The right answer is always bigger, meaner monkeys

Deputy mayor of Delhi dead after monkey attack. Yes, you read that right:

SS Bajwa suffered serious head injuries when he fell from the first-floor terrace of his home on Saturday morning trying to fight off the monkeys.

The city has long struggled to counter its plague of monkeys, which invade government complexes and temples, snatch food and scare passers-by.

The High Court ordered the city to find an answer to the problem last year.

One approach has been to train bands of larger, more ferocious langur monkeys to go after the smaller groups of Rhesus macaques.

The city has also employed monkey catchers to round them up so they can be moved to forests.

But the problem has persisted.

Culling is seen as unacceptable to devout Hindus, who revere the monkeys as a manifestation of the monkey god Hanuman, and often feed them bananas and peanuts.

Two questions:
(1) So it's unacceptable to cull the monkeys according to Hinduism but okey-dokey to form a monkey death squad (HT mjweber) that will get the job done?

(2) Um....so what larger, more ferocious animal can they introduce on the streets of Delhi after the langur monkeys go out of control?

Say it ain't so. But how?

Human beings are stupid in interesting ways:

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently issued a flier to combat myths about the flu vaccine. It recited various commonly held views and labeled them either "true" or "false." Among those identified as false were statements such as "The side effects are worse than the flu" and "Only older people need flu vaccine."

When University of Michigan social psychologist Norbert Schwarz had volunteers read the CDC flier, however, he found that within 30 minutes, older people misremembered 28 percent of the false statements as true. Three days later, they remembered 40 percent of the myths as factual.

Younger people did better at first, but three days later they made as many errors as older people did after 30 minutes. Most troubling was that people of all ages now felt that the source of their false beliefs was the respected CDC.

The psychological insights yielded by the research, which has been confirmed in a number of peer-reviewed laboratory experiments, have broad implications for public policy. The conventional response to myths and urban legends is to counter bad information with accurate information. But the new psychological studies show that denials and clarifications, for all their intuitive appeal, can paradoxically contribute to the resiliency of popular myths.[snip]

...once an idea has been implanted in people's minds, it can be difficult to dislodge. Denials inherently require repeating the bad information, which may be one reason they can paradoxically reinforce it.

Indeed, repetition seems to be a key culprit. Things that are repeated often become more accessible in memory, and one of the brain's subconscious rules of thumb is that easily recalled things are true.

Basically, until people start paying attention, we're doomed as a democracy. When information is absorbed passively in a peripheral manner, strong denials of untruths might have a counterproductive effect of strengthening the untruth instead of debunking it.

This reminds me of that Far Side cartoon where the exasperated owner is telling off his dog, saying "Ginger, you bad dog, if you keep misbehaving like this then you won't be getting any more yummy food..." and all the dog can hear is "Ginger...yummy food." Fill in analogous example with "Saddam" and "9/11" here.

An interview with the reporter who wrote the article above, Shankar Vedantam, from On The Media:



By the way, a collection of Vedantam's Department of Human Nature columns can be found here.

Save the Earth, Shoot a Moose

Moose: the hummer of ruminants:

They are dubbed the “Kings of the Forest” and are regarded by Norwegians as their national symbol.

Now, though, scientists have claimed that because of their burping and farting, the placid moose is an eco killer. During a single year, according to new research, a full-grown moose expels – from both ends – the methane equivalent of 2,100kg of carbon dioxide emissions. That is said to be as destructive for the atmosphere as the emissions released by 13,000km (8,000 miles) of car travel.

“To put it into perspective, the return flight from Oslo to Santiago in Chile leaves a carbon footprint of 880 kilos,” said the biologist Reidar Andersen, a biologist. “Shoot a moose and you have saved the equivalent of two long-haul flights.”

Perhaps it's time to switch to a less-polluting hybrid model?

The Tattooed Mortgage Broker

I wonder if this Marketplace radio story is more of a sign that tattoos are gaining respectability or that the profession of Mortgage lending is losing it. Snippet of the transcript below.

Kai Ryssdal: Every summer about this time the same thought strikes me. After a couple of months of short sleeves and tank tops you get a good idea of just how many people these days have tattoos. Clearly, body art's becoming more acceptable. Everywhere from college campuses to the boardroom, as Pat Loeb found out. .

James O'Connor: I got a skull and cross bones on my right side. I have praying hands on my left side, and then a cross in the middle.

James O'Connor is giving me a tour of the tattoos that adorn, it looks like, every part of his body — neck, legs, knuckles and full sleeves on his arms.

O'Connor: He calls this stretch skin, cheese skin, where it's supposed to look like you're almost looking inside, you know?

But the most astonishing moment comes when he tells me what he does for a living.

O'Connor: I'm a mortgage broker.

If ever there was evidence of the changing attitude toward tattoos in the workplace, it is 30-year-old James O'Connor. There was a time when his tattoos would have narrowed his job prospects. But he says his success as a mortgage broker is a sign that tattoos do not carry the stigma they once did.

O'Connor: They might look at me weird for a minute. But as soon as, you know, I explain to them what I know and what I've done, they see dollar signs.