Cold reading elements #2: facts and events

I am going to continue with extracts from Ian Rowland’s book The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading. These elements chiefly concern facts (such as names and numbers) which mean something to the client, and events in the client’s distant or recent past. Here is a selection of some of the techniques he employs:

1. The Fuzzy Fact

A Fuzzy Fact is an apparently factual statement which is formulated so that (a) it is quite likely to be accepted (b) it leaves plenty of scope to be developed into something more specific. Let us consider some common examples.

“I can see a connection with Europe, possibly Britain, or it could be the warmer, Mediterranean part?”

This example obviously varies with the geographical context of the reading. In Britain, the line could be “…a connection with America” or “Australia, possibly New Zealand”. The essential idea is to specify a large, distant part of the world with which the client may well have some sort of connection. Note that the psychic has not said whether this link is professional, social, domestic or romantic. She has not specified any particular part of Europe, which is a vast place (likewise America, or Australia). She has not said if the connection is current or past or in the future.

However, if the client has any connection at all with the named part of the world, no matter how vague, she can be encouraged to supply the requisite details, for instance that her husband’s family once lived there. The psychic then builds on this feedback to massage the initially vague statement into something more specific. The example given above might be massaged like this:

“I can see a connection with Europe, possibly Britain, or it could be the warmer, Mediterranean part. Now why might this impression be coming through?”

“Could that include Scotland?”

“The link I’m getting seems to have that sort of a Celtic flavour to it, but I wasn’t sure, I’m getting Edinburgh for some reason…”

“There is a link on my father’s side. His family comes from Scotland but it’s not Edinburgh.”

“Well, maybe that’s just a place that he or his family visited once or twice… but I’m definitely getting a link with that part of the world, and connection by blood and by marriage is indicated, so that makes sense to you does it?”

‘Yes, definitely.”

Thus the psychic shapes the initial vagueness into something much more specific. This is not just useful during the reading itself. It also affects how the reading is remembered afterwards. A statement such as this:

“I can see a connection with Europe, possibly Britain, or it could be the warmer, Mediterranean part”

can become mis-remembered like this:

“I see a family connection, on your father’s side, with Scotland, maybe Perthshire”.

Obviously, the mis-remembered version is far more impressive than the actual statement the psychic originally made. I will have more to say about developing statements into miracles later on, in the section on Presentational Points. The fact that clients often remember what was said inaccurately is well-known to sceptics. Non-believers are often challenged to “explain” how a particular psychic could have delivered some piece of devastatingly accurate information. Of course it is the tidied-up, specific version which is offered for analysis, not the Fuzzy Fact which was originally given.

2. The Good Chance Guess

This element involves making a guess which stands a higher chance of being right than you might think. (It is distinct from the outright fluke, or Lucky Guess, which we will look at next). To take a very common example, the psychic might say something like:

“And at the house where you live, is there a 2 in the number?”

This sounds like an outright guess, and in some ways it is. But the odds of the psychic being right are far higher than you might think. What’s more, the majority of clients lack either the mathematical sophistication, or inclination, to work out the correct odds. Let us investigate this a little more closely. Imagine a street with 100 houses, 50 on either side. How many houses have a 2 in their-number?

The correct answer is 19, very close to one fifth of all the houses in the street. So the psychic has almost a 1 in 5 chance of being right. (The probability increases for streets with more than 19 houses but significantly fewer than 100, which in practice applies to a high proportion of streets.) If client rejects this initial offering, the psychic might try widening it just slightly, like this:

“Oh, that’s strange… because I’m seeing this number 2. Perhaps it’s the house next door…?”

If we go back to our imaginary street of 100 houses, 20 of them (not among the 19 counted so far) are adjacent to a house with a 2 in the number. Therefore the psychic would get a hit if the client lived at any one of 19 + 20 houses, which is 39 in all. The possibilities do not end there. If the “house next door” ploy has not worked, the psychic can always smoothly extrapolate like this:

“…or maybe it’s the house you see opposite every morning.”

This adds 8 more houses of those not counted so far. Which makes a grand total of 47 houses, or almost a 50% chance of getting a hit!

3. The Lucky Guess

The Lucky Guess element is exactly that – a pure guess which lacks any of the subtlety of the “Good Chance Guess” explained above. The psychic simply offers a name, set of initials, date or place and sees if the client accepts it. If it is a hit, it seems miraculous and will be sure to impress the client. What is more, it can be used afterwards to give sceptics a thump, since it is apparently inexplicable. If it is not a hit, the psychic can easily move on to something else. Although there is nothing subtle about this element, it needs mentioning since it is so useful in cold reading terms. It is also worth emphasising that many clients apply great latitude when interpreting the psychic’s offerings. The same sort of ambiguity which helps Fuzzy Facts to become specific hits also helps Lucky Guesses. Take an example like this:

“The name Jane means something to you. I can see someone you have known quite a while, with blonde hair”.

The psychic is simply guessing. However, she has not said anything specific about how the name relates to the client, so more or less any connection will do. “Jane” could be a relative, a professional colleague or a friend. She could be alive or dead, known well or only distantly, linked with the present or the past. There are endless possibilities for this guess to count as a hit. If the client knows a Jean, Jenny, Janet, Joanne or someone whose name sounds close, she may well offer the mild correction and credit the psychic with a near-miss. This close-sounding name could be a first name, surname (“Jones”) or a nick name. It could be male or female (“Jan” is a common male name in some countries). Once you appreciate the interpretative latitude which least a fair chance of eventually being considered as a hit.

4. The Stat Fact

Stat Facts are statements based on statistics and demographic data. There is a wealth of such information available, from libraries, specialist publications, commercial databases and the internet. Some of the more headline-friendly data even makes it to the national press and becomes popular knowledge (or popular misconception). This kind of information can play its part in the cold reading process. For example, imagine that the psychic is giving readings in a region where, statistically, most of the women who have part-time jobs work either in the health services or the textile industry. If the psychic has reason to think her client is in part-time work, then she knows which two areas are most likely to be worth exploring. As with many aspects of cold reading, there are good and bad ways of using this information. Here is an example of the bad way:

“There is an indication that your career is related to health. Or possibly textiles.”

This is as transparent as it is trite and useless. In contrast, imagine the psychic is giving an astrological reading, and weaves her spell like this:

“…turning to the area of work and of career, the influence of Aries suggests that you have a great capacity for working with people and helping them. In fact the conjunctions of your fifth house suggest you could be very successful if you were working with people who needed care or counselling, in one form or another. The stars suggest that this could be right for you…”

At this point, the psychic pauses to see if the client seems to be agreeing. If not, the psychic changes tack:

“…but that’s more to do with your potential, rather than your actual current situation. The relatively rare influence of Saturn at the moment, coupled with your Capricorn nature, suggests you may have found your energy channelled into working with your hands, maybe in a form of manufacturing although, if my interpretation is correct, yours is work which other people will transform. Does this make sense to you?”

In this way, the psychic can hit on two likely careers – health and textiles- in a way which at least sounds like the information is coming from the stars rather than a web page of local census statistics.

Obviously, the success of this element depends on how reliable the information is, and how intelligently it is applied. Experienced cold readers make it their business to gather information which is likely to prove useful. Mediums and spiritualists, for example, have everything to gain from learning the statistically commonest causes of death, and to flavour their Stat Statements accordingly. There is certainly no shortage of demographic data available. There are tables and reports pertaining to educational attainment, careers, salary levels, marrying age, prevailing health problems and myriad other subjects. To rely on very well-known statistics is to invite unimpressed and rather cynical responses. But less well-known statistics can be extremely useful, as can attention to fine distinctions. For example, what is the most popular sport or pastime in Britain? Most British people would say football, which is true in terms of the numbers who have an interest as spectators. But in terms of those who actively take part, the top sport by a long margin is angling or fishing. Similarly, few of my fellow Brits would guess that doing jig-saw puzzles is something like the fifth most popular recreational pursuit in the country.

5. The Trivia Stat

This element consists of a statement about trivial domestic and personal details. Whereas the Stat Fact is derived from official statistics, Trivia Stats are based on widely-applicable facts gleaned from experience rather than bureaucratic compilations.

Experienced cold readers develop their own favourite Trivia Stats over time. Here are a few I have collected over the years. Some of them strike me as more likely to be hits than others. See what you think!

Regarding what you would find in most people’s homes:

a box of old photographs somewhere, not neatly sorted into Albums

at least one toy, or some books, which are mementoes from childhood

some item of jewellery, or maybe war medals, from a deceased family member

a pack of cards, even if they say they never play cards, and very often one or more cards missing

some electronic gizmo or gadget which no longer works, will never be repaired, but has not been thrown out

a few books concerning an interest or hobby which is no longer pursued

Regarding men and women:

most men tried learning a musical instrument as a child, buy then gave up

– most men wore a moustache or beard at some point, even if they have been clean-shaven for years

most men have at least one old suit hanging in their wardrobe which they can no longer fit into

most women own, or have owned, an item of clothing which they bought and then never wore

most women keep photos of their loved ones in their purse or otherwise near them, even if they do not seem the sentimental type

most women wear their hair long as a child, then adopt a shorter haircut when they get older

most people will have been involved in some sort of childhood accident which involved water

most people with fair skin have experienced bad sunburn at least once

It will be obvious that worthwhile Trivia Stats vary according to culture, region and content. The psychic who wants to use this element has to acquire examples appropriate for her region and clientele. The same is true for many other cold reading elements.

6.  Childhood Memory

As its name implies, this element consists of a character statement based on common experiences of childhood. The trick is to devise statements that are only slightly less than obvious, or at least seem to be so in the context of a reading. One of my personal favourites is ‘the abandoned interest’, and it goes like this:

“In your younger years I get the impression of a particular interest or subject you were very keen on, where you showed lots of promise. I get a feeling that this was something on the creative or artistic side, where perhaps your parents felt you might even have gone on to great things, as they say, but it was not to be.”

7. Folk Wisdom

Psychics are no enemies of tired cliché. Many readings are littered with that combination of an appeal to common experience and boundless optimism which passes for folk-wisdom. Here are half a dozen examples:

“After this past year, it’s not surprising you need a break. Let’s face it, we all need a little breathing space now and again to re-charge our batteries.”

“While success is assured, you may need to be patient. Never forget that the longest journey starts with a single step / Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

“We all need to talk things over with a friend from time to time, and it’s as true now as it ever was – two heads really are better than one.”

“This challenge might look a little daunting, but then again it’s surprising what you can do when you put your mind to it, isn’t it?”

“The main thing is not to worry. Let’s be honest, these things often have a way of coming right in the end, and then you look back and you think well, what was all the worry about?”

“There’s quite definitely light at the end of the tunnel. As the old saying has it, the sky is always darkest just before the dawn.”

This is not a particularly useful or productive element, but it is an element nonetheless, and can be useful for padding out a reading, or bringing one section to a neat coda before moving on to something else.

8. The Seasonal Touch

The Seasonal Touch is a very simple element. The psychic merely offers statements based on the time of year or other seasonal factors. These obviously vary according to the country, culture and society in which the psychic is giving the reading. For example, I live in England where the Spring months are typically associated with ‘Spring cleaning’ and embarking on major new DIY tasks around the home. January and July are the commonest months for major sales in the shops, which many women will flock to in search of bargains.

To get the most out of this element, give some thought to how many different ‘calendars’ we all live by, all the time. I have already referred to three, which we might call the household calendar, the retail calendar and the financial calendar. There are many others – the sports calendar, the entertainment industry calendar (seasons for hot new shows, or dreary old repeats), the food calendar and so on.

9. The Push Statement

I have deliberately saved the Push Statement until last in this section. This is because it is without doubt the hardest element to explain clearly. It is also one of the most powerful. The elements I have listed so far are designed to obtain a hit, i.e. agreement from the client that the psychic’s pronouncements are accurate, or at least plausible. Push Statements are quite different. They are intentionally designed to be rejected by the client. That is, to be rejected at first. However, they can almost always be made to fit if the psychic pushes with sufficient confidence and, at the same time, subtly expands the scope for agreement. Push statements are hard to make up, and generally evolve with experience over many readings. I only have one or two that I trust, and I use them sparingly. One that I have used quite a lot is ‘the red floor’. It goes something like this:

“About three months ago, I see you standing in a room, and it seems a strange detail to mention, but for whatever reason I have to mention that I see a red or red-ish floor. I don’t think it’s your home or where you work – it’s somewhere else. And there’s this red colour around you, and this is a place of some significance to you. Now I can only tell you what I’m getting, whether or not it seems to make sense, and what I’m getting is that you are there for a meeting of some kind. I don’t know if there’s one other person involved or a group, but I sense that someone’s expecting you to be there, and you’re having to wait for them.”

This almost always gets a negative response from the client – which is the intention. I then begin to push the statement, and appear highly confident that eventually the meaning will become clear. This sense of confidence is important, and helps to place the onus on the client to find something that matches. As I continue to push my initial statement, I start to subtly include more options. The colour might have been a kind of rusty brown, or an autumnal shade. It might not have been actually the floor that was significant, so much as the general environment which employed a red-ish colour scheme, or a danger zone (red = danger). The meeting could have been intentional or accidental, significant or trivial, routine or a one-off. It could have been social, professional, family or romantic. Sooner or later, in a very high percentage of cases, the client will remember something that fits. The whole point of a Push Statement is that the psychic seems to be aware of something which the client herself had forgotten about. This is devastatingly impressive when it works. It is one thing for a psychic to detect things the client is aware of. It is quite another for the psychic to apparently ‘see’ things the client herself had more or less forgotten. It is not easy to devise new Push Statements that are likely to work. The details have to be just sufficiently unusual to lie beyond guesswork, but just sufficiently common to stand a chance of being right. The details must also be capable of being expanded and re-interpreted in progressively broader terms, so that the chances of success are improved as the psychic ‘helps’ the client to remember.

The shoe and the party

Another example is ‘the shoe and the party’, which I have used more than once on female clients aged under 35. It goes like this:

“I’m getting the impression of a party or a celebration that I think took place around the festive season, Christmas and all that, but not necessarily an actual Christmas party. There’s a car involved, and a problem with this car or with transportation. And I can see you holding a shoe, or having problems with one of your shoes. It could be something like a broken heel, which is quite common, but I sense something not quite as common as that, such as a strap that has broken or caught in something, or something has damaged this shoe and you’re obviously not pleased. And I can sense that you are making your feelings about this very clear to the people around you! Is this making sense?”

Naturally, this element sometimes leads nowhere, and in the face of persistent rejection an escape tunnel is needed. The simplest options are to suggest that if it has not happened yet then it is going too soon, or to ask the client to carry on trying to think back, because the meaning may come to her later.

A successful push

I was once demonstrating cold reading in a TV production meeting. In the course of a reading for one of the production assistants, I used ‘the shoe and the party’ and added the name ‘Charles’. She was unable to find any match. Ten minutes after I had ended the reading, and while I was in conversation with someone else, the girl suddenly became very excited. In tones of sheer disbelief, she exclaimed that she had just remembered a party from her teenage years during which she had indeed broken her shoe while dancing with one of her friends who was called… ‘Charlie’! Although this was by no means a complete success, the girl simply could not believe that I had managed to ‘perceive’ this long-distant event so accurately. I have had my successes and failures with Push Statements, but on balance I believe they are worthwhile.

Cold reading elements #1: personality and character

I am going to summarise some of the elements of Rowland’s book, The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading. Cold reading does not involve a rehearsed script. It consists of numerous different types of statements (and questions) which can appear more significant or meaningful than they really are. Rowland calls each type of statement an ‘element’. The cumulative effect of these elements is to create the illusion that a reading of a psychic or mystical nature is taking place. He describes the 38 most useful and productive elements he has given them pet names for ease of reference and readability, and divided them into four groups. Today I am going to look at the elements for describing character:

The Rainbow Ruse

The Rainbow Ruse is a statement which credits the client with both a personality trait and its opposite:

You can be a very considerate person, very quick to provide for others, but there are times, if you are honest, when you recognise a selfish streak in yourself  or

I would say that on the whole you can be rather a quiet, self- effacing type, but when the circumstances are right, you can be quite the life and soul of the party if the mood strikes you.

Fine Flattery

Fine Flattery statements are designed to flatter the client in a subtle way likely to win agreement. Usually, the formula involves the client being compared to “people in general” or “most of those around you”, and being declared a slight but significant improvement over them:

I have your late sister with me now. She tells me she wants you to know that she always admired you, even if she didn’t always express it well. She tells me that you are… wait, it’s coming through… yes, I see, she says you are in many ways more shrewd, or perceptive, than people might think. She says she always thought of you as quite a wise person, not necessarily to do with book-learning and examinations. She’s telling me she means wise in the ways of the world, and in ways that can’t be said of everyone. She’s laughing a little now, because she says this is wisdom that you have sometimes had to learn the hard way! She says you are intelligent enough to see that wisdom comes in many forms.

The Psychic Credit

Psychic Credits are character statements which credit the client with some form of psychic or intuitive gift, or at the very least a receptivity to others who possess such gifts:

This card, the King of Wands, is generally indicative of a perceptive or even a psychic ability of some kind. Of course we all have these gifts, but they do vary from person to person. In your case, it’s the second card in the higher triad, which is devoted to your personal profile. This suggests you have very strong and vivid intuitive gifts, and good instincts which will serve you well if you learn to trust them. Since you also have the Eight of Coins in support of the same line, I would say that you have a very fine, almost psychic kind of acumen when it comes to dealing with material goods and financial affairs. You can perceive value in ways that not everyone else can.

Sugar Lumps

Sugar Lump statements offer the client a pleasant emotional reward in return for believing in the junk on offer. In general, the Sugar Lump relates to the client’s willingness to embrace the psychic ‘discipline’ involved in the reading, and to benefit from the insights thereby gloriously revealed:

Your heart is good, and you relate to people in a very warm and loving way. The tarot often relates more to feelings and intuition than to cold facts, and your own very strong intuitive sense could be one reason why the tarot seems to work especially well for you. The impressions I get are much stronger with you than with many of my clients.

The Jacques Statement

This element consists of a character statement based on the different phases of life which we all pass through. It is named after Jacques in Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’, who gives the famous Seven ages of man’ speech:

If you are honest about it, you often get to wondering what happened to all those dreams you had when you were younger; all those wonderful ambitions you held dear, and plans which once mattered to you. I suspect that deep down, there is a part of you that sometimes wants to just scrap everything, get out of the rut, and start over again – this time doing things your way.

Greener Grass

The Greener Grass element is based on the fact that we all retain some fascination with the options in life that we did not take. You could say they form their own sub-set of the Jacques Statements referred to above:

I see indications of material success and professional advancement which are a credit to you, and which reflect your own drive and ability to get things done. You are the sort of person who delivers results, and this characteristic has brought its rewards. However, it has also brought its penalties. Although you would not necessarily advertise them too openly, I sense some feelings here of a potential desire for more domestic security, and a more stable home life. I would not go so far as to say this has been a serious problem for you, but I believe your loyalty to your career has not always delivered the returns you expected. I sense that from time to time, you find yourself contemplating your more domestic instincts, and wondering if they could perhaps be allowed more room to flourish. I think this has been an area of conflict within you, and I foresee that you will take steps to resolve this issue within the next 18 months or so.

 

Now imagine a client who comes across as a contented housewife, whose every waking hour revolves around her home and family. Here is the same Greener Grass statement as before, turned on its head:

I see indications of strong domestic instincts which have been allowed to flourish, and which have brought you a sense of security and stability which is a source of great strength to you, and also very much to your credit. Not everyone can be a good home-maker, but you can, and you are. However, the stability and the stimulation of family life has also brought its penalties. Although you would not necessarily advertise them too openly, I sense some feelings here of a potential desire for more career progress, or at least being able to find expression and fulfilment beyond the four walls of your home. I would not go so far as to say this has been a serious problem for you, but I believe your loyalty to your home and family has not always delivered the returns you expected. I sense that from time to time you find yourself contemplating your more professional or academic instincts and wondering if they could perhaps be allowed more room to flourish. I think this has been an area of conflict within you, and I foresee that you will take steps to resolve this issue within the next 18 months or so.

 

Barnum Statements

These are artfully generalised character statements which a majority of people, if asked, will consider to be a reasonably accurate description of themselves. Here is a selection:

You have a strong need for people to like and respect you.

You tend to feel you have a lot of unused capacity, and that people don’t always give you full credit for your abilities.

Some of your hopes and goals tend to be pretty unrealistic.

You are an independent and original thinker; you don’t just accept what people tell you to believe.

 

It is possible to get more mileage out of Barnum Statements by combining them with a technique called ‘Forking’.

Take a simple Barnum Statement, like this:

You tend to be quite self-critical.

If the client seems to be broadly in agreement with this, the psychic can develop and strengthen the idea:

You often give yourself quite a hard time over mistakes and shortcomings which perhaps other people wouldn’t worry about. You have a tendency to be your own worst enemy in this regard, and this self-critical side to your character has held you back on more than one occasion.

On the other hand, if the client seems to reject the initial statement, the psychic can develop the same theme in the opposite direction, like this:

But this tendency is one you have learned to overcome, and these days it rarely comes to the fore. You have learned to accept yourself, and to be reconciled with your own special mix of gifts and skills. You have learned how damaging it can be to be too self-critical, and all credit to you for having matured past the self-critical stage.

The Road to Unfreedom – Timothy Snyder and Cold War 2.0

 

Timothy Snyder had originally set out to write about Russia and its relations with Ukraine and Europe. However, events let to a different book. It evolved into The Road to Unfreedom, a history of Russia, Ukraine, the EU and the US in the 2010s. Russia would end up playing an key role in both the Brexit referendum and the 2016 election, which saw Donald J. Trump elected as the 45th president of the United States. Many   local journalists who had seen Putin’s playbook in Russia and the Ukraine were not at all shocked by Trump’s victory. Snyder, who was born in 1969, is an American historian, a specialist in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, and the Holocaust. The Yale professor’s most famous work is Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, in which he explored how “In the middle of Europe in the middle of the twentieth century the Nazi and Soviet regimes murdered some fourteen million people.” It was an acclaimed book, which I must get round to reading.

A central idea The Road to Unfreedom is the distinction between two opposing narratives of history. The narratives of inevitability include free market evangelicals who prophesy the triumph of the free market or Marxists who foresee the withering away of the state. For them history is moving inexorably toward a clear end. Events such as the fall of communism and the Global Financial Crisis have seen these narratives being challenged by the narratives of eternity Here’s how Snyder describes it:

“The collapse of the politics of inevitability ushers in another experience of time: the politics of eternity. Whereas inevitability promises a better future for everyone, eternity places one nation at the centre of a cyclical story of victimhood. Time is no longer a line into the future, but a circle that endlessly returns the same threats from the past. Within inevitability, no one is responsible because we all know that the details will sort themselves out for the better; within eternity, no one is responsible because we all know that the enemy is coming no matter what we do. Eternity politicians spread the conviction that government cannot aid society as a whole, but can only guard against threats. Progress gives way to doom.

 In power, eternity politicians manufacture crisis and manipulate the resultant emotion. To distract from their inability or unwillingness to reform, eternity politicians instruct their citizens to experience elation and outrage at short intervals, drowning the future in the present. In foreign policy, eternity politicians belittle and undo the achievements of countries that might seem like models to their own citizens. Using technology to transmit political fiction, both at home and abroad, eternity politicians deny truth and seek to reduce life to spectacle and feeling.”

Snyder introduces us to a thinker I had not heard of before – an obscure Russian fascist, called Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin. Such is Putin’s devotion that he organised the repatriation of Ilyin’s remains for reburial in Moscow in 2005. According to Ilyin, God made a mess of the world but fortunately there was one pure and innocent being — the Russian nation. Consequently, whatever Russia did, and does, to defend itself is legitimate. One day it will find its redeemer – inevitably a strong and virile man – and triumph. I wonder who that might be.

This redeemer will wage war on Russia’s enemies. These foes start with his own citizens who have the impertinence to demand democratic rights. Then, we get Ukrainians and other neighbours who dare to be independent. Finally, we have the European Union and the United States, who offer the temptations of a more prosperous way of life. Snyder has an interesting take on Putin’s strategy, which he calls strategic relativism:

 “The underlying logic of the Russian war against Ukraine, Europe, and America was strategic relativism. Given native kleptocracy and dependence on commodity exports, Russian state power could not increase, nor Russian technology close the gap with Europe or America. Relative power could however be gained by weakening others: by invading Ukraine to keep it away from Europe, for example. The concurrent information war was meant to weaken the EU and the United States. What Europeans and Americans had that Russians lacked were integrated trade zones and predictable politics with respected principles of succession. If these could be damaged, Russian losses would be acceptable since enemy losses would be still greater. In strategic relativism, the point is to transform international politics into a negative-sum game, where a skilful player will lose less than everyone else.”

Apparently Putin once described the internet as a CIA conspiracy. That was then. Now the Russian state has unparalleled expertise at manipulating cyberspace to apply Sun Tzu’s “confusion to our enemy” principle to a mass disinformation war. They have effectively transformed international affairs by waging a systematic war on the very concept of truth. The internet has made getting into the heads of Europeans and Americans is considerably easier than it was in the past. The Russians like to fight in this psychosphere rather than on the battlefield.  With electronic screens you can create havoc with a few cleverly targeted messages. The great advantage of this way of fighting is that the bang for the rouble is unbeatable; Russia’s cyber budget is less than an F-35 according to Snyder.

How Russia employed propaganda in the Ukraine is fascinating. They were able to use the internet to target opposing political susceptibilities. To appeal to the right they argued that the Ukraine was an artificial construction run by an international Jewish conspiracy. To attract the left, Ukraine was an artificial construction by fascists. Then there was the brazen lying with Putin denying that Russia had invaded the Ukraine. This was complemented by something that is more traditional – the atrocity story:

One day after Russia began shelling Ukraine, Russian television provided a compelling escalation in the competition for innocence. On July 12, 2014 Pervyi Kanal [First Channel] told a stirring—and entirely fictional—story of a three-year-old Russian boy who was crucified by Ukrainian soldiers in Sloviansk. No evidence was provided, and independent Russian journalists noted the story’s problems: none of the people in the story existed, nor did the “Lenin Square” where the atrocity supposedly transpired. When confronted with this, Russia’s deputy minister for communications, Alexei Volin, said that ratings were all that mattered. People watched the cruci-fiction, so all was well.

 Finally they created a cacophony of competing rumours to create doubt. When Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down on 17 July 2014 while flying over eastern Ukraine, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew on board, the Russians did not deny it. What they did instead was to float a series of possible conspiracies. One of these was that it was shot down by a Ukrainian Su-25 fighter jet. Instrumental in this campaign was Russia Today, whose slogan is – “Question More“. Yana Erlashova, who used to be one of the star reporter for the Moscow-based, international news network claims to have found many witnesses who said they had seen jet fighters:

“I don’t push any scenarios or theories, I just report what people say.”

Despite this modesty she has produced a documentary called “MH17: A Year Without Truth” I found it referenced on what seems to be a far-right website, which praises the video:

“The anti-Putin agenda of the Zionist-controlled media in the West, however, blames Russia in this blatant false-flag operation and ignores the facts and evidence.  This video is highly recommended viewing.”

The Dutch Safety Board’s official technical report concluded that a single, powerful, Russian-made Buk ground-to-air missile had hit the plane.

These dark arts employed in Ukraine were then employed in the west. In Germany Russia spread false information, like the fake story of a German schoolgirl’s gang-rape by Muslims. The bombing in Syria created millions of refuges, many of whom ended up in Germany. This provided a fertile area for the German far-right; Alternative for Germany In the 2017 German federal elections the AfD won 12.6% of the vote, the best performance of such a party since 1933. Snyder shows how Russian news sources promoted the idea that the Scottish independence referendum had been “rigged”. The goal of course is to undermine faith in democratic institutions and processes. They have also sought to sew division in the European Union. Russia TV regularly featured Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage. Russia’s great European success was the Brexit referendum. However, they were not finished yet.

Snyder dubs Trump Russia’s candidate. The hacking of emails, the spreading of disinformation, the Russia-linked Facebook ads and the troll farms may well have decided an election where the margins were very small. I don’t know what Mueller will unearth in his investigation. But what Snyder has shown already seems scandalous. He talks about how Trump would retweet Russian propaganda posts. He also shows how Trump’s business was saved by Russian buying his properties in order to launder money. What about Paul Manafort, the American lobbyist, political consultant and lawyer, who joined Donald Trump’s presidential campaign team in March 2016. As well as lobbying dictators like the Philippines’’ Ferdinand Marcos, and the   Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Mobutu Sese Seko, he was promoting the pro-Russian former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych. According to leaked text messages between his daughters, Manafort was also one of the proponents of violent removal of the Euromaidan protesters which resulted in police shooting dozens of people in 2014. In one of the messages his daughter writes that his “strategy that was to cause that, to send those people out and get them slaughtered.”

Ultimately there is a fascinating dovetailing between Russian disinformation campaigns and Trump’s shameless mendaciousness. Of course politicians have always been economical with the truth. But Trump has a total disregard for the truth.  One unlikely hero in this story is Mitt Romney. When he called Russia the US’s number one geopolitical foe, he took a lot of flak. Obama quipped that “the 80s called and wants their foreign policy back.” According to the New York Times Romney’s words displayed “a shocking lack of knowledge about international affairs or just craven politics.” Now amid Mueller’s probe of the 2016 presidential campaign Romney appears to have been prescient. And we are living in a world turned upside down, with the Republicans blasé about Russia and the Democrats hawks. Indeed one Democratic senator compared the Russian intervention to Pearl Harbour

I have always found Putin’s mix of Soviet nostalgia, Orthodox Christianity Fascism and homophobia difficult to understand. Snyder’s book has helped me see things a bit more clearly. I can also see how this all relates to what has been happening in the West. Snyder likens Putin to a perverse doctor who diagnoses you and then tries to make your diseases worse. Nevertheless, Putin’s diagnosis is correct.  Wealth inequality, economic problems, voter suppression and gerrymandering, race relations, and the opioid crisis are all very real. Without these Putin’s efforts would not have had the impact that they undoubtedly did.  I will admit that I am intrigued by the way Putin has been able to achieve his geopolitical goals. I have always had a sneaking admiration for the KGB, one of the few things that actually worked in the Soviet Union. I would also say that none of this is new. When I hear about the meddling in the U.S. election, I do remember that the Americans have been known to influence elections in a number of countries. However, we will have to look at how we can make our societies immune to such damaging interventions.

But is it reading?

Audiobooks go back to the mid 1930s. They were first given to First World War veterans. This quote from The Times in 1936 shows one blind ex-soldier’s enthusiasm:

“The person who thought of the Talking Book ought to have a monument three times the size of Nelson’s. This is how I enjoy my Talking Book. Every night about 10 o’clock I make the fire up, draw my armchair near then I switch on the Talking Book. Don’t you think that is real luxury? Not being able to sleep much and being very poor at Braille you can imagine how useful the Talking Book is to me.”

The first audiobook was Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. In those days they were known as “talking books”. Such books were recorded on 12-inch shellac gramophone records, with each side lasting 25 minutes. Instead of the then standard 75 rpm, records could be played at 24 revolutions per minute, so that more narration could be crammed onto a disc – each side of the record could hold 45 minutes. Nevertheless, this meant that a normal book would require ten double-sided records.

People had been recording literature since the invention of the phonograph in 1877. Thomas Edison had wanted to use it to record Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby. Had it ever been recorded, this would have been the first audiobook. But recording an entire novel on wax cylinders, which could only record four minutes at a time, was out of the question. The progress of audiobooks has always been dependent on technology. In the 1980s it was the Walkman and the car cassette player which gave them another massive boost, attracting the interest of book retailers, who saw their commercial potential. Now it was possible to hear your favourite books on the go. The possibility of multitasking is what makes audiobooks so attractive to me. Like podcasts they have transformed what used to be mundane tasks such as commuting, exercising, cleaning the house or cooking into something more pleasurable.

There was, however still one problem. A long book required a lot of cassettes. Only when the MP3 player came around did this problem go away. Now with file compression you can fit various unabridged books on one device. Gone are they days when you needed 30 cassettes to hear all of Gone with the Wind. The leading company today is Audible.com, which is now a subsidiary of Amazon. According to Wikipedia, Audible’s content includes “over 150,000 audio programs from leading audiobook publishers, broadcasters, entertainers, magazine and newspaper publishers and business information providers, amounting to over 1,500,000 hours of audio programming.”

Audiobooks pose a problem of definition. Should you refer to readers or listeners? I tend to say I read a book, before correcting myself and saying I listened to it. Whatever term you choose, there is nothing easy about an audiobook. Indeed it could be said that the audiobook demands more concentration than the printed version. Traditional reading gives you the freedom to go at your own pace, stopping to savour a passage, or skimming to reach the end of the page. You can’t do this so easily with an audiobook. And if you happen to get distracted, it’s not so easy to find exactly where you were. It is often necessary to listen to segments of an audio book more than once to allow the material to be understood and retained satisfactorily. I don’t normally listen to them in bed, as I am normally out cold after ten or fifteen minutes.

Storytelling began as an oral art, after all, and there is something profoundly satisfying about hearing a book read aloud by a talented narrator. There is something immersive about the experience. Charles Dickens used to go on tour reading from his works. However, our aural culture is very different to Homer’s time. Many books were not created to be read aloud. Harold Bloom, the literary critic favours deep reading:

“Deep reading really demands the inner ear as well as the outer ear,” said “You need the whole cognitive process, that part of you which is open to wisdom. You need the text in front of you.”

In the end I think the two ways of enjoying books are valid. I went through a phase where I was listening to a lot of them. However, since I bought my e-reader I have gone back to having the text in front of me. With all the wonderful podcasts available I just haven’t found the time to listen to so many. But I remain a big fan. Anything that gets people interested in books should be welcomed.

Of tarot and criminal profiling

I have just finished a book called The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading by Ian Rowland, who is probably the world’s leading expert on this topic. Wikipedia defines it like this:

Cold reading is a series of techniques used by mentalists, illusionists, fortune tellers, psychics, mediums and con artists to determine or express details about another person, often in order to convince them that the reader knows much more about a subject than they actually do. Without prior knowledge of a person, a practiced cold reader can still quickly obtain a great deal of information about the subject by analyzing the person’s body language, age, clothing or fashion, hairstyle, gender, sexual orientation, religion, race or ethnicity, level of education, manner of speech, place of origin, etc. Cold readers commonly employ high probability guesses about the subject, quickly picking up on signals from their subjects as to whether their guesses are in the right direction or not, and then emphasizing and reinforcing any chance connections the subjects acknowledge while quickly moving on from missed guesses.

I first heard the term ten years ago when I began to get interested in scepticism. But I had never read anything as detailed as Rowland’s book. Ian Rowland a writer and mentalist who claims that he can replicate any psychic ability, and reveal all the tricks of the trade. Of course this does not prove that those who say they have those powers are charlatans but we know that it is perfectly possible to do these things with no special psychic abilities.

The book begins by challenging some myths about cold reading. Many people think it is about saying very general things or fishing for clues but that’s not the way it works. Once he has established what cold reading is not, Rowland then sets about a systematic examination of its real functioning. This is the best part of the book. He is an excellent communicator and I like the way he breaks down the subject down into manageable chunks. He provides an exhaustive typology of the language and techniques. The book then demonstrates how the theory is translated into practice. It presents different verbatim transcripts showing Rowland deploying all the different techniques he’s just described. He is able to convince ordinary people that he has psychic abilities. There’s also a 3900-word all-purpose astrological reading.

According to Rowland, anyone can do this but you need a lot of natural ability to be able get away with it. I know the methodology but I don’t think I would be very convincing if I tried to do it myself. What I find absolutely fascinating is watching an illusionist doing a cold reading.

Perhaps the most intriguing question about cold reading is the intent. Clearly many are engaged in cynical manipulation of their clients, especially the celebrities. But there may be many others who actually believe in what they are doing. They are encouraged by the positive feedback they get from their clients. Former New Age practitioner Karla McLaren said, “I didn’t understand that I had long used a form of cold reading in my own work! I was never taught cold reading and I never intended to defraud anyone; I simply picked up the technique through cultural osmosis.”

It could also be the case that those doing the readings experience hallucinations, which might cause them to see things. This area could be a profitable one for further investigation.

The part of the book I like least is where he applies to other areas such as business or dating. However it is interesting to look outside the psychic/medium/tarot field and into other areas. In particular, I want to look criminal profiling. We have all been impressed by of profilers in The Silence of the Lambs, the British series Cracker and countless other movies and TV series. I have also read a number of books by real criminal profilers such as Paul Britton and John Douglas. The idea that you can build up a detailed psychological profile of a criminal by examining a crime scene is very seductive. I was always aware that it was not the same as real scientific evidence but I thought it could have some value in narrowing the field. Now though I have become increasingly sceptical about this field and its practitioners; it just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. A few years ago large study commissioned by the British Home Office found that according to police officers a profile had led to arrest in just 2.7% of cases.

I don’t know if the statistics in the U.S.A. are any better but it is hard not to notice the hit-and-miss nature of the enterprise. The case of the Unabomber (Theodore Kaczynski) illustrates this. They got stuff right – he was white, had problems with women and was a recluse. None of this is particularly earth shattering. But they got his age wrong by about ten years. They said he would be meticulously organised when he just the opposite. And they predicted that he would have been educated up to high school level when in fact he had a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Michigan as well as being a graduate of Harvard University.  Florida prostitute Aileen Wuornos, an American serial killer who killed seven men in Florida between 1989 and 1990, was effectively excluded from profiling typologies because the FBI database of convicted serial killers did not include women. Another infamous failure was the Beltway sniper attacks, where the killer was thought to be a middle-aged white male—but in fact the crimes were perpetrated by two black males, one of whom happened to be 17 years old.

In an article in The New Yorker, Dangerous Minds – criminal profiling made easy, Malcolm Gladwell looks at the case of Dennis Rader, the self-proclaimed “BTK killer (BTK stands for Bind, Torture, and Kill) In 2005 Rader confessed to the serial killing of 10 people in the Wichita, Kansas area from 1974 to 1991. Here is the profile:

Look for an American male with a possible connection to the military. His I.Q. will be above 105. He will like to masturbate, and will be aloof and selfish in bed. He will drive a decent car. He will be a “now” person. He won’t be comfortable with women. But he may have women friends. He will be a lone wolf. But he will be able to function in social settings. He won’t be unmemorable. But he will be unknowable. He will be either never married, divorced, or married, and if he was or is married his wife will be younger or older. He may or may not live in a rental, and might be lower class, upper lower class, lower middle class or middle class. And he will be crazy like a fox, as opposed to being mental.”

The real Rader was married and had two children after the murders began. The Raders had a son in 1975 and a daughter in 1978. For 30 years Rader belonged to the Christ Lutheran Church and was also a Cub Scout leader who was remembered for teaching how to make secure knots. This profile looks uncannily like a cold reading – if you make enough guesses, some of them will be right, and the ones that are wrong will be forgotten. The problem is that those misses could lead the police in the wrong direction.  

It’s possible to go a long way with an observant mind the right phrases and a bit of mental agility. In the end it is a tough task trying to be a sceptic. We want to believe this stuff. You do not win any popularity awards for debunking. Medium James Van Praagh put it like this: “…we [psychics] are here to heal people and to help people grow. Sceptics… they’re just here to destroy people. They’re not here to encourage people, to enlighten people. They’re here to destroy people.” Rowland has an interesting take on the sceptical movement, of which he is highly critical.  He feels that too many of them are preaching to the converted. That may well be true but as I have mentioned in previous posts it’s very difficult to get people to change their world view. You can try to present what you feel is the most logical explanation but if people want to believe something else, there’s not much you can do.

Language and gender Part Deux: How men and women speak

Last week I looked at language and gender in relation to the importance of grammatical gender and the gradual disappearance of feminine endings in English. Today I want to examine how gender affects the way we speak.  I do not belong to the Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus school. As I pointed out in a previous post, Men are from Africa, Women are from Africa. On the other hand I do not hold with the nonsense that gender is socially constructed. What we do need is humility. What may appear hardwired, might some years later to be more a product of society. Coming back to gender and language, it does appear that gender does make a difference. However, these differences are not universal. Two important paradigms for studying are those of dominance and of difference, I shall proceed to look at both of them below:

The linguist Robin Lakoff is one of the principal proponents of dominance theory which posits that differences in speech related to gender are a result of men’s socially superior position.  I found this useful reference source online. Here are some features of women’s language that Lakoff highlighted:

1. Hedging: using phrases like “sort of”, “kind of”, “it seems like”,and so on.
2. Use of polite forms: “Would you mind…”,“I’d appreciate it if…”, “…if you don’t mind”.
3. Use tag questions: “You’re going to dinner, aren’t you?”
4. Use empty adjectives: divine, lovely, adorable, and so on
5. Use more standard grammar and pronunciation: English prestige grammar and clear enunciation.
6. Use question intonation in declarative statements: women make declarative statements into questions by raising the pitch of their voice at the end of a statement, expressing uncertainty. For example, “What school do you attend? Eton College?”
7. Use “wh-” imperatives: (such as, “Why don’t you open the door?”)
8. Speak less frequently
9. Overuse qualifiers: (for example, “I Think that…”)
10. Apologise more: (for instance, “I’m sorry, but I think that…”)
11. Use modal constructions: (such as can, would, should, ought – “Should we turn up the heat?”)
12. Avoid swearing.
13. Use indirect commands and requests: (for example, “My, isn’t it cold in here?” – really a request to turn the heat on or close a window)
14. Use more intensifiers: especially so and very (for instance, “I am so glad you came!”)

In combination these features make women’s speech appear weaker and more uncertain. Indeed the features the identified by Lakoff were part of what it meant to learn to “speak like a woman” in our society. How accurate was Lakoff’s analysis of women’s and men’s speech? It was based more on introspection than carrying out surveys. It was written before all the consequences of the feminist revolution had been felt. We live in a very different world to the 1970s. actually I have just finished reading Margaret Thatcher’s autobiography and I can tell you it did not contain a lot of hedging! As women’s position in society changes, so will the way they employ language. I think you can also criticise her interpretation of linguistic features. There is nothing inherent in a linguistic feature that makes it good or bad, weak or strong; instead, how its use is perceived is based on our social preconceptions.

The second frame is that of misunderstanding, as popularised by Deborah Tannen in her book You Just Don’t Understand. She argues that men and women communicate in different ways. She has a series of six contrasts. In each case the male mode of communication is listed first:

1. Status vs. support
2. Independence vs. intimacy
3. Advice vs. understanding
4. Information vs. feelings
5. Orders vs. proposals
6. Conflict vs. compromise

You will notice that the terms on the right are more touchy-feely. Women use rapport talk to establish feelings, whereas men are engaging in report talk giving information and establishing the pecking order. Tannen’s critics have accused her of perpetuating stereotypes. I’m not sure. I’m also unsure of the implications. Will women have to sound more like men if they want to be more successful at work?  Women who talk like men are often judged harshly – they are considered unfeminine, rude or bitchy.

There have been other fascinating studies. Sociologists Don Zimmerman and Candace West showed that in ten same-sex conversations there were seven interruptions, but in eleven cross-sex ones there were 48 interruptions, of which men were responsible for 46. Linguist Paula Fishman claimed that men used statements rather than questions twice as often as women. And of 76 topics introduced into conversation, women were the initiators on 48 occasions compared to 28 by men. However, only 17 of the women’s initiatives were taken up, while all 28 of the men’s were.

What I do think it is always good to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Gender, though, is just one of the myriad influences on how we speak, but we also have social class, age and race. I don’t think we should overplay the significance of gender. We are not like those Carib islanders I mentioned last week, who supposedly spoke in entirely different languages based on their gender.

Doc Martin’s medical case notes

This week’s blog is a departure from what I normally do. There is not one theme to this week’s post. Rather I will be looking at a couple of stories relating to medicine have heard a couple of fascinating podcasts recently. It is from these that I got the ideas for this week’s post.

The first story comes from the excellent Freakonomics podcast. It was about how the CIA organised fake vaccination drive to get Osama bin Laden’s family DNA. Dr Shakil Afridi was recruited by the CIA to do a number of vaccination drives in Pakistan. Afridi was in the pay of the CIA, and in 2011 they asked him for help in capturing America’s number one terrorist target Osama Bin Laden. The means was a hepatitis B vaccination campaign in Abbottabad. They wanted him to gain access to houses in an area where they thought the terrorist might be present. Indeed they had one particular house in mind and their goal was to obtain DNA from the fugitive al-Qaida leader’s family.

The doctor went to Abbottabad in March, saying he had procured funds to give free vaccinations for hepatitis B. Bypassing the management of the Abbottabad health services; he paid generous sums to low-ranking local government health workers, who took part in the operation without knowing about the connection to Bin Laden. Health visitors in the area were among the few people who had gained access to the Bin Laden compound in the past, administering polio drops to some of the children. Afridi had posters for the vaccination programme put up around Abbottabad, featuring a vaccine made by Amson, a medicine manufacturer based on the outskirts of Islamabad.

The CIA were not able to confirm that Bin Laden was hiding there. We now know that he had been living there and on May 2^nd 2011 he was killed by U.S. forces. The Pakistani government, who had been kept in the dark about the operation, was furious and went in search of any locals who had collaborated with the Americans. The CIA gave Afridi money and recommended that he escape to Afghanistan. The doctor felt that he was safe and decided to stay. However, he was picked up by the notorious Pakistani secret services, the ISI. The CIA director at this time, Leon Panetta demanded that Afridi be released. However, as of 2014, Afridi is still in prison.

I have no doubt about the collusion between the Pakistani government and terrorists. Moreover, I can understand the desire to get Bin Laden. Nevertheless the decision to use a vaccination campaign as a cover for an intelligence-gathering operation was a deeply flawed one. Everyone involved in vaccine campaigns was under suspicion. Save the Children were forced to close down their anti-polio vaccination campaign in Pakistan. The Pakistani Taliban banned polio vaccinations entirely. And they began to target health workers in the country. 65 health workers administering polio vaccines in Pakistan have been murdered since the end of 2012. Consequently polio is on the rise in this troubled country. In 2014 there were 214 cases of the disease, the highest figure in 15 years. All of these unintended consequences were highly foreseeable. At the end of the Freakonomics piece they make a nice point. In the US there are, as in the UK, a lot of people paranoid about vaccines. Now the CIA has exported the problem. Couldn’t they have sent a fake cable TV guy, or an encyclopaedia salesman?

One of the most fascinating cases in medical history must be that of Mary Mallon, better known as Typhoid Mary. Born in 1869 in Cookstown, County Tyrone, Ireland, Mary emigrated from Ireland to the United States at the age of 15. She became the first

first documented case of an asymptomatic carrier of the pathogen associated with typhoid fever United States. In her capacity as cook she worked for a number of affluent families, many of whose members would subsequently be afflicted with typhoid.

One family hired a sanitary engineer named George Soper to investigate. He believed Mallon might be the source of the outbreak and set out to find her. When he finally approached Mallon about her possible role in spreading typhoid, she refused to provide him with blood, urine and stool samples. Put yourself in Mary’s shoes. You feel perfectly healthy and then one day a man accuses you of infecting people with this illness and making strange demands. You probably wouldn’t welcome him into your home. Indeed, she chased the investigator out of the building wielding a serving fork.

Soper would need to find alternative evidence, compiling a five-year history of Mallon’s employment. Of the eight families for whom Mallon had worked as a cook, members of seven claimed to have contracted typhoid fever. The health authorities declared her to be a carrier and under sections 1169 and 1170 of the Greater New York Charter, Mallon was held in isolation for three years at a clinic located on North Brother Island. Mary Mallon never believed that she was sick or dangerous. Here is a letter she wrote while she was “imprisoned” on the island:

“When I first came here I was so nervous and almost prostrated with grief and trouble. My eyes began to twitch, and the left eyelid became paralyzed and would not move. It remained in that condition for six months. There was an eye specialist [who] visited the island three and four times a week. He was never asked to visit me. I did not even get a cover for my eye. I had to hold my hand on it whilst going about and at night tie a bandage on it.

… I have been in fact a peep show for everybody. Even the interns had to come to see me and ask about the facts already known to the whole wide world. The tuberculosis men would say “There she is, the kidnapped woman.” Dr. Park has had me illustrated in Chicago. I wonder how the said Dr. William H. Park would like to be insulted and put in the Journal and call him or his wife Typhoid William Park.”

Eventually, it was determined that disease carriers should no longer be kept in isolation and that Mallon could be freed if she agreed to stop working as a cook and take reasonable steps to prevent transmitting typhoid to others. After being released Mallon found employment as a laundress. Unfortunately this paid less than cooking and after changing her name, she soon returned to her old profession. For the next five years, she worked in a number of kitchens in restaurants inns and a sanatorium. The inevitable result was further cases. It was only after another major outbreak at a New York maternity hospital. 25 people were infected and two died. I did feel some sympathy for her the first time she was quarantined, but now she was wilfully putting people’s lives at risk. Mallon was arrested and spent the rest of her life in quarantine back on the island. On November 11, 1938, she died of pneumonia at age 69. An autopsy found evidence of live typhoid bacteria in her gallbladder. We do need to put the cased in context. At the time Mary was being quarantined, there were hundreds of men who were also asymptomatic carriers. Indeed many of these worked in catering. But Mary was the only one on the island. She was undoubtedly a scapegoat. The authorities had to seen to be doing something.

I had head about this case before but I was reminded about by Patient Zero, a programme in the excellent Radiolab series.  In medical science patient zero refers to the initial patient in the population of an epidemiological investigation. The etymology is interesting it was originally patient used for patient O (standing for out of California), referring to Gaëtan Dugas, a superspreader of AIDS. The letter O was later misinterpreted as a zero. In fact, Mr. Dugas was not patient zero. According to the programme, the origin could be in 1908 from an African man who had eaten an infected monkey. Who knows if this true? And then we would to know who chimp zero was.

With the recent outbreaks of Ebola, plagues are very much back in the news. Before the virus wreaked havoc in West Africa and spread around the planet, Ebola struck a toddler named Emile Ouamouno, who is said to be the first person to contract the disease in the current outbreak almost a year ago. He is patient Zero. What is worrying is how far the disease has spread this time. Ebola has been around since the 1970s, but previous outbreaks have tended to be confined to small areas. I remember an interview with Desmond Morris before the Cold War was over. He said that he was far more worried about some kind of plague than a nuclear Armageddon. Let’s hope that neither of these catastrophes befalls us.

A real life Pygmalion – Thomas Day

Pygmalion saw women waste their lives

in wretched shame, and critical of faults

which nature had so deeply planted through

their female hearts, he lived in preference,

for many years unmarried.–But while he

was single, with consummate skill, he carved

a statue out of snow-white ivory,

and gave to it exquisite beauty, which

no woman of the world has ever equalled:

she was so beautiful, he fell in love

with his creation.  Ovid’s Metamorphoses: Pygmalion

 

The story of Pygmalion, whose disgust at the shameful lives of the women of his era, leads him to create Galatea, a beautiful ivory statue more perfect than any living woman. Indeed, he actually falls in love with the statue and goes to the temple of the goddess Venus to pray for a lover like his statue. Venus is touched by his love and brings Galatea to life. And they all lived happily ever after. But it is a rather perverse story. It is the idea of the man creating the woman of his desires to meet his needs. It reminds me of those avatars that I wrote about a few weeks ago.

This is not just the stuff of literature. One such case is that of Thomas Day, a British children’s author and abolitionist, whose portrait hangs at the National Portrait Gallery in London. I have been there many times, but I have to admit I had not noticed this one. I had no idea of the extraordinary life of Day. I learned about Day when I recently finished reading Wendy Moore’s How to Create the Perfect Wife – Britain’s Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate, a book which came out in 2013.

Thomas Day was born on June 22 1748. He was the only child of Thomas and Jane Day. His father died when Day was just a year old, leaving him fatherless but wealthy, a fortune he would inherit when he became 21. His education included Charterhouse School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He became a member of the Lunar Society, a club of prominent members of the Midlands Enlightenment, whose members included Josiah Wedgwood, Joseph Priestley, Erasmus Darwin and James Watt. It got its name because the members would meet during the full moon.  In the absence of street lighting, the full moon made the journey home easier and safer

It was 1769 and the 21-year-old Day, a man with a considerable was determined to find a wife. He was baffled that women just did not seem attracted to him. He was tall and dark, and was not unattractive. However, his face was marked by smallpox. He had no time for Georgian fashions. Indeed, he was a bit of a scruff, who didn’t wash his hair very often. But his biggest drawback was surely his personality He was uncomfortable with small talk, preferring to pontificate. Having been jilted a couple of times Day had a decidedly misogynistic view of women. He was looking for a woman untainted by society.  According to one of his friends, his demands were modest:

“He resolved, if possible, that his wife should have a taste for literature and science, for moral and patriotic philosophy. So might she be his companion in that retirement, to which he had destined himself; and assist him forming the minds of his children to stubborn virtue and high exertion. He resolved also, that she should be simple as a mountain girl, in her dress, her diet and her manners, fearless and intrepid as the Spartan wives and Roman heroines.”

If he could not find such a creature ready made, he would have to create the wife he wanted, all by himself. Inspired by a suggestion in Rousseau’s Sophie. Where could he find the raw material from which to mould his perfect wife? The place he chose was a foundling hospital. First, he went to one in Shrewsbury. He went there with a friend, John Bicknell, who was a lawyer. They would not have been allowed to pick up a young orphan for a single man, so they claimed to be looking for an apprentice maid for a friend of theirs, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, who knew nothing of their ruse. The “winner” was Ann Kingston, a 12.year-ol girl with chestnut hair, who he renamed Sabrina Sidney. Not content with one orphan, Day and Bicknell repeated the operation, this time in London with Dorcas Car a blonde 11-year old orphan with blue eyes. Maintaining the Roman heroine theme he named her Lucretia. All of this is rather shocking. Protected by his wealth, Day was able to purchase two vulnerable girls, in the words of Moore, “as he might buy two shoe buckles“. No system of follow-up checks existed. From the moment they left the foundling hospitals, these two children, ages 12 and 11, became Day’s property, to do with as he pleased. His friends, rather shockingly, raised no objections to the project. Significantly,his mother and stepfather remained in the dark. Of course neither of the girls was told about the arrangement.

Day took them to Paris and later Avignon. As well as helping him cover his tracks, it was an excellent way of isolating the girls. Neither of them spoke French so Day would be their only teacher, their only contact with the world. The subtitle of Moore’s book mentions the enlightened quest to train the ideal mate. This is where the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau come in. I am not a fan of Mr. Rousseau. His treatment of his own family was despicable. And more importantly many of his ideas about society were wrong-headed. The idea that we were all noble creatures until we were corrupted by civilisation is not one I subscribe to. Day, though, was a true believer. He declared in 1769 that the two tomes he would save, if all the world’s books were to be destroyed, would be the Bible and Rousseau’s Emile. The idea was for a progressive education. Children should not be forced to study. Rather they should discover things for themselves. Day was converted by his friend to Rousseau by his friend Edgeworth, who had educated his son Dick a la Rousseau.

This would be an ideal method for creating the perfect wife. But things didn’t go very well. He decided that Lucretia was too stupid and stubborn to train and had her apprenticed to a milliner on Ludgate Hill in London.  Soon, she married a draper and received her dowry, as stipulated in the contract that had been drawn up by John Bicknell.

Now only Sabrina was standing. The second phase of the Rousseau method was now about to begin. This involved making her stronger and better able to suffer. However, it sounds more Marquis de Sade. She had sealing wax poured on her arms and pins stuck into her. She had to learn not to flinch when pistols were fired near her and she was thrown into a lake, even though she couldn’t swim. This was all too much for Sabrina, who just couldn’t get with the programme. In early 1771 he sent her off to boarding school in Sutton Coldfield. He had failed to train her successfully. This was of course nothing to do with the training methods; He just hadn’t had the right quality raw material to work with.

He went back to more conventional methods for looking for a mate. The results were equally unsuccessful. He was jilted another two times. He even tried to change for one of these women by becoming the perfect Georgian gentleman, with disastrous results. He tried one more time with Sabrina, but it was not to be. In the end he found someone who could put up with his eccentricities – Esther Milnes, a rich heiress. They were married on August 7, 1778. They lived a very ascetic lifestyle and Esther was never allowed to contact her family. He would constantly criticise her, but she was in love with him. They worked together on a philanthropic project to improve the conditions of the working classes around them.

Sabrina married John Bicknell. Only then did she learn the full extent of the experiment. She demanded an explanation from Day. His reply was typical of the man:

“… whether those intentions were wild, chimerical, & extravagant … that object relates to myself alone & you are the last person in the world to whom I owe any apologies“. Bicknell died a few years later leaving her with xxx children to bring up. Luckily she soon found a job as a housekeeper at private boys’ school. She died at the age of 86.

Day would go on to write a book at the time would be a children’s children’s classic Sandford and Merton, which tells how a lonely, spoilt, rich boy is befriended by a farmer’s son, and becomes a hero by saving a poor family from the bailiffs. Day never lived to enjoy his fame. In 1789, the year of the French Revolution, he was thrown from a horse. Day, an animal lover, had refused to break in the young colt.

This is the contradiction of this man. Here was a man who loathed cruelty to animals, campaigned against slavery, supported American independence and was a follower of progressive thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau. A member of the Lunar Society, he was a respected member of Georgian society. Therein lies the reality. He was a product of the class and gender relations of that society. In a previous post I mentioned The Expanding Circle, how we have gradually extended sympathy to more and more groups, including animals. Day had extended his circle of sympathy to working people, slaves and animals but not to females. Women, especially if they were poor orphans were just property. Another man who lived at this time, Thomas Jefferson wrote something called The United States Declaration of Independence in which he stated: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” He was also a slave-owner. Such is the human ability to hold mutually contradictory ideas. Thomas Day certainly is an example of this.

Psychoanalysis and the examined life

This book is about change.

We are all storytellers – we make stories to make sense of our lives. But it is not enough to tell tales. There must be someone to listen. From The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves by Stephen Grosz

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Regular readers of my blog will know that I take an interest in mental issues. I have been critical of the meaningless psychobabble that clogs up our language – issues, baggage, closure, and low self-esteem. I have pointed out a number of the psychological myths that just refuse to go away. No, we do not use 10% off our brains. Using hypnosis to retrieve memories is not useful. In fact, it can be very dangerous. Low self-esteem is not a major cause of psychological problems. I have been critical of the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM and its apparent mission to convert life itself into a mental illness. I have quoted critic Tana Dineen’s cynical formula of victimhood:

PERSON = VICTIM = USER/PATIENT = PROFIT

I am sceptical about the powers of psychoanalysis to cure anyone. Indeed, it can sometimes be harmful. In the fifties and sixties it was proclaimed that psychoanalysis could cure even schizophrenia. Cold mothers were blamed for autism in their children. And we should not forget the debacle of repressed memory therapy (RMT).

So you will probably be surprised that I have just finished reading a book about psychoanalysis called The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves. The author, Stephen Grosz is a psychoanalyst who has worked in Britain and the United States. Over the course of a 25-year career as a psychoanalyst Grosz estimates he has spent 50,000 hours listening to the life stories of his patients. He has distilled these hours of conversations into a slim volume of 31 elegantly written case histories which give us a glimpse into our fundamentally flawed psyches. The stories are all short, between 1,000 and 2,000 words.  This is what drew me to the book – I am a sucker for stories.

Storytelling is such a huge part of what it makes us human. Psychoanalysis and storytelling have a rich history. Freud has been described as a great modernist writer. And while I don’t subscribe to Freudian theory there is no doubt that his theory of the unconscious had a profound influence on literature. Indeed, whether Freud was right or wrong, most major 20^th century writers believed that his account of the human mind was the correct one. In this volume Grosz is unapologetic about his use of stories. He argues that anything, no matter how complicated and theoretical, that can be done in technical language, can be done better in a very simple story

He wants to strip away all the theory,, paint a picture of the relationship between an analyst and a patient and give us an insight into how analysts think about things. The whole psychoanalytic experience seems a like a throwback to a bygone age. Two people are alone in a room for fifty minutes. There’s no telephone, email, or contact with the outside world. We are so used to being constantly connected. I have to admit I don’t spend that much time in pure contemplation. Shaving in front of the mirror in the morning is one of the few times of the day when this happens. We don’t like silence, so we constantly try to fill every second of the day with noise. If I’m on the bus and I don’t have my e-reader or my MP3 player, I feel bereft. Don’t get me wrong I love these devices. They transform mundane activities into pleasurable ones. But perhaps we should turn off our gadgets more often. In this sense I can see the attraction of the psychoanalytic session. It is a chance to slow down a bit and take stock of our lives.

The book is divided into five parts – Beginnings, Telling Lies, Loving, Changing and Leaving. Here is a selection of the chapters to give you a flavour of the book: How praise can cause a loss of confidence, The gift of pain, Why parents envy their children, On wanting the impossible, Why we lurch from crisis to crisis, On being boring, On closure and On waking from a dream. 

One story that I found especially fascinating was not in fact one of the case studies. Rather, it was the story of Marissa Panigrosso, who was on the ninety-eighth floor of the south tower when the first plane slammed the north tower of the WorldTradeCenter. Marissa Panigrosso didn’t pause to turn off her computer, or even to pick up her purse. She walked to the nearest emergency exit and left the building. We imagine that these situations are dominated by hysterical panic. However, this is not necessarily true. Two women she had been talking to – including the colleague who shared her cubicle – did not leave, preferring to have telephone conversations. Many people in Marissa Panigrosso’s office ignored both the fire alarm and what was happening just forty metres away in the north tower. Some of them actually went back into a meeting. Tamitha Freeman, a friend of Marissa’s, turned back after walking down several flights of stairs in order for some pictures of her baby. She would not make it out of the building. Nor would the two women on the phone, or the people who went into the meeting.

This behaviour may strike us as odd. Research has shown that, when a fire alarm rings, people do not act immediately. They talk to each other, and they try to work out what is going on. They stand around. This happens when there is a fire drill or the fire alarm goes off:

Instead of leaving a building, we wait. We wait for more clues – the smell of smoke, or advice from someone we trust. But there is also evidence that, even with more information, many of us still won’t make a move. In 1985, fifty-six people were killed when fire broke out in the stands of the Valley Parade football stadium in Bradford. Close examination of television footage later showed that fans did not react immediately and continued to watch both the fire and the game, failing to move towards the exits. And research has shown, again and again, that when we do move, we follow old habits. We don’t trust emergency exits. We almost always try to exit a room through the same door we entered. Forensic reconstruction after a famous restaurant fire in the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Kentucky confirmed that many of the victims sought to pay before leaving, and so died in a queue.

Despite my scepticism about psychoanalysis, I was won over by the book. The Examined Life is well worth reading.

The Etymologicon #3

Here is my final selection from  Mark Forsyth’s wonderful book, The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language, book which looks at the unexpected connections between words:

Heroin

Once upon a time, cough medicines all contained morphine. This made people worried. You see, morphine is addictive, which meant that if you had a bad cold and took the cough medicine for too long, you might cure the cough but wind up physically dependent upon the remedy. The poor cougher of a hundred years ago was therefore faced with a choice: keep hacking away, or risk becoming a morphine addict. Many chose the cough. So in 1898 a German pharmaceutical company called Bayer decided to develop an alternative. They got out their primitive pipettes and rude retorts, and worked out a new chemical: diacetylmorphine, which they marketed as a ‘non-addictive morphine substitute’. Like all new products it needed a brand name. Diacetylmorphine was alright if you were a scientist, but it wasn’t going to work at the counter of the drugstore. They needed a name that would sell, a name that would make people say: ‘Yes! I want to buy that product!’ So Bayer’s marketing chaps set to work. They asked the people who had taken diacetylmorphine how it made them feel, and the response was unanimous: it made you feel great. Like a hero. So the marketing chaps decided to call their new product heroin. And guess what? It did sell. Heroin remained a Bayer trademark until the First World War; but the ‘non-addictive’ part turned out to be a little misguided.

Water Closets for Russia

In 1911, Winston Churchill was moved from the position of Home Secretary and became First Lord of the Admiralty, where he was in charge of developing new and more lethal methods of killing the enemy.

One of the ideas that he oversaw was the landship. The oceans of the world were, at the time, dominated by the Royal Navy. Britannia ruled the waves. Huge steam-powered gunships chuffed around the globe making sure that the Sun never set on the British Empire. These ships were covered in iron, so that they were immune to enemy fire, and they had huge guns mounted on them, so that they could destroy others. However, on land Britain was not so invincible. The British army still consisted of men and horses, which are made of flesh rather than iron and could be killed in their millions.

So, under Churchill’s supervision, a plan was hatched to take the principle of the iron-clad warship and apply it to land warfare. The British started to design the landship. It would be iron, like a warship, it would be motorised, like a warship, and it would have guns mounted on it, like a warship. It would be a destroyer, but it would be used in the field and not in the sea.

The idea was pushed forward by an officer called Ernest Swinton. Plans were drawn up and manufacturers approached, but everything was done in deadly secrecy. No mention of landships was ever made in public, which is why they aren’t called landships today.

The landship was such a secret that not even the workers in the factory where they were built were to know what they were. By the outbreak of war in 1914, Russia was fighting on the Allied side, so Swinton decided that a good cover story for the new weapons would be to say on all documents that they were Water Carriers for Russia, but when Swinton told Churchill about his ruse Churchill burst out laughing.

Churchill pointed out that Water Carriers would be abbreviated to WCs and that people would think that they were manufacturing lavatories. So Swinton had a quick think and suggested changing the name to Water Tanks for Russia. Churchill could find no objection to this codename, and it stuck.

Well, it didn’t all stick. Water Tanks for Russia was a bit cumbersome, so water got dropped. Then it turned out that the tanks weren’t going to Russia at all. They were going to the trenches on the Western Front, so Russia got dropped too. And that’s why tanks are called tanks. If Winston Churchill hadn’t been so careful about lavatorial implications, they might have been called carriers. If Swinton hadn’t been so careful, they would definitely have been landships.

Queen Gunhilda and the Gadgets

Gunhilda was the Queen of Denmark in the late tenth and early eleventh century. She was married to Sven Forkbeard and, as is the way with Dark Age queens, that’s all we really know about her. She was the mother of Canute the Great (he of the waves), and presumably she helped her husband out with his beard every morning. She must also have known her father-in-law, King Harald I of Denmark, who lived from 935 to 986 AD.

King Harald had blue teeth. Or perhaps he had black teeth. Nobody’s quite sure, as the meaning of blau has changed over the years. His other great achievement was to unite the warring provinces of Denmark and Norway under a single king (himself).

In 1996 a fellow called Jim Kardach developed a system that would allow mobile telephones to communicate with computers. After a hard day’s engineering, Kardach relaxed by reading a historical novel called The Longships by Frans Gunnar Bengtsson. It’s a book about Vikings and adventure and raping and pillaging and looting, and it’s set during the reign of Harald Bluetooth.

Jim Kardach felt he was doing the king’s work. By getting computers to talk to telephones and vice versa he was uniting the warring provinces of technology. So, just for his own amusement, he gave the project the working title of Bluetooth.

Bluetooth was never meant to be the actual name on the package. Blue teeth aren’t a pleasant image, and it was up to the marketing men at Kardach’s company to come up with something better. The marketing men did come up with something much blander and more saleable: they were going to call the product Pan. Unfortunately, just as the new technology was about to be unveiled, they realised that Pan was already the trademark of another company. So, as time was tight and the product needed to be launched, they reluctantly went with Kardach’s nickname. And that’s why it’s called Bluetooth technology.

Beards

The number of hidden beards in the English language is quite bizarre. Bizarre, for example, comes from the Basque word bizar or beard, because when Spanish soldiers arrived in the remote and clean-shaven villages of the Pyrenees, the locals thought that their bizars were bizarre.

The feathers that were stuck into the back of arrows were known by the Romans as the beard, or barbus, which is why arrows are barbs, and that’s ultimately the reason that barbed wire is simply wire that has grown a beard.

Barbus is also the reason that the man who cuts your beard is known as a barber. The ancient Romans liked to be clean-shaven, as beards were considered weird and Greek, so their barbers plied a regular and lucrative trade until the fall of the Roman Empire. Italy was overrun by tribesmen who had huge long beards which they never even trimmed. These tribesmen were known as the longa barba, or longbeards, which was eventually shortened to Lombard, which is why a large part of northern Italy is still known as Lombardy.

The Romans by that time had become effete, perhaps through a lack of facial hair, and couldn’t take their opponents on. If they had been more courageous and less shaven, they could have stood beard to beard against their enemies, which would have made them objectionable and rebarbative.

What the Romans needed was a leader like General Ambrose Burnside, who fought for the Union during the American Civil War. General Burnside had vast forests of hair running from his ears and connecting to his leviathan moustache. So extraordinary was his facial foliage that such growths came to be known as burnsides. However, Ambrose Burnside died and was forgotten, and later generations of Americans, reasoning that the hair was on the side of the face, took the name burnside and bizarrely swapped it around to make sideburns.

And it’s not only humans that have beards, nor only animals. Even trees may forget to shave, namely the giant bearded fig of the Caribbean. The bearded fig is also known as the strangler tree and can grow to 50 feet in height. The beards and the height and the strangling are connected, for the tree reproduces by growing higher than its neighbours and then dropping beard-like aerial roots into their unsuspecting branches. The beards wrap themselves around the victim until they reach the ground, where they burrow in and then tighten, strangling the host.

There’s an island in the Caribbean that’s filled with them. The natives used to call it the RedLand with White Teeth, but the Spanish explorers who discovered it were so impressed with the psychotic and unshaven fig trees that they called it The Bearded Ones, or Barbados.

Cynical Dogs

The Cynics were a school of ancient Greek philosophy, founded by Antisthenes and made famous by his pupil Diogenes.

Diogenes was, by any standards, an odd chap. He lived in a barrel in the marketplace in Athens and used to carry a lamp about in broad daylight, explaining that he was trying to find an honest man. His one worldly possession was a mug that he used for drinking. Then one day he saw a peasant scooping water up with his hands and immediately threw his mug away. Accounts of his death vary, but one story is that he held his breath.

Cynic meant doglike. But why was Diogenes’ school known as the dogs?

There was a gymnasium near Athens for those who were not of pure Athenian blood. A gymnasium in ancient Greece wasn’t exactly the same thing as a gymnasium today. For starters, it was an open-air affair. It was more of a leafy glade than a building filled with parallel bars and rubber mats. People did do their physical training at the gymnasium, in fact they did it naked. The word gymnasium comes from the Greek gymnazein, meaning to train in the nude, which itself comes from gymnos, meaning naked. But if you could take your mind off the naked boys (which many Greek philosophers found difficult), gymnasiums were also places for socialising and debating and teaching philosophy. Diogenes’ gymnasium was known as the Gymnasium of the White Dog or Cynosarge, because a white dog had once defiled a sacrifice there by running away with a bit of meat.

Diogenes, not being a native Athenian, was forced to teach in the Dog’s Gymnasium, which is how one hungry and ownerless canine gave his name to a whole philosophical movement. A fun little result of this is that any cynical female is, etymologically speaking, a bitch.