Put the phone in your pocket and look at the world.

            Yesterday I was talking with a colleague about the all too common stupid habit of people walking while looking at their phones. This is a piece of idiocracy that extends across the generations, including to those who were actually brought up before the existence of mobile phones that were taught as children to look where they were going. A few years ago everyone was worried that mobile phones might cause tumours, when in fact the real danger was that they seem to make you stupid. My colleague had had a woman looking at her phone and carrying a coffee walk into him. He had stopped when he saw her but was unable to move out of the way due to a wall on one side and a flow of pedestrians on the other. She had walked into him, spilt the coffee down herself and then acted like it was his fault.

            In my book I have talked about the necessity of keeping aware of your surroundings as a component of personal safety. I have known people who have been assaulted and robbed because they were too busy talking or looking on their phones. As for driving while using your phone and texting, this is way too common and the courts really need to impose harsher sentences.

            I came across this video today so I thought I would share it on the blog. Phones are a useful tool, but like any tool, use them wisely and pay a little more attention to the world around you. You may just avoid missing something nice.

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Roman Marching Kit

            Recently I saw a comedian pose the question “Why did it take so long to put wheels on suitcases? We put men on the moon before we thought of putting wheels on cases!” It may be hard for younger readers to grasp, but the logical step of putting wheels on cases is relatively new.

            I mention this because I have always been interested in alternate ways of doing things. Just because we do things one way does not mean that this is the only or necessarily the best way. In that vein I will pass on this rather nice video about Roman Marching kit. I’ll comment that most Furcas (the forked pole) that I have seen have had larger forks. Doubtless these items also served many useful roles around camp, acting as support poles or pot lifters. Also worth noting is that the roman infantry made use of animal transport, each contubernium (8-man squad) having a mule to carry their tent and some other gear.

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Narcissism and Aggression.

            Surfing channels last night, looking for something different and I came across a program about cult leaders. In addition to the history of several examples there was also some content on the psychology behind some famous incidents.



            One interesting piece of information was that many people who believe they are having a religious experience and hearing the voice of god are in fact undergoing a temporal epileptic seizure. Inducing such seizures under laboratory conditions will produce the same experiences. This was interesting since there is considerable evidence of links between epilepsy and certain criminal acts. That may be the subject of a future blog, but for the moment I will point out that that statement should not be taken to imply that all epileptics are criminals or dangerous.

  
          Another trait of cult leaders discussed was narcissism. The program described an experiment where subjects were given a questionnaire to determine if they were strongly narcissistic or not. The subjects were then asked to write an essay, and the essay was taken away for marking by an unseen party. In reality the essays were not read but were instead randomly assigned either an “A” grade or marked “F. Worst Essay I Have Ever Read!” The graded essays are then returned to the subjects and the subjects given the opportunity to subject the unseen (and non-existent) grader with a blast of sound. Not surprisingly, many F-graded subjects did not like being criticised. What was significant was the narcissistic students tended to inflict more intense and longer duration punishments on the “grader”.

            Quite interesting, I think. Obviously many of the cult leaders in the program were narcissistic and in the majority of examples their violent crimes seem to have been triggered by their perception that they were losing control or things were not going to go their way. An extreme example of this was Jim Jones and the deaths at Jonestown.

            In your day to day life you will doubtless have to deal with some narcissistic and potentially more volatile individuals. It is a good policy to avoid humiliating enemies unless it is necessary. In my book I mention using “mental judo” to let aggressors back out of a fight while saving face, or make it appear that such actions are their idea. This has applications in other fields too. Over the years I have influenced many colleagues to adopt practices that I think are better. Many of them are quite convinced that these were originally their good idea and defend them accordingly. Only a few close colleagues know that I was the origin of these ideas or know about the various hints and nudges it took.

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"Foxy shovels love fights!"

              I came across this illustration the other day which I found sort of charming (if that is a correct term for the subject matter!)

           I have talked about entrenching tools in both my books and will doubtless cover them further in other blog posts, but since it is a Monday and getting late I will leave you to enjoy the picture for today's blog post.

 

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