Fall and our Majestic Oak

After our first round of trees died, we replanted mostly evergreens which have all done well, including the little four inch pine from the grade school giveaway which is now twenty feet tall at least. We did however succumb to a mere stick of a tree from Lowe’s some years back. Our oak is now rounded out and also about twenty feet tall. It is the last tree to leaf out in the spring but also the last to cling to its leaves in the fall. It turns a glorious burnt red color. I’m sure the young oak does not like our altitude, the bitter winter winds or the poor clay soil but it keeps hanging in there. S. puts extra iron on it.

It is cold and rainy here today. We have had a couple light frosts so far but not a killing frost. The summer planters and flower boxes are still going as we approach Halloween as you can see from the picture. That is a rare thing. Some facts about oak trees from the Nature Conservancy site of Indiana.

• The average oak tree can live to be more than 200 years old. Some are as old as 1,000 years.
• Many ancient oaks are found with rotten trunks. It is believed that this leads to a hollow structure that is actually stronger than a solid trunk would be.
• A mature oak tree can draw up to 50 gallons of water through their root systems a day.
• Fire, land development and the overharvesting of oaks for production destroy oak populations faster than any disease or pest.
• The oak is a common symbol of strength and survival.
• The oak is the national tree of England, France, Germany and the United States.
• It is thought that sleeping under an oak tree will bring good luck.
• In Celtic mythology, oak doors are believed to be the gateway between worlds.
• In Greek mythology, the oak was a symbol of Zeus – the god of thunder and king of all gods

Lou

Sick of Politics

Not much to say really. I do think voting is a privilege and a duty for citizens that we should never take lightly. Our voting should be informed as much as possible by reading about the candidates and watching debates and forums. I always hope that good citizens who are not motivated by power and greed will run for office. I do not really care what political party they are affiliated with. A democrat in Wyoming may fall to the political right of a republican in Massachusetts. Some of the independents have good ideas but no clout.

What gets so old at this stage less than two weeks before the elections are the negative political ads. We get most of our local news through the Denver TV channels and the political ads run non-stop. They are mostly negative and so distorted and misleading. I have no stake in that state anyway. In Wyoming most of our races are determined by the primaries so the political advertising falls off after August.

I am also so sick of hearing about the tea party candidates nationally, as if there aren’t others that deserve some attention. I got a fund raising letter from Michele Bauchmann in the mail, presuming I would send money to help someone in Minnesota get re-elected to Congress. Ha! Christine O’Donnell running for the Senate in Delaware has been all over the web with her ultra conservative views. Let’s hear from some middle of the roaders for a change. Let’s leave settled law settled and work on improving life for everyone. I cannot believe the voting public falls for the extravagant promises that X candidate is going to go to Washington and make everything right again. Blah Blah. I want them to tell me the specifics of what they want to do legislatively, not what they are against but what they would do, otherwise nothing gets accomplished.

As to the notion of this being a Christian nation, yes by population numbers but the government is secular and it would be best to stay that way. As a Christian the only theocracy I want to live under is the one where Jesus Christ himself presides and all can see and hear him in his glorified body. Until that day I am fine with a secular government that protects my religious freedom.

Try not to get disillusioned with it all. Don’t forget to vote!

Lou

Who works well together?

According to this study if you are after group cohesiveness select members that are very similar to each other in beliefs and values. Find people you like a lot especially on first meeting them. If however, you are after a group that makes the best group decisions or achieves the highest levels of performance you should select members that vary somewhat in training and ability and that have social skills to add to the collective intelligence. Having more women in a group on average predicts a higher level of collective intelligence. Interesting! From the article.

However, we know that teams that are highly cohesive are not always the same teams that make the best decisions or push each other to the highest levels of performance. In our research on collective intelligence in groups, my colleagues and I find that group cohesion is not correlated with collective intelligence. So if "work well" means "perform well," the question becomes much trickier to answer. To work together well, you actually want a team that is moderately diverse in their training and abilities. My graduate student, Ishani Aggarwal, finds that groups that are moderately diverse in their "cognitive style" have higher collective intelligence than groups that are very diverse or very homogeneous. We also found in our recent study published in Science that social skills are very important; of the many individual differences we explored, members' social sensitivity was the most strongly and consistently predictive of a group's collective intelligence. Because women tend to have more of this skill than men, on average, we found that the proportion of women in the group was also predictive of collective intelligence. While none of this is absolutely definitive nor guarantees that a group will perform well, you raise the probability significantly if you compose the group with members who have diverse and complementary skill sets and individuals with strong social skills.

As I think back on the rehab groups that I was part of in my career as a PT, I can see some of these elements at play. I worked at a hospital, a home health agency, and finally at a skilled nursing facility, the cohesiveness varied but was especially good at the skilled nursing facility, I suppose that group was the most alike in life stages and in values. I can also see that my performance was enhanced in settings where others had more or different experiences than I did and different education and skills. I often had other experts to go to for help in setting up a rehab program for a particular patient. Having a variety of disciplines working together in close proximity was beneficial as well.

Most of the time your work group is something you inherit though as you are hired and you get little say as to its composition. Much like you do not get to choose the family you are born into. If one is a manager and can make decisions about the composition of a group to work on a project this study might be helpful to consider. The study also seemed to show that a bad apple can drag a group’s collective intelligence down, click on the link above.

In group settings here is some wisdom to follow. Romans 12:17-18 NIV ¹⁷Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. ¹⁸If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.

Lou

Penelope is an optimist

This new study makes me chuckle. Apparently some dogs hurry to a location where there might or might not be a small amount of food in a bowl and some don’t. The optimists hurry and the pessimists don’t. Those same optimist dogs are less likely to suffer from separation anxiety and tear the place up or howl uncontrollably when their owners are out.

When Penelope was a pup she once chewed up a bean bag chair and spread the little foam (fake beans) all over the family room while we were away. She also chewed on the wood desk and a few other things. She slept in a kennel and we put her in there when we went out. Once she was about two she never did anything destructive again, but continued to sleep in her kennel with the door open. The kennel is long gone now but she sleeps on her dog bed which was placed in its spot. She happily greets us at the door when we come home. She is a good dog and an optimist I guess. Who knew?

The findings emerged from tests involving 24 dogs taken in by two re-homing centres. The scientists first assessed each animal to see how they would react to being left alone, which can lead to undesirable behaviours – such as barking or chewing – in about 50 per cent of cases.

The researchers then tested each dog for their levels of "optimism" based on how quickly they would walk or run to a bowl that may or may not contain a small amount of food. The bowl would be positioned ambiguously between two other positions in the room where the dogs had learned what to expect – one where the bowl would always contain food, the other where it would always be empty.

"Dogs that ran fast to these ambiguous locations, as if expecting the positive food reward, were classed as making relatively 'optimistic' decisions. Interestingly, these dogs

tended to be the ones who also showed least anxiety-like behaviour when left alone for a short time," Professor Mendl said.

Click on the “these dogs” link above to an article about the study. Don’t read too much into it, the researchers admit it needs more testing and they only had 24 dogs in the study. I still think it is funny, like a grade school science project. One of our kids did a study on if you can teach an old dog new tricks and IQ testing in dogs.

Lou

Some works in progress

Several of the women in an informal quilt group that I attend once a week are making a quilt called “Celebration.” It reminds me of a large interconnecting chain or honeycomb. Two of us bought the same jellyroll (a roll of strips of fabrics sold as a unit) consisting of 44 bright fabrics and bold designs and are using them on an off white background. Another woman is using all batik fabrics and it will be lovely too.

One problem we encountered was that the jellyrolls were not factory cut and we had to re-cut them to make them the exact two and a half inch width that we needed to piece the blocks, that was not much fun.

Today I arranged all my blocks on the guest bed to see what it was going to look like. I could immediately see that I still had one missing block, which I will remedy. I love the look! It will be a very fun, happy quilt when it is done. I've never used such bold colors before.

I am also sewing the little half square triangle leftovers into a doll blanket or something. The little nine patches they make when sewn together are so tiny and cute, it would be a shame to just toss them in the trash.

I have another unfinished quilt that I started a year ago and have a stack of blocks made for it. I also want to start working on a baby quilt or quilts in the near future.

The saying goes, at least in my quilt group that you aren’t a “true” quilter unless you have several quilts in the works all at the same time.

Lou