Statistical People

The people ahead of us at Disneyland, October 8, 2006

John Scalzi mentioned today the heavily-reported fact that the U.S. population officially just hit 300 million. I wrote such a long comment about this that I've decided to post it here:

When this subject comes up it always reminds me of a population counter display I saw at the 1964 New York World's Fair. Back then the count was a little over 200 million, and for years afterward that was my rule of thumb - 210 million, 214 million, 220 million...after that I lost track. I was fascinated at the time by the ticker (I was seven years old), and wanted to know how they knew that someone had been born, someone had died, someone had immigrated, someone had emigrated. The display covered all four of those factors. I think it was my brother Steve (age 14 at the time) who explained about statistics and estimates and the census.

But ever since then I've never quite believed the official count - in general, perhaps, but not specifically. Having gone door to door as an enumerator for R.L. Polk in 1977, I know that people don't always want to be counted. How do they know exactly how many people are evading the census takers? How do they know the degree of fluctuation in the birth and death rates between actual counts? So okay, yes, MAYBE the 300 millionth current American arrived today by birth, boat, plane or on foot. But more likely it's a statistical convention, and only vaguely correct. In terms of real living breathing people, the milestone may have been reached last week or last mont, or could be yet to come - and we'll never know it.

Is this milestone, such as it is, a good thing or a bad thing? Some of each, I expect. There are economic facters involved, and political ones, and sociological ones, and environmental ones. Economically, the country needs an influx of taxpayers to pay for the social security benefits of aging baby boomers. Legal immigration seems likely to fit the bill there. But sociologically, we are still fighting that same old human tendency to label people outside our own tribe as Them, and view Them with suspicion and disdain. 75 years ago it was the Irish and the Italians and the Poles who got such treatment. Now it's Mexicans and Muslims and people from India and Africa (yes, I know those categories aren't mutually exclusive). It was wrong then. It's wrong now. Being "white" is a social construct rather than a genetic one, anyway. We need to get over all these subdivisions, and deal with people as people.

The people behind us at Disneyland, October 8, 2006

Environmentally, we probably don't want to overdo things with a new population boom, but we can probably handle things if we do it right, with strict standards to curb pollution and global warming, and efficient use of land for food and well as living space. There are a number of countries with more people per square acre than we have. It's not pleasant (ask my husband, who just suffered through huge Disneyland crowds), but it can be done.

Hmm. Clearly I needed to blog this. And now I have.

I'll have my Round Robin post after midnight tonight, on the other blog.

Karen

Cross-posted:
http://journals.aol.com/mavarin/MusingsfromMavarin/
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Technorati Tags: Population, Scalzi, Ethics

George: The Rest of the Story

I'm strapped for time tonight (I'm behind on my homework, as usual), so I'll take this opportunity to finish off my tale of outrage and woe from my time working for George twenty years ago.  The following is partly cribbed from one of the ethics papers I wrote last week, and illustrated with the blurry photos of Store #1 that I managed to find tonight.
As you may recall, George is the one who gave me grief instead of sympathy after I did my best to protect his interests while being robbed at gunpoint.  But that's far from the sum of my complaints about my former employer.

George's basic stance was that if anything went wrong, it was somebody else's fault.  He made unreasonable demands, and pounced if you didn't meet them.  Certain favored employees were treated well, while the rest of us were criticized at every opportunity.  "I have to be perfect this week" was something I often said to myself, as I tried to avoid the man's further wrath after some real or imagined mistake on my part. 
The unfair and preferential treatment issue can be illustrated by the bonus program he set up circa 1984.  George forbade anyone to take notes about it (Sue did it anyway), deliberately set the goals so high that certain stores could not possibly meet them, and fudged the numbers so that only two of the six stores got the bonuses--including the small one managed by, you guessed it, his favorite employee.

The morning checklist was another good example of the problems George's employees faced.  This was a list of about twelve or fourteen tasks to be done in each record store each morning, from setting up the register and opening the door to vacuuming and dusting.  To do it all with with reasonable diligence would require about forty minutes of steady work, if nobody came into the store in all that time to demand your attention. So, when George came into a store and said, "Take fifteen minutes this morning to do a really good checklist," he was clearly asking the impossible.

Which leads me back to the other incident I started to tell you about last week:

The Set-Up:

As you may recall, I was managing Store #1 at a time when the company was having severe cash flow problems.  To stock his other stores with records, even though they were catalog titles rather than current bestsellers, George decided to remove all the records, prerecorded tapes and just-invented CDs from Store #1. We then moved the record bins around to create a smaller sales floor, kicking up dust in the process, and stocked it with silk wall hangings, T-shirts and other peripheral items.  I spent the rest of the morning and afternoon cleaning, and then passed this task on to Chris to do all evening as well.

The next day, George demoted me from shift supervisor (and de facto manager) to ticket girl, in an attempt to goad me into quitting. The excuse given was that on the day after the record bins were moved, Store #1 was a dusty mess.  I'd dusted my heart out, trying to mitigate the fact that moving furniture after eleven years will inevitably put dust into the air, which will eventually settle again all over the place.  Clearly I was not at fault, but George never let facts or fairness get in the way of a good scapegoating. My ethical dilemma was this: should I allow myself to be maneuvered into quitting, bringing economic hardship on my family but saving George money, or stay and defend myself against the false charges?

The decision hinged on both ethical principles and practical ones:

Ethical Principles:

1. Altruism.  Despite everything, I still felt some sympathy toward George, and knew that his financial situation was poor.  Removing myself from his payroll would help the company stay afloat a little longer.  This would benefit George and his remaining employees, who would be more likely to get their paychecks. However, quitting before I had another job prospect would financially harm another innocent stakeholder, my own husband, John. George was far from innocent, but his employees deserved to be paid.  The greater good seemed in this case to indicate that, as Spock famously said in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few—or the one.”

2.  Integrity.  To make a stand for truthfulness, another ethical value, can be an act of integrity, especially if a person behaves this way consistently. Although I am sometimes guilty of not volunteering uncomfortable truths, I try never to lie to anyone. To allow George to lie about why he wanted me to quit, impugning my workmanship and my truthfulness in process, was an affront to my sense of integrity.  To quit seemed at the time to be condoning his lie, but it could be argued that accepting the demotion and staying on gave the lie equal creedence.

Practical and Selfish Considerations:

Arguing for my quitting was the opportunity to selfishly reduce my stress over a job that had become nearly intolerable, and take a “vacation” from working while I looked for another job.  On the other hand, a self-serving motive for not quitting was a desire to avoid a loss of income.  Another was my psychological need to defend myself from George’s false changes.  It may be argued that refusing to quit was to make a stand for the truth, but there was a selfish component to this stance.  Furthermore, neither alternative was likely to cause to George admit the truth.  In addition, there was a temptation to “spite George” by refusing to do what he wanted, a vengeful, malicious, unethical (but psychologically understandable) response to the situation.

Alternatives and Consequences:

There were only two alternatives in this situation: to quit, or to refuse to quit.  Quitting would have the negative consequence of reducing my family’s income, and the positive consequence (for others) of reducing company expenses, enhancing George’s ability to meet payroll. It also would give George the opportunity to disparage me to other employees, without me around to refute his claims.  Refusing to quit would protect my household income, keep me on hand to protect my reputation, and thwart George’s dishonest behavior. The negative consequences would be increased stress for me, more strain  on company finances,  which would ultimately harm other employees, and the possibility of being fired.

The Decision:

Initially, I told George that I could not afford to quit until I found another job. After this conversation, however, John encouraged me to quit, saying that we could manage without the income for a short time. I called George back and quit. I even wished him luck.  Afterward, I found myself getting more and more angry with him.  I was tempted to call George again and berate him for his dishonesty, but John convinced me to let my previous, “classy” last words to him stand.  (When I mentioned this to John last week, he was amazed that he ever said such a thing.)

The Aftermath:

I soon got a job with National Record Mart, where I was appreciated and treated well. I kept that job until John and I left town on our big trip of 1986, driving around with Jenny Dog, looking for a place where it wasn't winter.

Some time after I Ieft town, George was arrested for check kiting.  In an effort to keep the record store chain going, he and his wife had written over eight million dollars in checks back and forth between two overdrawn accounts over a period of six weeks.  I guess the $4.00 an hour he saved by getting me to quit wasn't enough to save him.


Karen


See also:
Bashing George
Robbery, Part Two

The Ethics Thing

By tomorrow at 6 PM, I need to "prepare a 1200-1500 word paper that illustrates the development, understanding, and application of ethics in your decision-making process" (UoP rEsource page, GEN 480, Week One). It's 9:40 PM now, and I haven't started it, so my blogging tonight will be short.  I hope. Somehow I have to overcome the intertia and sleepiness to start the paper.  Once I do that, I should be okay.

The main reason I'm getting such a late start tonight is that I was at work until almost 7 PM, finally getting the TRAMS interface problem straightened out in a 1 3/4 hour phone call with the only TRAMS interface expert I hadn't already dealt with at least once. The computers were buggy and didn't do what they were supposed to do, but we prevailed in the end.  The key was to type obscure coding (something like ~D0~AD~***EOM*** and so on) into a box I'd never seen before, and reboot a bunch of times.  I got all but eight of my invoices (we'll get the rest tomorrow), and went home.  Then John and I had to shop for dinner.

While still eating I went online, because, you know.  But one major reason was that my other assignment for tomorrow night was to complete an online Ethics Awareness Inventory and print the results.  First I had to reinstall this stupid buggy browser for the second time this week, and then I was finally able to do the test.  And whaddaya know!  This may be the first personality test I've ever taken that I fully agree with.  It's a copyrighted academic and organizational tool, not a Quizilla free-for-all, so I won't just paste it all in here; but I will give you the first paragraph of what it says:

YOUR ETHICAL PERSPECTIVE



You tend to base your ethical perspective on an individual’s duty or obligation to do what is morally right - principles that represent what rational persons ought morally to do. You believe that ethical conduct appeals to “conscience.” In judging whether a person’s actions are ethical, you look to the intent behind his/her actions, rather than focusing on results. In other words, to be considered ethical, we must choose how we act and what rules we are willing to follow. From your perspective, ethical principles must be: (a) appropriate under any circumstances (universalizable); (b) respectful of human dignity; and (c) committed to promoting individual freedom and autonomy. Human beings must never be treated simply as “means” to the accomplishment of some defined “end.” The end does not justify the means. This category is most closely aligned in philosophy with a deontological theory (Immanuel Kant and John Rawls).

(c) 2003, The Williams Institute for Ethics and Management, Tempe, AZ

Yeah, me and Kant are best buds, talking about deontological theory all day long between rounds of the Philosophers' Drinking Song. Well, okay, not so much, but the individual freedom and mutual respect thing is very much me. It goes on to say that this perspective can be very frustrating and an impediment to advancement within an organization, which emphasizes the good of the group.  Yes, and that's why I have no plans to go work for some multinational and make pots of money.

Enough.  I have a paper to write.  More on all this later.

Karen

P.S. This is not to imply that I always live up to these ideals.  We all know I'm often blogging at times when I'm certain I ought to be doing something else!

Let 'Em In

 
Artist Unknown, from a St. Michael's church bulletin

This is the time of year when the Arizona desert is at its most dangerous, a place of death and desperation.

Forced east from the physically safer California border by enforcement efforts there, thousands of men, women and children cross from Sonora into Arizona near Naco or Douglas or some other likely spot, and do their best to walk across desert that's 140 degrees on the ground, 100 to 120 air temperature, bound for Tucson.  Many are picked up by the Border Patrol, given medical treatment, and shipped back into Mexico.  Many others die from dehydration, heat stroke, or sometimes from snakebite or gunshot wounds.  Some are transported in overloaded vans and trucks, only to be abandoned en route, or to be killed or injured in traffic accidents.

Some of them make it.  Their reward is a chance to be in this country illegally, to earn wages that are paltry by our standards but princely by theirs, to give their families a chance at a better life. 

That is the dream that sends all those people on such a deadly trek, year after year.  They spend their life savings to hire "coyotes" to get them to Tucson alive, or they supply themselves with as much water as they can carry and make their way across in small groups on foot.  Either way, their lives are on the line. If they don't make it, but survive, they'll try again.  And again. Economic necessity drives them on.

Why in the world are we more willing to let these people die in the desert than we are to let them enter the country legally?  Can't we screen them for criminal records, drugs, and terrorism ties, and then welcome them to the U.S. in a reasonable, regulated way?  Is it so terrible that a city like Tucson, with its rich intercultural heritage, be allowed to take in poor folks willing to work hard for low wages, along with the middle-class WASPs from the Northeast who simply want to get away from snow and ice?  Can't we document them and let 'em in, on a trial basis, and arrest or deport them later if they turn out to be criminals or fail to gain employment? Sure, there would be problems to be worked out, but it could be done.

St. Michael's used to have a sign out front that said, "Jesus was a refugee."  That sign, at Fifth and Wilmot, helped to draw me in when I decided, years ago, to give church another try. I loved the compassion behind the sign, which showed the Holy Family en route to Egypt.  The people in the picture could almost as easily have been a Guatamalan family displaced from their home, or almost any refugees with a donkey, anywhere in this strife-torn world. Nowadays, the sign says, "Either we are all God's children, or no one is," another compassionate response to war and poverty.  St. Michael's also has a social concerns committee that tries to help people in Guatamala and elsewhere.  Frequently, we read in the church bulletin or hear during the church announcements about a border trash pickup expedition, or the effort to build and maintain water stations in the desert to help people stay alive, or the needs of a border health clinic.  We are told about groups called Humane Borders and No More Deaths, and are urged to support their good work.

I never do anything about any of this, except to stick a couple of bucks in a white envelope once a month, or copy the latest event info from the church bulletin onto the schedule page of the St. Michael's web site.  I'm too broke to give a lot of money to this, too fat, too shy and too busy to go walk around in the desert trying to help. But I feel bad every time I read or hear of more people dying for no good reason.  They shouldn't have to die.  It's a poor reward for such a valiant attempt at the American Dream.

Karen

Fox 11: No More Deaths
No More Deaths.org
Tucson Weekly: Traces of Identity
Humane Borders.org
Here and Now: Hard Line

One Christian Responds to Another - Or Tries To

I got my first negative comment today, on the What Would Jefferson Do? Does it Matter? posting. The commenter's handle, "pinetreeheaven7," is not a valid screen name, so I will respond here.  Please be aware, though, that I really, really don't like to argue about religion or politics, or much of anything, to be honest. So this is a one time deal.  If at the end of this entry you think, as pinetreeheaven7 does, that I'm somehow not "really" a Christian, you're mistaken, but I'm not going to spend my life trying to convince you about this. Any further attacks on this church-attending, Bible-reading, Kerry-supporting Democrat will be deleted without comment.  You are, however, free to express your views elsewhere, as long as it's not for the purpose of slandering me.  Onward.

My unsendable email reply (slightly edited) begins:

I really don't like confrontation, so I'm only going to do this once.  You took your shot at me, and now it's my turn.  After that there will be no more turns, not between you and me, anyway.  

In a message dated 7/31/2004 10:45:27 AM US Mountain Standard Time, AOLAlerts writes:  

If you are a Christian I will eat my hat. Episco what?

The Episcopal Church has been around for centuries, and was one of the first to diverge from the Catholic Church.  Like everything else in this world, it's not perfect, but it is certainly Christian. St. Michael's in particular is a wonderful place. It's arrogant and ignorant in the extreme of you to assume that Episcopalians are not really Christians, or that I am not.  I not only attend church every week, but I usually serve at Mass as crucifer, torch or lector, especially in the summer when we're shorthanded. It has always horrified me that some Christians will narrow the definition so that it means "everyone who agrees with me" rather than "everyone who does his or her best to follow Jesus."  Once people put someone else in the box labeled "Them" instead of "Us," they tend to feel justified in treating that person as subhuman, which is the very antithesis of the teachings of Jesus.

Christians are against murder (killing babies).

I am very much against killing babies.  I am also against killing adults and children. Somehow, some of the same Christians who think that birth control is a mortal sin have no problem with killing Iraqis, prisoners, or even doctors who disagree with them. "Thou shalt not kill" is not an easy commandment to live up to, even if it's recast as "You shall not murder."  I, personally, have never killed anyone.

They beleive that marriage is Sacred and Holy insitution between a man and a woman, ordained by God as a symbol of our faithfulness and committment to Him.

For a gay couple to emulate that in the eyes of state law (which is separate from God's law, although it follows most of the same principles) does not make this any less true.

Ten commandments has these two listed as top commandments. Lies and slander are also something that God condemns.

First of all, depending on your numbering (which varies in different sects according to where the text gets broken up, but still adds up to 10), the top two commandments are about one's duties to God (not having strange gods before Him, etc.). The ones against murder and slander come later in the list.  All of the commandments are subsets of the main two: "You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, your whole mind, and your whole strength," and "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."  The commandments you refer to are part of that second one.

As for lies, all my life I have tried very hard never to lie to anyone about anything. I manage it about 99.9% of the time. That doesn't mean that people always agree with me. I have never lied or slandered anyone in my journal. (I have written fiction, though.)

If you are truly for religious freedom then i suggest that you join the groups that are fighting the ACLU. This organization's main goal is to get anything that points to the bible or Christ out of everything.

Many Christians, including myself, disagree with you.  Your claim about the ACLU *is* slander.  The ACLU believes that people have a right to believe as they choose, or not to believe at all.  Religious freedom is exactly that.  What you want is the "right" for everyone to be forced to agree with you.  Nobody is preventing you from believing what you believe.  They are merely defending the right of other people to believe something else. (In retrospect, I suppose that the commenter means "out of everything in the government." The concept of separation of church and state was important to Jefferson and other Founding Fathers, and remains important today.  If a courthouse can't post the Ten Commandments, or if "under God" is eventually removed from the Pledge of Allegiance, that in no way "prohibits the free exercise" of religion. It merely keeps a governmental institution from openly endorsing a particular form of religious faith.)

Hollywood is the only ones that have true freedom of speech now and they are great supporters of the ACLU.

Shall I correct your grammar?  You go from singular to plural in the same clause. The correct construction would be "People in the Hollywood entertainment industry are the only ones now who have true freedom of speech.  They are great supporters of the ACLU."  Even with corrected grammar, the first part is a false statement. You demonstrated your right to free speech by posting on my journal.  I will allow the comment to stand--once.  I will block future postings by you on my journal, as is my right as editor/publisher of this particular forum.  You are still free to post your misguided nonsense elsewhere--for example, in your own journal. (Of course, that would require having a real account somewhere.)

Larry Flint is also on their membership list.

He's a jerk, (IMO) but so what?  It doesn't mean that he's wrong 100% of the time.  People are complex, and one of the complexities is that nobody (except Jesus) is completely right or completely wrong in every way.

How about "What would Jesus do?"

Which, of course, I acknowledge indirectly in the piece you commented on. In the current instance, I think Jesus would want me to treat you with compassion, but speak out against your errors.

You can find this out by reading your bible. Take the time and you will never regret it.

If you had read my whole journal (which admittedly is a lot of reading), you would see that for Lent I reread the four Gospels and part of Acts.  I have been to classes about some of Paul's epistles.  I've read much of the Old Testament (but not all of it), including bits that most people would prefer to skip over, because otherwise Christians would still be offering burnt sacrifices and keeping Kosher (to name two of the less over-the-top practices that don't involve actually killing people).  I read aloud from the Old Testament in church.  And what's more, I think I understand some of it, a little.  I'm not perfect, but I don't hate anyone.  I do my best to love my enemies.  Can you say the same?

Regards and with prayers that you will someday understand your own faith better,

Karen Funk Blocher

Guilt

I'm all discombobulated today because of my disproportionate response toa pair of unpleasant emails from a man claiming to be a minister and longtime friend of Madeleine L'Engle. He accused me of promoting saccharine falsehoods on my L'Engle pages, said I should be ashamed of myself, and called my site fawning and obsequious. I eventually figured out that he was objecting to certain items on my L'Engle FAQ page. That page had not been updated since March, 2001, and was so labeled. The man was apparently incensed that I hadn't always known that some of L'Engle's reported details of her life were not entirely accurate, and said so, in the most perjorative terms possible. Or, failing that, that I did not update the site to include the most negative details of the New Yorker article on the moment I read them, or the moment he told me of them.

This whole thing has been distressing to me, especially this attackfrom a stranger who expects me to believe every word he writes, butdoes not provide his last name. Readers of this blog and the AOL sfwriters' boards are aware that I've agonized about the New Yorker article and my best response to it.

Well, I've updated the FAQ page. I acknowledged most of the points raised in the article, but not all of them, and I've done my best not to attack either L'Engle or her family. Still, I'm not comfortable about all this. I have no perspective at all. That explains why I'm wasting time at work writing this when I have so much work to do (I'm terribly behind!), and why I got virtually no studying done last night for my accounting final tomorrow night. I need to stop worrying about this and get on with my life!

This is much worse than obsessing about the Mavarin prequel.

Karen