Blog Archives

Bogus Research (Reading Time Seven Minutes)

4/24/2012

Every day we are inundated with research from various television shows and news broadcasts (i.e. average gas prices, gross domestic product, jobless rate, political polling, U.S. population, U.S. demographics, retail sales, stock market, etc.). One major problem most of us have is we accept what we hear as the truth when we shouldn’t. Let me give you a few examples of where I caught errors in the information being given by national news agencies. I was listening to ABC Nightly News with Diane Sawyer and she shared research from the Huffington Post that said Fox News viewers aren’t as informed as people who watch other news networks. This sounded strange to me because I know a lot of Fox viewers who seem very informed. I’m more inclined to watch our local news and nightly news.

Because I love research I decided to audit their report. I started with The Huffington Post and found out the owner, Arianna Huffington, is a big-time supporter of the Democratic Party. I don’t think democrats love Fox News. I then found out they got their research from Farleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey. After digging in to the research conducted by the university I found they only surveyed 600 people all of which live in New Jersey!

I would like for you to really think about this because I would love for you to be as livid as I am. I’ve worked with about every major grocery manufacturer there is (i.e. Clorox, Procter & Gamble, SC Johnson, etc.) and I promise you none of them would have conducted research this way because they would’ve lost credibility. They make sure they have an extremely large sample size (600 would be laughed at) and they’d make sure they had a cross section of demographics.

How in the world could national news agencies take a report based on 600 people who live in New Jersey and treat it like its national news? Not only was it just 600 people but the research company wouldn’t provide information on how many out of the 600 were Fox News viewers. This is very important because what if only 150 out of the 600 people surveyed watched Fox. Plus, the demographics are different in New Jersey than the demographics of those living in the southeast. Fox News has a large viewer base in the southeast so these viewers would be more inclined to watch Fox for longer periods of time.

So let’s think about this; news organizations like ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, etc., ran with the story. They were sharing the report and treating it as the truth when only 600 people out of the 300 million people in the U.S. were surveyed. I realize we don’t have 300 million people watching the news but I believe you get the point. I was outraged! How can we trust news organizations? They ran the story because they very much benefited in saying Fox News isn’t as good of a news agency as they are. The sad part is Fox News was harmed and there’s no way they can let everyone know how news viewers were misled by the other networks.

Let me give you another example. I was watching the evening news with Diane Sawyer and they have an awesome segment called Made in America. They mentioned in their broadcast that Christmas sales were projected to be around $465 billion dollars. They then went on to say that an average individual spends $704 on Christmas purchases (this sounded too high to me). And lastly they said Americans only spend around 45% on American made products and if all of us would spend an extra $74 dollars on American products we’d create 200,000 jobs.

Their numbers looked strange to me so I grabbed my laptop and checked them out. The first thing I did was divide the $465 billion by the average purchase amount with is $704. If you do this you’ll come up with 660 million people. I’m sure it’s sinking in now their numbers can’t be correct because our population is a little over 300 million. So right off the bat I saw a major flaw. And the thing is, if this number is so far off it also affects their projections of job growth because the $74 won’t be made by 660 million people.

I sent an email to ABC not expecting to hear anything but much to my surprise from the evening news called and went over my calculations. He was embarrassed and said they got the research from the National Retail Federation. He apologized that they didn’t conduct due diligence before airing the numbers. What’s great is on the following night when they ran the Made in America segment they revised some figures and stopped showing others all together. I give them credit for this.

There are more problems than the two examples I shared above. Do you really believe the media knows how many people live in the U.S. or for that matter the world? Do you think they know how many of our citizens are African American, Asian, Caucasian, and Hispanic? I even heard the news share how many people will be travelling during Thanksgiving and how many of them would be driving and flying. I don’t know about you but I don’t believe they know this. What I’m trying to get across is that everyone should be very careful when watching the news because practically everything they report (statistics wise) isn’t accurate.

I’m getting ready to share something with you that’s extremelyimportant. News organizations like Fox News and MSNBC intentionally inflame their viewers. Their primary reason for doing this is because they know if they don’t invoke strong emotions from their viewers they’ll lose them.

I love marketing analytics so I know data can be spun in at least two different directions. A recent example is the White House when they touted a decline in unemployment based on a percentage. In this case I believe it was 8.7% down to 8.6%. What they neglected to share is this doesn’t mean people got jobs it just means that unemployment applications dropped. In this case over 300,000 fell out of the system without getting a job. By the way I don’t think the Obama administration did anything that other administrations have done before.

With data spin in mind, Fox News can very easily spin data and make it fit their demographics while MSNBC (with different demographics) can do the same thing to their viewers. The problem is that people think what they hear is correct and it leads to major division between viewers of both networks. How many times have you heard people in a heated argument about politics because of the propaganda given to them from the network they watch? My brother has a good rule of thumb; the watches a few different networks and then figures the relative truth might be somewhere in the middle.

We’re all being duped. If the networks can get us fighting between ourselves they’ve accomplished their mission. I kind of wonder if people from both networks are actually friends each knowing that by pitching their viewers against one another, they’ll have job security. I could be way off base but sometimes I wonder.

I’ll cover one more topic before I move on to the next section. Please be very cautious of accepting the opinions of news consultants/experts. News agencies can find anyone they want to support their opinion or to invoke emotions from their viewers. There isn’t a topic in the world where all experts agree. Some scientist say there’s global warming while some don’t. Some economists say our economy is improving while other economists don’t. Some teachers say we need to radically change the way we educate our children while some teachers don’t. I hate to burst your news watching bubble but it’s my opinion that we should treat these news consultants/experts with extreme caution because there might be thousands of other experts who disagree with him or her.

My hope is that everyone who reads this will agree with me there is no reason for us to argue about news items because we’re not arguing over the truth; we’re arguing over the news network’s version of the truth. This is one of the reasons I don’t watch as much news as I used to (or listen to radio shows), because they got me all fired up over nothing. Life can be tough enough without the media bringing us down.

Keep in mind that I researched all of the things I’m getting ready to share so the fact is my information is only as good as my sources. I did my best to use multiple sources and if I saw a common theme I ran with it. In the end though I had to use my common sense and critical thinking to determine what is most accurate. This is my attempt to reiterate the insights I share are from my experiences. The best thing you can do if something doesn’t sound right to you is to do your own investigation of the material I share. I thoroughly believe in what I wrote, I hope you do too.

Does 2 + 2 = 4? (One Minute to Read)

4/24/2012

I’m getting ready to show you a few things that are strange about our numerical system. It’s because of these issues that two people can come up with different but accurate answers to the same problem. Let me show you what I’m talking about.

Three men check in to a hotel and say they will share a room to save money. The hotel clerk tells the men the room will be $30 so each man pulls out a $10 and gives it to the clerk and then goes to their room.

A few minutes later a bellhop stops by and tells the men that the clerk made a mistake and their particular room cost $27. So they explain to the bellhop that each of them pitched in for the room so he pulls out some one dollar bills and hands one to each of them and after doing this they tell him to keep the remaining $2 as a tip. Since each man was given a dollar back they have now contributed $9 apiece for a total of $27. Since they paid $27 for the room and gave the bellhop $2, what happened to the other dollar since they original paid $30? There is a way to prove the other dollar is there but the wild part is that someone could also prove that it isn't.

Now I want you to consider this scenario. If one person is 20 years old and the other 10, then we’d say the younger person was half the other person’s age (basically 50% their age). Based on our system of math we’d have to agree with this.

Now let's say let’s say these two individuals are now 100 years old and the other is 90. Remember there was a ten-year spread in their ages years before and the age spread is still the same now. But now the younger person isn’t half the other’s age but 90% their age. In this case something was true years before and all the variables are still the same but the percent difference between the ages jumped dramatically. If math were perfect should we expect this?

The bottom line is that our numerical system isn’t as cut and dry as we’re taught. I conducted research for years and definitely know numbers can be spun by both sides of an issue and in a lot of cases both can defend their position with the same data. In the business world we try to get away from spin by defining research methodoligies that everyone has to use, but in the political world they don't care. On our part we need to be very cautious about anything we hear or see. If something sounds outlandish we should probably write it off as attempted spin.

Pandora's Box (One Minute to Read)

4/24/2012

I'm sure you've heard the term: "Oh no, you've opened up Pandora's box," but you might not know where the phrase came from. Here's the story:

Zeus sent his daughter (Pandora) to earth to marry a good man by the name of Epimetheus. Before she left he gave her a small box with a big heavy lock on it and he made her promise never to open it or let her husband open it. Zeus was sure that either Epimetheus' and/or Pandora's curiosity would get the better of them.

Pandora couldn't hold back her curiosity any longer so when her husband was a sleep she took the key and opened the box. Out flew every kind of disease and sickness, hate and envy, and all the bad things that people had never experienced before. Pandora slammed the lid closed but it was too late; all the bad things were already out of the box.

Epimetheus woke up at the sound of Pandora crying. "I opened the box and all these ugly things flew out," she cried. "I tried to catch them but they all got out." Pandora opened the box to show him it was empty but the box wasn't empty as one tiny bug flew out before Pandora could slam the lid shut.

"Hello, Pandora," said the bug, "My name is Hope." With a nod of thanks for being set free, Hope flew out into the world, a world that now had a lot of bad things like envy and hate but also a world that had what it needed most...Hope.

Why Are People Apathetic?

4/23/2012

When we hear the word “apathy” we usually if not always think it’s a bad word. Webster’s defines the word as an absence or lack of interest in things; a lack of passion, emotion, excitement, etc. None of us want to hear someone say we’re apathetic because it’s often associated with laziness. But let’s face it, if we take a good look at ourselves we’re apathetic about a variety of things most of all politics at all levels (i.e. city, state, federal, etc.).

The question is: “Are we lazy because we don’t get involved in these things?” Not to try and justify my behavior but I believe for several reasons that it isn’t a matter of laziness but more a matter of frustration. Who among us thinks our vote really counts? Who thinks that our Congress and Senate will work together to pass real legislation that will make a positive difference for our country? Who thinks that it’s easy to deal with government when you have a problem you need addressed? Who thinks government forms are easy to fill out? Who believes the promises any presidential candidate makes? I could go on and on as I’m sure you could too.

With the above in mind it makes perfect sense that we’ve become apathetic and desensitized to the world around us. I’m sure that if most of us felt we could really make a difference that we would give it a shot.

The sad thing is when we reach a level of being apathetic we’re exactly where our government wants us. A good analogy (at least I think so) is how some bosses are smart enough to manage by walking around. She knows that she needs to inspect what she expects. Let’s face it, when we’re an employee of someone like this, we are much more likely to do our jobs more efficiently and effectively; it’s just human nature. I’ve always been a hard worker but I guarantee you that I stepped it up a notch when I’ve had eyes and ears on me.

This is exactly what our government doesn’t want. They don’t want us getting into their business. It’s worked well for them too because they’ve (even local government employees) been able to increase their benefits and salaries way beyond what an average citizen makes. The bottom line is they aren’t effective nor are they efficient and the only way we can figure out where the problems are is to get involved and start inspecting what they’re doing.

So being apathetic sometimes makes perfect sense to me and I don’t believe it has anything to do with laziness. I’ve pushed myself over this last year to get more involved but not everyone has the time to do this. My recommendation is to pick your battles. If there’s legislation that you feel strongly about then email everyone who needs to know about it. Provide them with this email site: www.conservativeusa.org. It lists all representatives at both state and federal levels and gives you a way to contact them via phone or email. Pounding them with a lot of calls and emails will make them realize they are being watched.

The Truth About Global Warming (Five Minutes to Read)

4/23/2012

First I’d like to remind everyone the fear mongers in the 1970’s were scaring people with Global Cooling. What’s funny is they blamed carbon dioxide just like they’re doing today with Global Warming. Their study included CO2 levels from the 1850’s to the 1970’s. Does anyone believe they were tracking this back in the 1800’s? I believe there’s some global warming but it has more to do with uncontrollable variables which I’ll explain shortly.

I don’t trust very much of what I hear because of researchers and fundraisers (Al Gore) misrepresenting data and imagery associated with their global warming initiative. Let me start with something that really upsets me and that’s the showing of glaciers melting into the ocean. This has been shown in movies like Al Gore’s: “Inconvenient Truth” and in a lot of other presentations throughout the country. The fact is, ice melts each season and in the An-Arctic it reduces to half its size during the warmer months. So glaciers breaking apart and falling into the ocean is a common occurrence. People like Al Gore are running around scaring people with something that’s part of the normal seasonal cycle. Keep in mind Al Gore became rich after he left office; any guesses on where most of his money came from? He’d sometimes spend $10,000 on fuel in his private jet to give a presentation on the negative effects of carbon dioxide. Apparently he’s not walking the talk.

When’s the last time you heard a bunch of news regarding a large hole in our ozone layer? According to researches we would burn up in a few years. We haven’t heard these scare tactics in awhile because scientific data around the world wasn’t supporting some of these researches.

Something to think about if we did have a large hole in our ozone layer is that it can allow more heat in but at the same time it allows more heat out. A good example of this is when you go outside at night and the temperature is around 50 degrees (colder than usual) and you look up in the sky and see a bunch of stars because it’s really clear out. Then the next night you go outside and it’s closer to 60 degrees and you notice the sky is overcast. Very easy to explain of course as the warming of the ground that took place during the day gets captured more when there’s a layer of clouds in the sky. But on a clear night the heat rises  quickly so it cools down faster. Welcome to one of the real ozone affect these  researches don’t want you to know about.

Now let’s talk about how the auto industry was attacked for auto emissions (carbon dioxide) and told they had to change the way cars were made. I definitely don’t mind aggressively pushing for less dependence on foreign oil but the attacks on car emissions were more of a scare tactic and there are reasons for this which I’ll sum up at the end of this blog. Researches know that methane gas is 23 times worse on the ozone than auto emissions. This equates to having to drive 12,500 miles in your vehicle to match the methane gas (harmful to the ozone layer) one cow releases each year. There’re over a billion cows on earth; so instead of sharing the truth that driving electric cars and reducing emissions would only put a dent in Global Warming they pushed to make automakers make major changes. The real inconvenient truth (not mentioned in Al Gore’s movie) is that to really address the ozone problem we need to give up hamburgers and steaks. FYI: I’m not on board with this!

Another very important thing to think about is that we aren’t the industrialized nation we used to be so we couldn’t positively impact Global Warming as much as other countries like China and Taiwan. Because these environmental researchers have scared highly developed countries (like the members of the G-8), there has been a major push for emission standards in manufacturing plants. The problem is that the U.S. follows the uniform standards which cost our manufacturers more money to produce products but countries like China aren’t playing by the same rules so their costs in producing products are lower. Of course this is exactly what we don’t need. I think we all know that no one is going to go to China and demand they follow the global policy.

Now one thing I do agree with researchers on is that chopping down trees in places like the Rain Forest definitely increases global warming. This is easy to back up. Think about when you go under a shade tree how much cooler it feels; it’s not a small difference it’s a huge difference especially if there’s a breeze. The tree absorbs the sun’s rays and you get to enjoy the cooler temperature it provides. Not only are you cooler, the ground is cooler as well. This means that while asphalt and areas without the shade of trees are sending the heat back up into our atmosphere, the trees and the ground underneath them have very little heat to send back up into the sky.

A couple of interesting side notes here is that we absorb heat as well and we don’t send it back into the atmosphere. Also, polar bears have dark fur under their beautiful white coats so they can absorb the sun’s rays and stay warmer longer. Lastly, our roads are terrible for their impact on global warming. Asphalt pretty much sends all of the sun’s heat/radiation right back up into the sky. This is why we can see the heat rising off of it. There are days that you could get away with laying on your paved driveway but you’d get terrible burns if you walked out and tried to lie down in the street. Asphalt and pavement are like day and night.

There are so many more areas I could discuss but I know you get the big picture and I never like for my blogs to be too long. My hope is that you’ll take these research studies with a grain of salt. It’s always a matter of “follow the money” and we need to keep in mind that biases come into play when the issue these research firms are addressing is their livelihood. Numbers can be manipulated and people get caught doing it all the time. You can find out more about this in my blog on “Pseudo Research.” I was able to prove to ABC’s Nightly News that they provided data that was incorrect and in one case they modified the next nights broadcast.

Once again I feel that Global Warming does exist but it isn’t to the level that some of these research companies (including universities) are sharing. I can’t say they purposefully misrepresent the data but even if they don’t, they should be embarrassed as to the accuracy of their reports. And it really does upset me when people like Al Gore are out pandering for money and using visual images (like the ice melting into the ocean) that are completely misleading. I’ve never heard him say the An-Arctic melts to half its size each year and then freezes over again to its full size. Sometimes it’s not always what someone says but what he or she doesn’t say, that gives insight into their character.

How Long Do Civilizations Last? (Two Minutes to Read)

4/23/2012

Based on history it’s difficult to make the case that a civilization will last more than 200 years. There are many reasons why a democracy has a difficult time making it over the long haul which you’ll see below.Let me start with a civilization cycle provided by Dr. Alexander Tyler. Many other professors agree with him as I’m sure you’ve seen in many articles and books. This is how it flows:

1. People go from bondage to spirituality.
2. From spiritual faith to great courage.
3. From courage to freedom/liberty.
4. From liberty to abundance.
5. From abundance to complacency.
6. From complacency to apathy.
7. From apathy to dependence.
8. From dependence back to bondage (which is usually a dictatorship).

Take another look at the above and come up with your own conclusion as to where we are as a nation. Although I know some people are at level 7, I think most of our society is at level six. I think this because we’re not counting our blessings and now most people are apathetic as to whether they can make a difference. Many people know how bad things are but don’t have any answers to how to improve things so they just give up and hope the politicians are taking care of things. I don’t think they’re taking care of things but they are taking care of themselves.

The reason a democracy has such a tough time making it (which can be seen above) is that it’s a great model (especially the one our forefathers put together) which outlined the very essence of capitalism. Unfortunately this good thing always leads to some bad things. First of all, some people make it so to speak and some people don’t. With this in mind there comes a division between our economic classes and this negatively affects our democracy which I’ll explain in a minute. The other bad thing is that with abundance comes complacency. We lose that “Eye of the Tiger” to keep pushing ourselves to be the best we can. A nation that is apathetic is prime to be defeated in war.

Let me address this economic class issue and that is the lower classes feel they aren’t being treated fairly and that the people at the top are getting away with everything. With this in mind, they become much more aggressive at voting for politicians who will take care of them. Someone once said: “A democracy will endure until the politicians figure out they can bribe the public with the public’s own money.” And Benjamin Franklin said: “When people find they can vote themselves money that will be the end of our Republic.” So there’s no better way to provide citizens with opportunities than through capitalism but it leads to a dependency on government from the lower classes because of their growing entitlement mentality. And following Dr. Tyler’s cycle above, this dependency leads to bondage/slavery
because the state will be their livelihood. This is also known as socialism.

Trayvon Martin (Two Minutes to Read)

4/17/2012

In my opinion this case has been totally blown out of proportion. There’re thousands of deaths which take place in our country with many of them being unimaginable in brutality. Why did the media jump on this one? The fact is nothing sells better than when you can inflame a community.

It’s always tragic when someone dies and I don’t have a clue how I would’ve handled it if I were Trayvon’s parents. But what upsets me about this situation is that the police are being demonized for following protocol. When they processed the scene they took Zimmerman’s story and then checked it out to see if it was viable. The police report listed the injuries to Zimmerman even though some of the news agencies reported they didn’t see any on video. They have now recanted their reports. Why would the police have lied about Zimmerman having injuries?

With Zimmerman’s explanation as to what happened and the supportive injuries it was decided they had better not arrest him until they investigated the death further. If they made an arrest the prosecutor would have had to decide which charge to file (i.e. first degree murder, second degree murder, manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, etc.). They didn’t have enough information to make this decision and if they filed the wrong one, Zimmerman could’ve gotten off the hook even if he was guilty.

I don’t know about you but I’ve not heard ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, mention what I did above. Of course a statement like this would go against their inflammatory nature.

There’s so much more to the case that I’m not covering but let me end with what bothers me most about this whole issue. The police are in a no-win situation because if the roles were reversed and they arrested Trayvon the first night, the black community (Al Sharpton) would claim discrimination due to the police rushing to judgment. They’d want exactly what Zimmerman is getting now which is a fair review to decide if particular charges were worth filing which is exactly what the police did. He could very well be guilty but as we all know in this country you're innocent until proven guilty.

Don't Let Your Village Raise Your Child (Three Minutes to Read)

4/17/2012

Hillary Clinton once said that it takes a village to raise a child. I understand what she was saying but my thought on the matter is that a village will influence a child (both good and bad) but it takes parents to actually raise their child.

When you drill down on the meaning of raise it’s associated with the word upright. This makes sense because when you think of raising something up you can also term the word upright when you lift something up. If you drill down a little further on the term upright you’ll see that one of the definitions is someone who has good character (i.e. honest, kind, etc.). It also list that an upright person is in tune with what is right.

What this boils down to is that a child’s parents can and should be the ones instilling the above values. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but the world isn’t demonstrating a lot of good characteristics these days especially in the entertainment world. Twenty-four hours a day a young person can watch shows that are so bad they would’ve been considered pornography when I was growing up. Just watch the dance moves from various  artists and it looks like they are having sex. I know they said the same thing about Elvis but there’s a world of difference now. And unfortunately even cheerleaders and dance teams are doing the same things including grabbing their crotch (I hate this word so sorry).

A child’s world/village has some pretty scary stuff in it that can negatively affect his or her character for life. There’s a lack of honesty, unselfishness, work ethic, etc., so someone’s child isn’t going to get a lot of exposure to people with these values. This is why I think it’s the parent’s job to raise their child because they need to be the gate keeper. These are some things I think a parent should do to positively
influence who their child becomes:

1) Set a bedtime and don’t deviate. When you start negotiating with your child each night you’ll lose credibility and not just on time for bed.

2) Set a time each morning that your child has to get up and make sure it’s enough time to where everyone isn’t rushing to get out the door.

3) Do everything you can to share dinner as a family at a specified time. If your child is taking part in programs (i.e. dance, music, sports, etc.) that go into the early evening, I’d recommend taking your child out of the program he or she is involved in. Any expert will tell you that eating together as a family will do more for your child’s character than participating in programs. Plus these activities usually stress everyone out (i.e. when is practice, when is the game, which field is the child playing on, limited time
for homework, etc.).

4) Know their friends and their friends’ parents. Not everyone’s  parents have good morals so there’s a possibility they could allow your son or daughter to do things at their home that you’d never let take place at yours.

5) Teach them a good work ethic and responsibility by coming up with weekly chores. Even a four-year old can clean their room at least once a week. I know of families who have a maid and they have teens. I say let the maid go and put your teenager(s) to work. They need it even more than you need it even though they won’t think so.

I could have listed more but you get the point. You have greater influence and more tools at your disposal to teach your children the characteristics they need to be successfully personally, professionally, and spiritually. So I disagree with Hillary Clinton because if you allow your village to raise your child, your child will end up with a miserable life.

The GSA Scandal (Two Minutes to Read)

4/17/2012

I couldn’t begin to list the services the General Service Administration and their roughly 5,000 employees offer to businesses, consumers, and the government in general. You can go to the www.gsa.gov website to get insight into all the things they do. So although I’m always for less government, in this case they provide a lot of necessary services just like any company would need in a support capacity.

We all know the GSA has been involved in a scandal where government employees hired prostitutes and used government money  to do so. I strongly believe these men should lose their jobs and be punished for misappropriation of funds or even embezzlement. But here are some things I don’t believe:

1) I don’t believe their supervisor (if not involved in the incident) should lose his or her job unless she was aware of what was happening and didn’t do anything about it. Nor do I feel that anyone else up the ladder should lose his job unless aware of the situation and not taken care of according to GSA policies.

2) I don’t believe Congressional Hearings needed to take place  regarding this scandal as there are much more serious issues they should be addressing like our country going bankrupt. It should have been handled at the GSA according to their rules and regulations.

3) I don’t believe Congressional Hearings should take place regarding the GSA spending over $800K on their event. An amount per person should be set for future events and made policy then signed off on by the head of the GSA. Once again Congress doesn’t need to waste their time on $800K when their pork barrel spending is in the billions. If they want to point their fingers at someone regarding waste, they should point it at themselves first. Hearings like this are only for allowing politicians to provide their constituents with sound bites so it looks like they’re fighting for them.

4) I don’t believe anyone at the top should be fired due to the $800K spend because it isn’t realistic that this person would know how much is being spent. It isn’t fair to set a standard that would be no way realistic in the business world. It seems like the only people who get second chances are politicians because they seem to always want someone’s head when it isn’t one of their own.

This event has gotten so much wasted news coverage when there are so many terrible problems in our country most of which stemming from our Legislative Branch. Politicians love having voters side-tracked so we don’t pay attention to the real issues, because it just reminds us of their ineffectiveness.

Monkeys and Morals (Three Minutes to Read)

4/16/2012

I recently watched a presentation by Dr. Hans de Waal where he demonstrated various animal behavior (his focus was on Monkeys) to get a better idea of their personal characteristics. The presentation was informative and very funny as he showed some great video clips of his experiments. So in this case there’s no way I can make it as entertaining
as Dr. Waal but you should still get some interesting information you can share.

First of all he showed how compassionate they were in that if a monkey gets hurt in a fight or something, other monkey(s) come up and stroke the injured monkey so it will feel
better.

Another very interesting video which showed something I’d never seen before is that a lot of monkeys who get in a fight with another monkey from their same group, reach out to one another after the fight. One video clip looked like the monkey who won reached out to shake the other ones hand.

This particular experiment was one of my favorites. They had two monkeys in separate cages but side by side and each monkey could see the other one. The woman reached in to the first monkey and gave it a cucumber which it quickly ate. Then she gave the other monkey a few grapes (which monkeys love). The first monkey noticed this and when the woman gave him another cucumber he reluctantly ate it. Then he saw her once again give
the other monkey the good stuff (you should have seen its jealous facial expression). The third time she gave the monkey a piece of cucumber he jumped up and down in his cage and threw the cucumber at her. Of course she eventually gave in and gave the first monkey some well deserved grapes. My guess is that he wished he was given the assignment of monkey number two in this experiment!

He then took two monkeys (different ones) and ran a test to see if they were kind enough to share their food. One monkey was taught that if he chose a red block he’d get the entire snack but if he chose a green block, he’d have to share with the monkey next to his cage. As you probably have already guessed he was willing to help feed the other monkey. What
a good friend.

Hopefully I can describe this well enough because it was my favorite experiment. Two monkeys were in the same cage and there were two ropes ends about three feet apart. At the other end of the ropes were two snacks each at one end of a crate. One monkey couldn’t pull the crate by himself so they figured out they could pull together and move the crate towards them. They even figured out they had to pull the ropes at the same time to get the crate moving. It was funny watching them look at each other and time when they would pull. Kind of like us saying: “Okay, one, two, three, pull.” It worked and they both got a
snack.

Then the experiment was changed. They took one monkey out and fed it a good size meal so it was no longer hungry. Then they put this monkey back in the cage with the other one he’d worked with earlier. Keep in mind the incentive to pull together was to get the food so in this case one of the monkeys didn’t care anymore. The monkey who was hungry pushed the
other monkey to the rope and got it to help him. Now after ever difficult pull or two the monkey who was full would try to step away from the rope but the hungry monkey kept grabbing him to help. I can’t describe how funny it was to watch this take place!

The presentation did include showing elephants who demonstrated the same kind of compassion as the monkeys did. They worked together to get food, they consoled each other, and they definitely protected each other especially all of the moms pulling together to protect a baby elephant. Anyhow, the presentation was very enlightening to me.

It’s interesting that many of the traits God wants us to have are being demonstrated by some of the animal kingdom. There own herds, packs, etc., are such good examples of how to have an effective society. So get out there and monkey around!

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Author: John Mann

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