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By Nathan Bierma


Content & Context

The Books & Culture Weblog

September 2003

This Week:

THE VISION THING

The subhead I recommended for the online version of Virginia Stem Owens' essay "Led by the Blind" in the May/June issue of B&C was "Visionary writing despite the loss of sight." I have a history of arguable use of the word "despite," and after another reading I realized this "despite," while defensible (as far as it challenged the assumption that the loss of vision is necessarily limiting), may have been contrary to the conclusion of the piece, which is that the loss of sight can make one's other senses and conceptions of reality more acute. This was echoed in Oliver Sacks' latest New Yorker piece in July on the vision of the blind (unavailable online but summarized by this blogger; version of an earlier piece here). Sacks, a neurologist, relayed some of his correspondence from people who had lost their sight or been born blind. Some said they retained a truly visual conception of the world, essentially picturing things in their brain (which in some ways is what everyone does—the eyes don't "see," but merely send messages to the brain, which then composes an image), while others have formed a mostly tactile or auditory relationship to their environment. The piece will truly change the way you see the world.

• As I reflected on the writing of Owens and Sacks, and the role of the eyes in how we perceive our surroundings, I remembered my interview with a police sergeant who specializes in organizing high–stress simulations to train officers for armed conflict. He explained why raising trainees' blood pressure is as important a part of preparation as a classroom lecture on procedure:

"Tunnel Vision and Auditory Exclusion are the two most common physiological effects that kick in under sudden and intense stress. Tunnel Vision causes the officer to focus on the particular threat and reduces the information he or she would normally be able to process; the officer may not be able to see the sights of his or her own weapon because he or she is focused on the suspect's weapon. It reduces the peripheral vision that might sometimes alert the officer to an additional threat, such as another suspect or a moving vehicle.  Auditory Exclusion is not quite as common but is also reported after stressful encounters. It can cause weapons close by to sound like a cork gun. High–stress, scenario–based training tries to replicate these effects by exposing officers to stressful encounters. If they experience these natural reactions, they will be inoculated to them when they enter a real confrontation.

• Finally, I couldn't believe my own eyes when I received this e–mail forward this week:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?

• Related:

Review of Sacks-inspired movie At First Sight from this New York University film database

Slackjaw, a bitter memoir about going blind by Jim Knipfel

PLACES & CULTURE

From the Washington Post:

HANGZHOU, China—Like many of the thousands of other graduates here, Lai Chuanlong, 24, was the first in his family to attend college, the son of illiterate villagers who borrowed heavily to pay for his education. It seemed a no–risk investment in a brighter future. Two months after his graduation, however, prospects remain bleak. Other than a brief stint as a factory laborer and a job offer at a supermarket for about $2 per day, Lai has found no work. … Throughout the world's most populous country, a dramatic surge in the number of college graduates has created fierce competition for the relatively high–paying office jobs that were once conveyed almost by right to anyone with a university degree. Where once college graduation ensured passage into the ranks of a privileged elite, this year it became a gateway to worry, diminished hopes and the prospect of unemployment—the result not only of larger class sizes but also of lowered educational standards at newer institutions. Full story

Four decades after visionary developer James W. Rouse set out to build the perfect community on what was then Howard County farmland, Columbia [Maryland]'s 96,000 residents are embroiled in a debate about the future of living in the suburbs. At issue: How does the planned community complete Rouse's vision for a vibrant city center before the remaining land is developed? Howard Research and Development Corp. … wants to construct 1,600 housing units in Columbia's Town Center neighborhood. But some community activists are arguing that the land should be used for office buildings and retail shops—the downtown that was part of the concept they bought into decades ago. … Urban planners, who vow to watch the debate closely, say the controversy signals the growing evidence that many people are becoming weary of such trappings of traditional suburban life as traffic, sprawl and enclosed malls, [and] are yearning for a more urbanized look that would make cars and big–box retail stores less needed. Full story

DIGEST

• The education reforms of the No Child Left Behind Act are ambitious and well-intentioned, requiring schools to demonstrate improvement and produce students with a certain level of proficiency. There's just one problem, says Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker. How do you define improvement and proficiency? Smaller schools, he points out, tend to show the most improvement or decline, regardless of their quality. "A lot of the ups and downs in a school's test scores are due to chance factors, such as the presence of a few really good or really poor students in a class, or the fact that on test day a few students may guess right on a couple of hard questions—and the smaller the school, the larger the role played by chance," Gladwell says. And when it comes to proficiency, luck gives way to chaos. Some schools measure proficiency according to the scores of the most successful students; others rank test questions—or weigh them individually—according to difficulty. So the percentage of proficient students in Kentucky is either 61, 22.7, or 10.5. Gladwell doesn't explain whether the No Child legislation fails to specify a method or chooses one that will require some states to change, but he makes an essential point: "Learning cannot be measured as neatly and easily as the devotees of educational productivity would like. If schools were factories, America would have solved the education problem a century ago." Full story

• The Patriot Act is one of those things that everyone seems to have an opinion about despite next to no knowledge of what it actually says. Enter Slate's four-part Guide to The Patriot Act. Nearly two years after the legislation breezed through Congress in the wake of the September 11 attacks, and with John Ashcroft's recent campaign-like tour of the country to rally support, Slate says The Patriot Act is "suddenly being revisited, and this time around some of the folks holding opinions have actually read the thing." Slate starts off diplomatic enough: "The truth of the matter seems to be that while some portions of the Patriot Act are truly radical, others are benign." But then it breaks down some of the scariest sections of the legislation, including the green light the law gives the government to walk into libraries and see what someone has checked out. This gives the FBI "power to conduct essentially warrantless records searches, especially on people who are not themselves terror suspects, with little or no judicial oversight," says Slate. "The government sees this as an incremental change in the law, but the lack of meaningful judicial oversight and expanded scope of possible suspects is pretty dramatic." One of the most useful steps forward, Slate says, would be for the government to get more specific about how this and other sections will be implemented. The series is a mostly fair and helpful step beyond the battle of hyperbole between advocates of homeland security and defenders of civil liberties. Full story

Related:
Why is talk about America's decline on the rise? From the Boston Globe.

• If the newest ad slogan from the National Insititute of Mental Health is none too subtle, it's because the assumptions it works against are so pervasive: "Real Men. Real Depression." Or, as the headline says in Time, "Real Men Get the Blues." Because society conditions both men and women to react to male depression as a forfeiture of their role as strong and silent partners, many depressed men are in denial, Time says. Only recently have the NIMH and others started searching for "psychological and pharmacological" solutions to this hidden problem. And they're introducing questions about the link between depression and testosterone. Full story

• The history of human clothes cleaning has operated on what is, when you think about it, a rather strange principle: that the best way to fight dirt and grease is with fat, oil, and ashes—the contents of soap. No, soap was probably not discovered at Mount Sapo, as hygienic mythology would have it. It is likely, however, that soap's discovery was accidental, says the Christian Science Monitor. "Who would think of using ashes and oil to get things clean? People knew it worked long before they could explain why." Now we can. The purpose of soap is to loosen up the water, so to speak. Water likes to stick to itself, but soap helps break up water molecules so they can go get dirt. A more technical explanation—and some fun facts (the average American uses around 30 pounds of detergents and soap each year)—are in the full story.

• If you're a farmer, one of the worst things you can do to your field is plow it, says Jonathan Rauch in the Atlantic Monthly. Plowing produces runoff that pollutes water, releases greenhouse gases stowed in the soil, and kills worms and other helpful underground residents. In search of the future of food, Rauch visits farmers who are more soil-friendly, practicing "no-till farming." To pull this off, they grow genetically modified crops, and that's where the controversy comes in. Environmentalists see biotechnology as not only unnatural but dangerous, since we don't know the side effects of mutant crops. Still, if environmentalists rallied to support research into the safety of biotechnology, Rauch says, the payoff, in environmental health and abundance of food, would be enormous. Full story

• Who in their right mind would want to go back to middle school and relive the angst of that phase in the life cycle? For one, Washington Post education reporter Linda Perlstein, who immersed herself in the lives of middle schoolers in Columbia, Maryland (see second item above)—through parties, classes, and interviews—in order to write Not Much, Just Chillin': The Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers. In an interview with NPR, she reports what struck her the most—including their willingness to open up, and their resilience in the midst of rapid physical and social change. Audio of interview

Related:
How families are, economically speaking, good for society, from the New Yorker

Nathan Bierma is editorial assistant at Books & Culture.

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