Foregrounding Hidden Figures

Lately, I've noticed others realize they've never heard about  Katherine Johnson, the African American mathematician who calculated flight trajectories for NASA's Project Mercury and the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the Moon. You can actually still download Dr. Johnson's report detailing azimuth angles at burnout for a satellite (published in 1960 by NASA) on the NTRS (Nasa's Technical Report Server).
So it bothers me that some people didn't realize, haven't heard, and blame NASA for not promoting it.
It bothers me that good people don't understand and ask, "why didn't NASA make this public sooner?"
They didn't because we didn't. Society, crowds, are large dumb apathetic masses that take a hell of a lot of energy to educate.  Hell, it takes a hell of a lot of energy to get a crowd's attention for 10 seconds.  Then you've got to be brilliant enough to educate someone in 10 seconds. Tough to do, huh?

See that famous hidden figure, the man in the moon?

So back to NASA and publicizing Katherine Johnson's accomplishments. They did try to publicize it (e.g. those of us who worked there saw her name and work lauded every year in at least two internal programs promoting women and minorities with innovative ideas), but it takes a movie--a story portrayal of the information and it's meaning--to garner public awareness, to educate a crowd.
As a novelist, I know I should be delighted that the public wants stories to help sort and define salient information into social consciousness because it gives me no end of job security and career potential...but as a social scientist it makes me cringe because I realize how much public information, how much heroic effort, how many potentially life-changing scientific discoveries go completely unknown because no movie has been made about them or no novel has been written including them.
Too many of us sit passively scrolling through Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and base 90% of our awareness about the world on only the information spoon fed to us.  Me included. Because it is part of our human nature to do so. Because finding, parsing, and interpreting data requires massive amounts of time and mental energy and we are overwhelmed with a buffet of data like never before. We are drinking water out of a fire-hose and the velocity is starting to rip the skin off the face of our humanity. Some of us are drowning, some of us are withering from dehydration because we can't swallow enough nourishing data in this deluge, and some of us are miraculously managing to get sips enough to thrive as well as survive.
Mostly, I manage to get sips and thrive, so I think it is my social duty to share these 4 tricks I've learned to make finding, parsing, and interpreting data in the fire-hose flow easier.

1. Feed your desire to know more by starting with the topics you are interested in or most upset about. If you're a space exploration nut like I am, then visit each of the world's space agencies websites (www.NASA.org, www.ESA.int, http://global.jaxa.jp/, http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/, http://en.roscosmos.ru/, http://www.kari.re.kr/eng.do, http://www.cnsa.gov.cn/) and look at what they actually say they are doing rather than relying on second-hand sources. Many of the organizations dealing directly with a topic also have tools, applications, on-line classes and history archives (e.g. www.siop.org, http://www.redcross.org/ux/take-a-class, https://shrm.org/, https://www.aeaweb.org/resources, https://www.ama-assn.org/). If you follow your interest rather than trusting the information gate keepers to post what you are interested in, then you will make discoveries that streamline how you spend your reading time and encourage you to read more. For example, I can peruse NASA's Sceintific and Technical information program and find out how to build a solar-powered refrigerator or a portable desalination system: https://www.sti.nasa.gov/. It is free...American tax dollars already paid for me to have access to it and I get excited about nerding-out over the world's water problems in ways that matter to me.

2. Even when following a headline to skim an article, go to the sources yourself before spending more than two minutes trying to understand or interpret anything. We're quick to jump to conclusions and make interpretations with too little data because that is how we are wired to accommodate life-threatening situations; but it isn't how we should operate as a norm if we want to be honest and genuine with each other or garner any respect for seeing the wider truths. Good articles will reference the sources somehow so you can follow the links to the sources, but even if they don't, you can find them or at least get verification that more than one news agency reports it. It is easier to do so now for many of us than it has ever been in the course of human history, thanks to our ability to freely search a global network from palm-held devices. You can even pull actual data and run your own analysis for many things. Here are just some examples of good sources to keep on your list:

• Get current travel alerts and country briefings directly from the U.S. State Department and look at the diplomatic plan for the current year so you know what policy you voted officials to represent is actually (or not) getting implemented.
• Get over 100 years of actual climate data directly from NOAA as well as current satellite imagery and enacted sanctuary and marine laws, policies, and projects supported by your tax dollars.
• Get free complete job description with salary bench-marking data for the U.S. and your state from the Department of Labor's Occupational Network Online (www.onetonline.org).
• See what new technologies and educational resources NASA is offering you (in return for your tax investment) this week.
• Look at the congressional record to see what was actually said on the senate floor today or at least read the daily digest to see what your lawmakers are trying to do to you--rather than trusting the news to notice the things you care about.
• Follow the White House and look at the weekly press releases and statements (90% of which never make any news outlet) to see what is really going on in your executive office of government.

3. Learn the cognitive biases. We humans are susceptible to cognitive biases any time we think. The good news is that awareness of them is half the battle. When you are aware of them, you are less likely to commit them and get tricked into doing stupid things when the information to help you do better was right in front of your face all along. Do a search on-line for cognitive biases and read about them. You'll be glad you did before one tricks you into having a stupid argument again with your colleague, spouse, sibling, parent, or child. The "Availability Heuristic" really gets a lot of us these days given our feeds on social media--are you being duped like this? Casinos rely on "Gambler's Fallacy" to part your pocket from money.  These cognitive biases can work for or against you. Your choice.

4. Follow the 10 Commandments of Logic and require those who provide you news to do so too. Many persuasion tactics violate one or more of these commandments, so if something you read violates one of them then odds are that someone is attempting to persuade you into doing something based on something other than fact or your best interest. Know them so you can spot them happening to you and so you can control your own use of these tactics. When other people outside of your own social in-group see you violating these 10 commandments without their explicit consent, then you risk losing credibility (and coming across as skanky, smarmy, or narcissistic). 

http://www.relativelyinteresting.com/10-commandments-rational-debate-logical-fallacies-explained/

Please share your tricks as you are able. I for one, am eager to learn more, so that I can thrive in the information deluge and help others. I'd also just like to see more courageous hidden figures and brilliant discoveries achieve critical mass in crowd awareness. Thanks for reading.

Fruit Cocktail

A fellow author, Annette Mori, threw down the gauntlet and challenged me to write a short story using all the clinical names for external female genitalia in the service of charity and education. This resulting story meets 100% of the challenge criteria in a surprisingly PG-13 way. I hope you enjoy it.

Fruit Cocktail

Leticia thumbed through the anatomy textbook on their kitchen counter for the hundredth time this semester and sighed.

“Look I know it’s retarded, but Davis swears it helped his whole class remember every friggin’ detail well enough to best even the gynecology residents in the year-end quizzes.” Gerald shoved his pale thin hand through the pages fluttering in front of Leticia, stopping perfectly on the frontal illustration of external female genitalia.

“I don’t need a fruit model to aid my memory,” Leti complained.

“Not all of us have the benefit of being lesbian love sorceresses, Dear.” Gerald scowled at her.

He was her best friend, and final exams were on Monday, but it was a heavy burden to spend the waning hours of Friday evening  ̶ after many weeks of lonely, wasted Friday evenings ̶  constructing fruit models of female genitalia.

Sarah leaned in the doorway and sang, “It’s not like you have anything better to do Leti, the Lesbian Love Sorceress.”

“Thanks. I don’t need the reminder.” They all knew that Leti’s wife, Lee, was busy finishing Air Force officer training before they deployed her to God-knows-where for the next two years she owed them in return for paying out her last year in a nurse anesthesia educational program. 
It was a deal each of them had considered taking to pay for medical school at one time or another.

“Yeah, but you do need the distraction.” Sarah smiled as she walked past Leti toward the refrigerator.  She passed out a collection of fruits, while humming something that sounded like Carmen Miranda’s “Chica Chica Boom Chic” song.

Leti felt the smile taking over her scowl before she could muster up enough sadness to counter it.

†

Two hours of labor and bawdy limericks later, Leti thought they actually had a pretty good fruit replica set up on a nine by thirteen-inch baking sheet.

“One more time,” insisted Gerald.

Sarah and Leti groaned in simulcast. The doorbell rang and Sarah dashed out the kitchen door to answer it before Leti could volunteer.

“Probably Jehovah’s Witness,” Gerald peered over his black rimmed glasses at her, “you should go ahead and do your repetition first.”

Leti shook her head and almost protested before the thought of their local Jehovah’s Witness overhearing inspired her to impish compliance. 
She took a big breath and sang, “The outside hairy cantaloupe mons pubis and forms the melon’s crust labium majus. Cantaloupe mons pubis leads to a perfectly pear prepuce of clitoris guarding a silky raspberry glans of clitoris. Lovely grapefruit skin hinges shapely labium minus from which first stems a plum pithy meatus urethral opening and Skene’s raspberry seeded paraurethral ducts which are the equivalent of male prostate glands.”

In her pause for another breath, no clues sounded from the front door as to their visitor’s identity.

Gerald followed Leti’s gaze to the door and shrugged. “Go on.”

“A center grapefruit segment opens to define a blissfully blue blueberry vaginal opening with a thin skinned hymenal caruncle less intact on riper blueberries and women before the whole grapefruit encloses vestibular fossa navicular like a navel orange to the frenulum of labium.  The posterior labial commissure closes the whole fruit store commissary before her perienal raphe routes home to anus.” Leti closed her eyes as she completed the mnemonic narrative and left them closed as she summarized, “Cantaloupe, Pear, Raspberry, Grapefruit Skin, Plum Pith, Raspberry Seed, Grapefruit Segment, Blueberry with thin skin, Grapefruit again, Navel Orange.”

“That is one dirty fruit cocktail,” a familiar voice shocked Leti into opening her eyes.

Her wife, Lee stood next to Sarah in the kitchen, smiling at her. 

Leti hurled herself into Lee’s arms, neglecting to care at all for the starched perfect lines of Lee’s dress blues.  
Her wife smelled of Brasso, Ivory Soap, and familiar salt and the cocktail of aromas was headier to Leti than that of all the eviscerated fruit crowding the kitchen. “I can’t believe you’re home.”

“I have three weeks leave. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to mess up your concentration before exams,” A laugh rumbled over Lee’s shoulders as Leti held tight, “but I can see that you three have already resorted to desperate measures.”

“Hey, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,” Gerald said.

“I’ve had plenty of fruit cocktail to know where it’s best modeled for study,” Lee replied and nuzzled Leti’s ear.

“Umm. Ick. Let’s go look at more manly eggplants in the grocery story, Sarah.”

“Right. Have fun you two.” Sarah called as Gerald tugged her toward the front door.

“Is now a good time to taste your raspberry?” Lee giggled.

“Oh yes. I can’t think of a better study aid.” Leti laughed.

“I’m open to stroking blueberries too.”

“I’ll share my whole fruit cocktail, if you’ll share yours.”

Lee pulled her toward the bedroom. “Yes, ma’am.”

I hope this story entertained you, but also serves as a reminder that it is mentally healthy to label and talk about all kinds of potentially awkward things--including your own mental and learning challenges, just as the great Carrie Fisher (who passed this week) did over the last two decades.  Mental Health and emotional well-being are causes dear to me and a big challenge among homeless adults, LGBT youth, and veterans in America. Please, learn more about what you can do to help yourself and others by visiting http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/ and volunteering through front-line organizations like The Montrose Center.

If you're interested in another free story meeting this challenge, please check out Darla Baker's.  And if you're brave enough, I double dog dare you...#BeMightyWrite

Why not the whole armor when challenged to a guantlet?

Save your holidays and happiness

Not all family gatherings are places of welcoming warmth and serenity, and some will never be no matter what you do; but you can improve your chances of happily-ever-after in every relationship by following healthy rules for fighting. Fights, conflict, arguments, and heated debates are a necessary evil. If we fight well, we learn something important and the relationship grows stronger.
There are dozens of lists on-line describing how to fight well in relationships, but the bottom line is that you should make your own list. Pick the rules that matter most to each relationship. Pick the rules you frequently fail to follow.
Memorize your list of rules. Carry them around in your wallet or on your smart-phone. Recite them at the cat each morning. Print them on your mouse-pad at work. Do whatever it takes to ingrain them into muscle memory before you find yourself in the heat of the battle.
And above all, pull them out and look at them before you allow yourself to lose your shit with someone at that Holiday Party or family dinner.

Yes, I know, your opponents probably break every single one of the rules; but their bad behavior does not justify your bad behavior. Rise above. You are in this relationship still because you want to be for some reason, because you somehow value your opponents enough to keep trying.  The good news is that you'll be surprised how vicariously contagious many of the rules are when you apply them consistently over time.

I maintain that is important to do your own research and pick your own rules, preferably in cooperation with your most common opponent (buy them a beverage and invite them to sit down and pick which rules you'll both try to fight by when the time comes). However, I will get you started by sharing the rules my spouse and I  picked. My last word of advice on the matter, pick a dozen or fewer rules and review and adapt them twice a year as you master them (for example, we've mastered the "no violence" and "no sarcasm during a fight" rules so they aren't on the list any more).

 1.    Never fight tired/ hungry/ distracted. STOP and figure out what you are really upset about. Set an appointment to fight.

2.    No degrading language or negative triggers (e.g. ridiculous, stupid, silly, all in your head).

3.    No blaming. State the problem first, then your feelings. Accept apologies at face value.

4.    No yelling. Try to keep calm, sit down, keep an open posture.

5.    No talk of quitting, being done, or leaving the relationship.

6.    Define yourself, not your opponent. No mind reading. Describe how you feel and what you want.

7.    Stay in the present. One issue, one occurrence. No bringing up past times or other grievances.

8.    Take turns. Invite your opponent to give her point of view. Restate what you heard before giving yours.

9.    When necessary, use time-outs. “I’m too wound up/ emotional right now, how about we try again in an hour/ day/ week?”

10.           Propose a specific solution and debate the advantages and disadvantages of each.

11.           Finish with gratitude. “Thank you for talking this out with me.”

When we fight fair, there is less fear and more fun in my family.

Happy Holidays! Please give feedback (like what rules work for you) as it is the gift that shows you really care.

And now with more feeling?

One of the single profound, most eye-opening, things I have learned as a social scientist was the idea that my feelings are like the temperature gauge on my car. They are simple emotional reactions to a real physical situation that tell me when something probably deserves a second, closer look.  They tell me there might be a problem and that I should begin a thinking and decision-making process.  While the temperature might indicate burning oil and might influence my direction and impact my distance of travel, it would be silly to let it decide my ultimate destination.
Yet, sometimes, I do.
There are costs to letting feelings, no matter how justified, dictate our destination:

1. Immediate blindness. When I revel in the righteousness of my own fear, anger, happiness--whatever--I cannot see the righteousness of others' emotions or comprehend the depth of anyone else's feelings.
2. Aborted logic. Once I give my emotions the lead, the majority vote, they overwhelm and oppress all attempts to objectively think through anything.  Emotions rule our sympathetic nervous system, which like any good emergency operator puts all of its resources into making the system immediately safe through any means possible.  Our SNS chokes off higher-order reasoning and throws out the objectivity with the bathwater screaming, "This is war, dammit." Even if it isn't.
3. Escalated emotions, especially the bad ones. Emotional reaction begets more emotional reaction. Sometimes this works in our favor, like when sex and intimacy ramp up our feelings of love and contentment. But usually not. Humans excel at negative pattern recognition.  We hone in especially well to what doesn't feel right or good so that we can avoid it. This is part of why it is so easy to focus on what is wrong with the world and get caught in a downward depressive spiral.
4. Regret and shame. In retrospect, letting my emotions have the majority vote in deciding my action or reaction to something usually causes me to be disappointed in myself because it usually means I was blind to what others were feeling, I gave in to fear, and/ or I publicly perpetuated a negative sentiment. If my emotional reaction succeeded in persuading others then it did so by somehow appealing to their baser emotions and not by figuring out what is in our best interests or for the greater good (and I have then become my worst nightmare).

In my experience, and in research, these costs far out-weigh the benefits (e.g. temporary satisfaction) of letting my emotions rule my actions.  These costs compound interest as they frequently lead to relationship traumas and social crises, too.  Awareness of all of this is somewhat helpful, but it isn't a panacea.  Maybe there isn't one, but through writing and meditation I have learned some things that help when I want to respond with more feeling (maybe too much):

1. I accept my feeling.  I don't need anyone else to validate it. They can't. It's mine and therefore it is legitimate, and I  probably have others I need to explore too. Some may even contradict each other.  Ever been crying happy? Raging sad? Painfully pleased? It's just a temperature gauge telling me to explore why my oil is burning--and it is always worth asking if my gauge could be broken or miscalibrated too.
2. I nurture my curiosity about others' feelings, especially those who seem to be feeling entirely differently than I do.  Part of it is that understanding others enables my compassion, which I know from research increases my odds of living happily ever after.  Part of it is that the larger sampling of what people feel and why allows me to shape my feelings and reactions with more intelligence. "There is no better intelligence than the enemy's marching orders" (Napoleon, I think...). Curiosity avoids aborted logic and the awful art of satisficing.
3. I chant until I believe it, "It's none of my business what any one else thinks of me, but how I act is entirely my responsibility alone."  I am an existential humanist so authenticity and responsibility play equally large part in giving my life meaning. Having a faith or a core philosophy helps me parse and value my emotions, but I need the reminder that having a moral code doesn't excuse me from having to carefully parse and value each and every emotion.
4. Always consider the wisdom in doing nothing. Emotions push us to react, right now. Sometimes it helps just to ask myself if there is any harm in waiting to decide how to react, in doing nothing for a day, a week, a month, a year. This also helps me time my reaction better if one is needed or desired.
5. Constantly solicit advice and insights. Yours. What do you do when your head is hot and your body is shouting at you to do something with more feeling this time? Why? How does it turn out? What would do instead or again if you could?

Accepting and acting on a feeling, like hugging a frightened pussy, can be good for everyone in the right context.

5 Sure-Fire Ways to Lose at Noveling

Nobody likes to lose and you shouldn't have to when I am perfectly willing to mercilessly unveil my own abject failures to forewarn yours. If I've discovered the antidote, I'll give you that too.

1. Start with a blank page. Blank pages are intimidating.  They look so large and perfect and you're about to scribble it up to shit, and that can really dampen your courage and kill fledgling inspiration as mental rats scurry about ranting, "I have no idea where/ how to start this right." My antidote?  I learned it from a sketch artist. Draw a baseline/ just put down random notes in any order that you can delete or reshape later as needed.  It helps to leave these on that big bad blank page as long as you can, until the end of the project so that you don't experience #2.
2. Ignore your progress.  Writing is an all out bloody war with your best and worst inner demons.  It is a journey of millimeters, one freaking sweaty alphabet letter at a time.  Sometimes even thinking in terms of number of words a day is just too bone-shakingly overwhelming. Antidotes? Mini-reward yourself for each paragraph, or dialogue (i.e. I get a lemon drop as soon as I finish writing this description for the first time, even if it sucks). Find your most unconditionally supportive friend (i.e. Polly Always Positive) and text her a line saying you just conquered the hardest sentence ever.  At the end of each hour, look at the shear number of characters you have managed to fling against your inner demons and that imposing blank white wall...it helps if you shout out like Alexander the Great or Rocky, "I am a conqueror!" (Don't worry about the folks and critters who live with you as they already know you're weird...you're a writer.)
3. Doubt your motives. Some people say you should only write for yourself.  Some say your should only write for others.  And yet some people say you should only write to serve a worthy purpose.  Writing is a noble endeavor and I don't want to belittle it by committing the worst treason and writing for the wrong reasons at the right time (note: that is a muddle  of  a T.S. Elliot quote). I cripple myself at times by trying to figure out why I'm going into screaming battle wielding my keyboard.  Soul-gazing is good sometimes, keeps us humble and compassionate, but not when we're painted-blue and naked running at the idea of NOVELING like a wild Pict toward a Roman legion. There are many antidotes for this, including Hemingway's trick of imbibing enough bourbon, but not all of them are healthy. So I suggest the simplest: be kind to yourself.  Trust that you have many motivations for trying to slay the Novel dragon, and the nobility is in the effort--in the fact that you are running naked at the Roman legion. Later, when anybody asks why you wrote your complete novel or what motivated you to keep going, then you can narrow it down to the right, most noble, reasons.
4. Berate yourself today for messing up or missing yesterday.  The old crying over spilled milk makes you fail twice.  I saw it a lot on the softball field.  The short-stop is so busy fuming at herself about missing the throw to second base that she gets smacked in the head by a line drive during the next play and lets two runs score.  And yet, even though I know better, I still do it. The only antidote I know of is cultivating your self-awareness enough so that you can recognize you're doing this and stop it before you fall into another screw-up today.  Five to ten minutes of meditation a day has helped me a lot--forcing myself to just be in the moment has strengthened my ability to focus.
5. Tough it out alone. One of the things I learned working with high-performing teams in extreme environments (e.g. astronauts) is that the hardest and the most critical thing to do is to take care of yourself first. Put on your own oxygen mask in the airplane before assisting your child with hers. We've all heard it, but we've also heard much more frequently something along the lines of Nike's Just Do It or, "Don't be a pansy." In extremely tough environments (and I do believe writing a novel is definitely one of these), toughing out an injury or sickness may kill you--but more importantly, it makes your whole team vulnerable. If you are struggling, then you owe it to your teammates (your friends and family) to let them know you are struggling so that you can decide as a group how to deal with it before it snowballs into disaster for your relationships and your writing (It's damn hard to take the time to focus on putting words on paper when you're worried about the health of your marriage).  The antidote is recognizing that writing is a team sport and playing it like one.  You feel like a lone, naked, conqueror; but you're not. There are armies of armies chaotically flailing all around you in similar and competing directions and if you coordinate with those closest to you, then you significantly up your chances of winning as well as surviving.

Bonus Helpers:

I like the old adage (or maybe it's a misquote from one of the Roosevelt's) -- If you never try, never start, then you have already failed in the most miserable way imaginable.  The good news is that like most failures, this failure too may be overcome by applying fearless effort.
While there are hundreds of ways to lose at writing anything, there is ultimately only one way to win: apply your ass to a chair and start slashing at that big white wall in your own proud warrior fashion. You are mighty every single pen stroke and keystroke, forging something tangible out of seemingly nothing.

Have you discovered alternative antidotes? Please share them.

"This is my pen. There are many like it, but this one is mine...

 I must master it as I must master my life. Without me, my pen is useless."