Tag: stubborness

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It’s a Big World, After All

“Space is big,” Douglas Adams once wrote in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. “You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”

Don’t look now, but he may have understated the case.

Remember the James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the Hubble that sent back amazingly clear star field images last year? Well, it’s back for another round. Astronomers studying those images have found six tremendous galaxies dating back about 13.1 billion years … which means the early universe was about 100 times bigger than we thought.

“We’ve been informally calling these objects ‘universe breakers’ — and they have been living up to their name so far,” astronomer Joel Leja told CBS.

Another put it even more simply to the press: “We just discovered the impossible.”

Now, depending on your perspective, this might not seem like such a (pardon the phrase) big deal. After all, it’s not something that’s going to instantly clean the atmosphere, bring peace on Earth and lead the Broncos back to the Super Bowl. Lots of stars? So what?

But from another angle, it’s huge. Not only does this add to our knowledge, it forces us to revisit it. We had an idea of how quickly galaxies come together. Now it looks like we were being too modest. And if so, old ideas need to give way in the face of new information.

That’s a basic tool of science. It’s also something we’re not terribly good at in our day-to-day lives.

Previously in this column, I’ve mentioned what I call the Paul Simon Rule, derived from a verse in his song “The Boxer”:

Still a man hears what he wants to hear,

And disregards the rest.  

Put simply, we’re a stubborn bunch. Sometimes that’s been our saving grace as a species as we outlast war, disaster and the rise and fall of Jerry Springer. But it also means that we tend to hold onto ideas long past their sell-by date.

Why? Because staying with what we “know” is comfortable. Certainly more comfortable than having to rearrange our mental furniture and maybe even acknowledge we were wrong.

Take a look at the last Super Bowl. A thrilling, down-to-the-wire game exploded into controversy because of a holding penalty that basically killed the Eagles’ chance for a comeback. And even after the player in question admitted he had been holding, it didn’t really change anything. Fans had already staked out their positions on whether it was justified or a joke, and nobody was budging.

At our core, we are storytelling creatures. We’re happiest when things fit a pattern. And if the story fits what we already believe, well, then we’re golden. Studies have suggested that our reasoning originally developed to win arguments rather than to find facts, especially since we’re so often better at seeing flaws in someone else’s logic than our own.

So when something comes along that forces us to rethink, it’s a big deal indeed. Even more so when we succeed. It’s a moment of humility that moves us forward, allows us to learn, opens up new worlds that we might not have considered before.

In its own way, those moments rebuild a universe at record speed. Maybe even faster than those ancient stars.

Let them happen.

You might just find that they give you space to grow.

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Now You See It

U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, whatever his other gifts may be, has clearly never been a reporter.

That might sound obvious, like noting that Bill Gates has never been an NFL linebacker. But it may explain a curious decision of Ryan’s on Wednesday.

For those who missed the drama, several Democratic members of Congress staged a sit-in Wednesday, literally sitting on the House floor until a gun control bill would be heard. This would be shown to the nation via C-SPAN, an all-Congress, all-the-time cable network that normally draws a lower viewership than competitive crochet.

And then Ryan gave the protesters a gift of inestimable value. He ordered the House cameras turned off.

Now, since the cameras belonged to the House and not to C-SPAN, Ryan had the right to do this. No question. But that’s not the same as saying it was a smart thing to do, since:

1) Several of the protesters carried these amazing devices called smart phones and could stream live video for C-SPAN to rebroadcast.

2) Nothing attracts a reporter’s attention – or an audience’s – like a closed door.

It’s sometimes called the Streisand Effect, after a long-ago attempt by the singer to remove a picture of her home from an online collection of 12,000 pictures of the California coastline. Before Streisand’s efforts, six people had viewed the photo online. In the month afterward, that soared to over 420,000.

People want what they’re told they can’t have. Especially when someone powerful or famous says so.

It works on a smaller level, too. Years ago, I was covering the efforts of Emporia, Kan. to hire a new city manager. This was of moderate interest to the community since the incumbent was one of those long-timers who had been around since “Crocodile Dundee” was the biggest thing to hit movie theatres.

And then moderate interest became burning interest. The Emporia City Council went back on an earlier decision and decided it wasn’t going to announce the finalists for the position.

The result was a flood of emails and online comments, a front-page story and a very rapid surrender by the council. The decision to close the doors had become a bigger story than any announcement of the finalists could ever have been.

Most of us, whether reporters or consumers of the news, don’t have a lot of time in the day. There are a lot of things screaming for our attention, most of them claiming to be pants-on-fire urgent. So it’s normal that a lot of stories, sometimes even fairly large ones, will slip beneath the radar of the average reader or viewer.

But we’re also a stubborn bunch. We have been for a long time. And when someone talks down to us saying “You don’t need to see that, “it almost always prompts an immediate “Why not?” For a moment, we KNOW where to focus our attention – and our frustration.

I’m not saying that the gun-control bill was good, bad, or as ugly as Eli Wallach. I am saying that its proponents should send Paul Ryan a thank-you card. Whether they succeed or fail in their quest, they’ve gotten the attention they wanted, and then some.

Come to think of it, maybe the Speaker’s found a second career. I’m sure there are many other struggling broadcasts that could use his assistance in getting a larger audience.

“Live from the Pepsi Center … it’s the 2016-2017 Denver Nuggets season that Paul Ryan didn’t want YOU to see!!”

Couldn’t hurt.

Let us know, Mr. Speaker, willya?

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Take Me Out of the Ballgame

The best thing about the late winter may be the promise that baseball is just around the corner.

Think of it. The crack of the bat. The roar of the crowd. The crowds and the teams, divided in loyalty, yet united in a love of the game and a conviction that the umpire is always wrong …

Whoops. Wait a second. Hold that thought about unity.

At least, until after you see this bit out of Reuters.

“A baseball game between Cuba’s national team and a South Korean professional club had to be called off when they could not agree on which ball to use …”

That’s right. They argued over the baseballs.

Sometimes I wonder about humanity.

If you wonder what the big deal is, join the club. Apparently, it’s common practice for each team in an international game to supply its own baseballs for pitching and fielding, so that no one gets hurt handling a ball they’re not used to. Odd, but reasonable.

But this time, the Cubans put their foot down. Our spheroids or none at all. And when the Koreans said “no thanks,” the Cubans canceled the game.

Why does this sound familiar?

Oh, yeah. That’s right. Our other great American pastime. The one that spends money by the bale and fills television with images guaranteed to generate exasperation and anger.

No, I don’t mean football.

Let me start by saying that anyone looking for peace and harmony in American politics is either doomed to a long and fruitless search, or destined to write fiction. We have been, from the beginning, a nation of arguers. One historian, studying the colonial period, was struck by how many petty lawsuits were clogging the courts. Ours may be a nation of the people, by the people, for the people, but it’s also one where a lot can stand between the people.

All right. Fair enough. A free country’s about debate, right?

Well, yes. Absolutely. Just like baseball, having competition is part of the game. If you have a stadium where one team offers no opposition to the other … well, you have last year’s Colorado Rockies. But back to my point.

In the end, a game is about resolution: someone wins, loses or gets rained out. Political debates don’t have to be that cut-and-dried, but it’s still supposed to be about getting somewhere, reaching a decision, coming to a compromise, getting something done – or sometimes, not done, if that’s the best thing for everyone concerned.

But that only works if everyone wants it to. If you take your ball and go home, there’s no game. If you say ‘My way or no way’ to everything, there’s no debate.

There’s just noise.

Admittedly, we’re overcoming a lot here. There’s a recent theory among social scientists that we didn’t develop reason to find truth, but to better insist on our version of it. We may actually be hardwired to insist on what we want in the face of all evidence, a tendency that only gets reinforced when our social networks, both real and virtual, start filling up with people who agree with us.

But the wiring isn’t unbeatable. We have made it work. We have played the game. Often with great acrimony, but we’ve played it.

Is it so unthinkable that we could do it again?

There are over 400 friends on my Facebook page. Some go about as far left or right as a person can without insisting on totalitarianism. But even when we’ve argued, I haven’t dropped them.

They make me think. Sometimes what they make me think is “You’re crazy.” But if I have to examine my own preconceptions, even for a second, it’s worthwhile.

That’s how I beat the circuits. Or at least give them a fight.

If enough of us do the same, maybe even Washington can become useful again.

Hey. It’s a season for dreams.

Play ball.