How credible are we?

Today on NPR the questions was “Should you be penalize for the actions of your family?” OK, I was pretty quick with a “Hell no!” Then the example they used was of the New York Times editor in Jerusalem, whose son has volunteered for the Israeli Army. The question became, can he be objective in his reporting?

Well to begin with I thought the first question was totally miss leading, and implied that a family member had done something egregious where someone needed to be penalized, and I didn’t think that was a fair representation of this situation.

That said, I found myself pulled in a number of ways by this dilemma. My first knee jerk reaction was he should be reassigned given the magnitude of hostilities between Israeli and its Arab neighbors, but then I had to take a step back. As the various experts banged away at the issues I could see the points they all were making, no matter what their viewpoint was.

I’m still not sure exactly how I feel about this, but I did start to put myself in the place of this father and son. In a way I’ve been there. I have certainly experienced the worried and pain of a parent whose child is in the military, and has been put in harm’s way. Many people have assumed that they knew how I would feel on a subject based on the fact that I have children in the military, one severely wounded in battle, or as a member of Soldiers’ Angels. Rarely have they been completely correct in their assumptions.

All of us are impacted by the lives we choose to live, the random acts that occur in that life, and by choices others make whether they are close to us or not. This is exactly why none of us can truly be objective. We can only speak from the accumulation of our experiences. The question isn’t if he can be objective, it is how will this situation, added to all his other life experiences effect how he interprets what he is reporting on? I’m reminded of the joke about three blind guys, each standing a different place around an elephant describing what they feel with their hands, leads them to believe there are three different animals there with them. We are all handicapped and empowered by our past and present when interpreting an experience. Does this make our reporting more or less valuable or credible?

NPR and corners

Today I was out and about in the car with NPR on the radio. In my personal car I generally don’t listen to NPR, but it tends to be on a lot in the work cars. I’m pretty flexible when it comes to the radio and music. As long as it isn’t George Jones (every time I hear him sing, it’s like nail on a blackboard), Rush Limbaugh, Fox News or gangster rap, I will listen to just about anything.
The cool thing about NPR is that you will hear about things you would never hear about any other way. Just listening sporadically, I have learned about how grain companies regulate the sell of seeds around the world and to hold the price high, and refusing to buy any grain or produce not grown form their certified seeds and starts. This means if you are wise and have been careful to save seeds from your crops to use next year you’re screwed because you’ve killed your ability to sell that crop. On NPR I learned about a woman in India who started a seed bank for local farmers who sell their corps at local and regional markets. The goal of the bank was to have farmers collect their own seeds and starts, and then barter with other farmers for different seeds and starts allowing them to grow more diverse crops and be more financially secure. Guess who came after them? Big agra-business.

Today there was an interesting conversation started by asking the questions, “If women, with their typically more cautious and long term approach to money issues, had been in charge of the banking and investing world instead of men, would we have developed a bubble, and if so would the results be as bad as they are now? (I know, big question.) Now I have to admit that at first I thought this was a crap question. But as more information came in I learned some really interesting things. For instance women are more likely to be found in money businesses that do asset management with an eye at 5 years or longer. Men tend to be found in short-term investment areas with windows of 12 months or less. For this short-term approach, men make up over 80% of the staffing, and the vast majority of them are young, and mostly white, and the work is highly competitive.

Added to this environment of high competition and short windows was information from a just completed study on two chemicals (one is testosterone and the other I don’t remember. Not good at names, remember?) whose levels rise in male animals during combat or competition causing them to take more and more chances. This study has found a correlation between these animals and the young men in the short-term investing arena. So what seemed like a crazy question ended up being a pretty interesting conversation. I think the real answer is that there needs to be diversity in any area and that too much of the same view point is hardly ever a good approach.

This was all very interesting until I turned a corner and accidentally hit the up/down and mode buttons on the steering wheel and ended up changing the channel and couldn’t find it again. I did find the gangster rap channel though.

Life lesson: be careful turning corners.