Pandemonium in the Punjab

Today is my father’s birthday. He died last year, one month short of his 90^th birthday.

I adored my Dad and very many along with me. I can commemorate him today by talking about how handsome he was, his sense of humor or his character. His favorite quote “Character is doing the right thing when no one is watching” reflects the kind of man he was. Or I could talk about his academic and athletic record-breaking feats in high school; or describe his courageous year in the Greek resistance during WWII, serving alongside the Allied Military Mission to Greece; or go into his co-discovery of the internationally acclaimed “The Beirut Reaction” in 1965 – a chemical reaction that has since helped develop hundreds of anti-bacterial and anti-cancerous drugs. Last but not least, I could brag about his being awarded Lebanon’s prestigious National Order of the Cedar, a medal of honor of the Lebanese Government, “for great services rendered to Lebanon, for acts of courage and devotion of great moral value, as for years in public service”. (Dad was Professor of Organic Chemistry at the American University of Beirut for almost 40 years, also throughout the violent Lebanese Civil War).

But it is something else I want to talk about today. One of the fondest memories I have of my Dad is his comical adventures in the kitchen and his secret recipes. He very seldom cooked, but when he did, it was always one of his favorite meals and the only thing he could make: spaghetti.

Over the years, our family now and then would savor Dad’s creative spaghetti sauces whose ingredients he adamantly refused to reveal. “They’re top-secret”, he’d always cajole. Moreover, he would never let us in the kitchen while he was cooking, lest we take a peek at his ingredients. Our attempts to do so always failed. He’d rush up to us the moment he heard footsteps, obscuring our line of vision, and push us gently away with a “leave the chef alone, please”.

His inimitable test of whether the spaghetti was cooked was to throw a strand on the wall. If it stuck, the spaghetti was done. Always the scientist…  But it was the fantastic names Dad gave his pasta sauces that had us in stitches. When dinner was ready he’d put on a posh British accent and solemnly proclaim, “Ladies and gentlemen, tonight on the menu…”, and an unforgettable name would follow.

Every time he’d make one of his notorious sauces, a game around the dinner table always ensued. Everyone took turns at guessing the secret ingredients. Dad’s reply was always the same, for as long as I can remember. “Hmmm…perhaps, who knows?” he’d retort with a twinkle in his eye.

While I was going through my father’s papers last year, I burst into tears when I came across an index card in one of the many files in his archive cabinet. Staring right at me were his secret spaghetti sauce recipes, in his characteristic handwriting. My crying briefly turned into laughter, only to revert back again for a long while…

Dad, you’ve been busted. Now, every year on your birthday we honor you by cooking one of your not-so-secret-anymore spaghetti sauces. And we love you for that, as for so many other reasons. Tonight on the menu, dearest Dad: your utterly weird but delicious Pandemonium in the Punjab.

Dad, Beirut, 1963

Tags: "Allied Military Mission to Greece", "American University of Beirut", "In Memoriam", "my Dad", "National Order of the Cedar", "The Beirut Reaction", Organic Chemistry, recipes

It Gets Better

I’m lucky. I do not know what it feels like to be discriminated against or bullied. I cannot even begin to imagine what it must feel like to be harassed and tormented to the point of taking my life.

Many, many people out there aren’t as lucky. In 2010, a number of teens in the United States took their own lives, harassed for their sexual orientation and unable to envision a positive future for themselves. In response to that wave of teen suicides, the “It Gets Better“ project was launched. It’s goal is to prevent suicide among LGBT youth by having adults in the community show that the teens’ lives will get better.

A few days ago, the staff at the Exploratorium in San Francisco issued a powerful and moving “It Gets Better” group video. From the Exploratorium’s press release:

The video features interviews with thirteen participants, who come from departments across the museum, including the very young and the mature, from the Teen Explainer program to Community and Government Relations to Online Engagement. Each of these individuals tells their stories of their struggles and imparts messages of hope and empowerment.

I take my hat off to you, Exploratorium.

Imagine if the LGBT staff at our schools, universities, government, big corporations, cultural institutions – you name it – were encouraged to come out with such group videos. Imagine the impact such institutional statements could have: Coca Cola’s “It Gets Better” video, Nike’s “It Gets Better” video… the IMF one, the Deutsche Bank one, the Facebook one, the NFL one, the EU one, the WHO one, the NEMO one… to name a few.

This is an appeal to institutions worldwide to follow the Exploratorium’s praiseworthy example. Help end anti-gay harassment once and for all. Give your LGBT staff a voice. Endorse and promote “It Gets Better” videos in the name of your institution, in support of your LGBT staff. Be role models.

So. Which well-known institutions will also take a stand? Who will have the balls– as an institution – to show LGBT teens worldwide that they are not alone, and that there is light at the end of their tunnel?

Tags: "gay rights". discrimination, "Science Center NEMO", "teen anti-gay bullying", "teen suicide", "The Trevor Project", bullying, Dan Savage, Exploratorium, It Gets Better Project, LGBT, Terry Miller

Publish-or-Perish

A few weeks ago, a prominent Dutch psychologist was fired on the spot. A charismatic personality, his quirky press releases had the media hanging on his lips. His latest experiments had shown that meat-eaters are more selfish and antisocial than vegetarians. People who eat that steak are compensating for their insecurity and loneliness, he argued.

The golden boy of social psychology, as it turned out, had cooked up the results.

Let’s, for now, forget that the same media that rushed to publicize his findings without bating a critical eyelid, now couldn’t nail him to the cross fast enough. Media hypocrisy is an appealing topic in its own right, but that’s not what I want to talk about.

It’s about something else. Comments about this scientific fraud, be it in the news, editorials, talk shows, or social media, frequently reverted to the proverbial publish-or-perish catchphrase: the pressure put on university staff to publish work constantly to reel in sponsors, get government grants, impress peers, and (thus) sustain a career in academia.

What astonished me during this tsunami of media coverage was that the publish-or-perish slogan was questioned not once. It was completely taken for granted.

Peter Foucault, Publish or Perish, Installation @ the I Magnin Building, Oakland, CA, 2006

While there is no excuse whatsoever for falsifying or concocting data, however high the publication pressure, this lack of reflection on the publish-or-perish model begs many, many questions.

Do we have our priorities straight in our institutions of higher education? What kind of institutions are we propagating, when we judge university faculty by the number of papers they have published, their citation index, and their media appeal? Serious and complex problems face the world and future generations. What better serves students – our future problem solvers: universities that cherish publishing machines or exceptional educators?

Has the publish-or-perish model in our universities led us astray? Do we need a paradigm shift? Might an Educate-or-Perish model be what puts us back on track?

Tags: "citation index", "educate or perish", "publish or perish", "scientific misconduct", academia, education

A Tribute to the Twin Towers

This is my first post.

I’m writing this one day before the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attack.  Unforgettable, horrific images resurfaced in the media these past few weeks. Images of anguish, destruction, mayhem. Documentaries flooded the networks, full of humane tales, or conspiracy tales, or nightmarish film-montages of that day, to commemorate that almost surrealistic event in New York City ten years ago.

And then, I stumbled across a video of cartoonist Dan Meth. A montage of Twin Tower movie cameos featuring over 75 clips, from 1969 to 2001.  Even though it dedicated only a nanosnippet to the extraordinary documentary Man on Wire, it left me mesmerized, stunned and sad.  It brought back 9/11  in full force,  despite its Hollywood glow.

As a cognitive psychologist, this made me wonder about the nature of emotions, and about the power of positive versus negative images.  Do the horror-images of burning and falling buildings and bodies commemorate 9/11 in a stronger way than Dan Meth’s poetic tribute to the Twin Towers?

See Dan’s film and judge for yourself.

Tags: cognition, Dan Meth, emotions, Man on Wire, New York, New York City, September 11 attacks, Short film, Twin Tower, World Trade Center