Meanderings, 25 November 2023
The crispness of the morning air on our walks and the darkness of our evenings makes me aware of the motion of our calendar turning from Thanksgiving toward Christmas — or, to use churchspeak, as Advent turns our minds toward the coming of Christ. But, first, in the lectionary tradition we have Christ the king Sunday.
Why do discounts work — especially on Black Friday and the Christmas season? Why do we think, in purchasing books, that ten dollars off an expensive book is “10 dollar saved”?
When you shop, there's usually a standoff in your brain between what can be described as its emotional and rational parts.
"The human brain has essentially evolved to feel first and think next," says Carolyn Yoon, who studies consumer neuroscience at the University of Michigan.
Spotting something you'd like to to buy activates your brain's reward circuitry. Dopamine-fueled impulses pump you up. Anticipation might have you imagining how great life would be with this new thing if you had it. All this gets especially heightened if it's something you're predisposed to like — say, the same Kia Soul you've enjoyed for years.
The counterbalance is your cognitive mechanism. It might pipe up like a prudent accountant: Do I need this? Is this worth it? How does it fit in my budget?
A sale lands like the thumb that tips your mental scale toward buying.
In fact, the discount itself often registers as a win, delivering its own bolt of joy, says Jorge Barraza, a consumer psychologist at the University of Southern California.
"Not only are we getting the product," he says, "but we're also getting that reward that we discovered something, we've earned this extra thing."
SHAWNEE, Kan. (WDAF) – It’s not unusual for the Johnson County Library to get packages with books in the mail.
But there was something unusual about the package the Shawnee branch received on Oct. 30. It was the kindness behind it.
The package included not just a book but also a letter written by a Delta Air Lines pilot.
The man who has only been identified as Capt. Ben wrote that he found a children’s book at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport while he was commuting home to Florida. Ben looked up the library on the barcode and sent the book back in the mail.
In his letter, he even offered to pay for any late fees.
“I do not feel anybody should ever be penalized for enriching their life with a book,” the pilot wrote.
“It connects exactly to the kind of thing that we want to help build in our community,” branch manager Anna Madrigal told Nexstar’s WDAF. “It’s just a really cool relationship piece that a stranger just decided to do that. I’m going to remember this for quite a while.”
Fortunately for whoever checked out the book and lost it, it wasn’t overdue yet. Even still, the Johnson County Library eliminated late fees earlier this year and forgave unpaid fines as well.
Ben even shared some Delta pilot wings and trading cards for kids in his package.
“Ben, if you see this, we think you’re pretty awesome. Come say hello if you ever find yourself in our neck of the woods!” the library wrote on Facebook.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — An exploding population of hard-to-eradicate “super pigs” in Canada is threatening to spill south of the border, and northern states like Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana are taking steps to stop the invasion.
In Canada, the wild pigs roaming Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba pose a new threat. They are often crossbreeds that combine the survival skills of wild Eurasian boar with the size and high fertility of domestic swine to create a “super pig” that’s spreading out of control.
Ryan Brook, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan and one of Canada’s leading authorities on the problem, calls feral swine, “the most invasive animal on the planet” and “an ecological train wreck.”
Pigs are not native to North America. While they’ve roamed parts of the continent for centuries, Canada’s problem dates back only to the 1980s when it encouraged farmers to raise wild boar, Brook said. The market collapsed after peaking in 2001 and some frustrated farmers simply cut their fences, setting the animals free.
It turned out that the pigs were very good at surviving Canadian winters. Smart, adaptable and furry, they eat anything, including crops and wildlife. They tear up land when they root for bugs and crops. They can spread devastating diseases to hog farms like African swine fever. And they reproduce quickly. A sow can have six piglets in a litter and raise two litters in a year.
That means 65% or more of a wild pig population could be killed every year and it will still increase, Brook said. Hunting just makes the problem worse, he said. The success rate for hunters is only about 2% to 3% and several states have banned hunting because it makes the pigs more wary and nocturnal — tougher to track down and eradicate.
"At first, when a pallet of boxes showed up at the Harvard Book Store's Needham warehouse earlier this month, nothing seemed fishy about it," the Boston Globe reported recently. The bookseller was prepping for its semiannual warehouse sale and regularly "gets batches of 'remainder' books... delivered in large quantities, in all sorts of packaging."
"I didn't even look twice at the pallet before signing the delivery acceptance slip," said warehouse manager Alexandra Reid. "It wasn't until we were done chatting with the delivery driver that I turned around and actually focused on what was printed on the outside of the boxes."
What she saw were dozens of green-and-white cardboard packages that read "FROZEN FISH" and "HADDOCK" in block letters. "I was immediately horrified," Reid said. "I was genuinely afraid that I had just casually accepted 600 pounds of frozen fish."
When she opened one of the boxes, however, it was filled with books. "We were immensely relieved," she said, adding that the store's regular distributor simply had extra boxes lying around and didn't want them to go to waste.
The bookstore immediately took to social media to have fun with the situation by posting a photo of the boxes and creating a contest, inviting people to come up with captions and offering a $50 gift card as a prize for the best one.
Three finalists were named on Monday and yesterday @lynzely was crowned caption contest winner for: "Available in hardcover, paperback, and fillet."
The bookstore plans to "send some of its warehouse sale book orders out in the haddock boxes, so customers will be just as confused as they were when their package arrives at the front door," the Globe noted.
"I'm going to encourage the staff to put just a little disclaimer on them so everyone--including the delivery drivers--doesn't have a heart attack," said Alex Meriwether, the shop's chief creative officer, adding that he hopes the mix-up serves as just one more "reminder of what shopping within a local economy's ecosystem looks like.... You don't see this at Amazon."
Students of Northwestern University who have completed their coursework while serving time in prison are preparing to graduate on Wednesday and become the first such pupils to receive bachelor’s degrees from the highly regarded college, according to academic officials.
The class graduating from the Northwestern Prison Education Program (NPEP) is one of four cohorts with 20 incarcerated students. Four hundred incarcerated people applied for the program during the latest application cycle, with only 70 getting interviewed.
Northwestern asserted that the members of the outgoing class are the first students who are incarcerated to receive bachelor’s degree from a university ranked among the top 10 on the US News & World Report.
The pupils finished their degree requirements during the Covid-19 pandemic, when universities across the country transitioned to remote learning.
To continue classes during the pandemic, Northwestern staff brought printed class materials and scanned assignments, given limited access to technology in the correctional facilities.
“What this cohort lived through … it’s really nothing short of extraordinary,” Jennifer Lackey, the NPEP’s director, said to Axios.
Students also navigated health challenges associated with Covid-19 as they attempted to finish their year.
Broderick Hollins, a student of the program’s second cohort, has said he had to teach himself thermodynamics after missing class because of a serious bout of Covid-19.
He said that working towards a degree helped bolster his mental health, Axios reported.
“Your mind can get into a dark, deep depression. Your mind is what’s imprisoned,” Hollins said, according to Axios, adding that learning in the classroom was “the best exercise you could have in prison”.
In an interview published on Northwestern’s website, Hollins added that chemistry was the most impactful course for him. He said that “with Covid-19 fighting us, our leaders are going to our chemists and living through science”.
The lauded writer and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates will be the commencement speaker for Wednesday’s NPEP ceremony.
Trust you had a great thanksgiving. I always appreciate your Saturday meanderings. This week meanderings are fantastic funny fascinating. The book and fillets is funny. 😄. The Northwestern University on ( I know a few people who put this together) was fantastic as well as the library one.
The books contest winner is clever and funny. I am grateful for the program Northwestern has opened up to the incarcerated. It can bring such hope, as you pointed out, to help an inmate from going into internal hopelessness as years pass. This could provide a way for this parenthesis in a life to make meaning of it.