Park Your Brain

In a classic case of Euphemism addiction some 'genius' who is being paid out of our taxes has decided to change the name of Parking Attendants to Civil Enforcement Officers


...and yes I have checked today is March 31st

This Blog Caught My Eye and That's No Lie

I was browsing through Mybloglog when I came across this fascinating site called Eyes For Lies Billed as The Human Lie Detector you will find some interesting 'takes' on current people and events and wether Eyes For Lies can tell if they have been fibbing...Honestly...I really mean it...you've gotta believe me...seriously...I was at my mother's all night...The blonde hair? Oh that...I was jumped by an albino Alsation dog in the hotel lobby...

Heathrow T5 to be re-named Dunning-Kruger Hub

image credit via Frank Schilling









One of the classic features of Gulliblity is the percieved gap between somebody's ambition and their capability.

Hot on the heels of the Heathrow Terminal 5 fiasco an emergency Bill is being rushed before parliament to be signed this coming Tuesday re-naming Heathrow's Terminal 5 The Dunning-Kruger Hub.

In a smooth PR move Heathrow management have issued a press release saying that the name change is to... quote... "Ensure customer loyalty during moments of truth. The 'DKNY' campaign will emphasise and strengthen air-relations with US customers"...presumably pasengers are being given complimentary extra dark sunglasses so that they won't be able to see the fiasco in operation!

How To Sniff Out Gullibility

How do you know if you are on the receiving end of somebody who is trying to dupe you? How do we get to the truth of the matter? Well as social animals most of us have a 'nose' for it, which regrettably becomes dulled because of three key factors:

i) cultural norms which lead us to think that asking direct questions are impolite

ii) undue deference to people who hold 'labels' of authority

iii) lazy thinking which causes us to accept things as 'givens'

So...imagine a situation you are familiar with, it might be a friend excusing themselves from a social event, someone close who doesn't fill in the details of a story, or perhaps someone who uses words and language that misdirect you.

A common tactic will be the use of Euphemism in order to avoid referring directly to the subject under discussion. With its close cousin Jargon I'm sure we all know of instances where the utterances simply obscure rather than clarify. If someone is obscuring the situation then its a sure-fire bet they are hiding something.

This fascinating article by the BBC Does 'misspeak' mean lying? gives some recent examples.

If you want to get really heavy you can dip into things like Language Truth and Logic I suppose this demonstrates the problem...to operate in the social world we have to make compromises and this means sometimes accepting at face value what we are told...can you imagine how you might end up with no Friends if you brought out your Truth Table in an attempt to verify everything that was said!

You can take the above post as true If and Only If The Post is True :)

25 Reasons You Might Be a Deluded Blogger

image taken from Colinski












With each post you might just be putting your head deeper into the sand. Judging by what it takes to get into Top 25 Blogs It seems that in pursuit of the dream millions of us are deluding ourselves with grandeur:

Some symptoms you might recognise...

Blogging Finger (digital medii nervosa)
Visitor Numbers Anxiety Syndrome
Blog Blank
Creative Hypertension
Traumatic Post Stress
Tag listlessness
Cranial Stumbles
Community Fever
Delusions of Authority
Aching Mind
Friendly Feed Fire (superficial burnerfeed)
Inspirational Rejection Psychosis
Memetic unspiralling
Rank Rancour
Network Notwork
Anti-Social Socialising a form of STD (socially transmitted diatribe)
Brillirantitis
Verbal Blockage
Obsessional Affiliation Psychosis
Analytical Analitis
Blog Thrush
Specific Topic Myopia
Stretched Metaphor Syndrome
Delusional Uniqueitis
Observational Quirkyspondylitis

Are British School Children Cannon Fodder?

The British Army is coming under fire from some teachers in the UK because of the sophisticated recruitment methods that are being used to target school pupils.

The age at which organisations should ethically 'target' people they wish to attract is always a source of controversy. The armed forces clearly have a particular challenge, and I doubt that any of the teachers at the N.U.T. conference would deny that the British armed forces are to be admired and thanked for the dangerous and important work that they do.

Sadly too in times of extreme danger to kin and country young people are the one's who are put in the firing line and there are many examples of this such as The Folorn Hope a junior officer role prevalent in the Napoleonic wars..this wikipedia entry states that the French version were known as 'The Lost Children'. More recent examples would include the Hitler Youth, the child soldiers of Africa and so on. What seems to happening in schools is that recruiters are going after people much younger than N,N,N,Nineteen

What is interesting however is that the army 'sales effort'(due to the obvious personal implications) needs to appeal to other motivators such as Duty, Service, Action, Adventure, Team Spirit, Winning and even as Sean O'Casey explored in his plays Glory...although some of his characters hankered after this at a safe distance. Beck and Cowan in Spiral Dynamics would recognise this as tapping into very strong red and blue Value Memes or world views.

In terms of personal development some young people are naturally more likely to be un-critcial, less concerned with distant implications, have a naive sense of invulnerability and are essentially...
Gung Ho. They are therefore as a result somewhat gullible, and in line with a common thread throughout this blog I don't feel it is right to exploit the gullible as by definition they are placing trust in you. As a personal example of this naivite in action, my 17 year old son was discussing his 'life plan' which was a simple as...

Join the Royal Marines...Capture Osama Bin Laden...Retire from army and open a restaurant with the bounty money and live happily ever after!!

I am not against army recruitment of young people per se. The world is often a dangerous place and rights need defending, and to deny a human being their right of choice is not good in my book. I am against methods that are economical with information about implications and consequences. Denying people informed choice is the unethical bit. This means that that the full facts should be shared even it means that 'sales' might go down a bit.

The Mystical Book Meme

The nearest book to me is Organizations in Depth by Yiannis Gabriel, concerning the application of psychoanalysis to organisations, and as such is key element of any approach to understanding people and organisations from a Critical Theory perspective. OOHHHHHHHHHHH the crowd roars as RR dives to his left and plucks the volume of his bookshelf and zooms straight to page 123


I was tagged by Daisy Puddock

The rules are:

1. Look up page 123 in the book nearest to you right now.

2. Find the fifth sentence and write it down.

3. Tag some other folk.

here goes...

"Questions of Constitutionality and determinations of entrapment by law enforcement personnel were outside the bounds of the Judges instructions to us"


Following Daisy here are couple more:

The Amber Spyglass

"The party from the road slowed to a halt, and Mary clambered stiffly down, knowing that she would ache later on"

Sophies World

"I think has something to do with the brass mirror" Sophie jumped again

I herebye tag

Jill
Mig
Dan

Go Smell The Flowers Award

I've just been given this new award from the guys at Go Smell The Flowers and I'm chuffed to bits. I really recommend that you drop over and see them, and, of course try these other Flower Smellers too!

Jillian
Offended Blogger
Mr Grudge
Maryannville
Uri

No Doubt ...You're Gullible?

I can't imagine Doubting Thomas ever being duped by 'get rich schemes', Snake Oil, a promise that the 'cheque is in the post, or explanations for being 'late home from the office'.

What you may not know is that Carravgios painting has the sub-title "If you look closer you can see the film set they used for the Fantastic Voyage "

So it seems that Thomas had all of the right qualities to prevent him from being gullible.

One thing got me wondering though, and that is...if, with Easter in mind Doubt is something you shouldn't have, how come in lots of instances 'having doubt' can protect us from bad things?

In Thomas's case doubt is clearly regarded as something you shouldn't have, but why have one rule for the use of doubt in one case and a different rule in another?. If God created everything (prior assumption alert!) then he must have created Doubt too. So what was his point? Is it a case of demonstrating what something is by emphasising what it is not? I doubt there is an easy answer!...

...So here is a question - "What is Doubt"?