poker-face or encephalisation quotient

Around a century ago in Berlin, local audiences, including scientists and emperors and the international public was coming to terms with what the latest object of fascination, much more than a side-show curiosity meant in terms of not only intelligence but for psychology. Around a decade prior, a school teacher, amateur phrenologist and some what of a charismatic, Wilhelm von Osten, bought a horse to hitch to a carriage he had had his eyes on. The stall available to him in the working-class neighbourhood of Berlin where he lived was too narrow to accommodate both beast and buggy and it turned out it the area was not the best to prance about, and so not discouraged, he undertook to teach his horse arithmetic, after repeated and at first accidental displays of precocity.
The world, still reveling from the recent publication of Charles Darwin's theories, had become engrossed with the idea of animal intelligence, and Mr. von Osten was more and more convinced that he had discovered the genuine article. With outstanding accuracy, the horse, Clever Hans (der Kluge Hans, after the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale), amazed audiences by clopping out answers to unscripted mathematical problems. The duo were a sensation and once learning that the Prussian emperor would have private audience, a scientific commission was called in order to avoid any royal embarrassment. The group, which included a top professor of psychology, a circus director, veterinarians and biologists, could find no explanation to the mysterious prodigy but also were convinced no trickery was involved. Besides, although he gained much fame, Mr. von Osten never charged admission or any other fees for his demonstrations.
The show continued, although, sadly Mr. von Osten died, under a new proctor, a business man who had studied von Osten's stage-presence and was enjoying some success in soliciting correct answers from Clever Hans. Hans' new owner even gathered a menagerie in a sort of equine classroom so Hans could impart his knowledge to others. The professor, however, who participated in the first commission was still mystified and launched a second investigation, this time with his students. Eventually termed the “Clever Hans Effect,” they slowly determined that the animals were quite clever though not in the ways the questioners had hoped, but rather became very good at reading body-language and non-verbal cues too subtle for audiences or skeptics to notice otherwise in order to get praise and rewards. It was a bit of a let down and Hans and his classmates were conscripted as war-horses and their fate is unknown. This effect, of course, affects all sorts of investigations and our ticks and tells give away a lot. It is funny to think also how well pets have their owners trained.

conspicuous consumption oder bishop of bling

Just on the heels of the Pope's overtures to Church leaders that culture must change and priests must rather be engaged with their communities and demonstrate charity, rather than living in Ivory Towers, it was revealed that the price for new residence for the Bishop of Limburg had swelled to some thirty-one million euro and included several architectural vanities. Of this extravagance and complaints of the bishop's autocratic, stand-offish leadership style, the Pope moved to place the bishop on indefinite administrative leave, while this matter could be sorted out. The Church has announced that the building will either be used as a home for refugees (Flüchtlingslager) or a soup-kitchen (Suppenküche) for the poor.

revolving-door

Reading an insightful article from the New York Times, at the recommendation of the watchdog group Corporate Observatory Europe concerning the metastasising lobbying-culture that America has helped introduced to the European Union and while the trend is most disturbing, I paused to wonder in today's environment where hypocrisies are immediately exposed (and though sometimes buried again right away but the truth will out, always) and only muddied by spin and ideologues whose sophistry is only grounded in commissions if such pressures and duplicity actually still meant anything. Bad behaviour and half-truths once uncovered become rather indefensible, like that other American commodity of surveillance, which has rendered secrecy and respect irrelevant. Does it matter that legislation is bullied or lubricated by influence-peddlers when their roles are subject to more and more public displays and outfitted with corporate logos like NASCAR racers and other niche sports before their audiences?

We all know who the puppet-masters are, even if the free-press is not sacrosanct neither. It is rather telling, however, of the troupes of legal-eagles entrenched in Brussels, making a corridor of lobby groups around the halls of power, have introduced recruitment of former politicians, fresh out of office, to ply their know-how, whereas before this was not a common practise, representatives content to retire or harmlessly play the grey-imminence to younger generations. As voters grow wise to these culture-shift that blurs the distinction between corporate and public interests, I hope that relaxing of standards and changing of priorities become harder to hide from view. Democratic processes and due review cannot simply become something of a show, a formality to be overcome, and hopeful the combined lag of bureaucracy on a super-national level, frustrating as it can be sometimes, can work also to uncover and slow the work of lobbyists.

mcjob

Though by no means limited to a single industry, demographic or the exclusive bailiwick of American exports, since there is wage stagnation to be found everywhere, the bight of mobility and want of jobs with career potential, sustainable beyond the ken of economic and class nostalgia, the glut of low-salary, abusive labour mills, the flagships of the US business model are presenting a particular threat, to the workers directly but also to the public made to subsidise the employers' bad behaviour.

A vestige of concern of concern would have been a nice gesture for those workers already faced with indentured servitude, not making ends meet but depressingly just scraping together enough to keep lenders and landlords at bay until next month, but one company's bootstrap services are not even that. Rather, in a calculated move to keep overhead low and profits high, such a life-line is a conduit to push workers (and presumably only those that have demonstrated enough desperate loyalty and competence to keep on since it is not available to all) to having their salaries supplemented by the public weal. Such workers are pushed towards welfare benefits to supplement their negative income, in turn costing tax-payers some billions annually. Combine this tactic with the practise of shaving off a few hours off their weekly schedules in order that they not be counted as full-time employees for health insurance purposes (though the same corporate entities are the most vociferous voices against reforming social programmes), it is no surprise that we are becoming mired in this mess and it is becoming a cycle for too many.