Left at Table 1: Paper on a Statistics Chapter 11

Attitude Scaling

Attitude scaling is the process of assessing an attitudinal disposition using a number that represents a person’s score on an attitudinal continuum ranging from an extremely favorable disposition to an extremely unfavorable one. Scaling is the “procedure for the assignment of numbers (or other symbols) to a property of objects in order to impart some of the characteristics of numbers to the properties in

question.  (Cooper and Schindler, p. 394)”

I’ve always found attitude scaling to be fascinating because it not only is dependent on how someone feels toward something, but also it is how they feel toward it during the moment that they are answering the question.   This is a critical distinction, because our feelings influence so much of our perception.   For example, you could expect that a person would answer favorably to almost every question on a survey if it was the day they just landed a great job, or just accepted a proposal for marriage.   Conversely, if someone just lost a job or their spouse just walked out on them, you could reasonably expect a different result.   Even if the attitude being addressed in the survey has nothing to do with their personal situation, you could expect that their answers will indeed be influenced by their emotional perception at any point in time.

Additionally, personality also might make an influence: there are certain characters of people who scale things differently.  If things are good, some will scale them as extremely favorable where another person might scale it as neutral.   That is more based on personality characteristics rather than situation feelings.

Still, all these are factors that go into the statistical collection of data, and it only serves to remind us that we humans are strange creatures with such complexity and variable hues of emotional coloring.

Miguel Mazariegos

Reference:

Cooper, D. R., & Schindler, P. S. (2011). Business research methods (11th ed.). [Vitrium Systems, Inc. version]. Retrieved from http://newclassroom3.phoenix.edu/classroom

Overheard at Table 3: Maya and the Wheel

Steingold: Yeah, but the Maya never invented the wheel.

Feinstein: They didn't NEED the wheel, they were in the jungle!   "Over the river and through the trees" up and down, up and down . . . you can't USE a wheel in the jungle.   The reason why the wheel was such a great invention for the Near East and Europe is because there were plains, there was gently sloping hills, there were vast areas that could be covered by carts.    Don't give me the "wheel" excuse: the Maya were doing brain surgery while Europeans were still living in caves going "wow!  we make fire!  we eat good!"

Overread at Booth 2: Be-Bop Deluxe's "Crystal Gazing"

Song of the Day for March 7, 2013

Be-Bop Deluxe
Crystal Gazing

The man who owned the heartache
That lived on the stairs
Passed me in the night whistling "Memories of You"

I stared to frightened to move
For fear my eyes shown a light
On the darkness he drew like a cloak
All around his shoulders

And the church on the corner
Marked the time for the mother
Who was giving birth to a child across the hall

And I waited half in anger half in sadness
For an answer to the call for help
I had written on the wall

And the rain fell like jewels
On the heads of all the fools
Who wandered crazed with their souls ablaze for me

And the blessing of the hour
Was the twilight and the tower
With it's golden bell from the bottom of the sea

And the moon through the window of the bedroom
Where lovers slumbered
Made a silver dance of such dust beneath the bed

And I waited for a moment in the lamplight
Crystal gazing
Listening to their hearts
And the changing of their breath
Listening to their hearts
And the changing of their breath
Listening to their hearts
And the changing of their breath



 These lyrics are soooo disturbing on a deep reading, because they seem to be indicating that the narrator is somehow secretively spying on the two lovers.   Perhaps he is a former lover?   Or perhaps he is simply a voyeur.   Either way, he is a poetic voyeur, but there is something darker to the lyric.   I've asked my class to delve deeper into it and produce a paper on the deeper meaning behind the song.

[from Phenergan's Wake]

A Poem for the Song of the Day

 

one foot peeps out from underneath the bedsheet

there are cracks in the paint on this windowsill,

as my breath fogs the outside of the windowpane.

 

 

 

Overread at Table 1: Ballad "Hiram Hibbard"

Interested I was in the version by Among the Oak and Ash, I wanted to know more about the ballad "Hiram Hibbard."  Can't really find much of anything online, except that it was also done by Bob Dylan in 1963, with some different verses.

The more detailed is a blog post (link http://mbmonday.blogspot.com/2012/05/hiram-hubbard-hiram-hubbert.html#!/2012/05/hiram-hubbard-hiram-hubbert.html)

That has some good historical narrative of the song.  Apparently it dates back to the Civil War, but I really still prefer the treatment by Among the Oak and Ash, who make the song sound like a lynching.  The way I interpret it, this is not so much a murder ballad as a treastise on post Civil WAr race relations in America, as well as the ability to administer immediate so-called "justice" which often amounted to community-endorsed murder based on fabricated evidence, if they even bothered with evidence at all.

I'll need to research further, to find out more.

I think the Americana duo S and M are planning to cover this one for a future album.

Overread at the Counter: The Twa Corbies

As I was walking all alane,
I heard twa corbies makin' a mane.
The tane intae the tither did say, O,
"Whaur sall we gang and dine the day, O,
whaur sall we gang and dine the day?"

"It's in ahint you auld fail dyke,
I wot there lies a new slain knight,
an naebody kens that he lies there, O,
but his hawk and his hound and his lady fair, O,
but his hawk and his hound and his lady fair".

"His hound is to the haunting gane,
his hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame,
his lady's ta'en anither mate, O,
so we may mak our dinner swate".

"Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane,
and I'll pike oot his bonny blue e'en,
we'll theek oor nest when it grows bare, O,
we'll theek oor nest when it grows bare".

There's mony a ane for him maks mane,
but nane sall ken whaur he is gane,
o'er his white banes when they are bare, O,
the wind sall blaw for evenmair, O,
the wind sall blaw for evenmair.

Overheard at Table 1: Brains vs Brawn

guy: My wife and I were having this discussion after we saw Thor.

his friend: How was it? I heard it was very cool.

guy: it was - very cool. First blockbuster of the summer. Rightly so. Just the right amount of superhero action, cool special effects, not overly deep on the character development, but it had some good lines back and forth . . .

his friend: witty repartee - always very cool.

guy: but the eye candy was only for the women. Don't really know what that was all about, but there was one scene where the guy was shirtless and I thought my wife was gonna bust right outta HERS, if you know whattImean . . .

his friend: six pack, huh? I hate guys like that.

guy: so yeah, and that's when we got into this discussion as we were leaving the theater about what women really want, and I was all talking about natural selection and about how much women may SAY they want a guy who understands and is considerate and remembers everything and all that, what they really want is some hot buff dude with a chiseled chest.

his friend: how'd she take that?

guy: well, she kept saying how that wasn't true, so I showed her this:

. . . and I said, "So tell me, babe, who would you rather procreate with: that guy - or THIS guy? :

his friend: bet she didn't have a good comeback for that one, did she?

guy: well, actually, that was when she said the coolest thing. She told me, and I don't think I'll ever forget this, she said, "Baby, you may not be as chiseled as Thor or as smart as Stephen Hawking, but you're the perfect blend of both of them for me!"

his friend: man! That's a keeper.

guy: no doubt!

Overheard at Booth 5

Listen to this passage I'm reading in this book I found the other day, it goes - lemme see . . .

"and the paranoic truth that we as humans refuse to recognize is the infinite and intricate limitations of our own humanity, both in the infinite capacity for evil and the finite opportunities for good. We turn to religion to both debase ourselves at the same time we try to sanctify ourselves, and we are left with a schizophrenic narcissistic self-loathing.

"On the other hand, to ignore religion and its precepts that assist on keeping our focus truly on God, we eventually open our eyes to see nothing but ourselves. Beyond narcissism, this choice leads us directly into megalomania, wherein the world exists solely to satisfy every whim. Our thought becomes the mind of God, and every word that sprays from our lips is the breath that moves across oceans and creates worlds.

"So, where is the healthy balance? Where is the healthy balance? I think we can find it in the words of Jesus Christ, when He said, 'Love God with all your soul, heart, strength, and mind' because by doing this, we are so fully concentrating on that which is the dawnspring and the final closing of all creation, that we have no time for the selfishness that creeps into both the following of religion and the following of ourselves.

"And then, His second great commandment, in which he cuts right through to the heart of our own Love of Self, where He commands us to 'Love your neighbor just like you love yourself.' That's probably more difficult than loving God, because to us God is a concept, so far beyond ourselves that we can cut Him some slack. But with this, we're left thinking, 'Love other people the way I love myself? Really? Even that stinky sick homeless guy who puked all over the street right in front of me? Even that nasty woman at work who always makes the whole department yell at each other because she's so stupid and miserable?'

"Yes, we think this way. Our selves are, in the end, the only thing standing in the way of our true happiness, which is found only in getting ourselves out of the way, ripping ourselves out of our hearts and replacing it with thoughts of God and love for the rest of humanity."


What do you think?

Glancing at a book lying open on Table 5

"Gerald was a man who despised God for giving humanity free will, because it gave them the impunity to commit horrible acts of violence against each other. He had never been convinced by the argument that God's joy rests in the coming to Him by our own volition, that the gift of our soul to Him was worth an eternity more than if we had just been made automotons innately programmed to blindly worship.

"He would have preferred that, he often told us. 'I wouldn't mind just being something like a hummingbird, darting from flower to flower, minding my own business, eating insects but never to extinction, and just flitter my little wings until the day that I just fall dead to the ground.' "












I turned the book over, the cover read "Phenergan's Wake"