The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has seen its reputation take a battering over the last ten years or so. Bailed out by the U.K. government during the global financial crisis in 2008, nearly 73 percent is still owned by the taxpayer.

Almost ten years on, the bank is focusing on the future. "RBS is probably the poster child of the financial crisis and we're well aware of the mistakes we made in the past," David Wheldon, chief marketing officer of RBS, told CNBC's Marketing Media Money on Thursday evening. "We're well aware of the legacy issues, but that was the bank that we once were," he added. "We're focussing on the bank we are today and the bank we want to be in the future. And what we want to be is the 'most preferred' bank."

RBS, Wheldon added, was focussed full square on the customer and its customer facing brands.

Wheldon said that RBS wanted to become number one for customer service, trust and advocacy by 2020. Is the ambition of becoming the most trusted bank an achievable one? Wheldon said it was, although challenges clearly remained.

"It's certainly a stretching target becauseif you look at RBS, it is still the least trusted brand in the least trusted sector," he explained. Focusing on customer facing brands such as NatWest and Ulster Bank was an important part of the process.

"By doing this we've really been able to get our staff focussed again on customer facing brands, leaving RBS behind us, because that was the global brand that we were attempting to build before it went wrong."

A recent ad campaign for NatWest, for example, used the slogan "we are what we do." A black and white film showed various types of human behavior, from the caring nature of a parent carrying a sleeping child to hooligans kicking tables and chairs.

The ad was something of a mea culpa for the bank and, according to Wheldon, a way of getting permission to be heard again.

"Inside there as well is the human truth: we're all what we have done, we're all what we will do," he said. "We're no different," he added. "We are what we do, so it was an admission of fault and an invitation to hold us to account, and our customers do exactly that."

Looking to the future, Wheldon said he wanted RBS to be trusted again.

"We've rebuilt pride internally and that's a really important thing for us because at its heart our strategy is... (to) engage our colleagues," he added.

"If we engage our colleagues and motivate them they'll service our customers well. If we do that well enough, our customers will advocate us. And there's a beautiful virtuous circle there that will lead us to number one."

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After the dark days of the financial crisis, RBS wants to regain its customers' trust - CNBC

Thucydides is on a roll these days.

The ancient Greek historian of the Peloponnesian War, who lived almost 2,500 years ago, makes the title of Graham Allisons prominent new volume, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydidess Trap?

The great historian merits this because his analysis of the causes of the ancient war between the Athenians and the Spartans provides the essential dilemma of Allisons book: Can states avoid catastrophic war when a rising power begins to challenge a dominant states control? Thucydides pessimistic answer seems to be No: War was inevitable, we are told, when emergent power Athens contested Spartas supremacy 2,500 years ago. Allison offers only a slightly more optimistic take (War is more likely than not) in analyzing Chinas growing challenge to Americas dominating position globally.

The Trump White House is reportedly obsessed with Thucydides, thanks in good measure to Allison. But senior administration officials like National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster have long taken seriously the ideas of the ancient writer, even if some think he misunderstands what Thucydides is really saying.

And now even Wonder Woman has Thucydides name on her lips: In the recent blockbuster superhero movie, the title character and a villain refer to the historian in a dramatic scene (incorrectly, as it turns out, since a quotation is erroneously attributed to him.)

All this attention, both serious and silly, raises the question: What can we truly learn from Thucydides, a writer who lived over two millennia ago, about power relations today? Quite a bit, in my view, but not necessarily in the way people like to.

This moment is not, of course, the first time modern policy experts have turned to Thucydides for his insights. The cognoscenti have long known of the utility of his history. To take a prominent example, during the Cold War much used to be made of the bipolar world of Thucydides. America was often cast in the role of Athens because both were democracies, while militarized, oligarchic Sparta was played by the Soviet Union. But this analogizing got things backwards in strategic terms: Sparta (much like the United States) led an alliance of relatively free, vulnerable allied states who looked to it for protection against a repressive imperial power. Meanwhile, Athens (much like the Soviet Union) controlled its allies by force or intimidation, causing a great deal of anxiety in the opposing coalition.

But regardless, this attractive bipolar comparison stoked fears that the unavoidable war Thucydides described in his time would mean World War III for all of us.

Happily, it didnt turn out that way.

This brings me to my first point about appropriately using Thucydides history: Be careful about the analogies you see. Thucydides compelling vision of the Peloponnesian War, with its meticulously delineated causes, combatants, and alliances, make it easy to find parallels later in history, right up to the present day. Thucydides clarity about power relations and human behavior in times of conflict gives his readers all the tools they need to see larger patterns at work that they may identify with events in their own times. Thucydides himself foresaw the utility of his work. He says that he wrote it not to entertain for the moment but to be of lasting value, because people could use it to clearly understand past events and also understand future events given that, people being people, similar sorts of things will happen again.

But as we have seen, one can get the analogies wrong. That similar sorts of things may come up again in human affairs (as Thucydides put it) does not mean that everything turns out the same in the end. Thus, the dangerous, decades-long American-Soviet standoff did not result in catastrophic war the way the Athens-Sparta confrontation did. Such a failed analogy doesnt mean Thucydides was wrong, only those who tried to prognosticate based on his text. Thus, we ought not be too eager to seize upon another comparable strategic situation modern Chinas challenge to the United States (equivalent to Athens challenge to Sparta?) and try to use Thucydides to predict the outcome.

Now, to be fair to Allison, Destined for War does not go quite this far. He is more cautious. For one thing, like a good political scientist, he expands his dataset beyond Thucydides to include 16 other, supposedly comparable, cases of rising versus established powers from various periods in history. In 12 of these, he says, war resulted and in four it did not. Moreover, his goal is not really to make a prediction. Rather, he wants to use what he identifies as the Thucydides trap the tendency for wars to break out in circumstances like Chinas growing challenge to U.S. dominance to put Americans on guard to the danger and encourage policymakers to take appropriate action, including embarking on a long-term strategic reassessment.

And yet the risk of misunderstanding Thucydides remains when he is used this way, however carefully. First, we should understand that Thucydides himself never talks of a trap. Thats a modern construal, not just by Allison but by Arlene Saxonhouse, when she asserts that, reading Thucydides history, we see a Power Trap described, whereby states like Athens become trapped by their unending pursuit of power. But Thucydides never describes the complex strategic history of his time as any kind of paradigm or trap. He never warns that this set of circumstances may occur again and that we all must be on guard for it in the future. To use his history as if he did risks turning it into a kind of parlor game of potentially predictive analogies. I see 19th century England in ancient Athens! No, Athens is 21st century America! No, Sparta is! We better watch out look what happened in the Peloponnesian War!

So how should we use Thucydides, then? Does his history have anything valuable to offer modern thinkers or policymakers? It certainly does, and this brings me to my second point. Years of working with Thucydides in the classroom and as a scholar tell me that what his book teaches most of all is what we might call historical mindfulness. By this I mean a generalized understanding about the workings of history: what kinds of forces tend to inspire people, drive politics, create crises and bring (or prevent) resolution, with what consequences for human communities? Thucydides was not a prophet nor a political scientist, but a keen observer and explicator of the human condition in collective conflict. And we can gain much wisdom by studying his work with this in mind.

For example, when we read Thucydides account of the devastating civil war in Corcyra, with his astute observations of the way political struggles of this kind twist ambitions and norms and the very meaning of words, there is much to learn. The horror and tragedy of the events in Corcyra friends become enemies, kin kill kin, a once-prosperous polity virtually self-destructs make his account riveting and give weight to his thoughts on how such things can come about. Several of his observations stand out: that the existence of a larger war (between Athens and Sparta) paved the way for Corcyra and, later, other polarized cities to fall into internal violence; that political behavior previously honored as prudent and honest becomes, in these circumstances, scorned as disloyal or cowardly; that atrocity led to counter-atrocity, while mutual distrust made de-escalation almost impossible. Seeing the truth in Thucydides observations about events in Corcyra (which, in general ways, recall incidents from other civil wars in other times and places) can teach us a great deal about civil strife and of politics gone wrong. It helps make us historically mindful.

This manner of reading Thucydides offers, I would assert, a deeper wisdom than analogy-hunting. (The Corcyrean oligarchs are like the hardliners in Iran! No, they are the loyalists in Syria! And the Corcyrean populists must be the Syrian Kurds! Now we can predict what will happen!)

Consider another example. One of the most renowned parts of his history is the Melian dialogue, where Thucydides reports on a conversation that took place between envoys from an invading Athenian force and officials from the small island city-state of Melos, which the Athenians were about to assault. In the dialogue, Thucydides presents his readers with a stark view of the Athenian imperial mindset of the time, while also putting us in the shoes of a vulnerable community that found itself in the path of a much more powerful one bent on swallowing it. The Melians ask the envoys to be left alone, appealing to reason and justice. They claim a desire to remain neutral in the Spartan-Athenian struggle, contend that the Athenians would outrage gods and men if they attacked them, and warn that the Spartans would intervene on the Melians behalf. The Athenians, in contrast, argue from a basis of naked power: We will forego fancy words of self-justification and simply tell you that we are strong, you are weak, and you can only save yourself by surrendering your freedom to us or we will crush you. Our empire was built by taking what we can and thats how we will maintain it. Oh, and the gods seem to like us just fine. (And dont delude yourselves about Sparta coming to help you; it is obvious that they wont.)

The contrast between the harsh words of the Athenians and the alternately brave, hopeful, and desperate arguments of the Melians makes this exchange one of the most memorable in Thucydides history. The fact that the Melians, who refused to surrender and resisted the Athenian siege for as long as they could, suffered obliteration in the end at the hands of the Athenians (all surviving men were executed, all the women and children were sold into slavery) adds to the drama and message of the episode. Thucydides follows his Melian account with a lengthy description of Athens grand Sicilian expedition. This was another arrogant attempt at imperial expansion, but one that instead ended in disaster for Athens.

Scholars have argued about how exactly we should interpret the Melian dialogue, but two conclusions seem fairly clear. First and foremost, Thucydides wants us to see the brutal thinking and overbearing pride of the Athenians in the way they conceived of and sought to expand their empire. Fair-seeming words used on other occasions to justify ethically their imperial expansion are stripped away, revealing the cold calculus beneath. Thucydides moralizing purpose shines through, both in the painfully unjust treatment of the honorable Melians and in the comeuppance that he shows the overconfident Athenians suffering in the immediately following narrative of the catastrophic Sicilian expedition. Naked, cruel aggression can rebound against its practitioners.

But there is more to it than this. Thucydides is also teaching us about realistic expectations in dangerous times. The Melians, for all the justice of their cause, made a terrible error in deciding to resist the Athenians. The Spartans did not lift a finger to help them, much as the Athenians predicted. The Melian forces were completely outmatched, much as the Athenians said they would be. And the Melians paid for their delusions with their very existence.

I could produce many more fertile episodes for examination from Thucydides ample history. There is, for example, his famous multifaceted treatment of the short- and long-term causes of the Spartan-Athenian war (on which see S. N. Jaffes recent and wise commentary in War on the Rocks.) But the expositions I have provided, brief as they are, show, I hope, how contemplating Thucydides rich text can yield many insights about fundamental matters of politics, war, and the human condition. We can see in Thucydides work (and, of course, in written accounts of other times and places, if not always as incisively) the dynamics of history at work. Understanding the predicament of the Melians, or the civic self-immolation of the Corcyreans, or the corrosive imperial ideology of the Athenians, together with the long-term causes and consequences of their conflicts, helps one to perceive, at a general level, how human communities can prosper or falter or fail. Guided by Thucydides, we see dynamics at work that can facilitate the analysis of strategic confrontations in any era.

Fostering such historical mindfulness does not, unfortunately, grant one the straightforward ability to predict the course of future events. Neither does Thucydides history itself. He did not write an oracular text. Trying to peg the Chinese or Americans as latter-day Athenians, or distilling Thucydides work into axioms of history (when x power challenges y, z will result) while, admittedly, intellectually stimulating misses a more profound education available in his text, an education that can provide students of public affairs with a nuanced, historically grounded grasp of how the world works.

Eric W. Robinson is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of History at Indiana University. His most recent book is Democracy Beyond Athens: Popular Government in the Greek Classical Age (Cambridge, 2011). He has written about Thucydides and causes of the Peloponnesian War in The Oxford Handbook of Thucydides (Oxford, 2017).

Image: Jastrow, CC

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What Thucydides Teaches Us About War, Politics, and the Human Condition - War on the Rocks

LONDON (Reuters) - Engravings on a human bone from a prehistoric archaeological site in a cave in southern England shows that human cannibals ate their prey and then performed ritualistic burials with the remains, scientists said on Wednesday.

The forearm bone appears to have been disarticulated, filleted, chewed, and then engraved with a zig-zag design before being broken to extract bone marrow, said scientists from Britain's Natural History Museum who conducted the analysis.

The finding, published in the journal PLOS ONE, adds to previous studies of bones from the site, called Gough's Cave, thought to be from Britain's Palaeolithic period - the early Stone Age.

Those studies confirmed human cannibalistic behavior and showed some remains had been kept and modified, making human skulls into bowls, or "skull cups".

The zig-zag cuts are undoubtedly engraving marks, the scientists said, and had no utilitarian purpose but were purely artistic or symbolic.

Silvia Bello, a Natural History Museum who worked on the study with colleagues from University College London, said the engraved motif was similar to engravings found in other European archaeological sites.

"However, what is exceptional in this case is the choice of raw material - human bone - and the cannibalistic context in which it was produced," she said.

"The engraving was a purposeful component of the cannibalistic practice, rich in symbolic connotations."

Discovered in the 1880's, Gough's Cave in Somerset, southern England, was excavated over several decades ending in 1992.

Archaeological investigations there revealed intensively processed human bones intermingled with butchered remains of large mammals and a range of flint, bone, antler and ivory artefacts.

Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky

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Engraved prehistoric human bones show ritualistic cannibalism - Reuters

In another leak from the Trump Administration, The New York Times obtained a report on climate change last night (August 7).

Titled the Climate Science Special Report, it is based on the work of scientists from 13 federal agencies, and it concludes that it is extremely likely that more than half of the increase in global temperatures over the past 40 years is because of human activity. Though this has been the assertion of many of the worlds expertsand laypeopleon global warming, it is a belief that starkly contradicts those of a number of Trumps cabinet members, who claim it is uncertain how much human behavior is to blame.

The draft is now under review by the White House, which received it several weeks ago. According to New York magazine, 13 government agencies must sign off on the draft, which has already been approved by the National Academy of Sciences, by Sunday.

The Washington Post reports that scientists from these agencies fear suppression from the White House. One of the agencies that must approve it is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It is headed by Scott Pruitt, who has said that he does not believe carbon dioxide is a primary factor in global warming. The report insists otherwise.

In addition to Pruitt and other cabinet members disbelief about human influence on global warming, The Guardian reported yesterday that aseries of emails shows staff at the Department of Agricultures Natural Resources Conservation Service is censoring the use of the term climate change. Instead staff has been advised to use the term weather extremes.

The current situation will provide an acid test of whether the Trump Administration is open to hearing the scientific truth about climate change or is so much in the thrall of fossil fuel interests that they are fixated on hiding the reality from the public, Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University, told the Times.

The draft report, says The Washington Post, estimates that human impact was responsible for an increase in global temperatures of 1.1 to 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit from 1951 to 2010.

In addition, scientists studied all areas of the United States. Per the Post:

It also dismisses talk of a so-called hiatus in global warming, noting that the most recent years reinforce longer-term trends. Instead, the report says, the United States faces temperature increases of 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the next few decades even under significantly reduced future emissions. And the record-setting temperatures of recent years will become relatively common in the near future.

Aside from a rise in temperatures across the nation, the report also posits thatair and ground temperatures in Alaska and the Arctic are rising at twice the rate of the global average. There are already coastal Native communities in Alaska that are wrestling with the realitieseconomic and culturalof relocating inland to avoid rising sea levels.

As Colorlines has previously reported, coastal communities of color bear a disproportunite brunt of climate change in the U.S. Such communities tend to live on lower-lying land more susceptible to flooding, and when it floods, they often lack the proper funds to deal with it and rebuild.

The entire report can be read here on the Times site.

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New Federal Report on Climate Change Refutes Beliefs of Trump Cabinet - ColorLines magazine

The American Society of Safety Engineers conference in Denver sponsored a debate of sorts between the proponents of behavior-based safety (BBS) and what has come to be called human and organizational performance (HOP). These were touted as two different philosophies of workplace safety aimed at reducing workplace injuries and fatalities. The latter of these two was presented as a shift in thinking.

There are several problems with both ways of thinking that should be obvious to those in charge of safety at the site or organizational level.

The first problem is that neither of these represent an overall strategy for safety. Each approach focuses on one aspect of what is needed to create a safe workplace and ignores almost everything else. Neither really is a philosophy, but rather a program or process.

A true strategy is a value proposition that defines how to win. In the case of safety, it would define how to win the war against accidental injuries and fatalities. Both these approaches fail to define what true safety excellence looks like or what it takes to achieve it. Rather, both prescribe a series of steps to fail less.

For decades, safety metrics largely have been lagging indicators or failure metrics. Such measurements prompt organizations to work reactively to drive the metrics down or fail less. Success is defined as the lack of failure rather than a strategic achievement.

The second problem lies in the fact that every site (even within the same organization) has a unique culture. While both of these approaches have been successful at reducing accidents, the successes are less a function of methodology and more a function of fit. BBS stresses working on specific behaviors and HOP stresses working on organizational support factors. The approach that will work best for the specific site is the one that best addresses the site-specific safety challenges. The factor that can change this reality is the extent to which the process can be customized for the site.

BBS became so popular at one time that many practices with little to do with mainstream behavioral thinking were labeled as BBS. Academic experts and consultants proposed very specific methods for doing BBS. Because of this, many people have a very limited or specific view of what BBS really is. Based on the most popular approaches, BBS has several main components:

Selecting specific safety-related worker behaviors. Observing workers to see if they are doing these behaviors. Using various methods to encourage (positively reinforce) or discourage the behaviors. Using the observation data as a leading indicator to enhance safety. Some attempted to shape the safety culture through worker interaction, caring and ownership of the process.

Many of these approaches to change worker behaviors failed to realize and address the organizational influences on the behaviors and simply attempted to force a change at the individual worker level. This omission was one factor that led to the formation of HOP.

Human and organizational performance (HOP) proposes that workplace factors of various sorts impact worker behavior and the organization should align these factors to prompt the kind of safety performance it wants.

The spokesman for human and organizational excellence in this debate explained the difference, stating BBS sees the worker as the problem to be solved while HOP views the employee as the problem solver. Neither of these recognize the worker as the customer of safety efforts. The workers definitely are not the safety problem, but neither are they the problem solvers. If workers could solve their own safety problems, they already would have done so.

While HOP requests feedback from workers on what they need to be safe, it ignores the truism that people dont know what they dont know. It is the responsibility of the safety efforts to add value to the worker: increased skills, better risk awareness, strategies for handling risks, personal protective equipment, etc. Even if the worker doesnt know they need these things, the safety department should.

Safety constantly should try to predict and exceed the needs of the worker, not just meet the known demands. Steve Jobs said no one knew they needed a smart phone until he invented one. Henry Ford said if he had given people what they thought they wanted, it would have been a faster horse. It is not enough to just ask workers and rely on their perceived wants and needs.

In all fairness, the statement that BBS views the worker as the problem is inaccurate as well. Most BBS programs focus on behaviors and realize that behavior is influenced by much more than the individual. In this regard, the two philosophies tend to agree. The organization should manage influences on human behavior, not just ask workers to change.

In this sense, these two approaches are part of a greater whole. BBS produces a measurement of targeted behaviors and an excellent opportunity to better understand what influences behavior at the very touchpoint where it is happening. If BBS observers would quit confronting workers to change behavior and start asking why when desired behaviors are not occurring, the organization could better target the specific influences impacting worker behavior.

Without such information, human and organizational performance approaches are simply seeking generic actions to prompt performance. Without the why approach, BBS naively is thinking it can change behaviors without changing the influences on behavior that could be modified in a HOP program. If these two programs quit debating and start cooperating, the result would be a much more holistic approach.

Even so, addressing worker behavior and its organizational influences only impacts one element of safety excellence. The greatest potential value of either of these programs (or a combination of them) would be if they fit into an overarching safety strategy that defined success and the specific role these programs would contribute to that success.

Terry Mathis, founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, has served as a consultant and advisor for top organizations. A respected strategist and thought leader in the industry, Mathis has authored four books and numerous articles and blogs and is known for his dynamic and engaging presentations. EHS Today has named him one of the 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS four consecutive times. Mathis can be reached at [emailprotected] or 800-395-1347.

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Safety and Performance Excellence: Two-Dimensional Safety - EHS Today

MONDAY, Aug. 7 2017 (HealthDay News) -- A new study suggests -- but doesn't prove -- that certain players of action video games may lose gray matter in a part of the brain that's linked to mental illness.

On the other hand, the Canadian study suggests, other players may actually benefit from the games.

And a psychologist not involved with the study said there's no evidence that video games are harmful to the brain.

The results indicate that the reported benefits of playing shooting-style video games -- such as improved attention and short-term memory -- "might come at a cost" in terms of lost brain matter in some players, said the study's lead author, Gregory West. He is an assistant professor with the department of psychology at the University of Montreal.

The difference may be the style of playing, the researchers noted.

The new study aimed to better understand the brain effects of so-called first-person and third-person shooting games -- such as Call of Duty, Battlefield, Killzone, or Medal of Honor -- compared to "3-D platform" games in the Super Mario series.

The researchers used a virtual-reality test, MRIs and 90 hours of game-playing involving 100 people who were either expert or nonexpert players. They also used MRIs to assess the impact on the hippocampus, the part of the brain that helps spatial and episodic memory.

The results showed evidence that gray matter in the hippocampus grew in those players who used so-called spatial strategies to find their way in the action video game. But the gray matter shrunk in those who navigated the same games by learned response.

Spatial players create maps in their heads to understand the geography of the world within the game, the researchers explained. And response players use an approach akin to learning a route that you travel every day -- make a right turn here, then a left, then a right -- so that you can drive on mental auto-pilot without thinking.

Those who played the Super Mario games, meanwhile, showed signs of growth in either the hippocampus or another part of the brain called the entorhinal cortex.

The study authors emphasized that they aren't saying that anyone who plays video games will develop a mental illness.

"But we know that those with less gray matter in the hippocampus are more at risk to get conditions like schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and Alzheimer's disease," said study co-author Veronique Bohbot. She is an associate professor with the department of psychiatry at McGill University in Montreal.

A video game expert called brain studies of game players problematic.

"Given that there are so many areas in the brain, it stands to reason that, by chance alone, some of these areas may randomly differ between any two groups of people," said Chris Ferguson, a professor of psychology with Stetson University in DeLand, Fla.

"Researchers can sometimes make a big deal out of these random differences and ascribe them to something like video games," he said.

Ferguson noted that overall brain research into the effects of the games hasn't revealed problems.

"Despite some wild headlines and press releases from time to time, the research suggests that video game playing is entirely safe for the brain," Ferguson said.

"The aggregate of studies have not suggested that playing video games, even 'violent' ones, cause either short- or long-term brain changes that are problematic or could be called 'brain damage,' " he added.

"Most studies also don't connect the brain differences to actual behavior. So brain studies often function like Rorschach cards, telling you more about what the researchers want to believe than anything actually happening with human behavior," Ferguson suggested.

What should video game players do? Study lead author West suggests that adults play shooter games for only two to three hours a week.

Ferguson noted that research is hinting that video games may reduce stress and improve problem-solving abilities.

"Playing video games should be balanced with other activities: offline socialization, exercise, work and school, family and good sleep," he said. "As long as games are part of a balanced lifestyle, there's no evidence that they cause harmful brain changes."

The study was published in the Aug. 7 issue of Molecular Psychiatry.

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Can Video Game Playing Cost You Gray Matter? - Bloomington Pantagraph

Perhaps perpetuated by folklore, Hollywood, or just human fascination, the idea that the moon effects human behavior continues to persist today.

But how much of it is fact, and how much is fiction?

When there is a full moon, people always say Oh everybody is acting strangely because its a full moon, says Sara Wilson, executive director of the St. Joseph Museums. We said Well, is that really true?

The Moon and Madness exhibit, which looks at the connections between the moon and human behavior, opened Aug. 1 at the Glore Psychiatric Museum. The family-friendly, temporary exhibit will be open through the end of the year.

The exhibit explores this idea, this fundamental belief that we have that the moon effects human behavior, Wilson says. We think about the history between our long understanding of the history of mental illness and what mental illness is and the idea that the moon has some relationship to that.

In preparation for the exhibit, the museum collected research that looked at human activity during a full moon, including psychiatric hospital admissions and crime. They worked on the exhibit for about a year before it was unveiled.

Are there more psychiatric hospital admissions during a full moon? Is there more crime during a full moon? Wilson says. Overwhelmingly, the science seems to indicate, no, theres not. But if you have friends who work for the police force or hospitals, almost all of them will say Yes, yes, there is something that happens when theres a full moon that people start to act strangely.

Although such a connection, which has been called the lunar lunacy effect or Transylvania effect, has persevered in legend, media and other places, the research didnt support a connection, Wilson says. Despite the lack of solid scientific evidence, the connection has been long standing, including in the mental health field, she says.

The state hospital, which was here in St. Joseph, which is largely what the Glore interprets, was originally called the State Lunatic Asylum. If you think about that word, lunatic, that has its roots in lunar, which is another word for moon. The notion of lunatic, the longstanding idea of what happens with lunacy, is there is some connection to the phases of the moon, she says.

One theory about a link between the moon and human behavior stems from the moons influence on the Earths tides, Wilson says, but research suggests that the same influence is not substantial on the human body.

The thing that I find most interesting is our stead-fast belief that people do act strangely during a full moon, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence, Wilson says. I think there must be something to it, even though our science maybe hasnt figured out what, yet.

The interactive exhibit also looks at the solar system and the fundamentals of solar and lunar eclipses. A telescope allows visitors to view the moon, and a 3-D interactive exhibit displays the solar system.

A few floors below the exhibit, lunar sample 70035, a piece of moon rock, is on display at the museum. It was collected by astronaut Harrison Schmitt in 1972 and is estimated to be 3.75 billion years old. It will be on display through October and was brought to St. Joseph by the St. Joseph Museums and VekTek LLC.

Thats been a huge deal for St. Joseph to have a piece of the moon when the solar eclipse is coming, Wilson says. We are grateful for that.

The solar eclipse provides a unique opportunity to look at the history of the moon and mental illness, Wilson says. The St. Joseph Museums, 3406 Frederick Ave., are open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays. Admission ranges from free for children under 6 to $6 for adults.

The Glore is a fantastic resource here in St. Joseph, and its inspiring, she says. Its also an important story that we share with the entire country, the history of treatment of mental illness. Its very unique.

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Glore looks at connection between moon, behavior - News-Press Now

Religion has played an important part in countless wars, conflicts, terrorist attacks, murders, and genocides, yet people seem to associate it with morality. In fact, these same peopleeven other atheistsseem to think atheists are the immoral ones.

A new study from an international team of scientists tried to add some data to the moral distrust of atheists, a prejudice that exists in America and around the world. The research surveyed 3,256 people from 13 different countries, and found that, sure enough, anti-atheist prejudices still exist among religious people and other atheists alike, in both religious and secular countries.

Entrenched moral suspicion of atheists suggests that religions powerful influence on moral judgements persists, the authors write in the article, published today in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, even among non-believers in secular societies.

The task was simple: Survey participants read about a boy who tortures animals, then murders and mutilates homeless people as an adult. They then answered questions about the mans religious beliefs in a way the experimenters specifically designed so folks werent simply choosing whether the man was a believer or non believer, which could add extra bias. Instead, some participants decided whether the man was a teacher, in general, or specifically a teacher who believed in god, and others decided whether the man was a teacher or specifically an atheist teacher.

Participants came from Australia, China, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hong Kong, India, Mauritius, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. While the amount of anti-atheist sentiment varied between countries, folks were always more likely to say the man was an atheist teacher than they were to say he was religious.

Even as secularism reduces overt religiosity in many places religion has apparently still left a deep and abiding mark on human moral intuitions, the authors write.

You might think that people simply associate immorality with disbelief in general, but further studies seem to point out that the sentiment is specifically expressed towards those who dont believe in God.

If youre an atheist, no need to worry (yet). This is just a scientific study and not necessarily a reflection of how peoples thinking actually plays out in the real world, Adam Cohen and Jordan Moon, psychologists at Arizona State University write in a Nature commentary. Atheism is rarely the only piece of information known about interaction partners, they write, and it is possible that, when included with the social information that individuals collect naturally, atheism will be perceived as less indicative of immoral behavior. In other words, survey data doesnt necessarily reflect the world as large, as is often the caveat of many lab studies.

Still, as mentioned, the data does seem to support a well-documented bias against atheists. To that I ask: What is wrong with everyone?

[Nature Human Behaviour]

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People Everywhere Think Atheists Are Bad, Says New Study - Gizmodo

BySaralyn Lyons

For young people in Baltimore who are exposed to violence regularly, violent behavior can become a conditioned response to stressful situations. But for many, it's a response that's not fully intentional.

A husband and wife team of researchers, George and Stephanie Zuo, have proposed a way to address these automatic responses in Baltimore youth through cognitive behavioral therapy, a technique already proven effective in schools and juvenile detention centers in Chicago. Their proposal aims to give young people in city schools and detention centers the tools to develop situational awareness and internalize new, healthier patterns of thinking and responding in stressful situations.

The idea has earned Stephanie, who graduated from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in May, and George, who completed his first year as a doctoral student in economics at the University of Maryland, College Park, the 2017 Abell Award for Urban Policy, which recognizes outstanding papers that analyze a major policy issue facing Baltimore and propose feasible solutions.

The honor is accompanied by a $5,000 award. Students with ties to Johns Hopkins University have won the Abell Award 13 times since 2003.

"We wanted to work together, because we thought it would be an amazing way to use both of our skill sets to do something for Baltimore," says Stephanie, who is currently an OB/GYN resident at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center in New York City.

The pair met as undergrads at Harvard University, married in 2014, and moved to Baltimore to attend graduate school.

"We're both very much invested in urban, under-served neighborhoods and finding ways to improve the lives of those who live there," she says.

The crux of their proposal, says George, is correcting a common misconception about human behaviorthat all people, teenagers included, think ahead and consider consequences when they act, and that they will be deterred from violent behaviors by harsh consequences.

"We know from the wealth of literature and research on the matter this isn't actually the case," he says. "Most of the time, your brain is in this autopilot mode that has evolved over time to efficiently handle everyday life. You actually spend very little of your time actively and consciously making decisions. For kids who come from turbulent backgrounds, this autopilot mode can be useful for navigating through a tough environment at home but can also be problematic in certain contexts, like being called out by a teacher or fellow student. The CBT intervention we propose is an immersive way to help youth shift towards more deliberate thinking, especially in the heat of the moment."

To develop their proposal&titled "Juvenile Crime and the Heat of the Moment: A proposal to pilot cognitive behavioral therapy interventions to reduce youth crime and recidivism in Baltimore City"they examined research from two programs in Chicago that implemented the CBT therapy, which applies mindfulness techniques to help people identify and correct automatic responses, thoughts, and behaviors. Among the teens who received the therapy, total arrests decreased by 28 to 35 percent, and violent crime arrests decreased by 45 to 50 percent. Graduation rates increased as well at the end of the academic year.

They also analyzed violent crime in Baltimore, finding that the city has one of the highest rates of violent crime per capita among cities of comparable size. They looked at programs and trends in the amount of money spent on youth in the juvenile justice system and found that Baltimore already far outspends the daily national average on educational and mental health services for each child in a juvenile detention facility.

"Clearly," they state in their paper, "financial resources alone have not been enough to stem this problem."

They interviewed high school students, educators, and correctional workers to learn about the needs of high-risk youth in Baltimore.

"I found it incredibly moving to be able to talk to the local stakeholders in Baltimore," Stephanie says. "I really commend them for their hard workthe teachers in the Baltimore City Public School system, the staff at the Baltimore City Juvenile Detention Center, and those involved with nonprofits serving Baltimore youth. It was inspirational to listen to their stories and to hear their passion for caring for these young people."

Adds George: "We have research interests that we're passionate about, but seeing the human interest in it gave a different dimension to our work."

The duo is currently working to connect with Baltimore City officials, youth organizations, and corrections facilities to help implement and administer a pilot program.

"A project at this scaleit's ambitious," George says. "But if we get the right people at the table, I think it's definitely possible."

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Proposal suggests using psychotherapy to help break cycle of violent behavior among Baltimore youth - The Hub at Johns Hopkins

Literary criticAdam Kirschis readinga page of Talmuda day, along with Jews around the world.

The Talmud is a compendium of laws and legal opinions, and it presupposes the existence of a functioning court system. But a Jewish court, a beit din, is different in fundamental ways from the court of a state like the United States or, for that matter, Israel. Instead of being appointed by the government and staffed by salaried professionals, a Jewish court is made up of expert rabbis resident in the area, who serve as volunteers. In most cases, three judges serve to constitute a court; in more serious cases, where capital or corporal punishment is on the agenda, 23 judges are required. This commingling of sacred and secular is fitting, because halakhah, Jewish law, is not simply a code for the regulation of human behavior. It is a set of commandments given by God (though elaborated by human interpreters). To be a judge is to fulfill a religious duty: God stands in the congregation of God; in the midst of the judges he judges, says Psalm 81.

Yet that duty, as Daf Yomi readers saw in chapter one of Tractate Sanhedrin, is an onerous one, for several reasons. It is unpaid labor, which makes it a financial burden: Ajudge does not do what is necessary to provide for the needs of his house, and he enters his house empty-handed, says Rav in Sanhedrin 7b. Worse, however, is the moral responsibility of judging: If only his entry will be as his departure, Rav continues, by which he means that a judge is lucky if he comes home at night as free from sin as when he left in the morning. Judges are only human, which means they will sometimes make mistakes, but these are mistakes with enormous spiritual and worldly consequences. A judge should always view himself as if a sword is placed between his thighs and Gehenna is opened up beneath him, says Rabbi Yonatan. One wrong move means going to hell.

No wonder that when Rav Huna was judging a case, he would gather and bring 10 rabbis from Ravs study hall, in order to share the burden of responsibility. As Yehoshua ben Levi says, If 10 judges are sitting in judgment, a prisoners collar hangs around all of their necks, since they will be punished by God for a false verdict: any judge who takes from this litigant and gives to that litigant unlawfully, the Holy One, Blessed be He, takes his soul from him. When he goes to the courtroom, a judge goes out to death. Indeed, the fate of the entire community rests on the actions of its judges: Every judge who does not judge according to absolute truth causes the Divine Presence to withdraw from Israel, the Gemara holds.

Yet the suspicion arises that perhaps the rabbis put such stress on the dangers of judging because the office also involved a certain temptationnot financial, but in terms of status. In Sanhedrin 7b, we read about how a convoy of scribes would follow Rav around, and crowds would carry Mar Zutra on their shoulders. The power of a judge added to the prestige of a Torah scholar is a heady mixture, and the best judges take care not to be intoxicated by it: For power is not forever, and does the crown endure for all generations? Mar Zutra would remind himself, using a verse from Proverbs.

It is because they recognized the moral responsibility of judging that the rabbis were so hesitant to impose extreme verdicts, especially the death penalty. The law code given in the Torah is full of capital crimes: everything from adultery to idol worship to violating Shabbat to disobeying your parents can be punished by death, often by the particularly horrible method of stoning. But by the Talmudic era, it is clear that judges had lost their taste for such bloody punishments. Indeed, they introduce such high barriers to the imposition of capital sentences that, in practice, the death penalty could almost never be used.

In Sanhedrin 9a, the Gemara lays down the procedural requirements for capital punishment: The court executes them only when the following elements are present: the congregation; and witnesses; and forewarning. The congregation of Israel imposes judgment by proxy, through the panel of judges. There must be two eyewitnesses to the crime, and those witnesses must have warned the suspect explicitly that he was about to commit a capital crime. Moreover, Rabbi Yehuda adds, the warning must include by which form of the death penalty he is to be killed. If the suspect is warned that he is liable to death, but not specifically liable to stoning or strangling, then he cannot be executed.

This rule raises the question of whether Jews can be expected to know Jewish law. Apparently, the rabbis believed that they could not. Even in the case of major crimes, a person would have to be explicitly informed about the potential consequences of his action, presumably because he didnt already know it. Only a minority of Jews could be assumed to be familiar with halakhah; these were the people known as chaverimliterally, friendswho were evidently a religious elite; comparable, perhaps, to the Orthodox today. So the question arises: Does a chaver need a forewarning before he commits a crime, or should it be assumed that he already knows the law? Here the rabbis disagree, with the majority sticking to the rule that forewarning is necessary. Evidently, the purpose of the warning is not only to inform the would-be criminal of the law but to give him an extra chance to desist.

Obviously, these requirements could almost never be met in real life, particularly in the case of sins like adultery, which generally take place without witnesses. But the rabbis go on to add even more barriers to a guilty verdict. According to Rabbi Meir, whose opinions usually form the basis of the Mishna, any inconsistency in the witnesses testimony, even the most trivial, is grounds for dismissing that testimony. Yochanan ben Zakkai once heard a case in which the testimony hinged, in an unexplained manner, on the stems of figsby which the Talmud seems to mean, the color and shape of the figs. When the two witnesses disagreed about this, Yochanan dismissed their testimony, causing the case to collapse.

The primary role played by witnesses in a Jewish court case raises an interesting question. Can the accused be a witness against himself? In Sanhedrin 9b, the Gemara considers of a man who is raped by another man. In this case, the victim can be considered a witness to the crime, so that only one additional witness is required to make the requisite two. These two can take it upon themselves to kill the rapist because they are carrying out Torah law.

To us, of course, the crime in this situation is the rape, not gay sex. But Leviticus holds that sodomy itself is a capital crime, even if the sex between men is consensual. This raises the question of what happens when the victim of sodomy engages in it voluntarily. Such a person, under Torah law, is considered wicked (rashah), and the Torah prohibits accepting the testimony of the wicked: Do not put your hand with a wicked person to be an unrighteous witness. So can a person convict himself of wickedness by confessing to it? There seems to be a logical contradiction involved: Acriminal who confesses is declaring himself a rashah, and the testimony of a rashah is inadmissible, so the testimony of the man that he is a rashah would be inadmissible as well.

According to Rava, this case falls under the category of testimony that is forbidden because it applies to a relative. Ordinarily, a man is not allowed to be a witness in a case involving a family member, whether he is testifying for or against the accused. Rava reasons that a person is his own relative, and so this rule extends to self-accusation: A person cannot render himself wicked by his own testimony. However, his testimony about the same incident would be considered reliable when it is directed against someone other than himself. This leads to the paradoxical result that, if two men have consensual sex, one can procure the execution of the other while remaining innocent himself. However, it can only be the passive partner in sodomy who makes the accusation, since in the eyes of the law he is the victim of the act, while the active partner is the guilty party. The absurdities of this situation are a good sign that it is criminalizing gay sex that is truly rashah.

***

Adam Kirsch embarked on theDaf Yomicycle of daily Talmud study inAugust2012. To catch up on the complete archive,click here.

Adam Kirsch is a poet and literary critic, whose books include The People and the Books: 18 Classics of Jewish Literature.

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Literary critic Adam Kirsch is reading a page of Talmud a day, along with Jews around the world. - Tablet Magazine