So it's Monday, meaning the resident faculty here at Blogistan Polytechnic Institute donned neon Hawaiian-print spandex bodysuits and made their way from the wine cellar library where they'd spent the weekend drinking thinking on our motto of Magis vinum, magis verum ("More wine, more truth") to the hot tub faculty lounge for their weekly game where the underwear goes flying planning conference. As usual, the staff planned to eavesdrop on them to figure out what they have in mind for the week. We had all taken up our respective listening posts and tested our comm links when ... neon Hawaiian-print spandex bodysuits?!?
That seems rather ... extreme.
More below the fold....
First our usual thanks to last week's guest lecturers. Last Tuesday, Professor of Neuroholdemology Caractacus compared the civil rights movement and the Tea Party protests in Some Thoughts on 4/19. Last Wednesday, Professor of Juronursinfosystology FarWestGirl offered a stirring rant on being the grownups in today's political dialogue and a call for continued activism, in Keep It Up. And last Thursday, mdmslle made her debut at the BPI lectern with a discussion of The Overton Window, Local and State Politics, and a Call to ACTION. All were well worth reading if you missed them.
This week the classified briefings on OPERATION TO BE DETERMINED continue, so don't forget your Super Double-Secret Decoder Ring (some assembly required, batteries not included). On Tuesday, Professor Caractacus returns with his Things We Learned This Week series. And on Wednesday, Professor of Commuhealthmemiofieldrogueology TheFatLadySings returns for her first lecture as tenured faculty. As with last week, the secret password is "If the diarist specified a topic" and the secret response is "I missed it." But unlike last week, the Professor of Astrology Janitor will not disguise himself as Chef and offer coffee and bagels, nor will Chef disguise herself as the Professor of Astrology Janitor and bump into your toes with the buffer. And we apologize for the scuff marks on last week's bagels. Their plans were so secret not even they knew what they were doing.
Note: We have guest lecturers tentatively scheduled for the next three Wednesdays, but we have Wednesday openings starting May 19th. Also, JanF and addisnana would still welcome a research assistant in BPI's state-of-the-art High Energy Meta Mojo Elucidation Detector (HEMMED) laboratory, to prepare the "Top of the Morning" featurette on Wednesdays. If you would like to guest host Morning Feature, or try your hand with the buttons, switches, dials, levers, and knobs in the HEMMED lab to post TotM, please volunteer in the Tuna Can, below.
Also: Please visit the Things We Did This Week thread and share your stories of offline political activism.
Which leaves only the resident faculty and those neon Hawaiian-print spandex bodysuits. Perhaps they simply wanted to spice up their weekly game where the underwear goes flying planning conference in the hot tub faculty lounge, but if so they went to an extreme. What's more, they made sure we all saw it.
As you can see, this startled the BPI Squirrel, because we're usually so normal here at BPI. Okay, there was The Tijuana Incident. Okay, and The Cream Cheese Incident. Okay, and The Tibetan Yak Festival. You can stop now. But still, those neon Hawaiian-print spandex bodysuits startled the BPI Squirrel. He even dropped his Blewberry and accidentally deleted a message about his family reunion plans. Luckily Pootie the Precious could recover it with the Litter Box Scoop app on her iHazPhone.
You might think the resident faculty odd - we do - but we also recognize a clue when we see it. They were demonstrating an important insight on group behavior. An individual lawyer or businessman living in Washington D.C. and having season tickets to that city's NFL team might show up at the stadium wearing a team jersey. Get a group of lawyers and businessmen who have season tickets together, and let them discuss what they should wear to the stadium, and you might very well get this:
It's a concept called group polarization (pdf link) and it runs contrary to conventional wisdom and the Hegelian Dialectic, which suggest that groups in discussion tend to bring divergent views together toward a moderate synthesis. The research shows the opposite: group discussions focus on and group opinion coalesces around extreme positions. And the individuals who participate in the group discussion tend to emerge with more extreme views than they held when the discussion began.
Group polarization obviously has important political implications. But it also has important academic implications: the BPI Squirrel may not come out of his tree for a week.
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Happy Monday!