attention

I.
Earlier this year, I recommended Lawrence Rosenblum's See What I'm Saying, which explores the lesser-known aspects of sensation and cognition. What I didn't mention was that I had two of my English classes read an excerpt, then head out into the halls to test our echolocating skills. Since we had so little practice, we were terrible at it--but we could hear the possibilities. Navigational failure was a pedagogical success.

I was reminded of that experience when pointed by Maggie Koerth-Baker to this blog entry by neuroscientist Bradley Voytek.

We're used to thinking of our senses as being pretty shite: we can't see as well as eagles, we can't hear as well as bats, and we can't smell as well as dogs.

Or so we're used to thinking.

It turns out that humans can, in fact, detect as few as 2 photons entering the retina. Two. As in, one-plus-one.

It is often said that, under ideal conditions, a young, healthy person can see a candle flame from 30 miles away. That's like being able to see a candle in Times Square from Stamford, Connecticut. Or seeing a candle in Candlestick Park from Napa Valley.

Similarly, it appears that the limits to our threshold of hearing may actually be Brownian motion. That means that we can almost hear the random movements of atoms.

Voytek calls humans "inattentive superheroes," our skills fundamentally underdeveloped in a world full of noise. We underestimate the value of silence, of darkness, of time spent alone. We'd like to be more focused, but we don't know how--and we keep filling our lives with more things that siphon attention away.


II.
Much of the siphoning is well-intentioned, an attempt to remind us--to alert us--to pay attention. You're rolling through a residential neighborhood, at the wheel of a two-ton death machine. In the corner of your eye, a yellow warning: "Children at Play." It's a safety measure that can be--and will be--easily ignored. And probably should be torn down.

The National Cooperative Highway Research Program, in its "Synthesis of Highway Practice No. 139," sternly advises that "non-uniform signs such as "CAUTION--CHILDREN AT PLAY," "SLOW--CHILDREN," or similar legends should not be permitted on any roadway at any time." Moreover, it warns that "the removal of any nonstandard signs should carry a high priority."

One of the things that is known, thanks to peer-reviewed science, is that increased traffic speeds (and volumes) increase the risk of children's injuries. But "Children at Play" signs are a symptom, rather than a cure--a sign of something larger that is out of whack, whether the lack of a pervasive safety culture in driving, a system that puts vehicular mobility ahead of neighborhood livability, or non-contextual street design. After all, it's roads, not signs, that tell people how to drive. People clamoring for "Children at Play" signs are often living on residential streets that are inordinately wide, lacking any kind of calming obstacles (from trees to "bulb-outs"), perhaps having unnecessary center-line markings--three factors that will boost vehicle speed more than any sign will lower them.

If, at our best, we're "inattentive superheroes," at our worst, we're overly confident, cognitively-deficient supervillains.

As is often the case in driving, when we meet the enemy, it is us. You want difficulty in judging spatial relations? Consider the research, by Dennis Shaffer, that showed people reporting 10-foot-long highway stripes to be two feet long. You want difficulty estimating speed? Consider this study, which found drivers underestimating their speed in the presence of children by upwards of 50 percent. You want exceeded sensory abilities? Consider the widespread phenomenon of "overdriving" one's headlights. You want trouble estimating distance? Ask any driver how many feet they'll need to stop, driving at 65 mph. You want impulsive? Who's reaching across the seat for that buzzing BlackBerry?

If "Children at Play" signs are ineffective at capturing our attention--or doubly ineffective when they do--what about other supposedly helpful road signs: speed limits, "Road Narrows," "Koala Crossing?" (We'll leave aside "One Way" for now.) What if they were gone--all gone? John Staddon points toward a possible future:

So what am I suggesting—abolishing signs and rules? A traffic free-for-all? Actually, I wouldn’t be the first to suggest that. A few European towns and neighborhoods--Drachten in Holland, fashionable Kensington High Street in London, Prince Charles’s village of Poundbury, and a few others--have even gone ahead and tried it. They’ve taken the apparently drastic step of eliminating traffic control more or less completely in a few high-traffic and pedestrian-dense areas. The intention is to create environments in which everyone is more focused, more cautious, and more considerate. Stop signs, stoplights, even sidewalks are mostly gone. The results, by all accounts, have been excellent: pedestrian accidents have been reduced by 40 percent or more in some places, and traffic flows no more slowly than before.

Of course, all of this could be moot once automobiles become truly auto. And then we can turn our attention toward more important things.


III.
For some, it's even harder than usual to block out the tumult of the everyday. In the fourth part of a fascinating series, Marie Myung-Ok Lee describes how her autistic son was finally able to learn how to ride a bike.

After my husband and I bought him a bike with training wheels, he would sometimes sit on it for a minute or two, try to pedal, and then have a tantrum, hurling the bike in frustration. His classroom bike-riding lessons weren't going any better. At a school meeting, the consensus among his teachers and other professionals was that independent bike riding was something he'd probably never learn.

They probably would have been right, were it not for Lee's persistence in seeking out a remedy: high-grade marijuana.

[C]annabis not only mitigates J's pain, it also seems to help him to focus... [M]arijuana's effect on short-term memory allows a user to focus intently on a single sensation (that "Whooooaaaa, man... look at that flower" feeling). One feature of autism is a heightened, disordered, nondiscriminating sensitivity, so that autistics seem to see and feel and hear and smell everything at the same time.... But with cannabis (which also regulates anxiety and stress), I noticed that J had a much higher tolerance for activities that involve multiple steps, like unloading the dishwasher.

Bicycling, when you think about it, involves myriad functions: coordination of gross motor movement with the vestibular, visual, and proprioceptive systems that regulate balance. On a nice weekend I brought J, his bike, his helmet, and a wrench to a nearby private school that has a bunch of wide, paved paths. I removed the training wheels from his bike, put him on it, and gave him a push, figuring that once he realized how good it felt to bike--to move along on his own power--he was going to love it. He pedaled and immediately tipped over, laughing, as he was expecting the training wheels to be there holding him up. But after a few tries, he started to get it. And before the afternoon was over, he was biking independently.

Lee's story is inspiring and infuriating; our federal government's increasingly bizarre insistence on persecuting medical marijuana users made her take unnecessary personal and medical risks. In a saner world, her doctor would have been able to prescribe a standard, fully-tested treatment, and her son's triumph would have been heartwarmingly ordinary.

It may tax your 21st-century attention span, but start with the first part and keep going until you're done.



Asides
When I was young, I could get so wrapped up in a book (or so focused on my Legos) that I'd shut out the world. Maybe that's why I've never been interested in trying pot: that "Whooooaaaa, man..." sensation may not sit well with a brain perfectly comfortable managing its own focal point.


When we let someone else sort the signal from the noise, we risk missing the whole signal. Call it a "filter bubble," algorithmically facilitated attention-narrowing.


Just because you can see a photon from space, doesn't mean you should drive without your glasses.


Driverless cars? Soon. But not quite yet.

smoke 'em if you have the proper permit for 'em

The Washington State Senate has passed a bill re-legalizing indoor smoking--in select locations.

The plan would permit up to 100 cigar lounges and 500 retail tobacco shops to allow smoking.

The bill would reverse part of a wildly popular 2005 initiative, which banned smoking indoors in public buildings and places of employment.

The bill may hurdle the House, but I'd be surprised if Gregoire signs on. After all, as Attorney General, she made her political reputation by leading the campaign to sue tobacco companies for deceptive practices, to the tune of $206 billion, $4.5 billion of that for the Evergreen State alone.

Even if the bill passes, don't go celebrating the moderately reasonable rollback of nanny-state social engineering, or lament the death of democracy. There's one overwhelming reason for the exemption:

Businesses would have to pay annual fees of $17,500 to obtain cigar lounge endorsements and $6,000 to obtain tobacco store endorsements.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, quasi-libertarian?

Re-reading The Scarlet Letter means re-reading "The Custom-House," its windy (in both pronunciations) preface. (If you skipped it, I don't blame you. But you really should go back and read it--it's a witty counterpoint to the heavy-handed moralizing of the novel.)

Hawthorne's experience as a federal employee turned him into a bit of a libertarian. In a typical digression, he writes,

An effect—which I believe to be observable, more or less, in every individual who has occupied the position—is, that, while he leans on the mighty arm of the Republic, his own proper strength departs from him. He loses, in an extent proportioned to the weakness or force of his original nature, the capability of self-support. If he possess an unusual share of native energy, or the enervating magic of place do not operate too long upon him, his forfeited powers may be redeemable. The ejected officer—fortunate in the unkindly shove that sends him forth betimes, to struggle amid a struggling world—may return to himself, and become all that he has ever been. But this seldom happens. He usually keeps his ground just long enough for his own ruin, and is then thrust out, with sinews all unstrung, to totter along the difficult footpath of life as he best may. Conscious of his own infirmity,—that his tempered steel and elasticity are lost,—he for ever afterwards looks wistfully about him in quest of support external to himself. His pervading and continual hope—a hallucination, which, in the face of all discouragement, and making light of impossibilities, haunts him while he lives, and, I fancy, like the convulsive throes of the cholera, torments him for a brief space after death—is, that, finally, and in no long time, by some happy coincidence of circumstances, he shall be restored to office. This faith, more than any thing else, steals the pith and availability out of whatever enterprise he may dream of undertaking. Why should he toil and moil, and be at so much trouble to pick himself up out of the mud, when, in a little while hence, the strong arm of his Uncle will raise and support him? Why should he work for his living here, or go to dig gold in California, when he is so soon to be made happy, at monthly intervals, with a little pile of glittering coin out of his Uncle’s pocket? It is sadly curious to observe how slight a taste of office suffices to infect a poor fellow with this singular disease. Uncle Sam’s gold—meaning no disrespect to the worthy old gentleman—has, in this respect, a quality of enchantment like that of the Devil’s wages. Whoever touches it should look well to himself, or he may find the bargain to go hard against him, involving, if not his soul, yet many of its better attributes; its sturdy force, its courage and constancy, its truth, its self-reliance, and all that gives the emphasis to manly character.

Later on, Hawthorne credits his (politically-motivated) dismissal for providing him with the creative energy and spark to turn the outline for The Scarlet Letter into a living, breathing, perpetually sermonizing novel.

You Can Go to Jail for That?

Via Robert Whitlock at Olyblog, an interesting quiz by the ACLU on Washington's marijuana laws. I wish it were longer, and had included some of the situations covered by people like Lee Rosenberg. Reforming laws isn't enough: institutions, and people, stand in the way as well.

P.S. I scored 5/5.

the peril of sticking it to the census man

In perhaps my favorite exchange from O Brother Where Art Thou, the Hogwallop child, after ensuring that our vagrant heroes aren't "from the bank," or "servin' papers," notes, "I nicked the census man." Delmar O'Donnell responds, "Now there's a good boy."

It's that time of the decade again. Blogger and principled libertarian D.A. Ridgely recently told a census taker that he'd rather not answer any questions.

He was, I believe, genuinely puzzled. Who could object to anything so innocuous as a census?

I could. Sadly, he entered something or other in his hand held gizmo, for all I know scheduling a visit to my house from federal SWAT team soon, probably in the middle of the night.

“The law is the law,” he said. We exchanged somewhat strained pleasantries and he went on his way.

He seemed like a nice man. I’m sorry I made him feel uncomfortable.

The applicable provision of the U.S. Code, for my fellow prospective scofflaws, is as follows:

Title 13 U.S. Code § 221. Refusal or neglect to answer questions; false answers

(a) Whoever, being over eighteen years of age, refuses or willfully neglects, when requested by the Secretary, or by any other authorized officer or employee of the Department of Commerce or bureau or agency thereof acting under the instructions of the Secretary or authorized officer, to answer, to the best of his knowledge, any of the questions on any schedule submitted to him in connection with any census or survey provided for by subchapters I, II, IV, and V of chapter 5 of this title, applying to himself or to the family to which he belongs or is related, or to the farm or farms of which he or his family is the occupant, shall be fined not more than $100....

So there it is. A fine of not more than a hundred dollars for refusing and not more than $500 for lying. The law is the law.

Actually, I really don’t have any strong objections to the census. I do, however, object to being required to comply, even more so when it is being supervised by an ideological hack like Rahm Emanuel. But, hey, if Rahm knocks on the door personally, maybe I’ll reconsider.

As I noted a while ago, the penalty for refusing to answer the American Community Survey--a sort of pre-census--is pretty stiff. It maxes out at $5,000, actually--and, although I'm no lawyer, I have reason to believe the same is true of the regular-ol' census. According to the ACS website,

The American Community Survey is conducted under the authority of Title 13, United States Code, Sections 141 and 193, and response is mandatory. According to Section 221, persons who do not respond shall be fined not more than $100. Title 18 U.S.C. Section 3571 and Section 3559, in effect amends Title 13 U.S.C. Section 221 by changing the fine for anyone over 18 years old who refuses or willfully neglects to complete the questionnaire or answer questions posed by census takers from a fine of not more than $100 to not more than $5,000.

Title 18 U.S.C. Section 3571 reads, in part:

(a) In General.— A defendant who has been found guilty of an offense may be sentenced to pay a fine.
(b) Fines for Individuals.— Except as provided in subsection (e) of this section, an individual who has been found guilty of an offense may be fined not more than the greatest of—
(1) the amount specified in the law setting forth the offense;
(2) the applicable amount under subsection (d) of this section;
...
(7) for an infraction, not more than $5,000.

[emphasis added]

The only exception in subsection (e) is for any law that "by specific reference, exempts the offense from the applicability of the fine otherwise applicable under this section." Sadly, Title 13 Section 221 doesn't make any specific reference and concomitant exemption.

At least it's not 1975, before the act was amended to remove the jail time penalty, up to 60 days for spurning the census man. Not sure how much you'd get for shooting him.

an Orwellian nightmare compliments of the Blackberry Curve

Q: What if delivery people ran the world?

A: 1984, plus a few dings, dents, and scratches.

step away from the tater tots

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Nailed 'Em - Buffet Crime

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Thou shalt not share thy buffet plate.

litterbug vigilantes and the nanny state

Here's a perfect example of the potential for petty vigilantism in the Affirmative world of the March / April resolution: A man poses as a state trooper to shame someone who littered.

Police said the unidentified man was driving a red pickup truck with a dash-mounted flashing blue light when he stopped the woman and told her he was an off-duty Maine State Police trooper.

The impersonator never threatened the woman, Toman said.

"He just said, 'I stopped you because you threw a cigarette butt out the window in Augusta,'" Gardiner Police Chief James Toman said. "He didn't ask her for any identification and he certainly didn't show her any identification."

Just what the nanny state needs: freelancing nannies.


[Via Obscure Store]

the weed on the bus goes round and round, all around town

A couple folks complained about an Oly Hempfest ad on the side of an Intercity Transit bus. The agency isn't backing down, though; the ad clearly represents political speech, even though it includes--horrors!--a photo of a cannabis leaf. What's out of bounds:

Intercity Transit forbids advertising on its buses that is obscene, defamatory, racist, sexist or "that is directed at producing imminent lawless action and is likely to produce such action." The agency does not endorse any issue or product advertised on its buses, the exception being self-promotion, according to its policies. All political and issue advertisements identify who sponsored them.

If looking at a pot leaf promotes "imminent lawless action," then what will we make of all those anti-drug ads sporting drug paraphernalia? Consider the top half of a recent print ad, which, at first (and potentially only) glance, has a message bound to boomerang:

Today's weed: twice as efficient!

privacy? who wants it?

Enterprising prosecutors are now trolling MySpace and Facebook for embarrassing photos that might, say, prove that you weren't exactly remorseful for that drunken crash. In a related story, enterprising investigators, similarly fishing for leads, were blocked, at least until they found a warrant, by a librarian with more knowledge of the Patriot Act than the overzealous flatfeet.

"The lead detective said to me that they need to take the public computers, and I said 'OK, show me your warrant and that will be that,' " said Flint, 56. "He did say he didn't need any paper. I said, 'You do.' He said 'I'm just trying to save a 12-year-old girl,' and I told him 'Show me the paper.' "

Privacy is a gold standard of the library experience: you're supposed to be able to check out books or surf the web without the government reading over your shoulder.

Judith Flint's fellow librarians strongly supported her, and rightly so. After all, privacy is a right. As long as MySpaceCadets and FaceBookies post every last loving photo of their inebriated weekends, though--and, more frightening, as they start taking over positions of power--privacy is threatened, and will only become more threatened. Techno-wizardry is just too alluring.

To complete the triptych, consider what the Lacey Timberland Library now offers: the ability to check out the books you've reserved from other branches. They're shelved in a special section, and you take them home without any assistance from an employee, through the magic of self-checkout. It seems flawless, until you realize that now anyone who recognizes your first name and the first three letters of your surname can see that you're a secret Flashdance fan. It's easy: when I picked up my hold, I figured out that the books next to mine were my dad's. Wasn't malicious; his books were right next to mine, and I couldn't help noticing the covers.

I'm not saying everything you do or say or read is nobody's business. I'm a blogger, after all. But when you want something to be, will it?

Privacy. Convenience. I know where I'm placing my bet.

today's traffic links

Today's news:

1. A car flips over in Puyallup. Two die.

2. Left-lane slowpokes, your time has come.

3. In Bellingham, the pedicab.

4. As the city readies for the Olympics, Beijing's trying to cut pollution by taking cars off the road. So far, it's not working.

Today's opinion:

5. Posting more traffic signs might actually make us less safe.

Added:

6. Via Joe Carter, an economist tries to think his way to better traffic.

7. D.A. Ridgely's take on #5.

red light cameras: no deterrent this time

The Olympian is still optimistic, now that the cash is about to flow from Lacey's red light cameras.

Cameras have become a necessity given the epidemic of red-light violations in the South Sound region.

Greg Cuoio, Lacey city manager, defends the move to cameras, saying, “We’re not entering into this to generate revenue. It’s truly a safety issue.”

And that’s why red-light cameras are a good thing. If they prevent just one high-speed T-bone accident with injuries or death, they will be a success. And if they convince motorists to obey the law and stop for every red light, well, that’s an added bonus.

Tell that to the guy in the Terminix truck early this afternoon. I drove into the intersection at Pacific and College just as the light turned yellow. Fearing a short yellow, the kind cities institute to instigate offenses, I accelerated slightly, not going to be the chump with the ticket. Good thing, too. Terminix Truck Guy was running the light, camera be damned. He nearly rear-ended me. In the rearview, I saw him chatting on his cell phone, oblivious.

Yep. Those red-light cameras are the answer.

somnambulism and the nanny state

"Chicago sleepwalks into the surveillance society with 'intelligent' networked cameras."

"We are sleepwalking into a surveillance society."

First it was Chicago. Then came Seattle. Metropolis after metropolis marches blithely toward automated authoritarianism. Who will watch the watchers? Who will wake the watchers of the watchers?

where was the air marshal?

Man talking on cell phone refuses to hang up. Signal fouls up plane's avionics, causing tragic crash. Not exactly:

Joe David Jones, 50, was cited for disorderly conduct, Dallas police said.

The incident occurred during a Southwest flight from Austin to Dallas. “After multiple requests, the flight attendants were not successful in getting the passenger to get off the phone,” said Southwest spokeswoman Brandy King.

According to a Dallas police report, flight attendants had asked Mr. Jones to turn off his cell phone and he responded with, "Kiss my ---." When asked again, he stated, "Kiss my ---. Not happening," the report said.

He remained on the phone for about 20 minutes. The pilot radioed the incident to the Love Field tower and Dallas police were notified. Officers met Mr. Jones at the gate and he continued to "exhibit disorderly conduct," police said.

Because if they let one guy talk on his cell phone, they have to let everyone else, and then we'll have a plane full of cell phone talkers, who'll have to shout over the engine because they're sitting way in the back with the screaming babies, and nobody wants that.

[via Obscure Store]

fighting crime with math

Could we cut crime without resort to drama, political posturing, or needless injury and death? Cue mathematics [sub. req.]:

One of the earliest studies using this approach was led by Michael Batty of University College London. Since its inception in 1964, the Notting Hill carnival in London has grown to attract more than a million visitors each year. With vast crowds jammed into narrow streets, crime is inevitable - anything from pickpocketing and shoplifting to violent assault and worse. After three people were murdered at the event in 2000, the Greater London Authority commissioned a review of public safety and asked Batty to create a computer model of people's movements in an attempt to identify better crowd-management strategies. "We simulated the crowd movement around the parade and the exhibits," says Batty, "and used the model to test 'what if' scenarios for changing the parade route, or closing particular streets."

This led to the discovery that altering the parade route could significantly reduce the density of the crowds. "The circular parade route didn't let people easily cross it," says Batty. "This was the problem, as all the events were inside the route." Enlightened carnival organisers adopted the straighter route suggested by the computer analysis, and subsequent carnivals registered a big drop in both maximum crowd densities and the number of crimes committed.

Bowers's finding that burglaries spread like communicable diseases is another example of the power of computer modelling. It first emerged from work with her colleague Shane Johnson, completed four years ago. They studied data from the Merseyside region of the UK, containing information on locations and times of residential burglaries committed over 14 months within an area of about 26 square kilometres. This revealed that, following a given burglary, the likelihood of another was increased for the next two weeks for any house within about 200 metres, though the probability tailed off at greater distances and after that time had elapsed. This pattern of communicability of crime strongly mirrors the patterns that epidemiologists find with diseases that spread from one person to another. In the case of crime, Bowers and Johnson suspect, communicability arises simply because burglars have routines, and after one success they often continue in familiar territory nearby.

Seems a lot smarter than this approach.

red light cameras coming to Lacey this May

At the intersection of Sleater-Kinney and Pacific:

A City Council committee gave final approval Friday to activate the systems, after directing that drivers who run red lights receive warning notices for the first 30 days. Starting June 1, violators will be mailed $124 citations.

"This is going to go on for a long time," Councilwoman Ann Burgman said in support of the grace period. "We'll just get them settled in."

The start dates could be pushed back as the city makes final preparations, Police Chief Dusty Pierpoint said.

The city began exploring the use of the cameras in late 2005.

Pierpoint and council members have said they expect the program to be "revenue-neutral" and that the motivation is public safety, not getting money. They say drivers running red lights is a growing problem.

At least six other cities around the country told the same lie at the outset, but then succumbed to temptation, reducing yellow light times to boost earnings. That may not happen in Lacey--but there are many more reasons to distrust red light cameras. See here, for starters.

one blogger's vigilante justice

Stories like this are going to become more and more common, as more people are empowered to use technology to aid the authorities or simply seek justice for themselves. The Army of Little Brothers grows every day.

red light cameras redlighted

One of the best summaries of the red light camera debate is available from MSNBC today:

Last week, Dallas officials reviewed the numbers and decided that a quarter of the cameras they had installed to catch motorists running red lights were too effective. So they shut them down.

They are not alone. Faced with data showing that drivers pay attention to cameras at intersections — resulting in fewer ticketable violations and ever-shrinking revenue from fines — municipalities across the country are reconsidering red light cameras, which often work too well.

When they don't work, which is also often, they're either counterproductive or just too expensive. We're right back where we began.

(Longer-lasting yellow lights, on the other hand, are safe--and cheap.)

red light cameras make things worse

My skepticism about red light cameras only grows. A careful study of multiple datasets reveals a painful truth:

Rather than improving motorist safety, red-light cameras significantly increase crashes and are a ticket to higher auto insurance premiums, researchers at the University of South Florida College of Public Health conclude. The effective remedy to red-light running uses engineering solutions to improve intersection safety, which is particularly important to Florida’s elderly drivers, the researchers recommend.

The report was published this month in the Florida Public Health Review, the online journal of the college and the Florida Public Health Association.

“The rigorous studies clearly show red-light cameras don’t work,” said lead author Barbara Langland-Orban, professor and chair of health policy and management at the USF College of Public Health.

“Instead, they increase crashes and injuries as drivers attempt to abruptly stop at camera intersections. If used in Florida, cameras could potentially create even worse outcomes due to the state’s high percent of elderly who are more likely to be injured or killed when a crash occurs.”

Worse than useless. Counterproductive--and harmful.

[Via the inimitable Radley Balko]

how about banning anonymity?

If a certain legislator has his way, anonymous posting on a website--in Kentucky, however that works--will be against the law.

The bill would require anyone who contributes to a website to register their real name, address and e-mail address with that site.

Their full name would be used anytime a comment is posted.

If the bill becomes law, the website operator would have to pay if someone was allowed to post anonymously on their site. The fine would be five-hundred dollars for a first offense and one-thousand dollars for each offense after that.

So much for the grand American tradition of pseudonymous rabble-rousing.



[Bill available here. Via Radley Balko]