Cherry Picking

I had an interesting thing happen at church on Sunday. Before I get into specifics I wanted to talk about the rhetorical tool of cherry-picking. Cherry-picking is the process of picking only the data the supports your position while ignoring or under emphasizing the data that goes contrary to your point.
To illustrate my point today I took a Wikipedia article about an individual and picked only the positive and neutral points. From the information below see if you can identify the subject of the article.

An avid downhill skier while in high school.
He studied law at Utah State University.
In college he was baptized a member of the LDS church.
He worked on Nelson Rockefeller’s presidential campaign.
He liked Volkswagens.
He enjoyed spending time outdoors.
He died at age 43.

Okay. He sounds like a pretty good guy, doesn’t he? Well yeah. Anybody would if you only use the details that make him seem like a nice guy. Now take a look at the rest of his profile and see if I left out anything important.

Big difference isn’t it? Even though everything above was technically true by cherry-picking the data, only picking the positive, I was able to create a false picture of who this man really was.

Now back to my experience Sunday. July 24th is Pioneer Day. It’s a Mormon holiday to celebrate those who made the trek west to help settle the Salt Lake valley. It’s typical for the Sunday talks to tell personal anecdotes about ancestors who made the trek and have them make comparisons to their own lives. This Sunday it became a textbook example of cherry-picking. The closing speaker did indeed have an ancestor who crossed the plains and helped settle the west. As he began to list the positive attributes of his great-great-great-great grandfather his name rang a bell. I pulled out my iphone and did a quick search for him. Now here is a short list of the details that the speaker shared with us.

He learned to hunt as a boy.
He converted to the church as an adult.
He was a close confidant on Joseph Smith.
He crossed the plains with Brigham Young and was one of his most trusted friends.
He was a proud defender of the LDS Church.
He was shot several times and eventually died from complications of his gunshot wounds.

I’m going to spare the actual name of the ancestor mentioned because I don’t want to identify the speaker. However, Suffice it to say that the comparison I made to Ted Bundy is not unfair. He was Danite and essentially a hired assassin. This speaker’s ancestor actually confessed to killing more people than Bundy is suspected of killing. Yes, he was a member of the church but he was excommunicated and became an opponent of the church.

My point here is not to criticize Sunday’s speaker. I just seriously am intrigued by the amount of cognitive dissonance that it takes to spin this character into a hero. It’s one thing to cherry-pick data in order to convince somebody else. But I think that more often than not people unconsciously sort that data. They just actually do not even see the disconfirming evidence. Or if they do they minimize it or rationalize it to the point that even a negative becomes a positive.

Surgery

It’s been a while since I’ve checked in. As usual this isn’t because nothing has been going on. Actually it’s quite the opposite. I just haven’t been able to slow down enough to give a report.

Emergency Surgery

A year or so ago I was having some recurring abdominal pains so I went to the doctor. She did a CT scan and noticed that I had a few kidney stones and a gall stone. I passed the kidney stones and then the real fun began. I started having gall stone attacks. For the most part they were just an annoyance that made me lose a lot of sleep and consequently vacation days. But after a few months they started getting rather intense. Went to the doctor again and she gave me some drugs for the pain and told me to try to manage it with diet. Well anything with any fat at all could trigger it and after further reading I found out that just laying on your left side could also trigger an attack.

Well the first weekend in July I came home from work a little early because I couldn’t stand sitting in my chair. It was getting painful but I was trying to tough it out. I knew exactly what the problem was and exactly what the solution was. I just didn’t have time for it. I had multiple projects in the works and my house was still substantially less than complete. Plus I didn’t have much of a buffer on vacation days if we were going to be able to go at all.

I tried to make it get better and nothing would work so Victoria called our neighbor over, she’s and EMT, and she persuaded me to go to the ER. After painfully waiting for hours in the ER they finally saw me. They kept asking me to rate my pain on a scale of 1 to 10. I had a hard time with this and kept thinking about the Brian Regan comedy routine. So I told the nurses, “Well a broken femur is supposed to be a 10 and I did that in ’97. This is far worse so how about 35.” An x-ray, EKG, and ultrasound later they admitted me. They gave me some morphine so I could sleep and scheduled me for surgery Saturday morning.

The next morning the doctor came in and explained what was going on. She used the phrase, “If you want to keep on living…” and the word “gangrenous” in the discussion. As if I needed more persuasion, but I was even more convinced after that.

The surgery was laparoscopic so I have 4 little scars that look like bullet holes. The doctor said that my gall bladder had a large stone and showed significant scarring. So it was good that I didn’t wait any longer. I healed up pretty quickly and only missed a few days of work the next week. The next Friday the doctor approved me for driving so our vacation could go on as scheduled. We left pretty much as soon as I got back from her office.

It’s been three weeks since the surgery and three weeks without an attack. That’s the first time in about a year that I can say that. At its worst the attacks were coming about every 5 days. I sure hope those days are all behind me.

I doubt any of them are reading this but I just wanted to give a tremendous thank you to all of the staff at the hospital. Everybody, without exception, was very nice and pleasant. I don’t ever want to have to do something like that again, but if I do I’ll pick the same folks to help me out.

Conflicts

Many years ago I played saxophone in my middle school band. I wasn’t very good at all. Typically I was either 3rd or 4th chair. That depended entirely on how many saxophones there were that semester, 3 or 4. In band if you wanted a promotion to a higher chair you had to “challenge” the chair in front of you. Friday’s were challenge days. We would go around the band and listen to each challenge. Typically the 2 players would each play the same piece and they were judged by the band director. If that challenger played it better they advanced to that chair. Sometimes challenges would be issued to show an expertise in a specific technique. I remember challenges issues entirely on breathing at the correct spots in a piece.

I will always remember one particular challenge. I was in the flute section. Our band director had been working with us on keeping our fingers close to the keys; basically not wasting energy and time by completely straightening your fingers when a smaller motion will get the job done. So the 3rd chair recognizes that she had an advantage in this area and challenges the 2nd chair to a piece. Here’s where it got interesting. She challenged him based on two criteria, accuracy and keeping fingers on the keys. Both musicians played the piece and then the director had to make a decision. The 3rd chair flutist clearly had mastered the concept of keeping her fingers near the keys. However the 2nd chair played the piece with more accuracy. So what do you do? Which of the 2 challenge criteria trumps the other? Without any ground rules in place before the challenge he decided that a tie meant no change in the positions.

No you’ve probably already realized that this post isn’t really about who sits where in a middle school band class. At our company we have a long standing safety creed. Until a few years ago it read,
“No job is so important and no service is so urgent that we can not take time to perform our work safely."
I have no problem with that at all. It’s simple and to the point. When I would get spot checked while on site my supervisor would ask me what it meant in my own words. I would typically say something like, “It’s just your phone or your internet. Nobody should have to get hurt to make this work.”
Well a few years ago we were bought out by a larger company. And that company made a slight change to the safety creed. It now reads,
“No job is so important and no service is so urgent that we can not take time to perform our work safely and in an environmentally responsible manner."
Hmmm. Now like our band director I am presented with a possible conflict. I have no problem with either of the goals expressed in this creed as long as they don’t conflict with each other. But what about when they do conflict? I can think of several cases where the most environmentally responsible thing to do would not be the safest thing to do in the short term. What if a coworker is being attacked by a Canada Goose? Whose side do I take? The coworker’s or the threatened migratory bird? While I have no criticism of either goal, I just think that bringing up environmental issues in the context of a safety creed waters down the creed and could actually make a situation more dangerous.
Now on to other issues. How many times do we find ourselves in situations like this? Do I swerve to miss the animal in the road and endanger my passengers in the process? Or make a professional decision without considering the family? I guess my only point is that you need to be clear which goal would trump the other before you get into that situation.

Bittersweet

We’ve started making the plans for our biannual family adventure. Every other year our family does a reunion. This year it’s in Utah. We do our best to attend and we also try to make a big road trip out of it. The kids really look forward to it. This year we plan on hitting several of the National Parks in California as well as some old favorites, possibly Yellowstone and Carlsbad again. We’ll see. The hardest part about planning these trips is reminding the family that we only have two weeks to get everything in.
The bittersweet part of this adventure comes because we are going to have to leave one of the family home. If he wants to graduate on time Aaron’ll have to take a summer school class which means that he will not be going with us. While I recognize that he has to sleep in the bed he made, it’s still rather tough to make plans like this knowing that we won’t all be going.

Judy

I bought another car last week. That’s actually the errand we were running last Sunday when we noticed the water coming out of the house. A few months ago I noticed a cute little VW bug parked in a driveway about 2 miles from the house. Every time I drove past I became more apparent that it hadn’t move for quite some time. I checked some online aerial shots and based on some other clues in the area it had been there for several years. So after work one day the last week of May I stopped by and talked to the owner. We talked for a little bit and I made him an offer and he accepted it.

The owner and his family are some of the nicest people I’ve ever met. Just a treat to talk to. He actually owns a tool rental company and when he found out what happened to the house he loaned us a carpet blower to help dry things out until the abatement people showed up. So if you need to rent a tool consider using Temporary Tools in Lilburn. A good friend of mine from the bug club loaned me tow bar and a wheel and helped me get her home. The previous owner and his son were also very helpful in getting her rolling so we could move her.

She’s a 1967 zenith blue VW Beetle . 1967 is a one of kind year for Beetles. Sometime in ’66 VW made the decision to completely overhaul the design by the ’68 model but the still had to get a new model out for ’67. Many VW aficionados think this is the best year for the Beetle. It still had a lot of the old body style and quaint features like the overrider bumpers, longer hood and the horn grills. But it also has some of the modern technical features like the 2-speed wipers and upgraded 12 volt electrics. Before ’67 they were only 6 volt.

Rachel decided to name her Judy, or Jude for short. She’s very much a work in progress and I’m probably going to have to learn to weld to get her fixed right. I’m not holding my breath that she’ll be on the road any time soon. Every day reveals some positive surprises and well as a few let downs. I’m very happy that most of the ’67 only features are still intact and very salvageable. It’s gonna be fun to work with my girls to help get her back on the road. I already have a set of replacement doors and Rachel wants to keep her the same color. First priority is to get the foundation solid enough that we can drive her safe. Then we’ll worry about cosmetic details.

Water Water Everywhere

We had a little excitement last week that made for a very stressful Memorial Day week. Sunday after church we’d gone over to the in-laws for a dinner. Around 3:00 or so Victoria, Rachel and I left to run an errand. We stopped by the house for just a second. I hadn’t even planned on going in the house, just needed to get some tools out of the truck. Well when I got out of the car I noticed that the driveway looked wet. I then noticed that the water seemed to be coming out of the garbage can. I moved the can saw it coming from under the garage door. I quickly dashed inside and it sounded like somebody had left the shower on. I ran up stairs and the steps were splashing as I ran. When I opened the bathroom door water was spraying everywhere. My first instinct was to check the shower but it was fine. The pipe behind the toilet had sprung a leak and was spraying water everywhere. I shut the water off there but it was still leaking. So I went into the garage and shut it off at the house too. When I opened the door to the garage it sounded like it was raining. The ceiling had become completely saturated and was buckling in several places. I backed Victoria’s car out just a few minutes before pieces of the ceiling began to fall.

So it was chaos for several days at the house. Plumbers, electrician, water abatement companies, insurance adjusters etc. for most of last week the house was around 110degrees inside. The water abatement folks had 3 of these mini-fridge sized dehumidifiers that were very effective but they were like little ovens. On top of that there were 18 high volume fans. The place sounded like an airport during a vintage prop plane air show with all those rotors turning at once. The kids and Victoria stayed with family most of the week. Personally I was afraid to leave the house unsupervised with all that heat and that many electrical appliances running.

We got somewhat back to normal on Friday when the insurance adjuster showed up and the water abatement company left. The house is now dry and the air conditioning is back on. All the flooring in most of the rooms is damaged beyond repair but they’re taking care of that for us. We didn’t have much damage besides the house. Everything in the garage got wet but not much was damaged. Now we just start the long process of dealing with flooring contractors to get everything taken care of. So far the insurance company has been great to deal with. It isn’t quite like the commercials (i. e. the agent standing side by side with you seconds after the damage occurred looking at the home owner saying, “We’ll make this right”) but I don’t have many complaints.

Banned

So I haven’t blogged for a while. Don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s because nothing has been happening worth talking about. Actually quite the opposite. Life’s been throwing a lot at me lately. I’ll try to catch up a little bit but I may have to break it down into a few posts.

Banned

Last month sometime my blog was tagged as offensive on Facebook. Somebody who calls themselves a friend of mine, at least as far as facebook’s definition of “friend” goes, reported my blog as offensive. I had to appeal it to the powers that be at facebook in order to get unlabelled. Every since then I’ve been really wondering what specifically I said that was offensive. I’ve never intended to offend, disagree? Certainly. But never offend. I’ve since brushed it off as just somebody who doesn’t know the difference between offensive speech and disagreement. It’s just taken me a little bit to get motivated to actually post something again.

Awe

I've posted this before but I just felt like posting it again today.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Last night Atlanta had some pretty rough storms roll through town. High winds, rain, hail, and lightning made quite a mess outside. My 11 mile commute to work had four detours from roads blocked by trees, utility lines and debris. About half of the neighborhoods I drove through were pitch black because they had no power.

The FM DJs on the station I was listening to were being pretty factual about their reporting. They were just stating the facts. Roads x, y, and z are blocked. Power out in x, y and z areas of town. But when I get in to work a coworker is complaining about how bad the am stations were reporting the storm. In his short commute he heard the aftermath compared to a “war zone” several times. Really? A war zone? Really? Were they bodies in the streets? Gunfire? Burning buildings? Sure there were trees down and leaves and crap spread everywhere, but a war zone? Come on. I remember as a kid being told the story of the boy who cried wolf. Apparently some people need a refresher course.

The boy who cried wolf caused the public to ignore his pleas. He had changed the definition of the word “wolf”. It no longer meant the same thing and was now something that could be ignored. Same goes for calling the storm damage a “war zone”.

A few years ago a gas pipeline blew up in California and completely blew up or burned an entire subdivision. I did not criticize anybody for saying that looked like a “war zone”. Now, if something like that were to happen today in Georgia what words are left to describe it? “War zone” now just means limbs and stuff spread around. You have diluted the words and they no longer have their original meaning.

It hit me today that the problem I have with this type of exaggeration is the same problem I have with the political inflammatory rhetoric. Suppose a real Socialist, a real Nazi, or a real Fascist were to run for election. What words are you left with to describe them? The past few years people have been throwing the words around without understanding that they are diluting the meaning. The three term are used as synonyms, they aren’t, and they are all used to mean “anybody who wants to control something I don’t want them to”.

Perhaps we could all benefit from asking an elementary school kid to retell us the story of the boy who cried wolf. Remember the moral to that story? He used scary words when there really wasn’t anything to be afraid of and people stopped listening and stopped caring when the real wolf showed up.