THINKER'S ALMANAC - May 15

What one simple act introduced in 1847 reduced the mortality rate in a maternity ward from 20% to 1%?

Subject:  Status Quo Bias - Hand Washing

Event:  Ignaz Semmelweis introduces hygiene practices, 1847

All too often, what matters is not whether an idea is true or effective, but whether it fits with the preconceptions of a dominant cabal. -Rory Sutherland

In 1846, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis became consumed by a problem.  Working as an obstetrician at Vienna General Hospital, he was troubled by the large number of mothers who died in his hospital after giving birth.  This was not a new problem; dating back to the 5th century, the father of medicine, Hippocrates, had described the ailment that inflicted mothers, known as puerperal fever.

One clue to a solution appeared when Semmelweis compared statistics in his hospital's two birthing wards.  One ward, attended by doctors, had a mortality rate of 20% while the other, attended by midwives, had a mortality rate of just 2%.

                                                                            Image by Kai from Pixabay 

Why, Semmelweis wondered, would the women who were attended by some of the finest doctors in the world, be more likely to die than those attended by midwives?

The answer came to Semmelweis after an unfortunate accident.  One day, one of Semmelweis’ mentors, Dr. Jacob Kolletschka was assisting one of his medical students in the dissection of a cadaver.  As the student wielded his scalpel, he accidentally nicked Kolletschka.  The cut drew blood, but did not appear serious at the time.  A few days later, however, Dr. Kolletschka died.  While Semmelweis mourned the death of his mentor, he also noticed that Kolletschka died of a fever that was eerily similar to the puerperal fever that had taken the lives of so many of the new mothers in the maternity wards attended by doctors.

Semmelweis realized at this point that doctors, including himself, would routinely do dissections and autopsies of human cadavers prior to working in the maternity ward.  Could it be, he wondered, that the hands of doctors carried cadaver particles that infected the mothers?

To test his hypothesis, Semmelweis instituted handwashing, instructing all doctors arriving from the dissecting room to wash their hands with hot water before entering the maternity ward.  On May 15, 1847, Semmelweis began this new hygiene regimen, and the results were remarkable:  the mortality rate for mothers dropped to 1.33 percent.

Despite having concrete evidence to support handwashing, Semmelweis’ procedure was not embraced by the medical establishment.  Semmelweis was just 28-years-old, and many older doctors resented being told that rather than healing their patients, they were killing them with their own unclean hands.

Through lectures and letters, he continued to attempt to persuade doctors that his discoveries were sound and that they would save lives, but he was mostly ignored and eventually ostracised.  Tragically, Semmelweis began drinking and suffered a nervous breakdown that resulted in his confinement in a Vienna insane asylum.  It was there that he died, ironically, of an infected wound on his right hand on August 13, 1865. He was just 47 years old (1).

It was only a few years later that Louis Pasteur’s germ theory would vindicate Semmelweis, identifying his cadaver particles as bacteria.

Semmelweis’s story is a powerful reminder of the status quo bias.  Old habits and dogma die hard, and although we think that an idea that is both true and effective will be adopted and accepted, this is not always the case.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the Status Quo Bias? How does Semmelweis’ story illustrate the power of the status quo bias?

Challenge - Ignaz Semmelweis Day:  In 2020, science writer Carl Zimmer recognized the contributions to medical science made by Semmelweis. Zimmer wrote the following Tweet:  “Every day is Ignaz Semmelweis day.”  Who would you argue is a person no longer living who should be remembered and honored for their contributions to making our lives better through science?

ALSO ON THIS DAY:

May 15, 1970:  On this day The Beatles released their last album, Let It Be.

Sources:

1-RadioLab. Dispatch 2: Every Day is Ignaz Semmelweis Day.  NPR.ogr 1 April 2020.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - May 14

When studying the autobiographical essays of a group of 600 nuns, a scientist discovered a secret to predicting which nuns would get Alzheimer’s disease and which wouldn’t.  What was the secret, hidden in the sentences of the essays?

Subject:  Syntax/Alzheimer’s Disease - Nun Study

Event:  Time magazine reports on the Nun Alzheimer's Study, 2001

The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ronald Reagan died at his home in Bel-Air, California on June 5, 2004. Certainly much has been written about Reagan’s political career as governor of California and as the 40th president of the United States, but after his career in politics was over, Reagan accomplished something unique. On November 5, 1994, he announced to the world that he had Alzheimer’s disease, the brain disease that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills.

In a short handwritten letter, Reagan explained his desire for privacy, but also his desire to raise public awareness for the millions afflicted with Alzheimer’s. With his characteristic candor and optimism, Reagan closed the letter by saying: “I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead” (1).

The disease is named after a pioneer in brain research, Alois Alzheimer, a German doctor who described the abnormal brain tissues of one of his patients in 1906.

On this day in 2001, Time magazine contained a cover story tracing the search for the causes and a potential cure for Alzheimer’s. One study of particular interest involved a group of more than 600 nuns. Scientist David Snowdown of the University of Kentucky began studying the nuns’ personal and medical histories, looking for clues that might solve the mystery behind why some people get Alzheimer’s and others don’t.

                                                        Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay 

Snowdown became interested in autobiographical essays that the nuns had written when they entered the order in their early 20s. He analyzed each essay for its idea density and grammatical complexity, and the results provided some interesting insights. Snowdown discovered that the nuns whose essays contained grammatically complex sentences were the same nuns who six or more decades later were free of any signs of Alzheimer’s. Conversely, those nuns who used mainly simple sentences were the same nuns who contracted Alzheimer’s. By examining the nuns’ early writing, Snowden was able to predict with 85% to 90% accuracy which nuns would have the disease 60 years later (2).

There is no evidence yet that teaching students to incorporate complex sentences into their writing will prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s in later years. However, one thing is certain, a healthy menu of intellectual pursuits, including writing, in your younger years doesn’t hurt. Another certainty is that good writers use a variety of sentences.  A key to writing varied sentences is a clear understanding of the difference between simple sentences and complex sentences.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What was the key difference in the nuns’ autobiographies that indicated whether or not they contracted Alzheimer’s disease later in life? What are the key components of a Compound-Complex Sentence?

Knowing the major types of sentence types allows writers to revise and edit their sentences, making them more varied and clear.  Below, the following four types of sentences are explained: simple, complex, compound, compound-complex.  Notice that the definition given for each sentence is a Meta-Sentence, that is, the definition is written in the form of the sentence being defined. Each definition is followed by an additional example:

A simple sentence is a sentence with one independent clause — a group of words with a subject (noun), a predicate (verb), and a complete thought.

Example:  Bill completed his homework.

A compound sentence is a sentence with at least two independent clauses; often the two clauses are connected by a coordinating conjunction (FANBOYS), a semicolon, or a conjunctive adverb — such as “however,” “therefore,” or “then.”

Example:  Bill completed his homework, and Jane wrote a report on penguins.

A complex sentence is a sentence that contains one independent clause and at least one dependent (adjective) clause.

Example:  Bill, who owns a dog named Huck, sat studying for his math test.

OR

If a sentence has a single independent clause and at least one dependent (adverb) clause, it is a complex sentence.

Example:  Bill was angry because his dog chewed up his homework.

A compound-complex sentence is a sentence that contains two independent clauses, and it also includes at least one dependent clause.

Example:  There were a lot of good things to watch on television, but Bill, who always gets his work done on time, sat doing his homework instead.

Challenge - Four Ways to Make Sentences Flow: Select a topic you know well and write four sentences on that topic, writing one sentence of each of the four types:  simple, complex, compound, and compound-complex.

Sources:

1-https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/reagans/ronald-reagan/reagans-letter-announcing-his-alzheimers-diagnosis

2-Lemonick, Michael D. and Aice Park Mankato.  “The Nun Study.”  Time Magazine 14 May 2001.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - May 13

One day after taking his dog for a walk, a man noticed that both he and his dog were covered with annoying cockleburrs.  How did he transform this annoyance into a million dollar idea?

Subject: Invention - Velcro

Event:  George de Mestral trademarks Velcro, 1958

. . . the average English-speaking adult knows about 40,000 words.  The number of active US trademarks is more than thirty times larger than the common English vocabulary.  -Christopher Johnson 

Today is the anniversary of a registered trademark that gave the world an alternative to zippers and buttons: Velcro.

One man’s annoyance can be another man’s eureka. One day, when Swiss inventor George de Mestral returned with his dog from a walk, he noticed that he and his dog were covered with cockleburrs. Instead of being annoyed, he studied the burrs under a microscope where he noted their hook-like shape.

Engineering artificial fasteners that replicated the ones he found in nature took a few years, but Mestral eventually succeeded in creating his easy to use hook and loop fastener. He registered his invention in 1958. For the name of his product, he blended two French terms: “vel” from velvet and “cro” from crochet (little hook).

                                                                Image by Tonguemation from Pixabay 

Today, Velcro Industries is a successful international company, but like other successful companies, Velcro is challenged by a paradox: they want people to use their trademarked name as much as possible to promote their product; however, because the name is used so often and the product is so successful and so ubiquitous, the name of the product becomes a generic, non-capitalized word. As a result, companies like Velcro are in a constant battle to protect their trademark and in turn their bottom line. The lines are blurred even more when a word, like Google, becomes used so often that it becomes more than just a noun. No doubt the legal department at Google and the neologism department at the American Heritage Dictionary are both busy tracing the growth and development of this word.

The following statement from the Velcro website is an example of the kinds of reminders and warnings that companies put out to protect their brand names:

The goodwill and integrity which are reflective of the Velcro companies are ingrained in the VELCRO® trademark. This makes the trademark a very valuable asset to the company and to our customers who purchase the VELCRO® brand fasteners.

Many terms that we all use frequently in our everyday language were once trademarks. All of these terms lost their distinction as trademarks because their owners allowed them to be misused by the public. That’s why the Velcro companies pay close attention to how the VELCRO® trademark is used (1).

As stated by the Velcro website, there are several brand names that were once registered trademarks, but today they have lost their capital letter and entered the dictionary and the English lexicon as generic terms, such as cellophane, escalator, and yo-yo.  Other brands seem generic, but they legally retain their trademarks, such as Kleenex, Jet Ski, Play Dough, Popsicle, and Q-tips.

The one key quality of Velcro, its stickiness, is an excellent metaphor for exploring how ideas are communicated to an audience.  In their 1922 book Made To Stick, Chip and Dan Heath explore the key principles that make an idea stick, in other words, the principles that persuade an audience to both pay attention to a message and to accept it.  A good example comes from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and its effort to persuade the public in 1992 that movie theater popcorn was unhealthy, specifically because it was prepared with coconut oil, which is high in saturated fat.

The basic claim that the CSPI was making was that “movie popcorn is fatty.”  In order to sell this idea, however, they needed to do more than just say it; instead, they needed a way to make the idea stick.  On September 27, 1992, the CSPI called a press conference to make their pitch:  Standing in front of table covered with a smorgasbord of greasy entrees, the CSPI spokesperson’s message what short but sticky:  “A medium-sized ‘butter’ popcorn at a typical neighborhood movie theater contains more artery-clogging fat than a bacon-and-eggs breakfast, a Big Mac and fries for lunch, and a steak dinner with all trimmings -- combined!”

The sticky pitch stuck, and the proof was that sales of movie popcorn plunged, and soon the big theater chains discontinued the use of coconut oil to pop their popcorn.

Using examples like the successful CSPI pitch, the Heath brothers created an acronym that lays out six principles to consider when trying to make a message stick:  SUCCES:

Simplicity:  As the CSPI pitch demonstrated, a profound but clear one-sentence statement has great power.  As Shakespeare said, “Brevity is the soul of wit.”

Unexpectedness:  Think about the expectations of your audience, and then consider how you might violate those expectations with a counterintuitive idea.  Who would have thought that a medium bag of popcorn would add up to an entire day of meals?

Concreteness:  More than just telling an audience something, a truly sticky message must show the audience something. Even if the CSPI had not included the table of food, the message still had a chance to stick because it was full of the specific names of menu items that an audience could imagine.

Credibility:  Going back to Aristotle, who invented rhetoric, the importance of the authority of a speaker has been emphasized as a key to the success of any message.  The speaker must consider the audience’s point of view and appeal to the kinds of authority that they will find believable and credible.

Emotions:  More than just making an audience think, successful messages make an audience feel.  A reasonable message based on sound evidence is good, but if it doesn’t have something that appeals to an audience's specific emotions, it may not move the audience or be memorable enough to stick.  The visuals and specifics of the CSPI message, for example, made the audience think, but more importantly, it made them feel the excess of the fat in the popcorn. 

Stories:  Narratives are the oldest form there is for getting a message across. Even if we are not aware of it, we understand our world by connecting ideas through the stories we tell about those ideas.  Even though the CSPI message did not have a specific story, the layout of the message created a dramatic connection between the one bag of popcorn and the entire table of fatty foods (2).

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason: How did George de Mestral get the idea for Velcro? What are the key elements that make a sticky message?

Challenge - Sticky SUCCES:  What is an example of an advertisement or public service announcement that you have seen that you would classify as sticky.  Describe the advertisement/PSA and explain which elements of SUCCES are included and how these elements contribute to the effectiveness of the message.

Sources:

1 – https://www.velcro.com/about-us/our-brand

2-Heath, Chip and Dan Heath.  Made To Stick:  Why Some Ideas Die and Others Survive.  New York:  Random House, 2007.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - May 12

According to George Orwell, what is the great enemy of clear language?

Subject:  Language and Thought - Carlin’s Euphemisms

Event:  Birthday of comedian Geoge Carlin, 1937

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. -George Orwell

                                    George Orwell - Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay 

Euphemisms are a natural feature of language, where we replace potentially offensive or harsh language with words that are more tactful and less abrupt. For example, when we talk about death, sex, or bodily functions, we refer to how someone has “passed away,” or how two people are “sleeping with each other,” or how someone has gone to “the powder room.”   These kinds of euphemisms are perfectly appropriate in social sending, used for purposes of being polite to others.

Euphemisms become dangerous, however, when they become doublespeak, which means language that is used to be intentionally misleading, manipulative, or deceptive. In the words of William Lutz, an expert in political language, doublespeak “is language designed to alter our perception of reality.”  For example, in 1984, the U.S. State Department announced that it would replace the word “killing” in its annual report on human rights with the phrase “unlawful or arbitrary deprivation of life.” 

One man who declared war on euphemisms and doublespeak was the American comedian George Carlin, who was born on this day in 1937. In one of his classic stand-up acts, Carlin made his case for using “simple, honest, direct language” rather than resorting to the kind of language that squeezes humanity out of language.  To illustrate his point, Carlin talked about the way euphemisms have been used historically to refer to the damage suffered by soldiers in combat.  

Beginning in the First World War, the operative term was clear and straightforward:  “shell shock.”  By World War II the term had become “battle fatigue,” but soon took on more syllables and less clarity, becoming “operational exhaustion.”  Today it has morphed into “posttraumatic stress disorder.”  Carlin’s point is that each change in the term became less clear, less concrete, and less human, resulting in a term like P.T.S.D. that buries the suffering of soldiers and blurs the reality of their suffering under jargon.  As Carlin points out, fewer euphemisms would have resulted in more soldiers getting the kind of medical help they really needed (1).

Another classic example of how euphemisms come into play is in the workplace.  In a 1996 essay entitled “You’re Out of Here,” linguist Geoffrey Nunberg is nostalgic for a past when an employee was given bad news; a boss would say simply and clearly, “You’re fired” or “We’re letting you go.”  In a modern age, however, corporations continue to generate more and more creative euphemisms to replace simple, clear language.  Here are nine examples:

Restructured

Re-engineered

Redeployed

Rightshaped

Downsized

Involuntary force reductions

Involuntary methodologies

Focussed reductions

Managing down staff resources (2)

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason: When does the use of euphemisms become dangerous?  How does the evolution of the term “shell shock” illustrate the nature of euphemisms?

Challenge - Four English Fails:   In his classic essay “Politics and the English Language” (1946), George Orwell warns against several aspects of language that can get in the way of expressing clear thoughts in writing.  In addition to euphemism, Orwell warns against the following:  passive voice, nominalizations, cliches, and jargon.  Do some research on one of these four terms.  Define the term with examples, and explain why writers who want to communicate their ideas clearly and cogently to an audience will avoid it.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:

May 12, 1812:  Today is the birthday of poet and painter Edward Lear. Before he made his name as a poet, Lear was a painter, illustrating birds for such noteworthy clients as Charles Darwin.  In 1832, while on an assignment to paint animals in the Early of Darby’s private zoo, Lear began composing humorous verse for the Early’s grandchildren.  He put his poems together in his Book of Nonsense, published in 1846. Lear is remembered for his famous poem “The Owl and the Pussycat,” but his most noteworthy contribution to the literary world is the limerick.

Sources:

1- Carlin, George. “Euphemisms.” Youtube.com

2-Nunberg, Geoffrey.  “You’re Out of Here.”  The Way We Talk Now.  New York:  Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - May 11

Whenever he would take a nap, what did Salvador Dali make sure he had in his hand?

Subject:  Sleep - Dali’s “Key” to Creativity

Event:  Birthday of Salvador Dalí, 1904

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it. -John Steinbeck

Legend says that Alexander the Great slept with two things under his pillow:  a copy of Homer’s Iliad and a dagger.  Unlike Alexander, the Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali, who was born on this day in 1904, needed just one thing for his strategic slumber:  a key; furthermore, he didn’t even need a pillow, for he slept in a chair.

More than an opportunity for a little shut-eye, Dali had a strategy for his power naps that made them useful for fueling his creativity.

Sitting in a chair with his head tilted back in a resting position, Dali would place a heavy key in his right hand and extend his right arm over the chair’s armrest.  Directly beneath his right hand, he would place an upside-down plate.   As he began to fall into a deep slumber, his hand would release the key, and it would fall clanging loudly onto the plate.

                                   Salvador Dalí - Image by Таня Добрая from Pixabay 

In his book, 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship, Dali explains the method to this seeming madness:

The moment the key drops from your fingers, you may be sure that the noise of its fall on the upside-down plate will awaken you, and you may be equally sure that this fugitive moment when you had barely lost consciousness and during which you cannot be assured of having really slept is totally sufficient, inasmuch as not a second more is needed for your physical and psychic being to be revivified by just the necessary amount of repose.

It appears that Dali understood intuitively what sleep researchers have learned about sleep, specifically the hypnagogic sleep stage where we are conscious but just beginning to dream.  It’s at this sleep stage where reality and dreaming mix to create a surrealistic stew made up of visual or auditory hallucinations. If you have ever seen some of Dali’s paintings, such as “The Persistence of Memory,” you can understand how his “slumber with a key” strategy might have produced such bizarre images.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What two items did Alexander the Great have under his pillow as he slept at night?  How did Salvador Dali use sleep to fuel his creativity?

Challenge - Sleep Smarts: What is the relationship between sleep and learning and creativity?  Do some research on this topic to see what experts have said about why effective thinking and learning rely on getting enough sleep.  Report on the best insight you find that might help others prioritize a good night’s sleep.

ALSO ON THIS DAY

May 11, 1720:  On this day Baron Karl Friedrich Munchhausen was born.  The German nobleman fought for the Russian Empire in two Turkish wars.  When he retired to his German estate in 1760, he gained a reputation as a raconteur, weaving outrageous tall tales based on his experiences as a soldier, traveler, and sportsman.  In addition to being a name synonymous with tall tales, Munchausen’s name has also become well-known in the psychiatric and medical communities for a condition known as Munchausen Syndrome; victims of this disease deliberately deceive their doctors, describing false symptoms of illness and in some cases even inducing real symptoms by injecting themselves with foreign substances.

Sources:

1-Hagan, Ekua. “How to Dream Like Salvador Dali.” Psychology Today 20 Feb. 2015.