LocSec News

All Things Presidential

Show All

This page is intended on providing the LocSec with a way to express their ideas and communicate information to both the general public and Mensans. Remember, Mensa does not hold any opinion, nor does it express any political or religious views; but I do and should you read further you will run into a few of them here.

Sincerely, Betsy McCall

DATABANK: File 12: Strange People

Published: 7/26/2009 - Modified: 07/21/2009

Those of you that know me well will not be surprised at what I’m about to say; those that know me less well may be: I don’t really like people. Yes, I’m Local Secretary of Columbus Area Mensa and I dislike people. ... More

DATABANK: File 11: The End Of The Year

Published: 6/26/2009 - Modified: 07/21/2009

For us here at Columbus Area Mensa ExComm, July marks the end of the year. As I write this, we are awaiting petitions for the new Executive Committee. There are likely to be some old faces returning, and some new ... More

DATABANK: File 10: Disaster!

Published: 5/01/2009 - Modified: 05/27/2009

Watching the public response to the swine flu recently has got me thinking about the way humans respond to apparent threats. We see a lot of both extremes in the media. Some people panic and react in essentially irrational ways to protect themselves, while others dismiss all "doomsayer" predictions as overblown—even the good predictions—and do equally irrational things. We saw an example of the former in Egypt’s reaction to the swine flu threat. They decided to slaughter pigs in the country even though there was no evidence of the flu in humans in Egypt, or in pigs in Egypt, or even rampant human to pig spread. We see the latter every year in hurricane season when people choose to ride out a Category 4 hurricane on an island barely above sea level. The desire for sensationalism in the media is no help, as they go out of their way to highlight these extremes and fuel them. But what is it about people that leads them to behave this way in the first place? And what can we do to do better?

The root of the problem is in our brains. Evolved to keep us alive in the face of immediate and short-term dangers, they simply aren’t designed to handle the kinds of dangers we face in modern society, which are usually longer-term and less immediate, though no less serious. The emotions of flight or fight work extremely well when up against a tiger or a rival tribe. They work considerably less well against H1N1 (swine flu) or airline crashes. Our higher reasoning abilities can help us work through the problem, but we need information to go on.

Processing that information runs into further problems in our brains. We have very selective memories. We are more likely to remember extreme situations and experiences which are outside the norm than we are to remember exactly how often the everyday experience happens. This makes it more difficult for us to judge real relative risks in our heads, to compare, let’s say, the chances of being killed in a car accident vs. being killed in a plane crash. Plane crashes are more dramatic and are more likely to get reported than the thousands of people killed every year, one or two people at a time, on our roads. So it is the plane crash we remember and the plane crash we fear.

Modern dangers are often defined by science and so it is to science and mathematics we have to turn to put modern dangers into perspective. When we look at the risks of riding in a plane vs. riding in a car, we can turn to statistics. We do have to be careful about statistics and make sure that we are comparing like things. We can compare features like hours in the air vs. hours in a car, or accidents per 1000 trips, or the like. No statistic is perfect, but ironically, public fears of plane travel contribute to the higher safety rate.

We often don’t have precise numbers, particularly with new dangers like H1N1 (swine flu), but we can look at the way that scientists talk about a problem closely to determine how experts look at the dangers. Scientists like precise language, and for some topics, the use of particular words corresponds to numerical estimates. In statistics, words like "significant" or "very significant" have precise mathematical meaning. The IPCC in their reports on climate change has a similar numerical representation of their vocabulary, where "likely" takes the place of "significant", and "very likely" for "very significant". They also include precise definitions for "probable" (more than 50%) and "possible" (less than 50% but more than 33%), etc.

Whenever we listen to "doomsayer" reports in the news, we can think of this scale. For instance, when reports of the swine flu were starting to spread in the news, scientists started talking about a "possible pandemic".

At the time, some people were already starting to panic and closing schools for weeks on end when the likelihood of a pandemic was still being discussed as less than 50% chance. (The technical terminology of a pandemic further makes understanding difficult, but that’s what dictionaries are for. That at least has a specific meaning in and outside of science.)

It’s unlikely that this understanding will talk those who have already developed irrational fears out of their fear. However, it can maybe help the rest of us know when to take warnings seriously, and when they are intended only to increase caution (and not induce panic)

DATABANK: File 9: Critical Thinking

Published: 5/01/2009 - Modified: 05/19/2009

I'm teaching an English class online right now, and other than the mountains of grading, I'm really enjoying it. One of my favorite parts is that in addition to teaching the students how to write well mechanically, the students are also learning about critical thinking, so that ... More

DATABANK: File 8: Unlucky Numbers

Published: 4/01/2009 - Modified: 05/19/2009

We are all familiar with the Western tradition of thirteen being the unlucky number that makes some people apoplectic. Buildings are numbered without a thirteenth floor, and ... More

DATABANK: File 7: Pythagoras

Published: 3/01/2009 - Modified: 05/19/2009

Ive been teaching trigonometry this quarter, and you know, everything in trigonometry goes back to Pythagoras. Perhaps not directly, but a lot is built on the Pythagorean Theorem, which is where most of us begin ... More

DATABANK: File 6: Climate Change

Published: 1/23/2009 - Modified: 05/12/2009

As I write this, it is just four days before the inauguration of a new President, and a radical shift in climate change policy for this country is about to take place, as evidenced by the Cabinet and advisory choices like Steven Chu, and John Holdren. It seems an appropriate coincidence ... More

DATABANK: File 5: Janus

Published: 12/24/2008 - Modified: 05/12/2009

It’s the new year and that means, it’s January. We think of January as being the obvious start of the new year, but in fact, the Roman calendar upon which our modern one is based did not begin in January. The Roman year began in March, with the spring. That’s why astrological calendars ... More

DATABANK: File 4: Tradition

Published: 11/24/2008 - Modified: 05/12/2009

As I write this, we are still two weeks away from Thanksgiving, and a few more weeks after that is the winter holiday season when it seems like everyone has a holiday, or indeed, has an excellent excuse to celebrate several simultaneously. This time of year is steeped in centuriesold traditions—some of them are even millennia-old. The marketplace depends on ... More

DATABANK: File 3: Voting Theory

Published: 10/24/2008 - Modified: 05/12/2009

In this month when we celebrate democracy, it seems like a good time to talk about the theory behind how we vote. ... More


Last modified: July 21st, 2009