Your blogster is back from the Spanish Main. You lucky readers you! Your brief but bitter period of confusion about what to think can now end. Read on.
What is this?
This is a picture of the radar device aboard the sailboat I have been sailing on for the past two weeks in Columbia, Panama, Aruba, etc. while this blog has been silent. Radar is a handy thing to have, one might think, especially in the dark or fog at sea when big dangerous ships are in the vicinity. You don't want to accidentally bump into this guy!
Never mind that everyone knows that none of these ideas would have any effect on gas prices anywhere in the remotely foreseeable future, even if the Canadian tar sands oil were used in the US instead of being shipped to China as currently planned. Those facts are filtered out of the R radar because the R radar declutters data and imparts meaning in the same familiar way. Their heuristics (rules; thinking short-cuts) are programmed into the party line.
It is the same deal for Democrats. They turn on the D declutter and frame things according to their own different heuristics (declutter rules). In this case, however, the declutter on their radar is guiding them into a some stinking doo doo. Their radar is missing an obvious fact, a gigantic pile of elephant poop that somehow got decluttered out of their radar.
Unfortunately, radar is not perfect. Unless you carefully adjust a feature called “declutter”, the picture you get is a confusing screen with too much data, all white and black splotches, signifying nothing and impossible to interpret. On the other hand, if you turn on declutter to remove too much distracting data, you end up also erasing a big dangerous item that you need. Either way you often don't see what you need to see.
Result: shipwreck.
Jimmy Cliff thought he was seeing clearly in the film, The Harder They Come, but he ended up with a bullet in his head.
Your brain is just like radar. As scientists have shown over and over again for 30 years, our brains always have declutter turned on, at least after infancy. We would otherwise take in too much confusing and distracting data and could not make sense of the world around us. We need that declutter. Cognitive science researchers and psychologists call it our system of heuristics. Heuristics in this context are rules based on prior experience and beliefs used to filter data input and make meaning out of the mess of total perception input. Vast amounts of raw truthful data comes in, but we chew it up in our meaning making machines.
Our brain declutter meaning making machine has a downside. We don't see clearly, as Jimmy cliff found out the hard way.
Take any political issue. A hot one right now is gas prices. This one comes and goes but recently gas prices have spiked so it's back on the political hit parade. Gas prices are up 12% from last year, and Obama is running scared, trying to play defense.[ii]
Your brain is just like radar. As scientists have shown over and over again for 30 years, our brains always have declutter turned on, at least after infancy. We would otherwise take in too much confusing and distracting data and could not make sense of the world around us. We need that declutter. Cognitive science researchers and psychologists call it our system of heuristics. Heuristics in this context are rules based on prior experience and beliefs used to filter data input and make meaning out of the mess of total perception input. Vast amounts of raw truthful data comes in, but we chew it up in our meaning making machines.
Our brain declutter meaning making machine has a downside. We don't see clearly, as Jimmy cliff found out the hard way.
Take any political issue. A hot one right now is gas prices. This one comes and goes but recently gas prices have spiked so it's back on the political hit parade. Gas prices are up 12% from last year, and Obama is running scared, trying to play defense.[ii]
Fact: Americans are pissed as hell that it now takes $300 to fill up the tank on their Humvees.
In the face of that, Henry Waxman, Edward J. Markey and two has-been liberal Republican environmentalists are advocating another approach. They want to make power plants and oil refineries pay for carbon emissions, essentially increase the cost of gasoline.[iii] Forgetting that Dick Cheney said that deficits don’t matter, they argue that this will have the extra added benefit of reducing the deficit. And cleaning up the enviroment to boot.
Oh my God, Henry and Ed! Turn off your declutter and smell the elephant poop!
When democrats and environmentalists step in a pile of doo doo as big as this over and over again, you have to wonder if their olfactory radar is just plain broken.
If everyone turned off their declutter for a minute, they just might see what is REALLY causing gas prices to jump all over the place in the short term.
When democrats and environmentalists step in a pile of doo doo as big as this over and over again, you have to wonder if their olfactory radar is just plain broken.
If everyone turned off their declutter for a minute, they just might see what is REALLY causing gas prices to jump all over the place in the short term.
You can guess the answer. It is rather obvious if you think about it.
But if you don’t get it, the answer will be provided in tomorrow’s blog.
[i] Lyrics of song, “I can See Clearly Now” from the film, The Harder They Come.
[ii] Mark Landler,” In a Nod to Gas Prices, Obama Talks About Energy,” Washington Post, Feb 23, 2012.
[iii] Op Ed, Washington Post, Feb 23, 2012.
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