Soup Brain: SPRING BREAK!

Oh yes, it's that magical time of year where I get set loose from my crazy work/school schedule and am unleashed on the world of muggles (ok, I feel wrong appropriating a Harry Potter term when I don't read the books or the movies in any voluntary fashion and don't expect to just about ever, but well it's brain soup week... I'm thinking my brain at the moment is a nice corn chowder... comforting, surprisingly thick, and a little bit on the lukewarm side). In my off-the-hook state I threaten to ... uh, drool and possibly stare. But I must say these activities were fairly long deferred with some hubbub before I could get there.


For my final finals feat, I answered your typical kitchen-sink issue spotter about discrimination and then drafted a proposed amendment t Title VII to answer any problems I - as a theoretical aide to a feminist Washington legislator - feel have arisen in the federal courts' interpretations of sexual harassment law (which, quite frankly, is kookier as all hell).

 I naturally suggested that all sexual harassers (defined as "persons endowed with external genitalia, who attempt to interact in any way with persons endowed with internal genitalia") be immediately rounded into fenced areas and pelted with rotten fruits ("including, but not limited to, tomatoes, bananas, all products listed in 294 USC sec. 3941(a)(1)(iii) and any product susceptible to becoming softened through a process of oxidation and bacterial build-up a product of which is a smell to be defined by guidelines established through the EEOC). No, I don't really know what I wrote, but naturally, it was doubtlessly brilliant and should be enacted into law by this time next week.


I began my spring break far more actively than one might expect by attending the PNB's Contemporary 4, which was a fantastic show. I used to hate contemporary dance passionately, but the more exposure I've had to really good contemporary, the more I can buy into the strength, emotional prowess, humor and musicality that it can grasp when properly done. And it was quite properly done. The show consisted of - you'll never guess - four pieces, which were generally in the contemporary style. 


The first was Mark Moriss' Pacific, which will be most prominently remembered by me for the surprisingly pleasant effect of extraordinarily fit men in long flowing pants/skirts and little else beyond a sheen of perspiration. 

Move over, utilikilt... Nummy

The second was by far my favorite - a world premier of Marco Goecke's  Place a Chill, an ode to the cellist Jacqueline du Pré,. Her career was cut short by a debilitating disease that caused her to lose physical control of movement and confined her to a wheelchair. Set to Saint Saen's Cello Concerto 1, the piece interplays with the lush and sensual musicality in a surprisingly effective show of rapid pace jerks and twitches mimicking her disease. The dancing, with its heavy emphasis on small and speedy body isolations, could easily be set to hip hop, but with the Saint Saens... it just works. Mostly I was torn between tears from the emotional impact and an objective sort of fascination with the technical perfection and cleverness of the whole thing. It was so well balanced. I wish I could really embody how evocative the contrast became, but ultimately it was simply superb. 

Also kudos to the PNB person who
made the executive decision to work
 shirtlessness as an enduring motif

The third was another oldie, Piano Dances (a number of short pieces set to ten piano solos of varying modernity and tonality), and the fourth was a PNB premier of Alexander Ratmansky's Concerto DSCH. They both featured fantastic interactions between the dancers, the latter featuring a somewhat pas de deux and a pas de trois that was utterly delightful and moving at the same time. I found myself giggling and clapping my hands together at the moments of sheer inventiveness. But I will stop now, because I find when I write approvingly of my experiences, they feel fawning and far duller than when I skewer things. I suspect this is why critics really ought to hate their art-form. It's just more interesting to read that way.  

Not to be quieted quite so soon, I spent Sunday somewhere near Lake Samish, watching some more sweaty men in tights and spandexy outfits performing feats of emotionally intense athleticism. Yes, it's mountain bike racing season, and it was pleasantly not so close to freezing as to turn me a shade of blue slightly more prominent than Andrew's racing jersey. Incidentally, his new team is called Blue Rooster and I just have to ask, am I the only one who feels this team name is rife for innuendos about sexual frustration... take a minute on that one, it involves a few mental steps... yeah. 

Andrew did well, which always makes for a slight uptick in the mood on the way home, which is fraught well enough with sheer exhaustion and a little bit of residual racer instincts that can make the freeway portion a little, er, exciting. 

But enough! My brain liquidated sometime last week and is starting to leak out my nose. So, today, I am doing it right: America's Next Top Model, a big cup of tea and a whole lotta drooling. SPRING BREAK!!!!!!!

Netiquette drawing out my inner grammar/punctuation snob

First off, I am generally a descriptivist in virtually all walks of life, but particularly so when it comes to linguistics. I find that the function of grammar is communication and if a point has been communicated, then the construction wasn't "wrong" - perhaps non-standard or non-academic, but again all language is very contextual. I have a little less tolerance for hypercorrection - when people alter their speech to what sounds "more formal" but which is grammatically "incorrect" (e.g.: "Whom ordered the turkey sandwich") - I suppose, part of this is that it smacks of pretension but also it tends to just not sound right to my native ear. Also, considering the oddly complex sentence structures that strike my fancy, well ... stones and glass houses etc. etc.

I guess punctuation usually is the textual substitute grammar and intonation. We speak with more than our literal words, and the arrangement of these words requires some instruction to be read back in our heads (sotto vocce, andante! Smiley face!!!). When these signals are lacking or errant, we may perhaps confuse verbs for nouns and other confusing atrocities. Hence the idea of "crash blossoms" - a consequence of the distance between spoken and written language and our general tendency to "sound" things out when we read. Usually the best crash blossoms occur due to poor word placement, but punctuation can also contribute.

But - as always - I digress. I've noticed an increasing amount of errant apostrophe's (HA!) recently. Now, I tend to be pretty forgiving of these sorts of errors. More often than not, I think that it's a brain-finger disconnect along the lines of your average typo. When I go to write its - knowing full well that I intend the possessive of it, and that this form of it takes no apostrophe due to the consternations of what we may call the English language - my fingers will succumb to habitual apostrophe without running it past my brain whatsoever. And the rules for the apostrophe are arbitrary and capricious: is it -s's or -s' or -seseseses'??? who knows! But let's agree: ordinarily when the eyes do their right-to-left scanning, an apostrophe draws them in. If it's clearly a context where the possessive is appropriate: no problem. If it's clearly a place where a verb should be and the s soothes my inner sense of action: equally no problem.I'm a little warier when the apostrophe comes rolling in strictly for pluralization purposes... of course there are times where this is handy, but it's just one more complication waiting to be egregiously misused to baffle my reading speed. And yes I will get to that in a minute.

Incidentally, I tend to think the its/it's distinction should be discarded all together. While it takes less time to simply write its, people seem hellbent on always writing it's, regardless. Which is a waste of energy and often misplaced. I've seen errant it's popping up not only in adverts, but in AP articles, renowned magazines... it's time to give up the battle, and I vote for less punctuation over more.

But to get back to that odd duck of apostrophe pluralization, there is a facebook friend of mine (of course!) who is posting a little more frequently than I would prefer. My main complaint is that these posts are intensely redundant and each post is reposted word-for-word from her business profile, her personal profile, and her second-in-command's profile. This is in addition to about four weekly invitations to business related events she knows full well I cannot attend... while I support actually networking through social networks (satisfying the that-for-the-sake-of-which in purely Aristotelian orgasmics!), it does incline me to be a bit ornery in a "hey you kids, get off my wall!" kind of way. And thus: there is some hubbub about new logos shaking the triplicate statuses. (Not as in the greek logos and in the beginning there was logos and the logos was bios, etc., but those pretty little pictures that businesses use). It's a common topic of the multi-post-monster. And each time she writes "logo's" - NOT in reference to the possessive but to indicate multiple logos. I know, it's NOT a possessive, but everytime I read it, my brain crash blossoms dramatically. She also maintains a photo album titled, LOGO IDEA'S. Idea's what??? AAAAAAAAAH.




The official brochure for the NW Chocolate Festival
I forgive them because they gave me chocolate



I think perhaps she throws in the apostrophe it just to draw attention, and sadly it works in my case. Apparently we learn better when we read things written in difficult fonts. The brain is set to take familiar and easy constructions for granted, but when something isn't as it should be - we perk up. Kind of a survival mechanism for that familiar bush over there having a tiger in it that morning (do tigers hang out in trees?). I think nonstandard speech can have an extra oomph due to that second of dissonance - my theory for why "wicked awesome" came to be a phrase. Anything that more or less conveys the appropriate meaning but sounds just a little "off" is striking. And when it's striking in a way that also connotes a sociolinguistic membership of some sort... well it's even more striking.

So I haven't discussed my Core Rhythms habit in a little while, but I assure you, I am still all over that nonsense. I mix it up with other workouts - mostly pilates-based. In fact, I had my entire body brutalized in a back alley by this power yoga workout that I did last Wednesday and could feel for days afterwards! That yoga crap is like the ninja of workouts - usually you know when your ass is being kicked, but with yoga you just wake up and realize you'd been brutalized in a dark alley two days before and must have forgotten. Speaking of yoga (mmmm yogurt, I love yogurt!): I just want to say Kabalah Yoga?? Really??? 

... but nothing keeps me from every taking myself too seriously while still giving me a way to sweat in the mornings better than Core Rhythms. I'm starting to think of Julia and Jaana and their little ballroom bunny assistants as my friends.I guess studies have shown that when we watch television, it stimulates the same areas of the brain as actual socializing, so this is not entirely surprising.


Ok, I'm actually starting to develop complex feelings about their ballroom bunny assistants. There's this one girl in a couple of the videos - think her name is Julie- and I really can't stand her! It's this irrational gut dislike and my brain has started making up all kinds of backstory about her and the annoying things she does. I think she's kind of one of those self-deluded people... the kinds you often see in ballroom who make it somewhat far due to hard work, determination, and a belief so strong in their amazingness that others sometimes buy into it. But deep down in her core she is very insecure and knows she's not that great. And she acts out by being super showy and sassy and always trying just a little too hard... and it's awkward for everyone around her because she always needs affirmation and attention. I groan at her and sometimes insult her whenever I watch the video she's in. It makes me feel better.

Then there's this dude... I love him. He's spunky and sassy and just a little faaaaabulous and I would like to be his friend. Since the back up exercise people are all ballroom competitors/teachers, I would really enjoy tracking him down and seeing him dance for real. I'm very curious how the more serious dances would go - he seems kind of like an irratractable dork/goof. I can't speak to his actual sexuality, but in my ideal world, he would be my gay best friend and we would go out clubbing together.

In this world, incidentally, Tim Gunn would be my awesome bachelor uncle.

By gosh, YES I WILL MAKE IT WORK!!

But back to my Core Rhythms friends, the disembodied stomach. I imagine some day world religions will be built around this torso. It's intimidating enough anyways. I'm not sure where it fits in my ideal little family world.



Because sometimes I really do miss all the personalities that are attracted to the sport/activity. They are truly unimitably unique. "Julie" and happy bouncy fabulous dude are just a few of those types. They're nutty lunatics, sometimes thoroughly aggravating and self-important, but equally brilliant and big-hearted. And they like shiny things! How could I not feel a constant kinship??

Trick thyself!

"Procrastination is all about choosing want over should because you don’t have a plan for those times when you can expect to be tempted."

So, I'm sure I've blathered about this before, but I came across a great article about procrastination that addresses two of my pet topics about human beings - the myth of will-power and our tendency for hyperbolic discounting - and how people manage to work around these instead of hitting smack up against them. It's very long and I almost procrastinated (har har) finishing it during the long discussion about people and their netflix lists (I cycle through mine and am often out of movies before I remember to update it, so that part didn't really connect with me), so I'm going to summarize it for you:

1. Human beings suffer from something that can be called present bias. This causes us to judge our future actions within only the present context and discount that what we want and our future circumstances will change over time.

2. This is only partially mentioned in the article, but the will is like a muscle: an exercise of self-control in one arena tends to leave us more prone to succumbing to temptation later in another. For instance, you take a chewing out from your boss early in the day without yelling back and this makes it easier to yell at your kids when you get home. Or you didn't order a regular soda at lunch and this makes it easier to eat that entire cake at your friend's birthday party. I think I've heard it called The Snackwell effect, from findings that people who eat "diet foods" tend to overeat and binge on these snacks more than those who don't go for the diet food. I've also seen studies about how people who drive hybrids or recycle are more likely to excuse cheating on tests or lying and other similar findings that show one theoretical exercise of "virtue" in one arena of our lifes tends to be balanced against other exercises of "virtuous" behavior.
3. In other words, we all lack self-control. What makes some people more sucessful in overcoming temptation is metacognition. People avoid succumbing by understanding their own weaknesses and either developing tricks to distract themselves from it or removing themselves from the temptation.

4. People have an illogical bias towards present rewards, even where these yield less than the future rewards we forgo (immediate gratification!!). This probably has evolutionary roots where immediately eating prey or taking shelter may have been crucial for survival. Most people would rather have $100 today than $200 tomorrow. In the same way, our brains want the cookie today instead of the slamming body two months from now. In a really attenuated way, we may even opt for an updated facebook page today over having job security based on a great performance tomorrow.

5. People become more rational about their choices when they view them in a future-based context. If you consider whether you'd like the cookie two weeks from now or the slamming body two months from now, you'll choose the latter. This is called hyperbolic discounting, because your dismissal of the better payoff later diminishes over time and makes a nice slope on a graph.

6. People who are most sucessful also engage in metacognition about their hyberbolic discounting and tendencies towards procrastination. In a study where people could opt to either turn all three papers in at the end of a quarter or set deadlines for themselves (that would be enforced - so "late" papers would be graded down - and would provide no additional boost in grading) did much better than those who opted against deadlines.

7. "The trick is to accept the now you will not be the person facing those choices, it will be the future you – a person who can’t be trusted. Future-you will give in, and then you’ll go back to being now-you and feel weak and ashamed. Now-you must trick future-you into doing what is right for both parties."

Anyways, I really connect with this article, because I am extremely prone to procrastination and have tried to cope with little tricks to force future-me to behave the way now-me wants. For me, the key is planning for/with/around temptation and procrastination, so I can work those things into the plan itself. It's a bit of wu-wei, flow with the energy of my own weaknesses instead of working against it kind of thing. I may over-do it since I plan for every possible thing to go wrong sometimes, but my reason for this is that when something goes wrong, my natural instinct is to ditch the entire plan all together.
 I intentionally give myself set times to slack off, because I know I will do so anyways and this way it doesn't feel like I'm breaking my plan (apparently students who forgive themselves for procrastinating actually procrastinate less). When I'm trying to make a choice, I try to think about that choice as one I would be making in the future. I play all kinds of games I've learned in mediation to break me out of my knee-jerk thinking and portion things out into manageable sizes.

Anyways, I think these activities make me seem to have a different underlying personality than I actually feel. It certainly has changed a lot of my lifestyle patterns, and perhaps undercut some of my more exciting spontaneous moments (although despite all my best efforts, I'm still a horrible procrastinator and flaky enough to always have some emergency or other).  And this makes me wonder about other people and how they appear versus how they percieve themselves underneath it all. A lot of what appears to be my personality are coping devices and possibly overcompensations to deal with an underlying aspect of my personality. Although who's to say that these are any less my personality than the other aspect?

I See (a little bit more than) You



You will bring this case to mediation M@#* F*#&%er!!



Thursday is Training Day for my clinic job. In this scenario, I am Denzel Washington, having that whole mediation experience and having been a convenor all summer and what not. My co-convenor has plenty of experience doing telephone intakes as a legal aid worker before, but she is new to the world of Alternative Dispute Resolution and there are definitely some lawyerly adversarial edges to be bevelled out (GROUP HUGS EVERYONE!!). She's also a perfectionist and unlike me - who will kind of slip in unnoticed, do the projects I've decided should be done and then inform everyone of what I've done and plan to do - she wants to make sure she does everything right before she does it. Crazy girl! Feedback. Guidance. Pshaw. 

It is just like the movie, except without the car or the guns... or... Ok, the word training is involved and if I really cared, I, uh, have... a ... badge(ish).



I am not a Troll - it's a special
Trollifying novelty camera!

My CC has a tendency to go into lawyer mode, and you can hear the gears switching. The biggest challenge for her is that she speaks very quickly when she's nervous and still is struggling with the mentality that she *must* (a) solve the problem or (b) at least get the people to come to mediation. There's an undertone of panic to her telephone mien and this in turn become adversarial when she's speaking with a party. I honestly don't think it's going to change the numbers of people who agree and disagree to mediation, but I do think it might affect their experience of it.

It got me thinking a lot about how people interact with other people's expectations - particularly about the The Rosenthal or Pygmalion Effect. This is basically an interpersonal version of my old friend, The Placebo Effect. We subconsciously signal our expectations about our interlocutors and amazingly enough our interlocutors respond and adapt to these expectations. In one study highlighted in Sway: The Irresistable Pull of Irrational Behavior, men and women were asked to have a phone conversation with each other. Before the conversation, the men were given fictional informational packets about their interlocutors. Those men who had files of women with intentionally unattractive photos (and identical histories) reported that they expected the women to be "unsociable, awkward and inept." What's more interesting was that when that conversation was played back for a panel using only the women's halves of the conversation, they made the same judgments as the men had anticipated. When the woman in question had been expected to have positive traits, her side of the conversation reflected those characteristics and vice versa. This raises greater social justice questions in cross-racial education where subtle biases may have longterm institutional effects, but to limit the scope to my meandering musings: we respond to how we're expected to behave, so expectations shape us.

Given that, perhaps it's unsurprising that a mediator's success will have a lot to do with being able to focus on the constructive and positive traits that they can see in another person and forming a version of that person who is reasonable and well-intentioned. As soon as that person is what the mediator sees, there is a possibility of the Pygmalion Effect coming into play. Not always, of course, which is why it's useful to balance that version with variations and keep an open mind, but often. I've called it "modeling the good behavior that you would like to see" and I have found it really valuable both in mediations and over the phone. Alternately sometimes familiarity with a disputant brings familiarity with his/her more frustrating qualities. And I think one of the slipping stones in both mediation and interpersonal relationships in general is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy loop when you merely think you're being realistic.

It makes me think more broadly about human relationships. How much of the strength of our relationships depends on the version of ourselves that our loved ones have of us? I've read that newly married couples who still overestimate their loved one's qualities tend to be have longer and happier marriages, for instance.

I also know from experience what it feels like to be forced into somebody else's self-fulfilling prophecy and how distressing it can feel to find myself behaving in ways that are completely contrary to my own self image.

Being human and only a little neurotic, I'm drawn to people who have positive views of me. These views may not be spot on to my inflated self-perceptions, but they are based on true and identifiable aspects of my personality. And they are nuanced enough to go beyond the impersonality of idolatry or false flattery (although I've also seen studies that show even when flattery is obviously that, it is still beneficial and useful). I'm a well-developed character to my friends and loved ones - with flaws as well as strengths - but one who is ultimately appealing and something that I can live up to. 

And the more I feel those parts of myself seen, the more they blossom. The more my best self flourishes. The more I want to be what my teacher/friend/lover sees

We're funny and oddly vain creatures. Sometimes I wonder if our choice in friends is stimulated by the same impulse that causes us to spend hundreds on specially posed, well lit, photo shopped pictures of ourselves - are we looking for a "skinny mirror" to our soul? Do we like seeing ourselves just slightly distorted and drawing inspiration from that?

 We also define ourselves by our associations: choosing to hang out with a certain individual advertises our opinions of ourselves in many ways, subtle and unsubtle (depending on how close we are to middle school and the "popular girls" mentality). Of course we also look to our friends for all sorts of things you'd find on a Hallmark card, and pursuing love is also essentially drug-seeking behavior (oh endorphins, oh PEA, oh dopamine!)  

The moral of that little story was the following: (1) I am the pasty female law student version of Denzel Washington and I am that cool, (2) expectations have an amazingly transformative effect, (3) don't make me "look fat" in your eyes. Seriously. That's just not cool!

The ULTIMATE U-District Restaurant Redemption

Due to our mutually insane schedules, Andrew and I seem to have settled on a bit of a date night on Tuesday evenings. This is the one week-night that google calendar has allowed us to meet. We both rely on google calendar and would possibly be lost without it, so when it tells us to do something, we tend to willingly comply (there's a lot of fear surrounding the consequences of insubordination - I mean, this is google we're talking about). Which is good, because left to our own devices, we may never see each other. We both have our nutso schedules to balance with our on "quirks" about schedule management: his maybe involving some hyperbolic discounting about transitions between one task and the next, and mine being that I'm crazy! To elaborate, I'm obsessed with planning out at least one mutually acceptable schedule and perhaps two or three alternates, meaning that I both need to know what's going on with anyone else involved at all times, that if something isn't working according to schedule, I will scrap it and go with another alternately planned schedule and that I will inflate the predicted amount of time to do anything by about 40% "just to be safe," largely in order to maintain the small smidgen of highly valued down time (alone time recharging my introvert batteries). 

Google calendars is our friend, because it tells us to be somewhere and we will be there. Without it, I would be "somewhere" two hours early, Andrew would be there about two hours late... and we just might miss each other. Plus it satisfies my planning itch and allows me quick and easy access to all relevant schedules that need balancing. I scour my mind for restaurants before setting up a google invitation (and yes, I've threatened that one day when we're a busy yuppie couple, I will start making google events for days in the future that say things like "sexual intercourse" and send him an invite from my android to his blackberry as we sit in separate corners of the room doing at-home work that is no longer homework).

This week, I had to buy this particular kind of tofu that only Trader Joe's (and only the TJ's in the U district) seems to sell (yuppie-in-training, leave me alone!), so I thought I would scour in that area and decided on a place I'd passed many times while walking from his house to school:

The Ultimate Indian Food Experience! I mean, I'm not sure if that's attractive or terrifying, but it's definitely intriguing. Does it mean our last food experience due to poisins in the food? Is the food so exquisite that we will never be able to eat imitators again? Hopefully at least there will be bollywood music and those ever so delightful indian spices (I really feel that indian culture has pretty much the final word in how to spice food and nobody will come close). Will we be invaded by Mongols and live under the Moghul Empire? Will there be tigers??? It's intriguing enough.

Bombay Grill is a few blocks down in a bit of a rundown area surrounded by vacant lots, used-bookstores, and expensive car shops. In terms of providing a pleasant dining experience Bombay Grill had its work cut out for it. Andrew was tired after working on Monday Night RAW (yes, this is the coolest thing ever) before a regular schoolday and I was a walking midol commercial. I would say, based on my particularized tastes, that it completely came through for me and is ascending the "awesome restaurants of Seattle" mental list pretty quickly. It is totally awesome in that slightly off way that only totally awesome restaurants can ever be.

The atmosphere is a little bit of everything. The place looks a touch like an abandoned church, a touch like a cheap tourist hotel I might have stayed in while in Morocco and a little more like a lounge you might go to early in the an evening of vacation-related drinking. There are fake palm trees, little wood detailings, lanterns, flea sale paintings, and a HUGE amount of excess capacity.
Our waiter was super nice and attentive and they gave us hot towels at the end of the meal, which made me feel like I was on a Transatlantic flight. The prices were decent. My meal came in at around 7 dollars, anyways. Oh and since nobody was in there, we were left with the lulling tones of a bollywood cover of Besame Mucho, which definitely enhances the claim of Ultimate Indian Dining somewhat! No tigers and no death, but definitely lifted the mood a bit and sparked me up with some of those spicy stars.

Drinking the thermogenic koolaide?

Ok, ok, I'm embarrassed to admit it: I now own "toning shoes."

Toning shoes, in case you have been in suspended animation or very very male for the past couple of years, are shoes that make it slightly harder to walk by changing the positioning and slant of the foot (and a number of other things I'm sure you can find in addition to the special Sketchers diet program - I kid not - in some handbook somewhere). I was initially resistant to them, because they come off as pretty much the epitome of snake-oil panaceas to all your obseity woes (also, I'm not obese and I already exercise regularly, so there's that). If you read the ad-copy, it's as if the moment the shoe touches your foot, you will suddenly lose fifty pounds, all the cellulite and stretch marks you'd expect after losing those fifty pounds, have enough muscle tone to crack a walnut with your perfectly chiseled thighs, and possibly go up a cup size up top (why not). The more modest claims are that they work different muscles than walking in regular shoes, and are gentler on your feet and ankles. These actually seem to be backed up a bit.

Being a generally cantankerous contrarian, I tend to have a hatred of anything faddy. I'd like to imagine that my disgust for skinny jeans, crotchety wtf about certain "innovative and AMAZING" blockbusters, blossoming hatred of iCrap (I would like to say I've finally ended my codependant relationship with iTunes after only losing half my music collection!), and uncertainty about vibram barefoot runners has to do with a keen and thoughtful analysis, but it's probably at least partially inspired to the same sort of knee-jerk reaction that causes others to run towards a fad. Hipsters, after all, are notable for hating hipsters. I hope I'm not a hipster, but all hipsters hope this. Which is confusing to me, so I'll move on. I'm told that really we tend to have no idea why things appeal to us, but some things do appeal and once we act on that appeal we are masters at creating post hoc rationalizations about why the thing appeals. Anyways, that means that everything I write will ultimately just be a constructed explanation of preferences I don't actually understand and while it sounds all nice and logical, it will be superfluous. What else is new, right? Hell, I'm in law school, isn't the point to make up random explanations for things that suits my flexible idea du jour.

So, my post-hoc rationalization, (or pre-hoc rationalization kind of) was pretty simple: I was curious what the hell they were talking about with all this "reverse heel rocker toe magic" and when I tried them on I discovered that they're fun to walk in! They feel weird when you walk. Not the most exciting one, but quite appealing. I am guessing that wearing them is not a suitable substitute for actual exercising, but it may well be that working slightly different muscles or a tiny amount of additional difficulty to incidental walking isn't a bad thing per se. Oh, also they make me taller. And they really aren't difficult to walk in. I'm confused about the "balance" part of it, because I can't say I've ever felt off balance in them. Maybe it's really too much Julia and Jaana in my mornings. Maybe I secretly enjoy the fact that they make me two inches taller and are the exact opposite of high heels (which I still adore first and foremost).

I do, however, draw the line at crocs. Although those aren't really popular anymore are they? I'm actually not quite sure. But me, I prefer alligators:

Similar to roombas, but with more teeth. Great for any household and comes in a sizes ranging from mansion to studio apartment. Now this is a trend I could really get behind.




PLUS, you can preserve their wear by freezing them when you aren't using them:

 I am on a roll you know. But it really does bring something relevant to the conversation, I think. Namly, There's an old Irish proverb: to have your alligators thaw out and your daughter forgive you all in the same day... that's fortuosity. 

Your Cognitive Bias for the Day:

The Dunning Kreuger Effect: The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than in actuality; by contrast, the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to a perverse result where less competent people will rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. "Thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others."

By this standard, I am extremely competant in many areas! Unless, of course I am suffering from confirmation bias and optimistic-overcofidence about my ability to transcend my own optimistic-overconfidence regarding my own under-ratings of my skills and sense of inferiority because I secretly understand the Dunning Kreuger effect and am mentally twisting it to achieve a sense of illusory-incompetence-inferiority-superiority! Which, knowing myself (if I do in fact know myself, although many cognitive biases would suggest I actually do not at all but merely ascribe post-hoc rational explanations to the random actions I take and affiliations I feel, all of which I ultimately do not understand but feel the need to form into a cohesive story about my own identity), I would so not put past myself!

This, incidentally is what happens when you spend too much time studying human behavior either through the social sciences or ADR (I am - I think - doing the latter). It's like Med-Student hypochondria, but with a more existentialist sort of feel.

Anyways, when I'm not paralyzing myself with too much second guessing of my basic motivations (nobody analyzes Baby into a corner!), I am quite well. Summer and all that this entails is upon me. What it namely entails is a reprieve of sorts. Being a law student is similar to being a new mother in many ways (you can no longer speak normal adult english, you're increasingly socially isolated, you no longer have a reliable sleep pattern, you may not have changed in days, hopefully there is less spit-up involved, but then I've met many law students... these are a few) and summer is kind of like when you finally send the kids off to camp for a few weeks and slowly become re-acquainted with your sanity for a few days before it all begins again (OCI, wait noooo I don't have a job for four years from now yet??? NOOOOOOOOO).

There were a few moments of detachment panic during my actual break, but these have subsided now that I've adjusted to being alive and differently burdened. I'm now at my externship, which is delightfully downtown near Pioneer Square. My work schedule is highly flexible, as are my duties. At the moment, I've taken it upon myself to revise the Labor Law crash course that it highly out of date, but have played around with many more mediation-centered tasks as well. My coworkers are all great - according to their ilk, they form an "emotionally intelligent" work group together - and it's nice to be in an office environment again. I can't quite articulate why it's different from school, but it is. Very different.


 I'm also doing some more work for my Research Assistant job - just odds and ends at this point, having finished up some work on the teacher's manual during break, but it's nice to keep up with the adoption law thread as it is all quite fascinating. In related but more distant news, I've qualified for work-study (FINALLY!) so I can in fact work as the intake person for the UW mediation clinic next year. Last week, for a good dose of diverse legal education outside the classroom, I attended the American Health Law Association's national meeting. I came out of the three day conference with a shaky understanding of health law reform (holy crap, the newspapers are useless in explaining anything, by the way), the rosy glow of having seen some of my coworkers from last year, fifty promotional pens, and a purse full of fruit/pastries/odd-and-useless-advertiser's-toys (law student scrounging urges kicked in).

Notes from the ADRC - A Systems Approach to Conflict Resolution

This was a talk given by Joseph Haub, a prominent family law mediator (as well as marital therapist - interesting cross section, no?)


A Systems Perspective in Assessing and Managing Conflict as a Neutral: 

Although as mediators we are often seeking to get the substance of the dispute, a systems perspective recognizes that often the dispute at hand is endemic of greater structural divides. It views conflict resolution as part of a greater system of social networks and approaches individual conflicts with a recognition of procedural aspects of these greater systems.

There are ten basic principles of a systems approach:

1. Impacting one part of hte system will impact the others. No part of a system exists in isolation. 

There's something else going on in other parts in that system that may be more salient than what we see at the table on a given day. For instance, in a family a conflict between the husband and wife may manifest in an exacerbation of a potential conflict between the mother and her daughter, which then impacts the relationship of the daughter and the brother. While we may see one piece of this conflict, what we might miss is that it is a projection of conflict that is resonating throughout the entire system.

2. Systems are composed of interacting subsystems

When identifying conflict, the first step is to identify "what system is this person involved in" because the conflict within a system can project itself onto two individuals.

In a family, you have multiple subsystems. There are those on generational levels -  husband and wife; brothers and sisters, grandparents. There are gender subsystems - mothers and daughters, and so on. There are subsystems between certain siblings and on and on.

Conflicts often arise when conflicting allegiances arise between various subsystems. They are also expected whenever we shift subsystems - for instance when people get married and they have to shift their allegiances from their birth families to these new created families and the in-laws related.

Subsystems have boundaries with varying degrees of flexibility. During a nasty divorce, a child may be promoted into the parental subsystem as one parent takes him/her on as a confidant and emotional support. Other times there are very rigid boundaries with virtually no communications between systems.

3. Every single system has rules and Rules are the Glue that Hold the Interpersonal System Together

They are often not particularly explicit.In families, for instance, there are rules like who washes dishes, who makes the food, where do the glasses go in the cabinet, where the forks and knives go.

One of the major unspoken rules of a family is how we deal with conflict. During the speech we broke into small groups to discuss our family's unspoken rules on conflict. No two groups had a similar set of rules. We reflected on how these rules may have affected us as adults, since our general attitudes about conflict stem directly from these worlds. I personally mentioned how funny it was that virtually our entire mediation clinic had accommodating and conflict averse personalities and wondered if this was some way for us to apply external and comfortable rules to conflict and thus take some control over it.

These internal rules can be seen particularly when two people come together into a marriage. As Karl Wittaker put it "you kind of look at marriage. Two families send out scouts to meet. Every single marriage is sort of a blending of rules"

John Gobbman is a researcher who puts couples in a fully videotaped house and observes how couples interact. From these hours of proto-reality-television he's separated people out into three categories distinguishing how they interact with conflict:

1. Volatile - These will scream and yell and holler and slam doors and will be quite demonstrative in their conflict.
2.  Sweep-Under-Ruggers - That Midwestern, northern european non-overt style.
3. Validators - Those who use the strategies we envision when we discuss conflict resolution strategies to take a deep breath and try to understand each other, thus "validating" the conflict and using it to solve problems.

He concluded that all three of these styles are legitimate ways of dealing with conflict and one can find successful couples in each category. The problem really arose when couples had mixed conflict styles. Often he style of conflict is more of threatening to the relationship than the substance of the disagreement.

4. People within a system will seek to return to their previous state of functioning and interaction: 

He gave the example of a woman who goes on a diet and exercise program and successfully drops a tremendous amount of weight. To celebrate, her husband gives her a big old box of chocolates. On some level, he understood that she loved chocolate, but on another level it reflected his discomfort with change and a desire to return to homeostasis. Similarly, when on member of a couple begins to emotionally disengaging, the other person will routinely amp up the conflict level because it demands engagement. The bitter divorce battle is yet another all too familiar example of people who put up barriers to change and seek to maintain a homeostasis they are claiming to move away from.

5. People in relationship will tend to function in a complementary fashion (for a while):

In essence, opposites attract... for a while. Unfortunately, after a while, those opposite tendencies will go from refreshing to oppressive and resentment replaces enchantment. Another facet of this is the "dance of the pursuer and the distancer" - the stereotypical interaction where on partner seeks to get closer while the other moves away... until the first partner, feeling rejected, retreats and the second partner advances until the first again moves closer. The dance breaks down when the first partner has been rejected one too many times and instead of moving closer, builds up an impenetrable wall around him/herself.

6. In interpersonal relations causation is circular

As legal professionals, we think of causation as a fairly linear equation: x happened, causing b, therefore x is liable. In interpersonal relationships, however, each party feels their action is simply a reaction to the other person's action in an unending chicken-and-egg spiral.

For instance: A wife complains her husband is "never around." The husband counters that he's never around because she nags him whenever he is, to which she responds "but I nag you because you're never around" but... both think the other person started the cycle and in a sense they are *both* right. As a conflict resolver you are going to be asked by people in conflict to be able to say where where the cycle began. You won't be able to. But what you can do is work to understand what the basis of each person's concern is and this is far more valuable.

7. Interpersonal Conflict Raises Anxiety. Axiety causes reactiveness in unique but predictable ways.

Under stress we likely have our own idiosyncratic reaction such as depression, anger, substance use, overeating, exercising, checking out, picking a fight, throwing ourselves into work... and on and on. They are not conscious, but reactive behaviors. If you are under stress, the degree to which you'll react emotionally and not think through things is your lack of "differentiation." We think what we're saying are absolutely right and logical but we act from pure reflex.

We are all subject to stresses, both vertical and horizontal. Vertical stressors are patterns of behavior that are inherited from our previous generations. Studies suggests that trauma can change people on a cellular level and family trauma remains within a family intergenerationally. Horizontal stressors are both the inevitable stresses of normal development - puberty, marriage, aging - and situational stressors - losing a loved one, illness, job loss. When we experience any of these stresses, we react in line with our idiosyncratic patterns. Our minds are also closed to conflict resolution and conscious, creative thinking.

8. A System is an entity functioning over time, with its own developmental stressors

Organizations are also entities in this sense and they will have their own developmental stresses including hitting certain sizes - when you need an office admin, when you take on a new department or shed one. In families, the addition of a new child, a change in economic status, the stresses on any individual of the family... all of these impact the system as a whole.

9. A system under stress will stabilize by focusing the stress on a member or subsystem - thus the tendency to scapegoat

If you can share this with people, some may have the capacity to realize that this is the case and begin to understand the bigger picture and approach it from a new angle. If a family's under stress, it will all reside in one person - often the kid. A kid may suddenly develop "behavioral problems," requiring interventions from therapists, teachers, doctors and other professionals. A deeper look shows that these "problems" are a symptom and not a cause of the family system under stress.

10. People in conflict will experience anxiety. They will attempt to quell the anxiety through the interpersonal triangle

In the emotional triangle, a triangle and circle have an ok relationship but it won't always be ok. There's no single relationship that will always be ok. There will always be a time when there's some stress on it. What people often do is that they will reach out to a third person seeking to "triangle" in this person into the conflict. We see this when people vent, when they seek affirmation that they are correct, and when they ask another party to intervene on their behalf. This creates conflict between the confidant and the second party. That conflict, in turn, lessens the conflict between the initial parties by transfering some of the conflict energy.

Lawyers must be particularly wary of triangulation. Perople will project their anger to their lawyers. These lawyers in turn will share the conflict between each other. If people have a sufficient amount of stress,they will seek to triangulate as many parties as possible in order relieve the tension in the initial relationship. They will involve their children as well. And then they'll involve a medical establishment as the children manifest physical symptoms of the stress they experience; they'll involve the schools as the children experience problems in school; they'll involve their work environments; they'll involve the grandparents and other relatives; they'll eventually involve government agencies like CPS. The energy of that one conflict exponentially expands throughout these various systems. Along comes the friendly mediator and all that energy rebounds towards them.

THE KEY TO AVOIDING THIS DYNAMIC IS SIMPLE BUT CRUCIAL: If the third person remains calm and neutral in the face of conflict, that person will automatically bring calm to the system under stress. If you know you are being triangled in and you have any two parties in dispute and cannot find a way of connecting with both of them and find self aligning with one side you know you've been triangled. If you are able to avoid triangling in, you can dissipate the energy.

self-stalking and name narcissism

I occasionally do a google search of my name, email, etc. for the obvious reasons (self-worship of course!) having to do with making sure that my next job application doesn't turn up some hugely embarrassing thing I (of course never) did or said when I was seventeen. After much milling, I'm pleased that the following are the only hits that come up for me that are genuinely related to me:

1. my teacher profile on the Blue Moon's site
2. a testimonial I wrote for Uandme dance
3. a WWU press release naming me Outstanding EAS Graduate of whatever year I graduated
4. My heat listings and winnings for the '07 Seattle Starball
5. A very old listing saying I went to SJC after "graduating" from my "high school"
6. A couple of reviews I did for abstruse and archaic philosophical texts and math books that I wrote on amazon during my philosopher-king days at SJC

There are a bunch of other people who come up who share my name or some part of it. They, for the most part, are dead (I guess I have an old-fashioned name). Although one of them apparently has a thriving photography business and another one makes the nummiest chocolate chip cookies.

Of course my favorite doppleganger does not share my last name, but she does seem to have a huge following in the cosplayer world:

(this is - incidentally - not actually me although I am a fair-princess)

I don't know why I'm always so fascinated with people who share my name or some part of it. Why a name should imply more of a connection or a shared identity than any other similar characteristic (although I'll admit to feeling both threatened and drawn to other women who are over 5'10 on the grounds that they share a feature that is distinctive about me, making us either allies or simply redundant). I guess in a sense, we do suffer or benefit from the reputations of those who share a name or some part of it - in the general scuttlebutt of the world around us, so it makes sense to be fascinated and partially invested in what others with our names are doing.

But, also, names are very personal somehow - a way of putting a shape to our general and rather abstract sense of our own highly convoluted and complex identities.  I mean, it is kind of interesting to see the different ways people relate to their various internet monikers and how various identities of a dissociative state may be so formulated that they acquire different names. I also seem to recall a study that said people were more likely to be attracted to others with similar names to theirs. Maybe I made this up (I swear I didn't), but personal experience is rather persuasive. I know R&R, M&M, A&A... all make great couples.

Apparently, we do at least tend to prefer the letters in our initials - there's even a study showing that people with C's and D's in their names are less averse to receiving these grades in school. Thank goodness my parents had the foresight to name me Adella. If I'd been Dadella, I could be working at a 711 by now! Or... something. Anyhow, sometimes, it's weird being  human. We're odd little creatures.