Recurring News

World’s oldest person dies at 116.

Now, this is pretty impressive, as are her 40 grandchildren, 75 great-grandchildren, 150 great-great-grandchildren, 220 great-great-great grandchildren and 75 great-great-great-great grandchildren.

But the amazing thing is how often the world's oldest person dies!

This news is from today. But it also happened on Aug. 28, 2006. I note that it happened on the 3rd of November 2003, and the 30th of August 2005.

I suppose, in some ways, it would be more newsworthy if she didn't die, but "oldest person in the world did not die today" is not an eye-catching title,, I guess. Maybe when a new record is set for not dying, that will be news. And the number of people who are over the age of 110 is certainly on the rise.

The world's second oldest man also died recently, but the oldest man keeps on ticking, at 115. The second oldest was the last (apparent) surviving black US soldier from WWI, and both his parents had been slaves.

The oldest person is dead, long live the oldest person.

Human Behavior Experiments

I watched the Sundance Channel this evening, on which was being aired a documentary called The Human Behavior Experiments. It included footage, discussion, and retrospective interviews with some participants in the Milgram and Stanford Prison Experiments, along with other experiments, the Kitty Genovese murder, and Abu Ghraib.

These are all tied together, conceptually, in how people behave in groups versus alone, along with how they respond to the voice of authority. The kicker, for me at least, was the case of the strip searches ordered by a voice on the phone.

For approximately a decade, a man has been calling up restaurants and other places, pretending to be a police detective, and ordering the person who answers the phone (or whomever is in charge and handed the phone) to conduct strip searches of employees - and a lot of other things.

The behaviors of those on the phones is amazing. It is appalling. And, apparently, it is human nature more than not.

A report and some very disturbing footage is here: <http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=2684890&page=1>. I seriously recommend not watching it if inappropriate behavior and dehumanizing behavior disturbs you or makes you too uncomfortable.

The special didn't really tell me anything I didn't know about human behavior. It showed me some experiments I hadn't seen, in addition to the McDonald's strip search (and others) and it did a good job of tying it into Abu Ghraib. The similarities between the Stanford pictures and those from Iraq are eerie - and not just to me, but to some of those involved in the Stanford Prison Experiment.

If you get Sundance, I commend the show to interested people (and others who are unfamiliar and can handle it). It will be on again, I am sure.