Le Sigh...

I approve of making things into learning opportunities, even if those things unsolicted and rudely worded comments from strangers. I don't profess to know everything... and sometimes I even make glaring errors. Fancy that! I'm a human being! Whenever someone acts that way towards me, I try to seperate out the crude bullying aspects from whatever message I might be able to take away from the encounter.

My takeaway message: double check your facts, even if the prof said them. The prof might be wrong, I might have misheard or misinterpretted. Especially with Bowie on the mind, right? Good message. And I'm never above being corrected or learning something from someone who has more knowledge, wisdom or experience than me.

But I don't think that anyone deserves to be verbally abused or bullied. Ever. I might not know all there is to know about brain imaging. I might not ever know! But I sure do know a heck of a lot about bullying, abuse, misuse of power in relationships, language in relationships and general power dynamics (on and off the web). So, dear reader, I hope you will indulge me while I wax on a bit about the topic, which I learned about from one of the world's leading researchers in this field.

There are a few interesting things going on when someone attempts to take the piss out of you on the Internet. This is a way of acting out aggression that most likely (but not always) can't be safely expressed within the aggressor's day to day life. Typically, this is an individual that feels a lack of power or control in their own life and attempts to make themselves feel better by attempting to take power or control in someone else's life. Usually the person who is victimized has less social power (for example, they are new to blogger, have less knowledge about the topic being discussed, are more of a newbie on the Internet in general). The person who bullies gets momentary satisfaction from making someone else feel bad (or at least imagining that the other person feels bad - on the web it's an assumption because one doesn't see the immediate reaction). But the problem is that bullying another person does not address the root cause of the person who bullies self-esteem problems, and so, the person who bullies must continue to seek this reinforcement over and over again. And so there is a cycle where they seek validation that they are smart, or powerful, or capable of control over SOMETHING. It is the cycle of abuse and it continues (usually) until there is an intervention of sorts.

The other interesting thing happens when a person choses to make their comments anonymously. That's a very interesting and ultimately weak way of asserting perceived control. It's very safe... the aggressor remains unknown and protected from any personal investment. By not revealing anything about their own humanity, it is easier for them to treat the person they victimize as a non-human. What's more, when using the Internet to bully, the person who bullies does not have to see any of the human reaction on the receiving end. They miss any chance to develop the empathy necessary for social interaction. They commit the aggression and don't have to deal with any consequences.

Consider if you will, the kid on the playground who (for whatever reason) punches another kid. They see them cry, get hurt, other people around get angry. There are social consequences and the kid who did the punching gets to see first hand what the kid who got punched is going through. Hopefully certain mirror neurons fire, and the kid who punched gets to imagine deeply what it is like to be punched. Social learning... social consequences... social interaction. This is the same with social bullying... when the person aggressing can actually recognize what the consequences of their behaviour is on another person, imagine what it is like to be treated that way themselves, realize they don't want to be treated that way... well, then barring developmental difficulties, the kid learns to play nice and handle disagreements in a more pro-social way.

Internet bullying. Sigh... a huge problem among children and teens. I guess I'm surprised to see it coming from someone who is (in my opinion) cool enough to know so much about and be so passionately interested in medical science. Someone, who I imagine, I would probably really like to talk to and learn from. I mean, wow! What an incredible resource.

But, alas, I don't even know who the person is, their age, or even what country they live in. They haven't even provided me with a way to contact them privately. That leaves me with little choice other than to ignore them completely, or to write this post publicly. And since I believe in creating opportunities for learning, I chose the public venue.

So, I want to be clear. I will not tolerate rude language or flames on my blog. That includes swearing at me, calling me names, or making unkind inferences about my level of inteligence. Of course I will delete any comments like that.

But I also want to be clear about this. Whoever you are. I'm not a threat. I'm not a mean person. You don't have any need to take out whatever is bothering you on me. If I get some facts wrong, even horribly wrong on my innocent little blog, it doesn't actually harm you in any way. And you have a choice about how you can react. You can chose to use your power, knowledge, expertise and wisdom for good. You can share politely and even make a friend. Who knows, play your cards right and I could end up being a huge fan of whoever you are. Or you can react in a way that makes it very difficult for me to feel positively about you and what you represent (really cool science stuff). If you've got power, you've got responsibility for how you use it in the world. You can make the world (and my blog) a better place, or you can leave it alone. Those are your choices.

I really hope you make the nice one, because honestly, you sound like a pretty cool person.

Take care.

Measured In Bowies.. I Mean Teslas

"The tesla (symbol T) is the SI derived unit of magnetic field B (which is also known as "magnetic flux density" and "magnetic induction"). The tesla is equal to one weber per square meter and was defined in 1960[1] in honor of inventor, scientist and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla."

And it's the unit of measurement of strength of an MRI and fMRI. (Although someone recently told me that I have this wrong... apparently there are two different kinds of tesla measurements, and I need to do a bit more research on this. But since I'm not going to be a medical doctor... and this is more out of a general interest for me, I'll leave it at that for now...)

Magnetoencephalography is an imaging technique used to measure the magnetic fields in the brain. And it is really, bloody cool. Imagine wearing a giant helmet full of something called "SQUIDs" (superconducting quantum interference devices), which are basically super-sensitive devices that are sensitive to picking up magnetic fields and someone cancelling out the earth's magnetic pull. The helmet never actually touches your head but kind of hovers between 6 and 12 inches away.

Okay, I totally cop to the fact that as my prof was explaining this stuff to my class, I was imagining I was Magneto. That I was Ian McKellen playing Magneto. And of course, it got me thinking to how we associate famous figures from history and science with the celebrity that played them in somesuch. Someone mentioned teslas, and next thing I knew, I was hippocampus deep in the Thin White Duke. A happy place to be, by all accounts.

It's no secret that nerds and geeks of all walks have long since held up Nikolai Tesla as the epitome of awesomeness. He was a synesthyte!!! He was working on a death ray, people. And honest to god mf DEATH RAY... I don't approve of necessarily using death rays, but I mean COME ON!!! That is mf cool!!! So who else could play this man (in The Prestige - a fair to middlin' movie) stepping into camera shot out of an electrical storm but David Bowie? No one, that's who... When that giant glass eye looked "at" me from the giant screen, I belived he could see my voice as it said "cool as f*ck."

So, my brain is totally in it's happy place when my prof mentions that most MEGs are calibrated(?) to 1.5 teslas, and that there is some controversy about whether or not it is safe for children to be in an MEG of 2 or 3 teslas (the higher the teslas, the sharper the image... not so important for clinicians, but of much use to researchers - I mean think about it... if you can get a kid with ADHD and autism to sit still for 45 minutes, you want a crystal clear image of that brain...) And apparently back in the early 40s, they discovered that leaving someone in an MEG too long (say 4 hours) results in 3rd degree burns. These burns are internal, because essentially, an MEG is like microwaving yourself a bit. It shakes up all the H++ in your oxegen molecules and affects their polarity. Do it for too long and those bonds start to break, creating heat inside the body. Apparently, an hour or two at 1.5 teslas is safe... but we're not quite sure what would happen if we cranked up that sucker to say 3 or 4 Ts (yes, it's lowercase when you spell it out, but uppercase when you use the short form because it's someone's name) and put their poodle in it to dry it out after a rainstorm.

Which confirms scientifically, in the silly little part of my mighty brain, that Ziggy Stardust is smolderingly hot. As if we needed further proof.

Packed in Like Animals

I had the particularly sweet experience the other day of taking transit back and forth TWICE to my school. Now, most people would agree with me that under normal circumstances, that would be a bitter experience akin to having a mouthful of lemon rinds and razorblades. But, it was Rosh Hashanah, and classes were cancelled, so the buses were like little moblie ghost towns. I had not only no waiting time, but also my choice of seats. I don't think I've sat on a bus on the way to or from school yet this year. But I got to park my posterior on all four trips!



In was on these relaxing, room-to-breathe trips that I was able to give some thought to how commuting affects us in a multicultural city.



We've long known from animal studies that a lack of space decreases an animal's ability to socialize in a positive way. Doesn't matter if they are mice, rats, cats, dogs, tarantulas, or monkeys. If you stick too many animals in the same habitat, they get on each other's nerves, become more territorial than they were previously, fight more, and attack each other under circumstances which would not be considered provoking if they had more personal space. Okay, you see what I'm saying? Pack in animals too tight and they will tear each other to shreds.



As I basked in my abundant personal space, I got to thinking about the state of affairs on this bus route during rush hours. I have counted over 70 people on a bus, after having waited for 4 or 5 buses to go by before I could cram myself on one. Because the bus is an express route to the school, most people have a backpack, large purse, or one of those little laptop wheely-suitcases. That's a lot of luggage. Most people don't figure out how to handle their luggage in a crowded space, meaning that it's par for the course to get smacked in the face with a backpack someone refuses to take off, or squared by a wildly gesturing waterbottle. People have their mp3 players turned up to 11. First year arts students are having loud, pretentious discussions about how they just discovered Sartre. Graduate students arle having loud, pretentious discussions about how they hate Sartre. Someone is chewing their gum with their mouth open and EVERYONE is taking on the cellphones.



People become pretty freakin territorial over their allotted space. You see all kinds of weird territorial, animalistic things going on in that bus. The driver stops short. Someone uses the momentum to give someone else a little shove. Elbows get jammed, dirty looks get shot, invectives get muttered...



I haven't actually SEEN any punchings. But I've certainly been witness to more than a few altercations and a wide smattering of racial epiteths.



It's curious. I wonder if being crammed in too tight makes us more racist? Or at least more likely to engage is racist thinking or speech? Why is it that when we perceive a slight (because hey, this is YOUR bus, and that's YOUR seat - you OWN it and that insert-racial-slur-here ought to know that) we start picking apart everything that is different between that person and ourselves? I mean, why do we have to qualify what kind of asshole they are? Why can't they just be a generic asshole for not waiting in an orderly line the way we were taught to in our good and decent community where we were brought up? And keep in mind, that community of origin thing seems to hold regardless of what communit it is or how divergent it is from what is expected due to one's skin colour, clothes, or gender.

Or maybe I should be pleased and proud of my academic bretheren for keeping themselves together as well as they have been? The fact that I've been commuting to this school for 6 years already and have never seen anything come to blows might speak well for our difference from the animals. We might bear our teeth, but I've never seen blood. But still, I'm left wondering... where does all this extra tension go since we're not discharging it on the bus? Since we're all just sort of teetering under this passive-aggressive or completely repressed aggression? Humans are animals too, and it's pretty natural that we want to lash out when someone hurts us, perceived slight or real.

Which brings me to my final point. I may not have seen too many overt confrontations. But I've seen a lot of evidence of anxiety and panic attacks on these buses. Oh, and grumpy drivers, I've seen that too. Could it be that unlike some caged animals, we are internalizing our aggression and it's bubbling to the surface as a sort of polite, almost Victorian fainting spell? Do we have our figurative corsets on too tight? Would it do some of us some good to tell someone else off?

Sigh... I could go on forever about this.

So what do I want from you, dear reader? How about you dare to be honest with me? I promise not to give you away. Have you found yourself uttering (in your mind or out loud) an inappropriate comment based on race, ethnicity, gender, age or priveledge when in a too-crowded space? How did you justify it at the time? Did you feel guilty about it afterwards? And are you afraid, like me, that once you get old and senile, that you'll start saying this stuff out loud and the workers in the nursing home will start giving you the smackdown?

And were they right on Avenue Q? Is everyone a little bit racist? And should we all try to acknowledge and deal with it more openly?