Simon Denman's Blog: Simon says, page 2

Is it More Dangerous to Travel after a Publicised Suicide?

I’m currently reading a rather fascinating book called Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert B. Cialdini, PH.D. and last week I read in it something both astonishing and disturbing. Every time there is a well-publicised case of suicide in the media, there invariably follows a dramatic increase, not only in copycat suicides, but in reported car and plane accidents as well. Why might it be more dangerous to travel by road or air immediately following a well-publicised suicide? Could it be that the same socio-economic conditions that contributed to the motivation for suicide, led to an increase in carelessness at the wheel or joystick? It appears not, because the spikes in the number of accidents correlate, not with the number of suicides, but with the amount of publicity these suicides receive, and it appears highest in the areas where publicity is greatest. OK then, could it be that reading about suicide makes people more careless and therefore more prone to accidents? Again, another detail hidden in the statistics suggests that it’s actually far more disturbing than this.  When the suicide reported in the media is a simple one-person act of destruction, then the type of car and plane accidents increasing the most, also tend to involve only single victims. However, when the publicised suicide victim has taken others with him, there tends to be a marked increase in accidents with multiple fatalities. What could possibly explain this? It was the sociologist, David P Phillips, who in 1974 hit upon a possible, somewhat worrying explanation –...

Why do people post on-line reviews?

Driven mostly by convenience, wider choices and lower prices, more and more of us are now abandoning the high street in favour of the Internet. And where once we might have relied on the polished patter of a retail salesperson, we now have, via on-line reviews, access to the collective voices of hundreds of fellow consumers from around the world. But what type of people post these reviews and why? Why is it that some people feel compelled to post thousands, or even tens of thousands of on-line reviews, while the vast majority rarely or never do? Is it a fair system? What is the psychology behind it, and what are the ethical implications of posting good, bad, or indifferent reviews? Reciprocation I suppose the most obvious psychological motivation to post reviews is the rule of reciprocation. Having shopped on-line a few times before and benefited from the reviews left by others, some of us will feel a social obligation to contribute to the system which helped us. But how often and under what circumstances will we bother? My own experience is that I receive roughly one review of my book for every 300 or so downloads. Whether this is above or below the average, I have no idea, but I am nevertheless extremely grateful for every one – or at least most of them. Customer Advocacy In marketing circles, it has long been known that the most powerful advocate for any product is the customer. But not any customer will do. Imagine you have just bought...

Simply The Best Carrot Cake Recipe

As a special gift to you all on the first day of 2013, my wonderful, creative, and talented wife, Fatma, has allowed me to share her famous carrot cake recipe. Not only is this the tastiest, most wholesome carrot cake ever likely to pass your lips, it is also unbelievably light, containing almost no fat or butter, and is so easy to make, even I can do it. Ingredients (for a 24 cm diameter cake): Cake 5 Large eggs 1 cup of white granulated sugar 1.5 cups of shredded carrots (3 or 4 medium-sized) 1 cup of roasted chopped walnuts 2 cups of self-raising wholemeal flour 1 teaspoon of baking soda 1.5 teaspoons of cinnamon 2 teaspoons of ground ginger Filling / Frosting 300 – 400g of light cream cheese 2 – 3 Tablespoons of icing sugar Pre-heat the oven to 175C Put the flour, cinnamon, ginger and baking soda into a small bowl, mix them together and put to one side. Place the walnuts on a tray and pop them in the oven for just a few minutes so they will release more flavour into the mix. Don’t let them burn though. If there are still large pieces, break them up a bit more after warming. Grate the carrots. Crack the eggs into a large mixing bowl and whisk in the granulated sugar until fully dissolved and the mixture looks light and creamy. Add in the carrots and walnuts and whisk on low-speed for about a minute until the mixture is evenly distributed. Now...

Surviving Neonatal Care – The 65-day Journey Home from BWH NICU.

Having been asked by staff at the Birmingham Women’s Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit to write a short account of our experiences there, following the birth of our twins, this is an attempt to summarise those 9 1/2 weeks in a way that might be useful to other parents about to embark on a similar journey. For most parents-to-be, the expectation is of a natural child-birth after some  40 weeks of pregnancy – give or take a week or so. As parents of twins, we knew our two would probably arrive 2 or 3 weeks earlier than this, which for us would hopefully mean just in time for Christmas. Yet from around week 23, with the start of intermittent bleeding and water-loss, these expectations were about to be shattered. Fortunately, our twins managed to hold out for a further 5 weeks before our little kung-fu-girl (all through pregnancy she had been the active one) managed to kick a hole clean through her amniotic sack. At this point, my wife was admitted to hospital and, after 4 days of observation and foetal-heart-monitoring, the decision was made to deliver via emergency Caesarian section. Our experience of this event and our first reflections on what might lie ahead is recounted here. And so began the long journey home. In the above-mentioned post, trying to capture how we felt 4 days after the birth, I wrote, “For the parents it is a heady mix of elation, pride and anxiety.” For the following 60 days, this description remained fairly accurate, although...

Surviving Neonatal Care – Reflections on the 65-day Journey Home of our Premature Twins.

Having been asked by staff at the Birmingham Women’s Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit to write a short account of our experiences there, following the birth of our twins, this article is an attempt to summarise those 9 1/2 weeks in a way that might be useful to other parents about to embark on a similar journey. For most parents-to-be, the expectation is of a natural child-birth at some 40 weeks gestation – give or take a week or so. As parents of twins, we knew our two would probably arrive 2 or 3 weeks earlier than this, which for us would hopefully mean just in time for Christmas. Yet from around week 23, with intermittent bleeding and water loss, these expectations were about to be shattered. Fortunately, in spite of some early scares, our twins managed to hold out for at least a further 5 weeks, whereupon one of the amniotic sacks completely ruptured. At this point, my wife was immediately admitted to hospital and, after 4 days of observation and foetal-heart-monitoring, a decision was finally made to deliver via emergency Caesarian section. Our experience of this traumatic event and the immediate aftermath is recounted here. And so began the long journey home. The Long Journey Home. In the above account, trying to capture how we felt 4 days after the birth, I wrote, “For the parents it is a heady mix of elation, pride and anxiety.” For the following 60 days, this description remained fairly accurate, although looking back, we might now add frustration,...

Why debate gun control when the evidence speaks for itself?

Whether yesterday’s tragedy could have been avoided with tighter gun controls will once again be hotly debated. For those of us watching from the other side of the pond, it’s hard to understand the passion with which so many Americans defend what they see as their god-given right to bear arms. But when mainstream news anchors like Fox’s Bill O’Reilly behave like this towards anyone with the temerity to challenge that right, one soon realises how entrenched this “gun culture” has become, and how hard it will be to eradicate. Incidentally, inviting people onto your show only to lecture them on why you think they are wrong and without giving them any opportunity to defend their position, does seem a bizarre variation on the “interview” format. The 2nd Amendment to the US constitution, probably made sense back in 1791 when it was first adopted as a safeguard against chaos, anarchy and the breakdown of government, but to use it to justify allowing guns into school, beggars belief. Strangely though, very few of these debates refer to the statistics, which unless I’m missing something, clearly indicate that tighter gun controls result in fewer deaths by shooting. With 88 firearms per 100 citizens, the US is the worldwide No.1 in private gun ownership. Yemen, which is No.2 has only 54. This results in one of the highest homicide rates in the developed world. There may still be 27 countries with a higher gun homicide rate than the US, but most are either developing nations or war zones. As tragic as...

Sentience, Morality and Veganism

Following my post last week, questioning the consciousness of newborns, I exchanged a number of tweets with a professor of developmental psychology, who made the interesting observation that, The points you make also, paradoxically, show why conscious awareness should not be a criterion for personhood. (and that is a whole bag of worms, potentially, for topics like animal rights theory, “fetal personhood” bills, etc). Good stuff So if you don’t need to be conscious to be regarded as a person, what criteria should be used? What about someone in a persistent vegetative state for example? I put this to my newly acquainted professor, who responded as follows: huge question. I can argue several different sides of it! I have different personal vs. political views. Nutshell: sentience She then continued: I’m a vegan b/c I don’t think I have any greater moral right to eat a cow than a dog. (& I have adequate plant food options) I think for humans, birth is the only dividing line for *legal* personhood that makes any sense. Moral personhood: diff matter PVS and late-term abortions are tricky, but we can consider someone a person while still giving them limited legal status. All of this seemed to strike a chord with my own views…except for the bit about veganism. Now, I’ve always considered myself a fairly “moral” person, in that I usually try to act in ways that maximise well-being and/or minimise suffering for other sentient beings. But, I also eat meat. And except on the rare occasions when I run...

Neonatal Consciousness – What is it like (if anything) to be a newborn baby?

Five weeks after the nail-biting experience of having our twins born two months early, my wife and I have now settled into a routine of regular visits to the neonatal intensive care unit, where our little boy and girl try to complete the remainder of their gestation in perspex boxes. And so, as they lie there, mostly peacefully but with occasional myoclonic jerks, hiccups and tentative openings of the eyes, I find myself wondering what, if anything could be passing through their little minds. Do they even have minds? Are they even capable of consciousness at such an early stage of development? Do newborn babies have consciousness? Somewhat like a river, consciousness seems an intuitively simple concept to grasp, until you actually try to grasp it, understand it, or look for its source. In fact, the more I  have read of this fascinating topic over the last few years, the harder it seems to pin down. For hundreds of years, philosophers from Descartes and Kant to modern-day luminaries such as Daniel Dennett have hunted for definitions and possible explanations for this common, familiar, yet elusive quarry. More recently, with leaps in our understanding of the human brain, experimental psychologists and other cognitive scientists such as Stephen Pinker, Bruce Hood and Sam Harris have joined the fray. While not all such scientists agree on the exact nature of consciousness, what extent of the animal kingdom has it, or how amenable it is to academic study, they do mostly seem to share the following common ground: Consciousness can be loosely defined...

The slow climb to babyhood – First reflections on the premature birth of our twins.

On Wednesday October 17th2012, at 10:14am, a tiny baby boy weighing just 1.05Kg was lifted from my wife’s womb through an emergency Caesarian section. One minute later, following a slight widening of the incision, he was joined by his 915g twin sister. As I sat, head-end of the partition, comforting my awake yet spinally anaesthetized spouse, I caught glimpses of red and pink flesh being whisked away into the corner of the room, where a half-dozen doctors and nurses immediately busied themselves with swift, practised efficiency. For the next minute or so, the operating theatre seemed eerily quiet, then a brief, soft, plaintive cry broke the silence. This was followed almost immediately by a repetitive, almost musical set of tones reminiscent of an arcade game, but which, under the circumstances seemed more likely to be an alarm of some kind. Here I must admit, I lost track of time. For what seemed like a further 30 minutes, but which in hindsight was probably only 5 or 10, we waited, trying to take comfort in each other’s presence, desperately hoping to hear that our babies were safe and well. To say we were completely unprepared for the events of that morning would not be entirely accurate, since the previous 28 weeks of pregnancy had not been without complication, and by that morning my wife had already been in hospital for 4 days, following the premature rupture of one of the amniotic membranes – that of the girl. As a result, we were already well-informed of the potential risks...

What if money was no object?

Today on Facebook, an old school friend shared the above video, in which the late British philosopher, Alan Watts, in a gentle, fatherly and wonderfully mellifluous tone, makes a strong case for pursuing whatever activity we would desire if money was no object.  This beguiling thought inevitably got me thinking about the dilemma faced by most first-time or would-be authors. Most people I know seem to have, at one time or another, thought of writing a book. And while the flood of self-published e-books appearing on Amazon might suggest that an increasing number are now moving beyond the “thinking” stage, I wonder if we’re just seeing more of the iceberg that was always there, and that Amazon has merely raised the specific gravity of the sea in which that iceberg floats. So why this reluctance to move from thought into action? In my case, it was a combination of the following, that for 25 years conspired to keep Connected from being written: I don’t have the time and I can’t afford to stop working. Am I deluding myself? Do I even have what it takes to write a whole book? What if I invest all that time and people hate it? The suspicion, most eloquently articulated by the late, great, Christopher Hitchens, that while most people have a book inside them, “in most cases that’s where it should stay.” Of course, countering these seeds of doubt is a more encouraging set of thoughts which I’m sure every indie-author (myself included) has used to bolster an occasionally fragile ego: Everyone has a...