'The GM nod,' 'The GM salute' and a clash of cultures

Safety, cost-containment and impenetrable decision-making

"We cannot conclude," the Valukas report reads, "that the atmosphere of cost-cutting had no impact on the failure of GM to resolve these issues earlier."

Mike Colias 
Automotive News
June 5, 2014

 

DETROIT -- Page 248 of Anton Valukas' report on what went wrong with General Motors' deadly ignition switch defect outlines how GM's safety efforts run smack into its cost-conscious culture.
Under the heading "Tone at the Top," the report tries to peg how much GM's culture -- in full-blown cost-cutting mode at the time the bad switches were installed in Chevrolet Cobalts and other small cars -- had to do with its handling of the defect.
The report, which relied in part on interviews of 230 employees, describes a troubling mixed message subtly conveyed by senior leadership: that safety is paramount, yet so is keeping a lid on costs.
"Repeated throughout the interview process we heard from GM personnel two somewhat different directives," the report reads. "When safety is an issue, cost is irrelevant" and "cost is everything."
The report provides a harsh rebuke of GM's infamous committee culture, too, one that on the ignition-switch issue rendered "determining the identity of an actual decision maker … impenetrable."
Some GM employees told investigators that they didn't take any notes during "critical safety meetings" because they didn't think lawyers wanted them to.
Investigators never found evidence of an edict banning note-taking. But "the no-notes direction … reached the status of an urban myth that was followed, an instruction passed from GM employee to GM employee over the years," the report reads.
One of the most colorful descriptions of the cultural morass came from CEO Mary Barra herself. She described for investigators a phenomenon known as the "GM nod."
"The GM nod, Barra described, is when everyone nods in agreement to a proposed plan of action, but then leaves the room with no intention of follow through," the report reads. "It is an idiomatic recognition of a culture that does not move issues forward quickly, as the story of the Cobalt demonstrates."
There was also the "GM salute," described by another interviewee as "a crossing of the arms and pointing outward toward others, indicating that the responsibility belongs to someone else, not me."
Ultimately, Valukas' report says it uncovered no evidence of any employee making "an explicit trade-off between safety and cost" related to the ignition switch. It notes that, because engineers early on failed to grasp a link between the ignition switch slipping out of the "run" position and airbags not deploying, the problem was treated as a customer-satisfaction issue, not a safety problem.
Still, "we cannot conclude," the report reads, "that the atmosphere of cost-cutting had no impact on the failure of GM to resolve these issues earlier."

During the past four years, 19% of Republicans changed their minds about evolution. You'll never guess which direction they're going in

CREDIT: Shutterstock

Almost 1 in 5 Republicans has recently decided that science gets in the way of politics. And that it's the science, not the politics, that should be jettisoned. Who needs critical thinking?

Why Republicans Don’t Believe In Evolution Anymore
By Zack Beauchamp
Think Progress
December 31, 2013

The theory of evolution is right up there with the theory of gravity in terms of its universal acceptance among scientists. But, as we’ve learned from the climate change debate, politics has the power to trump science — and, according to a new Pew poll, it seems like political partisanship may be starting to take its toll on evolution. While a comfortable majority of Republicans accepted human evolution as fact in 2009, Pew finds a plurality now reject it — an astonishing 19 point reversal in four years.

It’s a finding that tells us a lot, both principally about the (ahem) evolution of the Republican Party in the past fours. In short, the kind of person who doesn’t believe in evolution is much more likely be a typical Republican today than four years ago — for reasons that have only a bit to do with the debate over evolution itself.

There are two keys to understanding what the Pew poll teaches us about Republicans. First, the drop in belief in evolution is among Republicans and, more or less, Republicans only. Acceptance of human evolution was basically the same among Democrats and independents in 2013 as it was in 2009. Second, the share of the total population that believes in evolution hasn’t changed at all. The drop in Republican belief doesn’t appear to be people changing their minds about evolution so much as people who already didn’t believe in evolution becoming Republicans.

Why might that be? The obvious explanation is the changing character of the Republican base. When Republicans win in recent years, those victories are won on the backs of old voters, white voters, and religious voters. While race isn’t super-important in predicting views on evolution, age and religion are. Each generation of Americans, Pew found, is increasingly more likely to accept natural human evolution; Americans 18-29 do so by a 68-27 margin, while the number for seniors (65+) is 49-36. Likewise, white evangelical protestants are the group most likely to reject evolution, while the religiously unaffiliated are by far the most likely to accept it.

The winnowing of self-identified Republicans to these demographic groups has been dramatic in recent years. The overall number of Americans who identify as Republicans hovered around 29 percent from from 2008-2012 as American seniors became dramatically more Republican, the pro-GOP margin shifting from 35-34 in 2008 to 39-29 in 2012. White evangelicals have become similarly more Republican at the same time.

So on one look, the decline in Republican belief in evolution is perfectly consistent with one of the most fundamental trends in American politics: a greying, born-again Republican Party increasingly out of step with the rest of America’s political views.

The Republican base’s increasing hostility to evolution could very well explain the rash of recent state-level debates on teaching evolution in schools. In the past four years, we’ve seen a slate of state controversies over school textbooks and curricula that teach creationism alongside evolution. States like Texas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and New Mexico have all had versions of this fight — all controversies sparked by conservative state leaders that have heated up in the past two or three years. All of this anti-evolution activity makes much more sense if understood as Republican representatives and activists responding to incentives created by their increasingly homogenous base.

If that explanation is right, then we should expect to see similarly base-tailored legislation coming out of Republican state representatives in 2014 and beyond. The demographic trends concentrating the Republican base don’t appear to be slowing, which means that Republicans will have even stronger incentives over time to push legislation that appeals to the older, whiter, more religious demographic. This means that more issues like creationism in schools that don’t play on the national level, but can help local Republicans make a name for themselves inside the party, might make their way into state capitols in the coming year.

But the demographic explanation isn’t everything. Pew cautions that “differences in the racial and ethnic composition of Democrats and Republicans or differences in their levels of religious commitment do not wholly explain partisan differences in beliefs about evolution.” Put more simply, Republicans are more skeptical of evolution than you would expect even when you take into account the demographic character of its base.

This suggests another, more subtle effect at work. A wealth of research into political psychology shows that people’s partisan affiliations affect their beliefs on basic facts. Republicans are overwhelmingly more likely to think the economy is doing well when Republicans hold the Presidency, and ditto with Democrats when their guy holds the White House. A recent experiment found that even basic math is contaminated by politics; people are much more likely to correctly solve basic math problems when, in context, solving them correctly helps rather than hurts their party.

In the evolution context, this suggests a feedback effect at work among Republicans. As the GOP becomes more associated with the creationist cause as a consequence of demographic shifts, Republicans start to feel more like being skeptical of evolution is their “team” position. So even Republicans who are demographically more likely to accept the basic science of evolution start to reject it, because that belief best harmonizes their beliefs with the perceived interest of their political party.

Politics, it seems, really does ruin everything — including science.

7 Reasons Why It's Easier for Humans to Believe in God Than Evolution

The ascent of man? José-manuel Benitos/Wikimedia Commons. Photoillustration by Matt Connolly.

7 Reasons Why It's Easier for Humans to Believe in God Than Evolution
What science can tell us about our not-so-scientific minds.
By Chris Mooney
Mother Jones
Nov. 26, 2013

Late last week, the Texas Board of Education failed to approve a leading high school biology textbook—whose authors include the Roman Catholic biologist Kenneth Miller of Brown University—because of its treatment of evolution. According to The New York Times, critiques from a textbook reviewer identified as a "Darwin Skeptic" were a principal cause.

Yet even as creationists keep trying to undermine modern science, modern science is beginning to explain creationism scientifically. And it looks like evolution—the scientifically uncontested explanation for the diversity and interrelatedness of life on Earth, emphatically including human life—will be a major part of the story. Our brains are a stunning product of evolution; and yet ironically, they may naturally pre-dispose us against its acceptance.

"I don't think there's any question that a variety of our mental dispositions are ones that discourage us from taking evolutionary theory as seriously as it should be taken," explains Robert N. McCauley, director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture at Emory University and author of the book Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not.

So what can science tell us about our not-so-scientific minds? Here's a list of cognitive traits, thinking styles, and psychological factors identified in recent research that seem to thwart evolution acceptance:

Biological Essentialism. First, we seem to have a deep tendency to think about biology in a way that is "essentialist"—in other words, assuming that each separate kind of animal species has a fundamental, unique nature that unites all members of that species, and that is inviolate. Fish have gills, birds have wings, fish make more fish, birds make more birds, and that's how it all works. Essentialist thinking has been demonstrated in young children. "Little kids as young as my 2 and a half year old granddaughter are quite clear that puppies don't have ponies for mommies and daddies," explains McCauley.

If essentialism is a default style of thinking, as much research suggests, then that puts evolution at a major disadvantage. Charles Darwin and his many scientific disciples have shown that essentialism is just plain wrong: Given enough time, biological kinds are not fixed but actually change. Species are connected through intermediate types to other species—and all are ultimately related to one another.

Teleological Thinking. Essentialism is just one basic cognitive trait, observed in young children, that seems to hinder evolutionary thinking. Another is "teleology," or the tendency to ascribe purposes to things and objects so as to assume they exist to serve some goal.

Recent research suggests that 4 and 5 year old children are highly teleological in their thinking, tending to opine, for instance, that clouds are "for raining" and that the purpose of lions is "to go in the zoo." The same tendency has been observed in 7 and 8 year olds who, when asked why "prehistoric rocks are pointy," offered answers like "so that animals could scratch on them when they got itchy" and "so that animals wouldn't sit on them and smash them."

Why do children think like this? One study speculates that this teleological disposition may be a "side [effect] of a socially intelligent mind that is naturally inclined to privilege intentional explanation." In other words, our brains developed for thinking about what people are thinking, and people have intentions and goals. If that's right, the playing field may be naturally tilted toward anti-evolutionist doctrines like "intelligent design," which postulates an intelligent agent (God) as the cause of the diversity of life on Earth, and seeks to uncover evidence of purposeful design in biological organisms.

Overactive Agency Detection. But how do you know the designer is "God"? That too may be the result of a default brain setting.

Another trait, closely related to teleological thinking, is our tendency to treat any number of inanimate objects as if they have minds and intentions. Examples of faulty agency detection, explains University of British Columbia origins of religion scholar Ara Norenzayan, range from seeing "faces in the clouds" to "getting really angry at your computer when it starts to malfunction." People engage in such "anthropomorphizing" all the time; it seems to come naturally. And it's a short step to religion: "When people anthropomorphize gods, they are inferring mental states," says Norenzayan.

There has been much speculation about the evolutionary origin of our anthropomorphizing tendency. One idea is that our brains developed to rapidly assume that objects in the world are alive and may pose a threat, simply because while wrongly mistaking a rustle of leaves for a bear won't get you killed, failing to detect a bear early (when the leaves rustle) most certainly will. "Supernatural agents are readily conjured up because natural selection has trip-wired cognitive schema for agency detection in the face of uncertainty," write Norenzayan and fellow origin of religion scholar Scott Atran.

Dualism. Yet another apparent feature of our cognitive architecture is the tendency to think that minds (or the "self" and the "soul") are somehow separate from brains. Once again, this inclination has been found in young children, suggesting that it emerges early in human development. "Preschool children will claim that the brain is responsible for some aspects of mental life, typically those involving deliberative mental work, such as solving math problems," write Yale psychologists Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg. "But preschoolers will also claim that the brain is not involved in a host of other activities, such as pretending to be a kangaroo, loving one's brother, or brushing one's teeth."

Dualistic thinking is closely related to belief in phenomena like spirits and ghosts. But in a recent study, it was also the cognitive factor most strongly associated with believing in God. As for evolutionary science? Dualism is pretty clearly implicated in resistance to the idea that human beings could have developed from purely natural processes—for if they did, how could there ever be a soul or self beyond the body, to say nothing of an afterlife?

Inability to Comprehend Vast Time Scales. According to Norenzayan, there's one more basic cognitive factor that prevents us from easily understanding evolution. Evolution occurred due to the accumulation of many small changes over vast time periods—which means that it is unlike anything we've experienced. So even thinking about it isn't very easy. "The only way you can appreciate the process of evolution is in an abstract way," says Norenzayan. "Over millions of years, small changes accumulate, but it's not intuitive. There's nothing in our brain that says that's true. We have to override our incredulity."

Group Morality and Tribalism. All of these cognitive factors seem to make evolution hard to grasp, even as they render religion (or creationist ideas) simpler and more natural to us. But beyond these cognitive factors, there are also emotional reasons why a lot of people don't want to believe in evolution. When we see resistance to its teaching, after all, it is usually because a religious community fears that this body of science will undermine a belief system—in the US, usually fundamentalist Christianity—deemed to serve as the foundation for shared values and understanding. In other words, evolution is resisted because it is perceived as a threat to the group.

So how appropriate that one current scientific theory about religion is that it exists (and, maybe, that it evolved) to bind groups together and keep them cohesive. In his recent book The Righteous Mind, moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that religions provide a shared set of beliefs and practices that, in effect, serve as social glue. "Gods and religions," writes Haidt, "are group-level adaptations for producing cohesiveness and trust." The upside is unity; the downside, Haidt continues, is "groupishness, tribalism, and nationalism." Ideas and beliefs that threaten the group or the beliefs that hold it together—ideas like evolution—are bound to fare badly in this context.

Fear and the Need for Certainty. Finally, there appears to be something about fear and doubt that impels religiosity and dispels acceptance of evolution. "People seem to take more comfort from a stance that says, someone designed the world with good intentions, instead of that the world is just an intention-less, random place," says Norenzayan. "This is especially true when we feel a sense of threat, or a feeling of not being in control."

Indeed, in one amazing study, New Zealanders who had just suffered through a severe earthquake showed stronger religiosity, but only if they had been directly affected by the quake. Other research suggests that making people think about death increases their religiosity and also decreases evolution acceptance. It's not just death: It's also randomness, disorder. In one telling study, research participants who were asked to think of a situation in which they had lacked control and then to "provide three reasons supporting the notion that the future is (un-) controllable," showed a marked decline in their acceptance of evolution, opting instead for an intelligent design-style explanation. (Another study found that anti-evolutionists displayed higher fear sensitivity and a trait called the "need for cognitive closure," which describes a psychological need to find an answer that can resolve uncertainty and dispel doubt.)

Such is the research, and it's important to point out a few caveats. First, this doesn't mean science and religion are fundamentally incompatible. The conflict may run very deep indeed, but nevertheless, some individuals can and do find a way to retain their religious beliefs and also accept evolution—including the aforementioned biology textbook author Kenneth Miller of Brown University, a Catholic.

Second, while there are many reasons to think that the traits above comprise a core part of who we are, it doesn't automatically follow that religion is the direct result of evolution by natural selection. It is also possible that religion arises as a byproduct of more basic traits that were, in turn, selected for because they conferred greater fitness (such as agency detection). This "byproduct" view is defended by Steven Pinker here.

In any event, the evidence is clear that both our cognitive architecture, and also our emotional dispositions, make it difficult or unnatural for many people to accept evolution. "Natural selection is like quantum physics...we might intellectually grasp it, with considerable effort, but it will never feel right to us," writes the Yale psychologist Paul Bloom. Often, people express surprise that in an age so suffused with science, science causes so much angst and resistance.

Perhaps more surprising would be if it didn't.

Rick Perry can't remember which government agency he's decided to eliminate

Nov 9, 2011
The moment Rick Perry’s candidacy collapsed
He provides what may be the most painful, cringe-inducing slip-up in debate history VIDEO
By Steve Kornacki

The good news for Rick Perry is that everyone will probably stop talking about his bizarre New Hampshire speech now. The bad news is: He created an even more cringe-inducing YouTube moment at Wednesday night’s Republican presidential debate — one that probably represents the most embarrassing public slip-up in what has been a campaign full of them for Perry.

Video is posted below, but we’ll stick to the transcript up here and pick things up mid-answer, a little more than an hour into the debate, when Perry — who had been mostly ignored by the moderators and his fellow candidates — tried to win some attention by talking about which Cabinet departments he’d eliminate as president:

PERRY: And I will tell you, it’s three agencies of government when I get there that are gone – Commerce, Education, and, the, uh, what’s the third one there? Let’s see…

RON PAUL (holding up five fingers): Five.

PERRY: Oh, five. OK. So, Commerce, Education, and the uh, uh, uh…

MITT ROMNEY: EPA?

PERRY: EPA. There you go.

DEBATE QUESTIONER JOHN HARWOOD: Seriously? Is EPA the one you’re talking about?

PERRY: No sir, No sir. We were talking about the agencies of government – EPA needs to be rebuilt, there’s no doubt about that…

HARWOOD: But you can’t name the third one?

PERRY: The third agency of government I would, I would do away with – Education, the uh, Commerce, and let’s see – I can’t, the third one. The third one there. Oops...


Update: The transcript has been changed to show that it was Mitt Romney — and not Ron Paul — who actually suggested the EPA to Perry. (h/t reader DR) Also, it’s probably worth noting that Perry, in an answer to a separate question more than ten minutes later, said that the Energy Department was the third “agency” he was grasping for.

Anger in schools and beyond: Are some of these people actually motivated by other problems?

Sometimes people are actually angry about something different from what they're yelling about

A lot of kids have been given less-than-stellar educations by our local school districts, and many of their parents are angry. I agree entirely with these parents' demands for better treatment for students. I also agree that many parents who complain have been bullied shamefully by school lawyers. Some of these lawyers have violated professional codes of conduct and state law to the extent that they deserve severe reprimands, even disbarment or jail time. Of course, these lawyers are unlikely to be called to account for their unethical and illegal actions.

But some of these parents are too angry, in my opinion.

I suspect that some parents are angry about situations that have nothing to do with schools, but they unleash this anger on a handy, accessible target: their kids' school. Sometimes it's really hard to keep track of exactly what these people are furious about.

Recently one of these parents sent me, for no apparent reason, an email claiming that President Obama was "first born"* in Kenya. Apparently the theory is that he was first born in Kenya, then born for a second time in Honolulu. (Sometimes it's hard to figure out exactly what these "Birthers" are trying to say.) The email I received included a photo of Obama's elementary school application to an Indonesian Catholic school. Very clearly on the application, right after his name, Obama's place of birth was listed as Honolulu. The person who filled out the form, Obama's Indonesian stepfather, was in no way trying to make his stepson sound more American.



Obama's birthplace was a matter of record, and no one had yet cooked up a plan to pretend otherwise. Yet this email was sent to me, as the sender indicated in the subject line, "to fuel the debate over Obama's qualifications." How does the human brain malfunction so spectacularly?

If anything, this San Diego parent should be angry at her own teachers for not training her adequately as a critical thinker.

But I must say that many teachers and administrators were not taught how to be critical thinkers, either. During my years of teaching I saw plenty of teachers and adminstrators spewing anger (at kids, parents and each other). Many of them made no more sense than the confused parent who emailed me. To top it off, I heard teachers make disparaging remarks about high intelligence itself. Smart people were not considered cool by the most popular and powerful teachers at my schools.

My suggestion? Critical thinking classes for school professionals.

Everyone involved would benefit from better decision-making by school personnel, and students would benefit from the improved thinking skills of their teachers.



------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Quote from the email:
"This document provides the smoking gun that many of Obama's detractors have been seeking - that he is NOT a natural-born citizen of the United States - necessary to be President of these United States . Along with the evidence that he was first born in Kenya , here we see that there is no record of him ever applying for US citizenship...Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation has released the results of their investigation..."



Next installment: Muslims versus Mormons: whom do Americans trust less?


__________________________________________________________________________

Here's a story about another nasty email. The woman who sent the racially offensive email in the first place was angry that a recipient forwarded it to the NAACP, and caused that recipient to be fired. This is just the sort of thing that happens in schools, in my experience. School officials want bad behavior covered up, and they take action NOT against the bad actors, but against those they fear might reveal the truth about the bad actions to the public. That's what Chula Vista Elementary School District and its lawyers did to cover up the crimes of Robin Donlan and Linda Watson. In the end, the district committed felonies like perjury and alteration of documents to cover misdemeanors. Things really get out of control once the cover-up starts. What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.


NAACP: SunTrust Mortgage worker fired over e-mail
CHRIS I. YOUNG TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
March 18, 2010

The NAACP says a 14-year employee was fired from SunTrust Mortgage Inc. in Richmond after she was accused of sending a chain e-mail she received at work that ultimately was forwarded to the NAACP.

The fired African-American employee said she found the e-mail offensive.

The e-mail contains pictures of 40 bumper stickers such as, "Clinton ruined a dress, Obama ruined a nation," "So I guess we're even on that slavery thing eh?" and, "Diversity -- It killed 13 at Fort Hood."...

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People released a copy of what it said was the e-mail sent by a SunTrust official to 13 office employees and one outside recipient under the subject line "FW: Bumper Stickers that Make Sense."...

Russ, an accountant, said SunTrust conducted an internal investigation and then brought her into a meeting. There, she was told she was being terminated because her supervisor had "trust issues" with her and because of the e-mail, she said in a telephone interview.

She said SunTrust accused her of trying to go public with the e-mail by forwarding it to someone who would give it to the NAACP.

The official who sent the e-mail collected Russ' belongings and escorted Russ out of the building immediately after the Feb. 18 meeting, Russ said. She said she was paid through March 4...

Harmless Creature Killed Because of Superstition

Harmless Creature Killed Because of Superstition
Updated: 9 hours 4 minutes ago
David Knowles
AOL News
(March 27) -- For some residents of the African island nation of Madagascar, encountering the tiny mammal called the aye-aye is as bad as meeting death itself.

The 4- to 6-pound animal is believed to creep into the houses of villagers and use its peculiarly long middle finger to lance the hearts of sleeping victims, according to Discovery News.
aye-aye
Rob Cousins, Bristol Zoo via Getty Images
Natives of Madagascar often kill harmless aye-ayes over fears of what the animal represents.

For that reason, locals often kill the harmless animals on sight. Along with the loss of habitat caused by deforestation, superstition is a major reason the aye-aye is now considered to be at risk. Aye-aye population estimates range from 1,000 to 10,000.

Found only on Madagascar, aye-ayes are nocturnal primates that tend to live high in the trees of the rain forest, where they build nests of leaves and twigs. They use their long middle fingers to extract insect larvae from tree bark, according to National Geographic.

Some locals believe the legend that the appearance of an aye-aye -- which does not seem to fear the presence of human beings -- is a sign that a villager will soon die.

The animal, the largest nocturnal primate in the world, is now officially protected by law, but that often does not protect the aye-aye from residents convinced of its evil nature...

Why can't people change their thinking?

Wall Street Culture Not Likely to Change
By JOE BEL BRUNO,AP
Posted: 2008-03-22 05:09:53
NEW YORK (AP) - Wall Street investment bankers got another lesson about the dangers of risk-taking this past week with the downfall of Bear Stearns Cos. The question now obviously is, how long will it last?

Those bankers, many of whom lived through market debacles like the dot-com bust at the start of this decade, turned out to have very short memories. And so analysts believe the sale of Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase & Co. for a stunning $2 per share ultimately won't have that much of an impact on how Wall Street conducts business.

In fact, bankers and traders are under even more pressure to reap big returns because of the ongoing credit crisis, and risk is just part of the game.

"There's an old saying on Wall Street that, for traders and bankers, you'd have to take a normal 30 year career and distill it to 15 years," said Quincy Krosby, chief investment strategist for The Hartford. "This whole episode might change Wall Street for a little while."

Krosby believes that Bear Stearns' near-collapse, which followed the company's investing too heavily in risky mortgage-backed securities, might force some bankers to change their ways in the short term. But it won't be enough to temper the financial industry's relentless pursuit of money.

Indeed, the past decade has seen a number of investing fiascoes that Wall Street doesn't appear to have learned much from. Krosby noted the go-go Internet days - when untested high-tech companies reaped piles of cash in public offerings. The lesson then was, don't put a lot of money into a venture that isn't on fairly solid ground - but mortgages granted to people with poor credit are quite akin to high-tech firms that had never turned a profit. In both cases, investors gleefully looked past the risk.

Now investors are smarting from what happened to Bear Stearns. And traders are somewhat chastened, for now.

Erin Callan, the chief financial officer for Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., said her firm has certainly become more wary about the risks it takes amid the credit crisis. However, the market's gyrations also offer Lehman's army of traders an opportunity to make money.

"We just try to come in, and run the business the best way we can," she said. "But, you can't survive if you take no risks at all. All we can do is plan in this environment, making sure we do all the things to optimize running the firm."

It seems there's little that will change an industry and a lifestyle attached to Wall Street, which is thought of by Americans as more than just the center of free-market capitalism. Its culture attracts men and women with a swashbuckling mentality - smart, aggressive risk takers with the potential to become very rich.

And, their skills in trading and investment banking were proven this past week - even after news of Bear Stearns' buyout.

Chief executives at Morgan Stanley , Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and Lehman Brothers pointed out that trading desks played a big part in offsetting massive mortgage-backed asset write-downs, which have ticked past $156 billion for global banks since last year.

As the three companies released first-quarter earnings data, Morgan Stanley said equity trading revenue surged 51 percent to $3.3 billion. Revenue at its fixed-income sales and trading group dropped 15 percent to $2.9 billion, but it was still the firm's second-highest performance ever despite having to write down $2.3 billion linked to subprime mortgages and leveraged loans.

And that pleased investors. Morgan Stanley had its largest gain in more than a decade on Wednesday, climbing 18.8 percent to $42.86. Rival investment banks also had their best week since 2001.

But, investors shouldn't get too comfortable - the investment banking industry, and Wall Street in general, still have a long way to go before they can be called healthy. It's not just the credit market problems that are an issue, it's also the struggling U.S. economy and its potential to hurt other countries.

"Until we feel more certain about the worldwide economies, we don't see things picking up dramatically," said Goldman Sachs CFO David Viniar. "We just need to keep plugging away."

http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/wall-street-culture-not-likely-to-change/n20080322050909990002

Time makes more converts than reason

Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor...Time makes more converts than reason.

Modern History Sourcebook:
Thomas Paine (1737-1809):
Common Sense, Jan, 1776

Conservatives, liberals and the anterior cingulate cortex

Can you withhold your habitual response when it's necessary? Then your anterior cingulate cortex is in good working order.

When human beings find themselves at a dead end, their anterior cingulate cortex tells them that they need to change course. Or at least that's what it should do.

But in some people, this part of the brain is less sensitive, causing these individuals to ignore new information.

43 college students were hooked up to electroencephalographs and given a button to press when a computer flashed the letter M. They weren't supposed to press the button when the computer flashed W.

The computer usually showed M, so the subjects got in the habit of pressing the button. It turned out that some people just can't let go of a habit, even when the situation calls for them to change course.

Those who did best on the test had the most electrical activity in their brains when the "No Go" cues were presented, according to researcher David Amodio.

Some people, it seems, will just keep on doing the same thing, even when they are receiving information that tells them they aren't getting anywhere.

Students who had identified themselves as most liberal were the most accurate in pressing the button, and had the most electrical activity in their brains.

See articles:
Los Angeles Times
September 10, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-politics10sep10,0,5982337.story?coll=la-home-center

Chicago Tribune
September 10, 2007
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-politicalbrain_bothsep10,1,6328755.story

All this makes me wonder how it would have changed history if George W. Bush had a more sensitive anterior cingulate cortex.