EVANSTON - In a passionately argued new book, Northwestern University literary scholar Gary Saul Morson and Northwestern President Morton Schapiro make the claim that economics is missing its humanity, and economists must look to literature to make their research work in the real world.

In their book, Cents and Sensibility: What Economics Can Learn from the Humanities, Morson, an eminent literary critic, and Schapiro, a leading economist, argue that economists often act as if their methods explain all human behavior.Professor Gary Saul Morson (left) and President Morton Schapiro

However, the authors make the case that the humanities, especially the study of literature, offer economists ways to make their models more realistic, their predictions more accurate and their policies more effective and just. The publication date is June 21 with Princeton University Press.

Morson and Schapiro trace the connection between Adam Smith's great classic,The Wealth of Nations, and his less celebrated book The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

They contend that a few decades later, Jane Austen invented her groundbreaking method of novelistic narration to give life to the empathy that Smith believed essential to humanity.

Morson and Schapiro argue that Smith's heirs include Austen, Anton Chekhov and Leo Tolstoy as well as John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman. In so doing, they suggest that economists need a richer appreciation of behavior, ethics, culture and narrative all of which the great writers teach better than anyone.

Cents and Sensibility demonstrates the benefits of a freewheeling dialogue between economics and the humanities by addressing a wide range of problems drawn from the economics of higher education, the economics of the family and the development of poor nations. It offers new insights about everything from the manipulation of college rankings to why some countries grow faster than others. At the same time, the book shows how looking at real-world problems can revitalize the study of literature itself.

Original, provocative and inspiring, Cents and Sensibility brings economics back to its place in the human conversation. The book has already received good reviews.

Publishers Weekly wrote: Insightful and compelling. . . .Morson and Schapiro succeed in finding new ways of thinking about big issues as well as new ways to read classic novels. . . . The case studies read like popular nonfiction. Theres immense joy to be found throughout this work on thinking with creativity and passion.

Robert J. Shiller, Nobel Prize-winning economist and author of Irrational Exuberance, said, In Cents and Sensibility, Morson and Schapiro argue persuasively that the vast intellectual gulf between economics and the humanities is a tragedy for all of us, since it compromises our ability to understand some of the most important trends of our times. The authors show us that this divide is not inevitable: they show steps to close it.

The authors have written a number of op-eds based on the book, as well as a Weekend Essay on LinkedIn.

In the essay, Morson and Schapiro, who have co-taught courses together at Northwestern, observed: After examining material from a wide variety of subjects economics, literature, philosophy, history, psychology, sociology, theology, evolutionary theory and urban planning it has become very clear to us that economics has much to learn from its sister fields. While we do not question the significance of economics as a discipline, neither do we question the payoff from a dialogue with other approaches.

Gary Saul Morson is the Lawrence B. Dumas Professor of the Arts and Humanities and professor of Slavic languages and literatures at Northwestern University. His many books include Narrative and Freedom: the Shadows of Time, Anna Karenina in Our Time and The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture.

Morton Schapiro is the president of Northwestern University and a professor of economics. His many books include The Student Aid Game (Princeton University Press). Morson and Schapiro are also the editors of The Fabulous Future?: America and the World in 2040.

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New book calls for putting more humanities into economics - Northwestern University NewsCenter

WannaCry, the recent devastating global ransomware attack, is now the largest of its kind in internet history. The attack has breached hundreds of thousands of computers in more than 150 countries, crippling a wide range of enterprises, from hospitals and universities to banks and warehouses.

In order to breach an enterprise, WannaCry and other forms of crypto-malware have been delivered in zip files, documents, or executables from the web, email attachments and on USB keys. Once WannaCry has infiltrated an organization, it moves laterally, holding computer networks hostage until a ransom is paid. I explained exactly how this process unfolded in a recent blog post:

The WannaCry crypto-malware variant uses the EternalBlue vector to move laterally in an organization. EternalBlue exploits a vulnerability in Microsofts implementation of the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. This vulnerability is denoted by entry CVE-2017-0144. The vulnerability exists because the SMB version 1 (SMBv1) server in various versions of Windows accepts specially crafted packets from remote attackers, allowing them to execute arbitrary code on the target. To attack a target, the attacker must be able to reach it crossing the firewall. If a compromised computer has mounted shares or knows how to reach an SMB server, the attacker can use this to propagate from the compromised device to the SMB server.

While the attack is now largely in the rearview mirror, ransomware is still very much a concern among enterprises. WannaCry has created a number of lessons in its wake, and its important we take them into account in order to prevent an attack of this scale from happening again.

The first lesson is that quickly patching vulnerable systems is fundamental to stopping lateral spread in any organization. Next is that WannaCry, which was made possible by a leak of the NSAs hacking tools, served as the latest reminder that the good guys cannot keep vulnerabilities from falling into the wrong hands. But the most important takeaway is that humans will continue to cripple cyber security so long as it continues to play such a prominent role in protecting the enterprise.

Although Microsoft publicly released a patch addressing this specific vulnerability weeks before, the thousands of personal computers displaying the now-infamous red ransom script illustrated few had implemented it as instructed. (Of course, its not just humans that are to blame its the security paradigm. Windows XP users did not have this option since XP has been unsupported for three years.)

As I said in my commentary on the attack, As long as the industry continues to play this neverending cat and mouse game of patchwork systems, sophisticated attackers will easily find ways to exploit the public in increasingly large scale attacks such as this.

At Bromium, we released an industry study just a week before the WannaCry attack that underscored the point that humans continue to be the biggest threat to cyber security. We surveyed security professionals at the premier cyber security event, RSA Conference, as well as sec pros from the U.K. and U.S., and were shocked to find its not just unsuspecting end users we need to worry about, but those tasked to oversee the security operation.

We found that on average, 10 percent of security professionals admitted to paying a ransom or hiding a breach without alerting their team. This means that for every 10 individuals on your team, its likely that one of them has committed this act of subterfuge. (Someone might have even done it for WannaCry.) Keep in mind, these are only respondents who were willing to be forthcoming about their behavior if every security professional came forth about their behavior, I would expect this to be an even more alarming statistic.

There are several reasons why these undisclosed dealings are taking place on such a considerable scale. One is that ransoms typically arent that expensive. While paying $300 takes a cut of your checkbook, it is a small price to pay to maintain your professional reputation.

This leads into the main reason why professionals are hiding breaches: Getting owned is embarrassing. No one wants to face ridicule from co-workers or be reprimanded by their boss. But keeping these secrets from employers puts the enterprise at tremendous risk. Not only have you let someone into the network, but youve left a backdoor for the next breach, which is likely to be more complex. This finding not only speaks to the growing sophistication of cyber attacks, which are fooling those being paid handsomely to prevent them, but also to how we continue to underestimate the role humans play in cyber security.

he study also uncovered another deeply troubling finding: On average, 35 percent of security professionals admitted to bypassing their corporate security settings. No one is surprised when employees avoid security settings (at this point, its a given), but it is disturbing to see irresponsible decisions being made within the security department. When you cant trust whats happening on the front lines, it means the model is broken.

If there is one thing we should take away from the fallout of WannaCry, its that we are overdue for a reset in this industry. There is greater urgency than ever to map trustworthiness into technology, not humans. Cyber security solutions should eliminate human error, not enable it.

Enterprises need to embrace security that takes the burden off the end-user and ensures IT and security teams protect their business assets and data. Of course the positive corollary to doing that is end users go back to getting their work done without constraints placed on them by the security team.

While the potential losses from WannaCry are staggering, my hope is it will be a net positive for the industry that inspires sweeping changes across the board. Human nature is a variable that cannot be controlled, and as this episode demonstrated, it will continue to wreak havoc left unfettered. This attack should serve as a watershed moment that resets the security paradigm and actually embraces human behavior rather than try to change it.

Simon Crosby, co-founder and CTO of Bromium

Image Credit: WK1003Mike / Shutterstock

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Human nature Is crippling cyber security - ITProPortal

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Last month in Starwatch, I told you about the zodiac band that runs through the night sky. Because the Earth and the planets all orbit the sun in nearly the same plane, all of our fellow planets are located within it.

Back in the day, folks didnt know about any of this and saw the planets as wandering stars. In fact, they really didnt know what stars were, period. Most cultures saw them as being of a divine or godly nature. They saw patterns or pictures in the stars we call constellations, and observed them majestically slide from east to west night after night. Their predictable seasonal cycles through hundreds of years acted as clocks and calendars that helped them plan their lives. They were, and still are, infallibly reliable!

But then, as now, there were five stars that were mavericks or wild cards. Without a lot of rhyme or reason, they showed up every night in slightly different positions among the fixed stars. They would also switch directions and get brighter and fainter. Some of them even sported variations in color. They would also disappear from the skies for weeks at a time. Many cultures, including First Nation and Native Americans, saw them as greater gods and their motions and behaviors were signs of pleasure or displeasure with the mere mortals on the ground. Human behavior was controlled by these wandering stars! Drastic actions, including sacrifice took place, even human sacrifice in some cases!

Ancient Greeks referred to these independently minded wandering stars as asteres planets which is where we get the term planets. The Greeks, as well as the neighboring Romans, didnt see these planets as gods themselves, but named them after major gods in their mythology out of respect for their deity. It never hurt to kiss up! The Roman names of the planets have carried on to our present day.

The planet Mercury is named after the messenger of the gods because of its speed among the stars, just as the god Mercury was considered the first speedy delivery service. It only takes Mercury 88 days to circle the sun, flying along at more than 100,000 mph! Earth plows along at just 67,000 mph.

Venus is named after the Roman goddess of beauty and love because of its great brilliance in the sky. Little did they know what a hellhole it is. Because of a thick poisonous atmosphere complete with acid rain, the runaway greenhouse leaves the surface temperature hot enough to melt lead! Its not only not a beautiful place, its extremely hostile!

Mars is named after the Roman god of war because of its reddish tint. War meant bloodshed. Mars travels from its closest point to Earth to its farthest point from Earth in a two-year cycle. When Mars is far away its more of a pale gold in color, and when its closest to the Earth it turns bright red, symbolizing blood. Whenever Mars was bright red in the sky it was considered a warning sign of war and death. Mars was feared!

Because the planet Jupiter was so bright and stayed in one place among the stars for a lot longer than Venus, it was named in honor of the king of the Roman gods. They were right in naming Jupiter after their head god Jupiter, because its by far the largest planet in the solar system at 88,000 miles in diameter. The Romans didnt know that at the time, of course.

The planet Saturn was named after the Roman god of agriculture for reasons that arent all that clear. However, Saturn was also considered the goddess of time because it takes so long for Saturn to make a complete circuit among the stars. Saturn takes more than 29 years to make that journey, the longest of all the planets.

(Lynch, an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist, can be reached at mikewlynch@comcast.net)

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The case of the wandering stars - Republican & Herald

It was an interesting week in the stock market, with plenty of fear and greed to go around. Same as it ever was, right? As we analyze emotions and behavior they seem to parallel the price action in markets. Excessive greed pushes prices ever higher, We saw new highs this week in names like Amazon (NASDAQ:) and Google (NASDAQ:), while all of the most prominent indices at some point hit record highs during the week.

As prices continue to rise volatility shrinks and the perception about market action becomes more 'predictable', and that could be troublesome. Anyone who tries to predict market action and behavior has certainly seen his share of losses - especially if it was down. Oh, we have seen downside over the years, but the longer term trend has been higher as the moves lower have been steep, sharp and quick.

As we analyze price patterns we see behavior show up in recognizable patterns. Let's study the chart of recent high flyer NVIDIA (NASDAQ:). This stock was the top mover in the last year, up a stunning 300%. Many believed those days were behind it and most likely the stock was going to head sideways for an extended period. The stock hit new all time highs last week and pushed much higher than anyone would have expected. But as we can see from the daily chart, at least in 2017 there have been a few interruptions, and we have just seen another if the previous pattern plays out again.

Earlier this year, NVIDIA encountered two nasty selling days on heavy volume, and as we would expect there was followthrough to the downside. These followed sharp moves to the upside. Those trying to catch a falling knife were bloodied and beaten up by not waiting for the selling to subside. Prices did eventually rise however, and this last move from the 102 area in May up to 167 was just stunning.

But look at the poor action June 9 and we can see the setup for more downside first before the stock may head back up. Clearly the fear was evident by the extreme selling and massive turnover. Higher price levels were rejected and when that happened the floodgates opened and sellers hit the bid very easily. This follows the pattern of behavior of sellers in previous price breaks, the odds and probabilities favor more downside here.

While the exact pattern the stock may follow is a guess, we can discern from the chart where support lies, at the recent breakout level, around the 130 price zone. This was a place buyers were aggressive. This would be about 15% lower than the close last Friday, and would be an area of interest IF price stops its decline.

Bottom line, follow the patterns of charts to key in on areas of interest, as these patterns are indicative of human behavior, fear and greed.

Read more here:
Human Behavior Creates Predictable Chart Patterns - Investing.com

New Canaan Police Chief Leon Krolikowski

New Canaan Police Chief Leon Krolikowski

Zucco

Zucco

Experts ponder moral vs. legal arguments with duty to rescue laws

Consider three scenarios:

Dozens of Facebook users watch a live stream of a girl being raped. A teenage boy lies unconscious on the floor surrounded by people at a house party. Bystanders walk by two men dragging an intoxicated woman down the street.

The common thread in the events besides all being true is that each had at least two witnesses. But the bystanders reacted differently in each incident.

In the last example, the people who witnessed a woman being led by two men down a Stamford street immediately called the police. The case, from 2014, led to the arrest of both men after police said they caught the pair raping the unconscious woman in a downtown apartment.

The partygoers who saw a 17-year-old boy lie unconscious in the second incident waited about 30 minutes before calling 911, according to police. The March 25 event happened in New Canaan, where police said the victim fell down a flight of stairs and hit his head, suffering a fractured skull and a concussion.

And more than 40 people watched the Facebook live rape - which occurred in Chicago - but not one alerted the police, who have charged at least two suspects in the March incident.

Although the inaction by the Facebook users and the partygoers raises ethical questions, bystanders of crimes or emergencies in almost any U.S. state have no obligation to report them under the law.

The general rule is that if a witness did not create or increase risk of harm to another, there is no legal duty to rescue.

Often we assume that theres a pretty good overlap between what the law requires and what most people think is the moral thing to do, said University of Connecticut law professor Sachin Pandya. This is one of the handful of areas of American court law where that is not the case.

In the New Canaan case, homeowner Douglas Knight was charged with interfering with an emergency call after authorities said he acted to prevent others at the party from calling 911.

The mans son, Andrew Knight, was charged with providing alcohol to minors and permitting minors to possess alcohol, but that case is closed and no one faces charges for failing to dial 911 when it was clear the boy was unconscious.

Ethically it would be ideal if everyone called and reported an emergency, New Canaan Police Chief Leon Krolikowski said. Its not smart to allow someones condition to deteriorate merely because your own self-interest is in jeopardy.

The chief, who also has a law degree, said its hard to tell whether criminalizing bystanders inaction would be the best solution.

If you contribute toward the injuries, if you caused the accident, you could be charged, he said. But if you just happened to be a bystander, theres no obligation to call or intervene.

There are exceptions in some states like Connecticut, including for a class of professionals who are legally required to help; those with a close connection to the victim; and cases where a bystander voluntarily begins helping the victim and then stops or doesnt succeed, Pandya said.

If youre passing someone who is drowning and you think you can easily save them, the right thing to do is to save them, Pandya said. But for various reasons, the law has been, for decades, extremely reluctant to hold someone legally responsible for not doing what we would all think is the moral thing to do.

Only a handful of states Massachusetts, Vermont, California and Hawaii penalize witnesses who fail to be Good Samaritans.

Massachusetts statutes, for instance, would punish witnesses to rape, murder, armed robbery or hazing incidents who were able to report the crimes without danger to themselves or others. Violators face a fines of between $500 and $2,500.

Even if Connecticut enacted such laws, its unclear whether prosecutors here would bring charges under those statutes or if witness behavior would change.

Its hard to know if its mostly a symbolic act or whether prosecutors would take it seriously, Pandya said. It might be appropriate to hold bystanders accountable for not doing more when they can.

But its hard for me to imagine that a bystander who is not already motivated by what they think is the moral thing to do will act differently just because the law is different.

Krolikowski doubts Connecticut will enact a duty to rescue statute anytime soon, especially because most people do the right thing. And he noted that every town has methods for reporting incidents anonymously.

More often than not, people do call 911, he said. Its a rarity that people dont do it.

Ivonne Zucco, executive director of the Stamford-based Center for Sexual Assault Crisis Counseling and Education, said victims are often among friends just moments before being raped.

There are other cases, she said, where someone is spotted slipping drugs into anothers drink at a party or a bar, but people in groups are less inclined to follow their instincts to get involved something known as the bystander effect.

Its a behavior highlighted by social scientists John Darley and Bibb Latan, whose work is still referenced by psychologists today. Their study showed that 10 percent of people in a group setting would report an emergency, compared with two-thirds when they were the lone witness.

Weve come to a point where everything is about rules and laws to manage human behavior, Zucco added. But the old values, when people seemed to think about one another, seem to be gone. As humans, these are things that we should be doing naturally.

See the article here:
Experts ponder moral vs. legal arguments with duty to rescue laws - The Advocate

Last month, I told you about the zodiac band that runs through the night sky. Because the Earth and the planets all orbit the sun in nearly the same plane, all of our fellow planets are located within it.

Back in the day, folks didnt know about any of this and saw the planets as wandering stars. In fact, they really didnt know what stars were, period. Most cultures saw them as being of a divine or godly nature. They saw patterns or pictures in the stars, which we call constellations, and observed them as they majestically slide from east to west night after night. Their predictable seasonal cycles through hundreds of years acted as clocks and calendars that helped them plan their lives. They were and still are infallibly reliable.

But then, as now, there were five stars that were mavericks or wild cards. Without a lot of rhyme or reason, they showed up every night in slightly different positions among the fixed stars. They would also switch directions and get brighter and fainter. Some of them even sported variations in color. They would also disappear from the skies for weeks at a time. Many cultures, including First Nation and Native Americans, saw them as greater gods and their motions and behaviors were signs of pleasure or displeasure with the mere mortals on the ground. Human behavior was controlled by these wandering stars.To appease them, sacrifices took place, sometimes even human ones.

Ancient Greeks referred to these independently minded wandering stars as asteres planets, which is where we get the term planets. The Greeks, as well as the neighboring Romans, didnt see these planets as gods themselves, but named them after major gods in their mythology out of respect for their deity. It never hurt to kiss up! The Roman names of the planets have carried on to thepresent day.

The planet Mercury is named after the messenger of the gods because of its speed among the stars, just as the god Mercury was considered the first speedy delivery service. It only takes Mercury 88 days to circle the sun, flying along at more than 100,000 mph.Earth plows along at just 67,000 mph.

Venus is named after the Roman goddess of beauty and love because of its great brilliance in the sky. Little did they know what a hellholethe planet is. Because of a thick poisonous atmosphere complete with acid rain, the runaway greenhouse leaves the surface temperature hot enough to melt lead. Its definitely not a beautiful place.

Because the planet Jupiter is so bright and stays in one place among the stars for a lot longer than Venus, it was named in honor of the king of the Roman gods. TheRomans were right in naming the planetafter their head god, Jupiter, because its by far the largest planet in the solar system at 88,000 miles in diameter. The Romans didnt know that at the time, of course.

The planet Saturn was named after the Roman god of agriculture for reasons that arent all that clear. However, Saturn was also considered the goddess of time because it takes so long for Saturn to make a complete circuit among the stars. Saturn takes more than 29 years to make that journey, the longest of all the planets.

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Sky Watch: The case of the wandering 'stars' - TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press

Selin Balci uses fungi as a medium tocreate living maps that explore the complexity of microscopic life and its similarity with human behavior.

SelinBalci got a degree in microbiology from Istanbul Universityand worked in researchfor 5 years before turning to art. Her work combines her experience culturing fungi and moldwith creative experimentation to obtain colorful pieces that reflect the complex behavior of these microorganisms. The micro-world, largely hidden from sight, is alluring, frightening and beautiful, she writes.

Balci creates her living paintings by seeding colorful microorganismson agar coating on top of the canvas. This method lets her control the overall shape, but the final colors and sizes of each colony depend on the interactions among the different species as they grow. After observing the complex patterns they follow for years, she argues that their behavior is not much unlike our own.

Simple living organisms demonstrate all of the hallmarks of a complex and coordinated social life, Balci says. The diminutive life forms harmonize to create a colorful array of actions, counter-actions and conflicts where they mimic the human conditions of social, political, economic, and environmental concerns that have an effect on us.

With every piece, she experiments with the fungis behavior.I create competition for resources, territorial wars, and struggle for power and control among living organisms in an artificially created environment where all vital resources are restricted, she writeson herwebsite.Sometimes they eat each other; they grow on top of each other. They get angry. Other times, they keep to themselves, delineating a strict border between colonies. I find their behavior very similar to us, to humans.

All images via Selin Balci

Original post:
This Turkish Bioartist Creates Beautiful Maps out of Fungi - Labiotech.eu (blog)

Harvard University says it has canceled offers to admit at least 10 students after it found they exchanged offensive memes on social media.

The universitys student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, reported the move on Monday.

The Crimson reported that the individuals connected through the Harvard College Class of 2021 Facebook group. It said they traded memes and messages with a private Facebook group, which was set up last December.

Those memes included images making fun of sexual abuse, racial minorities and the deaths of children.

For example, one student in the private group called the imagined hanging of a Mexican child piata time, The Crimson noted. Others made jokes about the Holocaust, Germanys systematic killing of Jews and others during World War II.

A Harvard spokeswoman did not comment, saying the university does not discuss the admission of individual students. The university tells accepted students that an offer of admission can be canceled for a number of reasons. They include behavior that brings into question (student) honesty, maturity or moral character."

What happened?

The Harvard Class of 2021 Facebook group had about 100 members. Later, some of them then created the smaller, private Facebook group. They shared the offensive images and messages in this group.

In April, Harvard officials sent letters to some of the members, asking them to explain their offensive posts. The students were told the school was reconsidering its offer of admission. The admissions office also said the students should not attend Harvards freshmen visiting event in April, the Crimson reported.

About a week later, at least 10 were told their offers were canceled, the newspaper said.

Jessica Zhang was a member of the larger Facebook group, Class of 2021.

A lot of students were excited about forming group chats with people who shared similar interests," she told The Crimson in an email.

She said the group began because someone posted about starting a chat for people who liked memes.

Zhang told The Crimson she did not post in the smaller group.

Cassandra Luca told the student newspaper that some members of the Class of 2021 group had suggested a group that posts more "R-rated" memes. Luca will also start taking classes at Harvard later this year.

Luca said the founders of the smaller group required students to first post shocking memes to the main group if they wanted to join the smaller group.

They were like, Oh, you have to send a meme to the original group to prove that you could get into the new one, Luca said.

Neither Zhang's nor Luca's offers of admission were canceled.

A student whose admission was canceled said the office asked the students to share with them all of the memes they sent to their private group.

This student spoke under the agreement that reporters would not use their name.

Right or wrong?

Some students, such as Luca, were unsure how they felt about the university's decision, she told The Crimson.

She said that if the students had threatened someone with harm, it would be a reason to cancel their admission offer.

But Zhang agrees with the school's decision. She told The Crimson that she respects the school's decision because "those actions really spoke about the students' true characters."

This is the second year that Harvard officials have dealt with students sharing offensive messages on the Internet. Last year, students from the Class of 2020 shared racist and sexist jokes in an unofficial Group Me chat. School officials released a statement saying the messages were unacceptable.

Harvard is one of the nation's top universities. It accepted only 5.2 percent of the nearly 40,000 students who applied for the Class of 2021.

I'm Jill Robbins.

And I'm Alice Bryant.

Alice Bryant reported on this story for VOA Learning English. Her report was based on information from the Associated Press, The Harvard Crimson newspaper and VOAs Student Union. Kelly Jean Kelly was the editor.

________________________________________________________________

meme - n. an amusing or interesting picture or video that is spread widely through the Internet

chat / chat group - n. a group of people who communicate regularly via the Internet, usually in real time but also by email.

piata - n. a decorated container filled with candies, fruits and gifts that is hung up at parties or celebrations and hit with a stick by children until it is broken and the things inside it fall out

The Holocaust - n. the killing of millions of Jews and other people by the Nazis during World War II

moral - adj. concerning or relating to what is right and wrong in human behavior

R-rated - adj. (informal use) not meant to be seen by children under the age of 17

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Harvard Cancels Admissions Offers Over Social Media Behavior - Voice of America

Whats the right way to respond if your boss makes an inappropriateor even unethicalrequest? Former FBI director James Comey says he found himself facing just such a dilemma in February, when US president Donald Trump reportedly asked him to drop a federal investigation into the recently-fired national security adviser Michael Flynn.

[Flynn] is a good guy. I hope you can let this go, Trump said, according to a memo written by Comey shortly after the meeting. I agree he is a good guy, Comey said, opting not to address the implied request.

Some US senators seem to think Comeys response was pretty weak. Youre big. Youre strong. I know the Oval Office, and I know what happens to people when they walk in. There is a certain amount of intimidation. But why didnt you stop and say, Mr. President, this is wrong. I cannot discuss this with you.' Sen. Dianne Feinstein asked during Comeys June 8 testimony.

But management experts say its no surprise that Comey floundered in the moment. When bad bosses take us by surprise, few people respond in the way they might hope.

Its incredibly normal for people not to respond perfectly in the moment when theyre confronted with shocking behavior.Its incredibly normal for people not to respond perfectly in the moment when theyre confronted with shocking behavior, Alison Green, a management consultant and author of New York magazines popular column Ask a Manager, writes in an email. Very few of us have a perfectly polished response on the spot when we first encounter something inappropriate or unethical. And one of the most common reactions is to say something to try to normalize the situationand that is especially true when there are sticky power dynamics, as there are in this case. (As an example of this, look to all the women who deal with creeps at work by just trying to smooth over an inappropriate interactionand later realize, whoa, that was clear-cut sexual harassment.)

Indeed, Comey was clearly navigating uncharted territory. By his own admission, hed never dealt with a president like Trump before. During his testimony, he noted that he felt compelled to take notes on their one-on-one meetings, a step hed never taken with former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. I was honestly concerned that he might lie about the nature of our meeting, and so I thought it really important to document, he said. Theres also reason to think Trump was trying to make Comey fear for his job security. Before firing Comey, Trump reportedly assured him that lots of people wanted the job. Comey saw this as an attempt to create a patronage relationshipComey could stay on as FBI director if he was loyal to Trump.

Such behavior will sound familiar to anyone whos had a boss that perpetuates a culture of fear, according to Stefanie Johnson, an assistant professor of management at the University of Colorado, Boulders Leeds School of Business. And when people face harassment or intimidation at work, they dont think as clearly.

Daniel Kahnemans book Thinking Fast and Slow (and many other theories) point to the fact that our brains have two mechanismsa logical side that requires slow conscious, data-driven thought and an emotional one that results in fast, not always logical, responses, Johnson writes in an email. If someone is afraid of their leader (their leader might fire them, for example) then theyre likely to engage in this emotional response.

Basically, when we feel threatened, the logical parts of our brain shut down, according to Johnson. The part of your brain in which you weigh the costs and benefits of making a decision (like standing up for what you think is right) is dismantled. Instead, you engage in fight-or-flight. Giving an answer like Hes a good guy seems to be a flight responsehe does not want to fight with Trump.

Comey himself expressed regret about his initial response to Trump. I was so stunned by the conversation that I just took it in, he told Sen. Feinstein. I remember saying, I agree he is a good guy, as a way of saying, Im not agreeing with what you asked me to do. Again, maybe other people would be stronger in that circumstanceI hope Ill never have another opportunity. Maybe if I did it again, Id do it better.

Chances are Comey will do better if he encounters a similar scenariosimply because hes now had practice dealing with a shocking request, and has devoted thought to what a suitable response might look like. But the truth is that its hard to prepare for unexpectedly alarming behavior at work. And so Johnson suggests that if you find yourself in a similarly sensitive moment, you ask for a moment to think.

You need to remove yourself from the situation, collect yourself, maybe go out on the balcony and think about what you need to do, she says. So just say, I really cant respond to that right now, I need to put some thought into that,' and leave the room.

Another option is to signal to your boss that you wont keep the request a secret. Say, Ah, I think we should probably loop some other people in on this and see what they think, Johnson suggests. If your boss is really making an inappropriate demand, this may help defuse the situation.

And if you dont heroically shut down your boss or another overstepping coworker, theres no reason to beat yourself up. Comey did exactly what anyone should do upon coming out of a shocking encounter like thathe documented it and he reported it, says Green. But youd have to be pretty oblivious to human behavior to criticize him for not taking the president to task in the shock of the moment.

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The MIT AgeLabwill build and analyze new deep-learning-based perception and motion planning technologies for automated vehicles in partnership with the Toyota Collaborative Safety Research Center (CSRC). The newresearch initiative, called CSRC Next, is part ofa five-year-old ongoing relationship with Toyota.

The first phase of projects with Toyota CSRC has beenled by Bryan Reimer, a research scientist at MIT AgeLab, which is part of theMIT Center for Transportation and Logistics. Reimermanages a multidisciplinary team of researchers, and students focused on understanding how drivers respond to the increasing complexity of the modern operating environment. He and his team studied the demands of modern in-vehicle voice interfaces and found that they draw drivers eyes away from the road to a greater degree than expected, and that the demands of these interfaces need to be considered in the time course optimization of systems. Reimers study eventually contributed to the redesign of the instrumentation of the current Toyota Corolla and the forthcoming2018 Toyota Camry.(Read more in the 2017 Toyota CSRC report.)

Reimer and his team are also building and developing prototypes of hardware and software systems that can be integrated into cars in order to detect everything about the state of the driver and the external environment. Theseprototypes are designed to work both with cars with minimal levels of autonomy and with cars that are fully autonomous.

Computer scientist and team memberLex Fridmanis leadinga group of seven computer engineers who are working on computer vision, deep learning, and planning algorithms for semi-autonomous vehicles. The application of deep learning is being used for understanding both the world around the car and human behavior inside it.

The vehicle must first gain awareness of all entities in the driving scene, including pedestrians, cyclists, cars, traffic signals, and road markings,Fridman says. We use a learning-based approach for this perception task and also for the subsequent task of planning a safe trajectory around those entities.

Fridman and his team, now firmly entrenched in the next phase of the project with Toyota CRSC, set up a stationary camera at a busy intersection on the MIT campus to automatically detect the micro-movements of pedestrians as they make decisions about crossing the street. Using deep learning and computer vision methods, the system automatically converts the raw video footage into millisecond-level estimations of each pedestrians body position.The program has analyzedthe head, arm, feet and full-body movement of more than100,000 pedestrians.

Fridmans research also focuses on the world inside the car.

Just as interesting and complex is the integration of data inside the car to improve our understanding of automated systems and enhance their capability to support the driver,he says.This includes everything about the drivers face, head position, emotion, drowsiness, attentiveness, and body language.

With Toyota and other partners, the team is exploringthe use of cameras positioned to monitorthe driver, as well as methods toextract all those driver state factors from the raw video and turnthem into useable data which can to support future automotive industry needs.

Whats innovative about Lexs work is that it uses state-of-the-art methods in computer science and artificial intelligence to study the complexities of human intent grounded in large-scale real-world data, Reimer says.

Toyota CSRC DirectorChuck Gulash the researchleverages the AgeLabs expertise in computer vision, state detection, naturalistic data collection and deep learning to focus on the challenges and opportunities of autonomous vehicle technologies.

When asked how the research collaboration would affect the future of automotive technology, Gulash says it willcontribute to better computer-based perception of a vehicles environment as well as social interactions with other road users.

What is unique about the AgeLabs work is that it brings together advanced computer science with a human centered perspective on driver behavior,he says. As with all CSRC projects, output from the AgeLabs effort will be openly shared with industry, academia and government to contribute to future safe mobility.

MIT AgeLab DirectorJoe Coughlinsays theAgeLab is using all of these technologies to do two things: understand human behavior in the driving context, and to design future systems that result in greater safety and expansion of mobility options for all ages.

Read more:
AgeLab researching autonomous vehicle systems in ongoing collaboration with Toyota - MIT News