FamiLee Life

Post-Daylight Savings Reflections on Work and Sleep

WARNING -- This is a rambling entry, so be patient with my nonsequitars.

This weekend was daylight savings. Technically, it was setting the clock back to standard time, but we seem to refer to both seasonal time changes as daylight savings. A great review can be found at Wikipedia, which is fast becoming my new favorite website. It also just so happens that one of my first "academic" publications was on daylight savings.

After I had graduated college, I had no resume and no job. I had career immaturity or not much career decision and lacked focused ambition. That is, I was ambitious but not toward anything in particular. Well, I was lucky to get a job as a research technician at a sleep research center located at Brigham and Womans Hospital in Boston. I did not know it at the time, but it was one of the premiere sleep centers in the country. Circadian rhythms and melatonin as a sleep regulator were discovered there. My boss, Gary Richardson, was an endocrinologist who was on faculty at Harvard Medical. He had been trained by famed sleep researcher William Dement at Stanford.

This year of work was amazing. I was trained to interpret EEG patterns and score sleep waves, learned the basics of research design and methods, and was mentored in a way that I had not experienced in school. The world had opened up to me. Perhaps the most memorable experience is one that is completely unrelated to research but taught me about life. Around Christmast time, Gary took out all the lab assistants to a super fancy restaurant in Harvard Square. There were six of us and I recall the bill was around $400+ - which was/is a lot of money and I had never been treated so well. We had a full three course meal and even sampled different cognacs. As a working class kid, it taught me about the other side of life.

As a newbie to the field, I didn't do anything groundbreaking and I am sure I was not the best research assistant. Still, I tried hard and was motivated. I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to contribute two entries to the Encyclopedia of Sleep and Dreaming (edited by Mary Carskadan | 1993). One was on daylight savings time and the other was on sleep positions.

I am certain that this work experience, particularly the training and publications, got me into graduate school in psychology and I owe a great deal to these individuals. So, you see, daylight savings time always reminds me to be thankful for all those people who opened doors for me, even when I was not aware that I needed doors to be opened.

I also have remained fascinated by the concept of sleep - its function and process. It just so happens that the latest issue of Nature has a supplemental series of articles on sleep. The Washington Post also has published a report on these papers. If you get a chance, check out some of these readings.

Halloween Karaoke

On Saturday night, I was the karaoke jockey (kj) for a Halloween party that was at Christopher's tattoo artist's house (Charlie). It was a costume party and I was loathe to actually dress up. Here is what I came as...any guess? Well, think back to the mid-80s...think Courtney Cox in the Dancing in the Dark video...think Bruce Springsteen's album cover for Born in the USA. Yes, I brazenly came as Bruce! The Boss!

Read more to check out some photos from the evening...

Here is the party's host, Charlie, in the hot dog outfit with friends

Christopher as Axl Rose

Some guy, whom we called Dog Boy, engulfing the mic

Holly came as a Mardi Gras party girl

Ken keeping it real with some Elton John

Mike, my main man, in a wig he found on the couch.

Shame and Suicide

I just read a tragic story in the NYTimes about a Chinese American families in NYC who committed suicide.

Fred and Christine Wang, both 42, were found dead, along with their two children (ages 11 and 8), lying atop a mattress in their bedroom. According to police reports, it appears that they died of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by charcoal that had been burned in half a dozen pots and pans. It is speculated that shame over a business failure was the cause of suicide. The family had recently moved into the man's grandmother's apartment. Amazingly and sadly, the grandmother was unaware of what happened behind the bedroom door. She was found disoriented and was later hospitalized.

Suicide happens every day. It is estimated that there is approximately 30,000+ suicides annually (83 suicides per day; or 1 suicide every 17 minutes), with 12 of every 100,000 Americans killing themselves. Yet the Wangs did not fit the demographic profile of the typical suicide victim. That is, they were young (40s), married, non-White, educated. But this profile does not mean that they were immune. Far from it. Mental illness, extreme financial stress, and isolation are common psychosocial precursors to suicide.

Does the fact that they were Asian American add to the reasons for committing suicide? We can only speculate. Research suggests that shame and shame-proneness play a powerful role in the mental health and well-being of Asian Americans. Shame is a psychological correlate of collectivism and interdependence. In this regard, shame has good and bad effects. On the one hand, shame can motivate people to make changes in life and to engage in prosocial behaviors that strengthen a person's bond to the social group. On the other hand, shame can signify feelings of inadequacy, helplessness and hopelessness. Without the proper resources surrounding us, such as supportive friends/family and economic stability, the deleterious effects of shame can overwhelm us.

When I reflect upon the sad tragedy of the Wang family, I cannot help but feel more motivated to engage in scholarship and education that will impact the lives of Asian Americans, particularly those who are most in need of help.

Star Trek's Sulu Comes Out

In an article in the Star Tribune, I learned that George Takei came out in the current issue of Frontiers, a biweekly Los Angeles magazine covering the gay and lesbian community. It should be stated that Takei has been openly gay for years but it was the first time he has mentioned it to the press. Read another story in AfterElton.com.

Takei struggled with "feeling ashamed because you’re Japanese-American, and feeling like you’re different because of your [homosexuality]," he tells Frontiers. "And then [as you grow older], with reading, and talking to other people, your understanding of the situation starts to grow."

Until eventually, he says, "you come to realize 'This is who I am. And by gum, I’m not going to let it be a constraint!' In the same way that I’m not going to let the fact that I am a Japanese-American, who was unjustly incarcerated and grew up with that, be a constraint."

Also reported in AfterElton.com, Takei joins a short list--which also includes BD Wong (Law and Order) and Alec Mapa (Half & Half)--of openly gay Asian American actors.

Interestingly, there has been discussion in the past about the fact that Star Trek never addressed homosexuality in any of the television episodes or subsequent movies. Read more in the online article Gay "Trek".

It's been a big week of coming outs (Swoopes and Takei).

Lost and Found :: A Life Lesson Learned

I had an interesting lost and found experience last night that taught me a life lesson. The story begins two weeks ago when my friends and I decided to check out the Poodle Club which is a divey, neighborhood bar around the Longfellow neighborhood of Mpls. We had heard they have karaoke and we were feeling adventurous. Well, it was a nice time. We sang a few songs, chatted with some regulars, including a guy named James, and left in good spirits. The next morning, I realized I had left my favorite jacket at the Poodle. I went back to retrieve it but they said it was not there. The bartender recalled that someone had taken it. I was bummed.

The lost jacket. It was my favorite fall coat -- a grey colored fleece jacket made by North Face -- that I have not seen on anyone else. I checked their company website and it is no longer made or sold.

Move forward two weeks to last night. We return to the Poodle Club to try out some new karaoke songs. It is much more crowded but we still get in a few songs. I see James whom we met last time and buy him a drink. Unexpectedly, James asks us for a dollar. We ask him why he needs a dollar, but he doesn't explain. He just keeps asking. Ed says that a dollar can't even pay for bus fare and why not ask for $5. After briefly debating with him, James walks away.

As the night is winding down, we go to shoot one game of pool and James reappears to say goodbye. He's a nice enough guy, maybe a bit down on his luck, but not homeless or struggling. I give him a handshake and an A-frame guy hug and suddenly notice his jacket. Believe it or not, it was my lost jacket. I was certain. James had stolen my coat and was now acting all chummy with me, as if I would not recognize my coat! He leaves the Poodle Club.

I tell Mike that it's my jacket and he walks out of the bar to confront James. I pause a minute and then follow Mike. Outside, James is on his bicycle and Mike is talking with him. I get into the conversation and confront James. James denies it's my jacket. I tell him it is not cool to steal my coat, let me buy him a drink, and then deny it. The bouncer is looking on. Another man stands nearby observing. I turn to this guy and say aloud, "Can you believe this guy let's me buy him a beer and he steals my jacket." He replies, "That's just wrong. You need to get back your jacket." I continue to argue with James who keeps denying that it's my jacket. Finally, James says "Fine, you want this coat. Here you can have it," takes it off, and hands it over to me. He bikes off.

I put the jacket on. It is my jacket. I have no doubt. Mike and I walk back into the bar.

Afterwards, I reflected on this incident. I am so conflict avoidant that I was going to just take the loss and be pissed, but Mike stood up for me and gave me the courage to stand up to James. I learned a lesson that night. I learned that it is okay to engage in conflict sometimes and the outcome can be positive. I also was reminded of the importance of having a good group of friends to watch each other's back. Last night, I was fortunate to have a friend like Mike who had my back.

Sheryl Swoopes, WNBA, and Coming Out

The big news today has nothing to do with CIA leaks, hurricanes, or the war in Iraq. Instead, it is the announcement that Sheryl Swoopes, reigning WNBA MVP player of the year, came out as a lesbian, as reported by ESPN. She is the most visible, most popular current athlete in a major league professional sport to come out as gay. I must say that she also did it with confidence, comfort, and happiness. She did it her way and I am proud of her for it.

My graduate student, Brooke, has done research on the coming out process and her findings on a community/college sample of gay/lesbian/bisexuals suggest that individuals with a positive GLB identity and who feel accepted in their outness have higher levels of well-being than individuals with a positive GLB identity but who have not come out or do not feel accepted in their outness.

To me, Sheryl Swoopes seems to fit into the former group of individuals. I hope America at large and particularly her fans and teammates continue to accept and admire her for her achievements on and off the court.

Read her ESPN Magazine story (told in first person). Here are some snippets.

My reason for coming out now isn't to be some sort of hero. It's not something that I want to throw in people's faces. I'm just at a point in my life where I'm tired of having to pretend to be somebody I'm not.

To be me.

CIA Leak, Rove, Libby, and Cheney: A Case of GroupThink?

I've become a bit absorbed lately in the whole CIA Leak investigation [see NYTimes or WashingtonPost]. Here is a thought experiment that came to mind while watching Carson Tucker on MSNBC last night. On the show, Tucker argued that it would be stupid and uncharacteristic for Cheney and company to made such an intentional slip in releasing Valeria Plame Wilson's identity as a CIA operative. But is it unrealistic to assume that it could happen? In fact, this very well might be a case of groupthink. In which case, it makes complete sense how such a gaff could have occurred in the White House.

Groupthink is a term coined by psychologist Irving Janis in 1972 to describe a process by which a group can make bad or irrational decisions. In a groupthink situation, each member of the group attempts to conform his or her opinions to what they believe to be the consensus of the group. In a general sense this seems to be a very rationalistic way to approach the situation. However this results in a situation in which the group ultimately agrees upon an action which each member might individually consider to be unwise (the risky shift). Janis' original definition of the term was "a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members' strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action."

Moreover, here is what Janis considers the antecedent conditions of groupthink. As I read through this list, I became more compelled by the evidence. To me, these characteristics describe the Bush-Cheney cronyism

* Insulation of the group
* High group cohesiveness
* Directive leadership
* Lack of norms requiring methodical procedures
* Homogeneity of members' social background and ideology
* High stress from external threats with low hope of a better solution than the one offered by the leader(s)

Each characteristic fits with the current Bush-Cheney administration. This is a very exclusive group who are all cronies. They are highly cohesive in their voice and actions. In fact, they seem to pride themselves on the tight cohesion. Cheney-Rove-Bush are a very directive leadership group. The leadership consists of wealthy White men with the same conservative mindset. The post-9/11 trauma and assault and seemingly no enemy (or external threat) to which to retaliate against. Hm...seems to be to be ripe conditions for groupthink.

Perhaps this cartoon (taken from David Myers' excellent Social Psychology Textbook) best sums up the situation.

What Rice Can't See (Post Op-Ed)

Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post wrote a wonderful op-ed piece today about Condi Rice, following up on my earlier morning post. Read the full piece right here -- What Rice Can't See.

It's as if Rice is still cosseted in her beloved Titusville, the neighborhood of black strivers where she was raised, able to see the very different reality that other African Americans experience but not to reach out of the bubble -- not able to touch that other reality, and thus not able to really understand it.

Civil Rights and Condi Rice: What If...

A photograph of Condi Rice? I know what you are thinking...why would Rich put up a photo of the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice? Has he gone crazy? Is he coming out as a Republican? Well, I am not crazy and I am not switching parties. I was intrigued by an interview with her that revealed some childhood experiences that likely affected who she is today (and how she thinks about things). In this respect, it is a lesson in cultural socialization -- which is what I study in my research on Asian American immigrant, refugee, adopted, and U.S.-born children.

Secretary of State Rice returned to her home state of Alabama and shared some memories of her childhood, which includes having been friends with one of the girls who was killed in the infamous Birmingham church bombing that helped spark the Civil Rights movement. I was most struck with the following comments that she made, as reported in the New York Times.

Ms. Rice said she did not learn about the difficulties encountered by her father, a prominent minister, in trying to vote until she was a professor of international relations at Stanford.

Ms. Rice said she also wished she had talked more with an aunt who earned a doctorate in Victorian literature in the 1950's from the University of Wisconsin, but who had difficulty finding a place to live while she studied there.

After reading the excerpt, I started to wonder if Ms. Rice would have a different attitude about racial and world politics if her family had spoken more honestly and openly with her about the challenges and difficulties of growing up Black in American in the 1960s. Might it have affected her differently if her parents had racially inculcated her by talking about their experiences with racism? Might she have developed a different outlook or chosen a different course in life? Put bluntly, would she still have become the ardent Republican who downplays the need for affirmative action and advocates for the Iraq War or would she have become a moderate/liberal Democrat with a different understanding of living in a racially diverse world? Perhaps there is still time to change...

A Saturday in Minneapolis with Friends

Saturday was a beautiful, action packed day, from morning straight till the next morning. It is the kind of day that you can't do every weekend because it is exhausting but it is good to do from time to time to keep things interesting and, more importantly, to remind you of the fortune of having good friends. There is a lot to do in Minneapolis and this was a great example of the diversity of things to experience with those ya love.

It began with a day trip to Afton Apple Orchards where my friends and I explored the corn maze and then picked some apples. It was a perfect Autumn day to be outside - crisp air, blue skies, whispy clouds, and great foliage. Here is a photo of my friend, Christopher, with his son, Ty, in the corn maze -- a 10 acre labyrinth. On the way home, we stopped for lunch at this quirky restaurant called Professor Java's in Hastings.

Then, later in the evening, I went to watch some Golden Gloves amateur boxing at Uppercut Gym. My friend, Sarah, works at the gym as a trainer and also is fighter (tho' she didn't fight this night). I must confess that I love watching boxing and similar combat style fights (K1, Ultimate Fighter, Muay Thai). I attribute this affection to spending many nights in front of the TV with my father watching Ali, Leonard, Duran, Holmes, Hearns et al. fight. Because of the language barrier between us, it was a way to bond without words. But back to this story...I arrived late, but caught the last three bouts. I had never seen a knockout before and was lucky to witness one this night. In the last fight, it was a classic match up between a taller boxer and a shorter fighter. The fighter was much more aggressive and set the pace. The boxer could not set his jabs and keep distance. In the 3rd round, the fighter scored a knockdown but it looked like a slip. When the boxer got up, however, it was clear that his legs were not under him. Shortly thereafter, the fighter hit him solid in the head and the boxer went down for good. The referee stopped the fight. It was impressive.

By now, it was just around 9 PM, so Mike and I decided to grab a drink at the U Otter in Northeast Mpls. For those who don't know, the U Otter is a tiny hole in the wall bar that has karaoke most nights. It's an unusual mix of young hipsters and older Minnesota regulars (aka big, White farmer types). Mike and I were the diversity quota for the night. No one was singing when we got there, so we put in a few songs that we had workshopped the previous week (i.e., practiced privately to make sure we could sing the songs). I sang "Ziggy Stardust" by Bowie and "Hand in My Pocket" by Morrisette (in honor of my friend 'stine).

Afterwards, the evening ended with a concert at the Varsity Theater.

We met up with a group of friends and watched an amazing performance by American Analog Set. This is an Austin, TX based band that plays some of the tightest, hippest, melodic music around. Check out some of their demo recordings. I was hypnotized by the music. Just a great performance. It reminded me of those youthful days back in HS and college when I was just so into music that it was my identity. Nowadays, I just can enjoy it without it defining me.

Got home late, slept in late, and had a lazy Sunday morning with (no surprise) the Sunday New York Times.

Sidebar -- Special thanks to Hee Won for touching up the blurry photo of Ty running up the hill. Such a cute boy.

Build Me Up, Buttercup!

Here is my latest purchase. I am so happy with it. It is a BluDot Buttercup chair that I recently purchased directly from BluDot, which is a local furniture design company. It is not my first BluDot purchase, but it is my most pleasing one. I first coveted the chair a year or so ago when I saw it for sale at a local store - RedLureRed - in Uptown. Then, a few weeks ago, I went to the BluDot 2nd Sale which is a once a year warehouse sale of refurbished, returned, and slightly damaged furnishings. I saw the chair for sale and immediately bought it for half the original price! I was so happy. Sadly, I went home to assemble the chair to the base and I noticed it was damaged on the seat. I didn't notice it initially because it was wrapped up and boxed. Fortunately, I was able to return the chair for a full refund. Still, I was disappointed. Then, as I was leaving, I was offered the chair for essentially the same sale price but brand new. However, I would have to wait a few weeks for a new shipment to arrive. Lucky for me, the shipment arrived early and I am now the proud owner of the chair. It is a surprisingly comfortable chair, given that it is wood, that is angled to accomodate the curve of your back. It also swivels!

If you love this sort of design or design in general, check out the blog of Diego Rodriguez. He is a "design thinker" at IDEO, as well as an instructor at Stanford's d-school. Now, this is a job to envy.

Porky from Little Rascals Passes Away

Gordon Lee, 71, the chubby child actor who played Spanky McFarland's little brother, "Porky,'' in "Little Rascals'' comedies, has died. He died Sunday in a Minneapolis nursing home.

Produced in the 1930s, the Little Rascals originally aired on TV in the 1950s. The show remained in reruns through the 1990s and probably can still be seen on TVLand or other cable channels. I grew up watching this show on Saturday mornings in the 1970s. Most people remember Spanky, Alfalfa, and Buckwheat (made famous in SNL skits by Eddie Murphy). Porky was the cute, affable, chubby kid brother who was always wanting to hang out with the bigger boys.

You may read the full story on the Star Tribune.

High School Rankings For What It's Worth

Did you attend a public high school? Did you feel you got a decent education? Well, how does the public high school that you attended rank on the Challenge Index which calculates a ratio of the number of Advanced Placement and/or International Baccalaureate tests taken by all students at a school in 2004 divided by the number of graduating seniors? Check out the Challenge Index. It is discussed in an article published last May in the Washington Post.

As for me, I went to a parochial, Catholic high school, so it would not be ranked in the Challenge Index -- which only assessed public schools. In HS, I never once took an AP or IB course. I also never took calculus or chemistry. Had I not gotten kicked out after my junior year, I still would not have taken any AP/IB or calculus/chemistry in my senior year. I also tested relatively poorly on the SAT. Nevertheless, my class rank was fairly high (out of about 300 students), largely due to my taking the honors courses and getting decent enough grades. As I've commented before in one of my first posts, I was fortunate to have been accepted at Simon's Rock College of Bard and subsequently Boston College, all without a high school diploma and with crappy SAT scores.

That said, I felt I had a very strong public elementary/middle school education and Catholic HS education. Among the most important things taught to me were critical thinking and writing skills. I was fortunate to take a freshman English course that required us to write a 15 page term paper with at least 25 references. I still remember the topic -- it was on Shakespeare's Globe Theater. Many students graduate college without ever having written more than 5 pages! I also took numerous humanities, theology, and philosophy courses that encouraged me to think outside the box. Plus, I had a great art teacher whose class was a breath of fresh air, especially needed when I felt I was suffocating in high school -- which was often.

So, for what it's worth, feel free to scroll through the rankings to see where your school might be ranked and wonder if it has helped you out in any way.

Ethnic Beauty Pageants: Pros and Cons

I came across an article in the Washington Post about the rise of ethnic beauty pageants. I'm really not sure what to make of them.

On the one hand, I agree with my colleague who was quoted as saying:

The shows are "a validation of beauty and culture that's not seen in the American mainstream," said Shilpa Dav, an assistant professor of American studies at Brandeis University. "It gives a lot of confidence to women because they are seeing other women who look like them, and their looks are validated," said Dav, who helped produce a 1997 documentary of the Miss India Georgia pageant.

On the other hand, beauty pageants in and of itself is contested territory especially among feminists and cultural critics who point out the problems with objectification and the privileging of assimilation.

"In Little Tokyo beauty contests in the '90s, the women who were selected turned out to have more Caucasian features," said Kyeyoung Park, an associate professor of anthropology and Asian American studies at the University of California at Los Angeles. "They tended to select more mixed-race people."

Dav attempts to clarify the tension.

Dav said the disconnect might reflect tension between old-world immigrant parents and their Americanized children, many of whom intermarry. "The first generation wants to see in their children a continuity of the place from which they came," she said. "The second generation has to deal with being a minority among people who don't understand their home, and that's the dichotomy."

I think it is a bit more complicated than a dichotomy of generations. It is not just immigrant vs. American born conflict. It is the challenge of finding a third space, so to speak, in which ethnic minorities in this country can claim a sense of place and home. To challenge old White standards and to create new standards of beauty, competence, intelligence and goodness. In this regard, pageants and any type of competition that rewards effort and achievement (as well as straight out physical beauty) may be worthwhile endeavors.

Toward this end, I wish pageant organizers and contestants would name the competitions Miss Vietnamese American, Miss Liberian American, Miss Indian American...rather than Miss Vietnam USA, Miss Liberia USA, Miss India USA. The current titles imply foreigners competing in the USA. I also hope they do not simply replicate or attempt to transfer in toto traditional cultural standards and expectations from Vietnam, Liberia, India. It will be important for us, as a community, to critically examine our motives and assumptions and to not seek imitation or replication. Rather, to create something new, something uniquely defining as Americans of diverse ethnic and cultural heritages. Plus, someday, perhaps I will be the Bob Barker of the Miss Korean American pageant or a contestant in the Mr. Korean American pageant.

Publish (in a High Impact Journal) or Perish

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published an article on the controversy surrounding the Impact Factor. For those in academia, the Impact Factor is as important (if not more important) than the "publish or perish" mantra frequently invoked during the tenure process. For those outside of academia or seeking to enter academia, the Impact Factor is a quantitative measure of journal prestige. It is a reputed means to assess the quality of research that one is doing and publishing. If you publish in a high impact journal, it is assumed you are doing important research. High impact journal publications, in turn, will help with tenure, promotion, and merit pay raises. It also can be (and has been) used to promote the quality and increase the visibility of a department faculty and subsequently raise the department and university prestige. You can see the sudden salience of this one simple number.

The ISI Impact Factor is a simple formula derived from the number of citations to a journal article over the last 2 years. Specifically, it is the following:

Impact Factor for Journal X = Citations in 2004 to articles published in X in 2002 and 2003 / Articles published in X in 2002 and 2003

According to the article, [i]n June, ISI issued its latest set of impact factors, for 5,968 science journals and 1,712 social-science journals...[M]ore than half of all science journals listed by ISI score below 1.

To put this in perspective to my subdiscipline of counseling psychology, our flagship journal, Journal of Counseling Psychology, had an impact rating of 1.629 in 2002. Because I recently went through the tenure process and, as such, had to note the impact ratings of my journal articles, I happen to know that JCP has had a pretty steady impact rating between 1.0 and 1.5 over the past decade. From my take on things, this is a pretty good impact rating -- above the 50th percentile and tops among counseling journals.

The problem with the Impact Rating formula is that it is easy to distort and the article addresses the numerous ways in which distortion can occur (e.g., self-citations, more review articles and editorials, even subtle editorial extortion).

The other problem with the Impact Rating formula is that it favors basic lines of research over applied research, at least in the field of psychology. How? Psychology is composed of a number of substantive areas (e.g., developmental, social, cognition, biological) and a few applied areas (e.g., clinical, school, counseling). It is more common for applied areas to cite basic research from substantive areas, because this is the nature of applied science. However, it is less common for a substantive area to cite aplied research. What happens then is higher Impact Ratings among substantive subdisciplines of psychology (compared with applied areas).

Despite these problems, I think the Impact Factor provides an incentive for disciplines to monitor themselves. In counseling psychology, I am concerned that we are growing increasingly insular in our research. That is, we need to look beyond our own discipline and stop navel gazing. We need to conduct research that looks toward the horizon by becoming more interdisciplinary. We need to find new ways to market our important research to the broader psychological, behavioral science, and biological science communities. Otherwise, I worry about the future and viability of our profession.

Finding Home: 50 Years of International Adoption

On Monday, American RadioWorks (part of APM/MPR) will broadcast their feature on the 50th anniversary of international adoption. Click HERE to download or listen to the podcast and read the transcripts.

In the past decade, the number of foreign children adopted by Americans has nearly tripled to more than 20,000 a year. Most come from poor and troubled parts of the world, and a life in America offers new hope. But it also means separation from their birth culture. Fifty years of experience with international adoption has led to new approaches in bringing up a multicultural child, but the success of international adoption brings perils, too. The past few years have seen an explosion in adoption groups and companies competing for clients, often over the Internet. Finding Home: Fifty Years of International Adoption explores the pull of adoption across lives and borders.

If you want to read or listen to the piece in which I am briefly interviewed (along with my good friend Kim Park Gregg who spearheaded this great piece) click on Korean Adoptees Remember.

I hope you find this broadcast series informative and transformative. And by the way, please excuse the smarmy photo of me on the website.

Getting into Grad School Gets Harder: GRE Revisions

As reported in the New York Times, E.T.S., the NJ-based company who administers the SAT and GRE, announced that they will be revamping the Graduate Record Exam by making it much longer (from 2.5 hours to 4 hours), not reusing items, eliminating the computer adaptive system currently in use, and increasing security to prevent cheating. These changes will go into effect next October.

One reason for this update is the rash of cheating incidences that occurred in China and Korea a few years ago. Approximately 25% of GRE test takers are foreigners.

In 2002, as reported in the NYTimes, an undetermined number of students in China, Taiwan and South Korea raised their G.R.E. verbal scores by logging on to Web sites in those countries and memorizing questions and answers posted by previous test takers. Later that year, two Columbia University undergraduates were arrested for using high-tech transmitters to send out test questions.

I remember this event because dept faculty received a university memo about this breach and we had to look long and hard at applicants from these countries. We had to compare their TOEFL scores with the GRE verbal scores to see if the regression lines were similar or appeared similar. I made some international telephone calls to a few applicants to evaluate their English speaking and comprehension skills. It was an unfortunate event that jaded some faculty, I am sure.

Ironically, this news item corresponds with my earlier post today about the Korean American perpetuation of the model minority myth. The emphasis on education is so strong and the stakes so high that, unfortunately, it leads some to cheat to beat the system. I wonder how the Kim sisters might account for this aspect of the obsession with educational achievement?

Leave it to Koreans to Perpetuate the Model Minority Curse

Two Korean American sisters were featured in the New York Times because they recently wrote a book called Top of the Class: How Asian Parents Raise High Achievers - and How You Can Too. What is this book? Well, the title says it all. Here is a quote from the article.

In "Top of the Class" the Kim sisters advise parents who want successful children to raise them just as the Kims did - in strict households in which parents spend hours every day educating their children, where access to pop culture is limited, and where children are taught that their failures reflect poorly on the family

I have not read the book and I really have no interest in it. Here's why...

1) The book clearly perpetuates the model minority stereotype about Asian Americans as high achievers. It assumes that all Asian Americans are successful and overlooks the thousands of children who are struggling.

2) The other insidious problem with the model minority stereotype is that it wedges Asian Americans between the success of Whites (and past generations of European immigrants) and African Americans. If Asian immigrants can succeed in this society, why can't Blacks? It over-simplifies the issue and allows Whites to not have to address structural problems with society.

3) It glorifies neo-Confucian parenting without addressing the downsides to this type of parenting. It glosses over the conflicts that children experience as they try to negotiate multiple cultures and seemingly conflictual demands.

4) It over-emphasizes educational success and consequently downplays the importance of other aspects of childhood and human development, such as learning to work well with others, giving back to the community, being creative, taking risks, etc.

The only thing from the interview which seems reasonable is the following:

Part of their motivation for writing the book, the sisters say, was to counter the assumption that Asian students perform better simply because they are smarter. "My sister and I are not exceptionally gifted," said Dr. Abboud. "We're O.K. This is something anyone can do. It doesn't take a lot of money or private schools just to get kids learning on a daily basis."

Fortunately, the reporter also interviewed Dr. Kyeyoung Park of UCLA to disabuse the book's emphasis

"Often I will see Asian-American kids become lost when they get to the university," said Kyeyoung Park, an associate professor of anthropology and Asian studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, who teaches many first-generation Asian students. "They feel disoriented, because they realize they've been sheltered and the world is not as their parents said it was."

We need to stop essentializing cultures and start acknowledging the complexity of human lives.

Pass the Neti, Not the Tissue

When I was a kid, I was the classic immigrant's child. Not only did I not use the dishwasher (read previous post), I also rarely used tissue. I just always sniffled and thought it was normal. Little did I know back then that I had allergies! Move ahead a few years and my discovery of the joys of Claritin and Flonase medication. The Flonase in particular was amazing (nothing like steroids). Finally, the joy of breathing through both nostrils! Yet despite this medical advance, I would prefer something that was not eating away slowly at my nasal passages.

Well, a few friends of mine (Me-K, Ken, and more recently Holly) have been recommending sinus irrigation as an alternative method. It's based on yoga practices in which you pour warm saline water into one nostril and allow it to flow out the other nostril. Similar to when you get water up your nose when swimming but less stinging because it is not chlorinated and cold. I was very hesitant but did some online reading and thought I'd give it a try when I recently had a cold and had sinus congestion.

Let me tell you now, sinus irrigation is the new way to go! Try the neti approach. A little self-experimentation should convince you of it's value. Helps clear your sinuses of allergens and mucus and prevents colds.

So, pass the neti, not the tissue.

Immigrants and Dishwashers

This is not my dog nor my dishwasher but it's a great photo to accompany today's entry on why immigrants don't use dishwashers. The Washington Post recently wrote about this phenomenon and UMN historian Donna Gabaccia is quoted. See the full article titled Washing Their Hands of the Last Frontier by Phuong Ly. It begins so elegantly...

A couple of months ago, in the privacy of his Reston townhouse, Alan Chien made a final break from cultural tradition, a guilt-filled decision he has yet to share with his parents. He used his dishwasher. He knows his parents will not understand.

Other great cultural observations...

If they have a dishwasher -- and many do, because it is standard equipment in most homes -- it becomes a glorified dish rack, a Tupperware storage cabinet or a snack-food bin. It's never turned on.

As a teenager, she [Grace Rivera-Oven who is Andres' daughter] got a friend to teach her how to operate the dishwasher -- "She was white; I figured she knew how." Before her mother got home from work, she would run a load. These days, she can use the dishwasher anytime she wants. Even so, she feels as if she's missing something. That's why every Saturday morning, she does the breakfast dishes by hand with her 10-year-old daughter, Amalia.

I confess that I am the child of immigrants and I rarely use my dishwasher. But like Rivera-Oven, I was fascinated by the machine and marveled when my White friends' moms would use it so casually. I thought quietly to myself that they must be wealthier than my family because I was always told how using the dishwasher wasted money. I think I finally figured out how to use it when I went off to college. And of course, I had the classic experience of using regular dishwashing liquid! Nowadays, I use it only when I host large dinner parties which is infrequent enough that I sometimes forget I have dishes still in there! However, I do not use it to dry my dishes which seems to be the most common use for it among Korean immigrants at least.

Here is another confession -- I actually enjoy washing the dishes. Plus, I don't have lots of kitchen supplies and find it easier to clean dishes as I cook. Washing dishes by hands has a calming, meditative quality to it. I use it as a time to slow down the day and to reflect on nothingness -- which is quite a pleasant experience.

In fact, in Morita therapy (a Japanese form of psychotherapy), one of the interventions to overcome neurotism is to not do anything for 3-7 days. Just stay in bed and do nothing. Then, after a few days, you are allowed to walk once or twice around the yard and to do mundane household chores like washing the dishes! Not too many of different activities though, just a few. The purpose? To begin to realize the little ways in which we are connected to the world around us and to begin to move our attention away from ourselves, to shift away from self-absorption which is believed to be the root of neuroses.

So, go home, cook a garlic meal, wash those dishes! It's good mental health!

For the Love of Garlic!

Okay, as you have obviously noted by now, I love reading The New York Times. My new favorite column of the week is The Minimalist (aka Mark Bittman) in the Food/Wine section. In fact, he was recently Q&A'd and had some great cooking tips.

But onto garlic! A couple of weeks ago, Bittman wrote about garlic [The Love for 50 Cloves of Garlic]. Specifically, he discussed the new trend toward buying peeled garlic. It just so happened that I recently had purchased a big 3 lbs. jar full of garlic from Costco (incidentally, one of the places that he suggested to buy garlic).

After making this purchase, I realized...what the hell am I going to do with this much garlic. Well, here is what I did. First, I put half the garlic in a freezer safe container, used my Foodsaver to vacuum seal it, and promptly froze it. I check in on them from time to time, like fish in an aquarium, and it seems to be working -- no freezer burns so far. Second, I gave a big sandwich bag full of garlic to my friend Holly. Third, I complained to Ken who had made a similar purchase and was puzzled by how to use up all this garlic. Fourth, I started to use my great Williams-Sonoma garlic press and discovered that this garlic tastes amazing. It has a sweet but strong aroma that leaves a wonderful flavor on your tongue. I have used pressed garlic on grilled halibut but don't use too much b/c it will overpower the fish. Fifth, I began to use whole cloves in my spaghetti sauce, curry, and everything else. Simply roasting garlic as a side dish is amazing too. It tastes great. Sixth, I discovered that if you eat about 6-8 whole garlic cloves, your morning trip to the bathroom will become memorable (hahaha). Okay, too much information, I know...

My new cooking goal is to learn to make garlic soup. If anyone has an easy but great recipe, pass it along for the love of garlic!

Here is one recipe that I found online....

Garlic Soup
Serves 4

1 whole head garlic
6 cups chicken broth
1 medium onion, chopped
1 tablespoon each butter and olive oil
Pinch of saffron
Salt & pepper to taste
4 large slices French bread, toasted
4 poached eggs

Separate the cloves of garlic and put them, unpeeled, into a saucepan with the chicken broth. Cover tightly and simmer 1 hour. Strain the broth into another pot and slip off the garlic skins when they are cool enough to handle. Saute the onion in the butter, oil, and seasonings until soft. Put the garlic, onion, and 2 or 3 cups of the broth into a blender, process until smooth, and combine with the rest of the broth. Heat briefly to blend flavors. When ready to serve, float a slice of toast and a poached egg on top of each bowl of soup.

Big Girls Don't Cry (Or Do They?)

There is a very interesting article in The New York Times today about the appropriateness of women crying in the workforce and they interviewed a couple of psychologists on this subject. It is a worthwhile read. Here are some quotes from the article that are worth a ponder.

For reasons both biological and social, scientists and sociologists say, women are more inclined than men to feel the urge to cry when they are frustrated. Yet Martha Stewart is not the only woman executive who expects her underlings to remain dry-eyed.

Some women pinch their skin, bite their lips or breathe deeply to stem tears while at work. Advice on the Society for Women Engineers' Web site, swe.org, suggests anticipating and rehearsing difficult situations. An article about crying on Womensmedia.com, advises emotional detachment: "Compartmentalizing feelings is also a good skill to learn. Practice not acting on a feeling you have."

Men learned this lesson [to not cry at work] back in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when the Industrial Revolution structured the workplace and the workday, and required a disciplined work force, said Tom Lutz, the director of the M.F.A. writing program at the California Institute of the Arts and the author of "Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears." Factory managers trained their workers to be calm and rational, the better to be productive. "You don't want emotions interfering with the smooth running of things," Mr. Lutz said.

Women for the most part did not receive this particular kind of on-the-job training. Nor did they usually learn, as boys did, that it was acceptable to express frustration in other ways.

"Men are allowed to be more direct," said Marianne LaFrance, a psychology professor at Yale University. "They can pound table tops and yell and throw something against walls and do various kinds of physical acting out. Women's mode of expression is supposed to be more passive, more childlike." She continued, "If women could act out like men, there would probably be less tears."

Nature may also make women more prone to tears than men, he said, explaining that both boys and girls cry about the same amount until the age of 12. But by the time women reach 18, they are crying four times as much as men, said Dr. Frey, who has conducted research on behavioral, personality and genetic aspects of crying and who has also studied the chemistry of tears.

Bear Bile, Death of a Farmer, and the Diaspora of Koreans in China

There was a news item in Reuters today about a Chinese bear bile farmer in Jilin province (northeastern China) who was killed by the bears. Based on the name of the farmer (Han Shigen), I believe he might be Korean. Now, you might be wondering what is a "bear bile farm"? It just so happens that I visited one of them in this very region of China back in 2001.

These are farms that raise black bears for their bile. Bile is used in Chinese herbal medicine to cure fever, liver illness and sore eyes, as well as increase virility and promote long life. It gets ground up into a powder and made into pills, gels, candies, and even liquor (which is what I consumed while visiting)! At these farms, there are hundreds of black bears living in a zoo-like environment, except there also are holding pens where they can extract the bile. Here is a Humane Society report on this trade.

In practices decried by animal rights groups, bile is extracted through surgically implanted catheters in the bear's gall bladders, or by a "free-dripping" technique by which bile drips out through holes opened in the animals' abdomens.

I visited one as part of a tour while doing field research on ethnic Koreans living in an autonomous region of China just north of North Korea. It is a diaspora community which can trace their roots to the early 1900s. At one time in history, this region was a part of Korea (in fact, one of the three kingdoms) and many Koreans farmed on this land for centuries. During the Japanese occupation of Korea, Korean patriots also fled to this region to set up the Independence Movement. Other Koreans were relocated here (and throughout central Asia) by Stalin as part of the cold war games. By the end of the Korean War, Koreans were stuck here, unable to cross borders.

Amazingly, to this day, Koreans live relatively independent lives from the majority Han Chinese. There is little outmarriage, children attend school taught in Korean, and communities are segregated. You can tell which neighborhood is Korean or Han by the type of tile roofing. There even is a Korean university (YUST) in Yanbian - the largest city in this region - and I have conducted research at this school.

Yet the autonomy of Koreans in this region is threatened by government efforts toward sinicization (or assimilation into Chinese culture). More and more Han are moving into this region and taking over local politics. There is evidence of increasing ethnic tension and conflict, as well as bicultural fluidity among the younger generation -- an increasing number of whom are moving to larger cities in search of work and better opportunities.

Many in this region hope to one day help in the reunification of the two Koreas, as they believe they are best suited to aid in this effort. But I worry that this diaspora community will be dispersed once again as China seeks to reclaim land and gradually assimilate this community and culture.

Will the plight of ethnic Koreans in China be like that of the black bear...

Anodyne: An Academic Sanctuary for the Everyman

Okay, here is where I hide. Anodyne Coffeehouse is located at 43rd and Nicollet Ave South in Minneapolis, just a couple of miles from my home. I first heard about Anodyne when I moved to Minneapolis 5 years ago, but it was thanks to my friends Ken and Me-K that I finally found my way here this past summer. Since then, I've referenced this shop as where I tend to go on rainy days.

I decided to take a moments break in my writing to mention Anodyne because it is a wonderful spot for those seeking a respectful place to work, converse, meditate, and laugh (btw, they have great internet WiFi). It is an academic sanctuary for the everyman. I really believe that we need these sanctuaries in our lives -- places we can go that release us from neurosis, places we can go to enrich our souls, the perfect place to feed the mind.

p.s., Anodyne means "capable of soothing or eliminating pain."

Media Representations of the Hmong Community

This week, the Minneapolis Star Tribune is running a special series on rape of young children in the Hmong American community in the Twin Cities. These articles, Shamed into Silence, Culture Clash Can Stymie Help and Breaking the Silence, investigate the seemingly rising rate of gang-style rapes of young girls and the collective silence of these crimes within the community.

I have strong but very mixed feelings about this newspaper coverage. On the one hand, I am glad that this issue is being brought into public consciousness because there is a need for local government agencies and the Hmong/Asian American communities to become aware and to take action. On the other hand, I am frustrated by the one dimensional portrayal of the Hmong American community as unacculturated and full of problems.

For example, the title of the first article "Shamed into Silence" plays on numerous cultural stereotypes of Asian immigrants and refugees, such as the notion of shame and the view of Asians as silent and passive. Second, the reporters focus extensively on the impact of rape on the marriagability of the young girls as if this is the main issue ("By losing her virginity without marriage -- even violently, against her will -- she had violated a basic tenet of her Hmong culture"). Third, it reduces the problem down to a difference in cultures, as if Hmong culture condones this sort of behavior ("A clash of cultures may play a role in the crimes" and "Hmong girls often run away to escape traditional responsibilities at home -- cooking, cleaning and caring for their younger siblings"). Fourth, there is a tendency for the media to depict Hmong culture as primitive and backwards. The next quote really captures this false essentialized view of the Hmong community.

"Hmong have a highly patriarchal society. Girls who lose their virginity outside of marriage are devalued; the community scorns them and their families unless the girl marries the rapist. By contrast, some families and clans will rally to protect the males accused of rape or paying for child prostitutes."

Obviously, there is some truth in these words and characterizations, but it is overly simplistic to explain this growing tragedy to just "cultural differences." I worry that this type of media coverage will only further stigmatize the Hmong community. It continues to portray them as unassimilative and not contributing to society. Amazingly, not one of the articles addresses the poverty, racial barriers, and lack of opportunities that have contributed to this hostile reactive environment. It is the accumulation of these risk factors that increase the vulnerability of girls to run away and of boys to engage in delinquent behaviors.

That all said, I realize this was likely not the newspapers' intent. I am sure some of the reporters felt they were doing a community service and they are to some extent. I also am glad to see a number of leaders rising within the Hmong community to fight this growing crime, to address the inequities, and to advocate for the victims and community. So, I simultaneously find some hope in the media coverage. There also is some growing recognition that this nation has an obsession with White girls from the suburbs as the only newsworthy victims.

The most hopeful quote in the articles came from local law enforcement:

Until recently, the larger community hadn't shown an interest in solving the problem, said [Sgt. Richard] Straka, a former state Gang Strike Force officer who now works Hmong rape and prostitution cases for St. Paul police. "I don't know why. Maybe it's because they are Hmong. Maybe it's because these are not little white girls from the suburbs."

Minnesota Needs to Honor Daisuke Inoue

This is a photograph of the man who changed many of our lives (for better or worse). Daisuke Inoue is the founder of karaoke. To him, we owe many whiskey drinks!

I was never much into karaoke until I moved to Minnesota. I had karaoke'd in Korea and elsewhere (LA, SF, NYC), oftentimes while attending psychology conferences, but I had never had a group of friends who were collectively into karaoke. Then one day, as a group of us were sitting around Dulono's Pizza eating pizza and drinking pitchers of Newcastle, it was realized that we all loved karaoke. Well, first this led to singing in a friend's house. Then, it led to a Monday night at Chatterbox and the rest is history...culminating in the Norae Shanty.

But it's not just a bunch of Asian Americans who love karaoke in Minnesota. For whatever reason, Minnesota seems like a karaoke mecca. According to a story on MPR, in St. Cloud (tho' I've never been there), you can even record karaoke tracks!

So, I think it's high time for Minnesota to honor the man who started it all -- Daisuke Inoue.

Ig Nobel Award Winners

The winners of the 15th annual Ig Nobel Awards were announced last night. Of the many illustrious winners, one awardee is from the University of Minnesota! Go Golden Gophers! Disappointedly, however, no awards were given this year in the field of psychology. I now feel it is a personal albeit very, very distal goal of mine.

CHEMISTRY: Edward Cussler of the University of Minnesota and Brian Gettelfinger of the University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin, for conducting a careful experiment to settle the longstanding scientific question: can people swim faster in syrup or in water?
REFERENCE: "Will Humans Swim Faster or Slower in Syrup?" American Institute of Chemical Engineers Journal, Brian Gettelfinger and E. L. Cussler, vol. 50, no. 11, October 2004, pp. 2646-7.
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Brian Gettelfinger and Edward Cussler

I also appreciated the award in nutrition which went to Dr. Yoshiro Nakamats. The beauty of Dr. Nakamats' study is the self-experimentation methodology, which psychologist Seth Roberts has popularized in recent years.

NUTRITION: Dr. Yoshiro Nakamats of Tokyo, Japan, for photographing and retrospectively analyzing every meal he has consumed during a period of 34 years (and counting).
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Dr. Yoshiro Nakamats

The Value of Beer

This just off the Reuter News Service's Oddly Enough website...Now, if only the beer coaster also could keep the mug nice and frosty!

BERLIN (Reuters) - Fans of non-stop drinking may soon be able to cut down on time wasted ordering refills, thanks to a beer coaster that can tell when a glass is empty.

"They wanted to know if they could use it or make it themselves," he said. "The prototype cost about 84 euros to make one but if mass produced, it could be done for around 10 euros."

Ig Nobel Awards

The Annals of Improbable Research will award its 15th annual Ig Nobel Awards tomorrow (Oct 6)
I read about this award in the Chronicle of Higher Ed blog.

Tomorrow night's ceremony will feature a mini-opera about infinity, a Win-a-Date-With-a-Nobel-Laureate contest, and the group's traditional 24/7 lectures, in which scholars describe their fields of research first in 24 seconds and then in 7 words. A Webcast of the event, which will take place in Harvard's Sanders Theater, will begin at 7:15 p.m. U.S. Eastern time.

One of last year's awardees goes to Steven Stack (Wayne State) and James Gundlach (Auburn) for their study on the association between country music and suicide. There also was an awardee in psychology. Dan Simon (Illinois) and Christopher Chabris (Harvard) did a study on how easy it is for people to overlook the obvious (like a woman in a gorilla suit) when we are focused on something else. Click here to see the video of this experiment.

Check out the Ig Nobel website for past winners.

Sun Spots and Academic Hirings

I read this story on a couple of blogs about a massive hiring frenzy at Columbia University's Economics Dept and thought it was quite fitting for my department. For those interested, my department was granted authorization by the college dean to conduct multiple searches for junior and senior faculty. We are now in our second year of this process, having made a number of hires last year. Why hire so many people at once? Well, as with many academic departments, we anticipate a number of retirements in the next few years and are seeking to bridge this transition and avoid a large faculty gap by hiring outstanding faculty now. But an undertaking such as this one has many challenges and I found Columbia's solution to be novel and quite risk taking. It seems it's all about sunspots...or so to speak...read on...

When Michael Woodford was a young economics professor in the late eighties, he wrote a handful of seminal papers on a topic known as “sunspot” theory. The idea is that economies get stuck in a rut because of a breakdown in coordination. It seems that people will be productive only when those around them are also productive. Suppose, for example, that you live in a country of skilled, educated people where no one is doing much more than subsistence farming because the economy had recently tanked. (Think of an extreme version of the United States at the beginning of the Great Depression.) Even if you knew how to manufacture sophisticated products like computers, you wouldn’t do it. Why? Because no one would buy them. What good is a computer to a bunch of dirt farmers? For the same reason, none of your countrymen would manufacture anything either.

According to the theory, the only way out of this dilemma is to change everyone’s state of mind at once. The impetus could be anything, really—a new president, a change in the fortunes of a beloved sports team, even something as arbitrary as a spot on the sun. The key is that everyone has to believe that everyone else will suddenly start producing again. The expectation that the economy will improve becomes self-fulfilling.

In the case of Columbia, it was the hiring of Woodford from Princeton which eventually led to the hiring of ten new faculty! That is simply amazing. I hope we have similar success in our search efforts.

It also got me thinking about what other "sunspot" phenomena is out there in society, in the field of psychology, in my circle of family and friends, and in my own life...

Ed Bok Lee in Asian Pages

Check out the Korean Dream, Ed Bok Lee, featured in the latest issue of Asian Pages. Click on the News and Books links on the left column to see a close up photograph of Ed and to read the article on him.

Just another reminder to folks -- Ed's book release party for Real Karaoke People will be on October 15th at the Loft Literary Center at 7:30 pm. In addition to great artists reading their prose/poetry and showing their art, I will be there to dish out some Korean food and to warm up the mic for some real karaoke people in vivo!

Freakonomics and the Psychology of Six Degrees of Separation

I am a self-admitted creature of habit. We all are to some extent – habits are an acquired set of patterned behaviors that help us organize daily experiences and make life meaningful and productive. But I begin with this admission because I have one habit (or minor ritual) which is quite hard for me to break these days. A while back, I received a gift subscription to the New York Times Sunday paper and found myself enjoying Sunday mornings sitting at my dining room table with a hot coffee and the paper before me. Ever since childhood, I have always started with the sports pages (or comics which the NYTimes does not have) and I continue this habit. Then, I move onto the front page, etc. My reading dessert is the NYTimes Magazine – a delicious canopy of pop culture, world facts, interviews, and recipes. It was in this week's NYTimes Magazine that something caught my eye and got me thinking about the small world in which we live in.

Recently, the NYTimes Magazine expanded their usual offerings to include some high brow Funny Pages (the strip, true-life tales, and the Sunday serial) – which makes it tempting to start reading these pages first and sports second – and Freakonomics by Stephen Dunbar and Steven Levitt. The Freakonomics column appears biweekly and is drawn from the widely popular book with the same name and by the same authors. It is based on the research and musings of Levitt who is an economist by training but more an interdisciplinarian in practice. Levitt is interested in the big social issues of today (crime, divorce, abortion), as well as seemingly trivial points of interests (e.g., sumo wrestling) that sometimes intersect with the former (e.g., commonalities between real estate and the klu klux klan). Using clever logic, multivariate statistics, principles of economics and human behavior, and some outside the box thinking, Levitt (with the writing help of Dunbar) is able to find solutions and offer explanations to these problems. I encourage folks to check out his book or read his column in NYTimes Magazine.

It just so happens that I am one degree removed from Levitt. I’ve never met the man and likely never will meet the man, but here is my “it’s a small world” connection to him. Back when I was a post-doc at UC-Davis, I became friends with Tom, who also happens to be Korean American. Anyway, we were around the same age, had similar interests, and both were in academia. Over the years, I’ve kept in occasional contact with Tom and his wife, Irene. Now, fast forward a few years. I am now living in Minnesota and it just so happens that Tom grew up in a suburb of Minneapolis/St. Paul and went to high school in St. Paul. Well, this is the same school that Levitt attended. In fact, Tom and Levitt were very close friends. How do I know this bit of information? Well, in another “small world” moment, my friend Heather happens to have attended the same school, though a few years younger. I asked her if she knew my friend. She knew him a bit and then mentioned that he was good friends with Levitt!

I bring up this “six degree of separation” story because I find it occurring more and more in my life. Perhaps Levitt has a “freakonomic” explanation for six degrees of separation, but the idea is actually drawn from psychological research by Stanley Milgram.

In 1967, American psychologist Stanley Milgram devised a new way to test the theory, which he called "the small-world problem". He randomly selected people in the American Midwest to send packages to a stranger located in Massachusetts, several thousand miles away. The senders knew the recipient's name, occupation, and general location. They were instructed to send the package to a person they knew on a first-name basis who they thought was most likely, out of all their friends, to know the target personally. That person would do the same, and so on, until the package was personally delivered to its target recipient. Although the participants expected the chain to include at least a hundred intermediaries, it only took (on average) between five and seven intermediaries to get each package delivered. Milgram's findings were published in Psychology Today and inspired the phrase six degrees of separation. .

I am coming to believe that this small world phenomenon is even smaller when we restrict the social worlds in which we traverse to well-defined communities, such as the Korean American community. It is amazing that wherever I travel, I seem to meet a Korean American whom I know or knows me either directly, through common friends, or oftentimes through my parents. For example, when I moved to Minnesota, my parents mentioned that they happen to know someone here because this person’s brother was my father’s physician back in Connecticut! No sooner than a month after moving here, I met this individual at the local Korean church.

What might account for this phenomenon? I suspect there are a number of converging factors, including the defined waves of Korean immigration, the class of people who immigrate during these waves (e.g., well-educated, affluent, etc.), the role of the Korean church, the collectivistic nature of the neo-Confucian culture, the transnational nature of modern immigration, and the relative cohesiveness of Korean culture. But of course, this is all conjecture and speculation.

In reality, it would make for a great research study to identify, measure and test which factors accounts for the most variance in the six degees of separation scenario. In fact, I should email Levitt and ask him to give me the freakonomics perspective on six degrees of separation. Stay tuned!

Bob Mould, Minneapolis, and Me

I was surfing the web during my late lunch break and came across a new City Pages interview with legendary rocker, Bob Mould. Reading this article brightened my day and erased (almost) the unpleasantness of awakening to George Bush's voice.

You see, Bob Mould was one of the main reasons I was willing to move to Minneapolis and accept the job at the University of Minnesota. His music, particularly back when he fronted Husker Du, was my life jacket in the 80s and early 90s. Husker Du, Mould's subsequent work with Sugar and his solo stuff kept me afloat during those angst ridden, identity crisis moments of adolescence and young adulthood. The other reason to move to Minneapolis was my affinity and equally fond memories of listening to The Replacements. I thought to myself, "If these music giants came from Minneapolis, it must be a cool place to live!" I know, pretty crazy to have such a thing factor into a major career move, but it did. Of course, let's not kid ourselves, teaching at the University of Minnesota in the Dept of Psychology was itself an honor. Husker Du and The Replacements was just icing on the cake.

Check out Bob Mould's blog to keep up to date on his happenings.

An Early Awakening

I had the guys over last night for some late night poker and conversation. We played poker till past midnight, tho' the exact time escapes me. Afterwards, we got into a discussion about conceptions of art that lasted till 2:30 AM when I finally kicked them out of the house. I fell asleep shortly after 3:00. Fortunately, I slept a lot the night before, so I knew I could rebound okay in the morning.

I awoke, as usual, around 7:00 to NPR's Morning Edition but unfortunately it was not the voice of Cathy Wurzer or Steve Inskeep. Instead, it was the voice of George Bush announcing Harriet Miers, the White House counsel, as his next Supreme Court nominee. Let me tell you, there is nothing more displeasing than an early awakening to George Bush's voice. I need a nap to reset my day.