Category: Musings

Being wrong can be right!

Another very interesting post courtesy of The Conversation.

First of all, let me quote the opening two paragraphs from the WikiPedia entry on ‘intellectual humility’:

Intellectual humility is the acceptance that one’s beliefs and opinions could be wrong. Other characteristics that may accompany intellectual humility include a low concern for status and an acceptance of one’s intellectual limitations.

Intellectual humility (IH) is often described as an intellectual virtue. It is considered along with other perceived virtues and vices such as open-mindedness, intellectual courage, arrogance, vanity, and servility. It can be understood as lying between the opposite extremes of intellectual arrogance/dogmatism and intellectual servility/diffidence/timidity.

Now to the article that was published by The Conversation.

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The curious joy of being wrong – intellectual humility means being open to new information and willing to change your mind

Sometimes the evidence points you in a new direction. Schon/Moment via Getty Images

Daryl Van Tongeren, Hope College

Mark Twain apocryphally said, “I’m in favor of progress; it’s change I don’t like.” This quote pithily underscores the human tendency to desire growth while also harboring strong resistance to the hard work that comes with it. I can certainly resonate with this sentiment.

I was raised in a conservative evangelical home. Like many who grew up in a similar environment, I learned a set of religious beliefs that framed how I understood myself and the world around me. I was taught that God is loving and powerful, and God’s faithful followers are protected. I was taught that the world is fair and that God is good. The world seemed simple and predictable – and most of all, safe.

These beliefs were shattered when my brother unexpectedly passed away when I was 27 years old. His death at 34 with three young children shocked our family and community. In addition to reeling with grief, some of my deepest assumptions were challenged. Was God not good or not powerful? Why didn’t God save my brother, who was a kind and loving father and husband? And how unfair, uncaring and random is the universe?

This deep loss started a period where I questioned all of my beliefs in light of the evidence of my own experiences. Over a considerable amount of time, and thanks to an exemplary therapist, I was able to revise my worldview in a way that felt authentic. I changed my mind, about a lot things. The process sure wasn’t pleasant. It took more sleepless nights than I care to recall, but I was able to revise some of my core beliefs.

I didn’t realize it then, but this experience falls under what social science researchers call intellectual humility. And honestly, it is probably a large part of why, as a psychology professor, I am so interested in studying it. Intellectual humility has been gaining more attention, and it seems critically important for our cultural moment, when it’s more common to defend your position than change your mind.

What it means to be intellectually humble

Intellectual humility is a particular kind of humility that has to do with beliefs, ideas or worldviews. This is not only about religious beliefs; it can show up in political views, various social attitudes, areas of knowledge or expertise or any other strong convictions. It has both internal- and external-facing dimensions.

Within yourself, intellectual humility involves awareness and ownership of the limitations and biases in what you know and how you know it. It requires a willingness to revise your views in light of strong evidence.

Interpersonally, it means keeping your ego in check so you can present your ideas in a modest and respectful manner. It calls for presenting your beliefs in ways that are not defensive and admitting when you’re wrong. It involves showing that you care more about learning and preserving relationships than about being “right” or demonstrating intellectual superiority.

Another way of thinking about humility, intellectual or otherwise, is being the right size in any given situation: not too big (which is arrogance), but also not too small (which is self-deprecation).

male standing with mic, seated audience, in a casual business seminar
Having confidence in your area of expertise is different than thinking you know it all about everything. Morsa Images/DigitalVision via Getty Images

I know a fair amount about psychology, but not much about opera. When I’m in professional settings, I can embrace the expertise that I’ve earned over the years. But when visiting the opera house with more cultured friends, I should listen and ask more questions, rather than confidently assert my highly uninformed opinion.

Four main aspects of intellectual humility include being:

  • Open-minded, avoiding dogmatism and being willing to revise your beliefs.
  • Curious, seeking new ideas, ways to expand and grow, and changing your mind to align with strong evidence.
  • Realistic, owning and admitting your flaws and limitations, seeing the world as it is rather than as you wish it to be.
  • Teachable, responding nondefensively and changing your behavior to align with new knowledge.

Intellectual humility is often hard work, especially when the stakes are high.

Starting with the admission that you, like everyone else, have cognitive biases and flaws that limit how much you know, intellectual humility might look like taking genuine interest in learning about your relative’s beliefs during a conversation at a family get-together, rather than waiting for them to finish so you can prove them wrong by sharing your – superior – opinion.

It could look like considering the merits of an alternative viewpoint on a hot-button political issue and why respectable, intelligent people might disagree with you. When you approach these challenging discussions with curiosity and humility, they become opportunities to learn and grow.

Why intellectual humility is an asset

Though I’ve been studying humility for years, I’ve not yet mastered it personally. It’s hard to swim against cultural norms that reward being right and punish mistakes. It takes constant work to develop, but psychological science has documented numerous benefits.

First, there are social, cultural and technological advances to consider. Any significant breakthrough in medicine, technology or culture has come from someone admitting they didn’t know something – and then passionately pursuing knowledge with curiosity and humility. Progress requires admitting what you don’t know and seeking to learn something new.

animated people talking over a meal
Intellectual humility can make conversations less adversarial. Compassionate Eye Foundation/Gary Burchell/DigitalVision via Getty Images

Relationships improve when people are intellectually humble. Research has found that intellectual humility is associated with greater tolerance toward people with whom you disagree.

For example, intellectually humble people are more accepting of people who hold differing religious and political views. A central part of it is an openness to new ideas, so folks are less defensive to potentially challenging perspectives. They’re more likely to forgive, which can help repair and maintain relationships.

Finally, humility helps facilitate personal growth. Being intellectually humble allows you to have a more accurate view of yourself.

When you can admit and take ownership of your limitations, you can seek help in areas where you have room to grow, and you’re more responsive to information. When you limit yourself to only doing things the way you’ve always done them, you miss out on countless opportunities for growth, expansion and novelty – things that strike you with awe, fill you with wonder and make life worth living.

Humility can unlock authenticity and personal development.

Humility doesn’t mean being a pushover

Despite these benefits, sometimes humility gets a bad rap. People can have misconceptions about intellectual humility, so it’s important to dispel some myths.

Intellectual humility isn’t lacking conviction; you can believe something strongly until your mind is changed and you believe something else. It also isn’t being wishy-washy. You should have a high bar for what evidence you require to change your mind. It also doesn’t mean being self-deprecating or always agreeing with others. Remember, it’s being the right size, not too small.

Researchers are working hard to validate reliable ways to cultivate intellectual humility. I’m part of a team that is overseeing a set of projects designed to test different interventions to develop intellectual humility.

Some scholars are examining different ways to engage in discussions, and some are exploring the role of enhancing listening. Others are testing educational programs, and still others are looking at whether different kinds of feedback and exposure to diverse social networks might boost intellectual humility.

Prior work in this area suggests that humility can be cultivated, so we’re excited to see what emerges as the most promising avenues from this new endeavor.

There was one other thing that religion taught me that was slightly askew. I was told that too much learning could be ruinous; after all, you wouldn’t want to learn so much that you might lose your faith.

But in my experience, what I learned through loss may have salvaged a version of my faith that I can genuinely endorse and feels authentic to my experiences. The sooner we can open our minds and stop resisting change, the sooner we’ll find the freedom offered by humility.

Daryl Van Tongeren, Associate Professor of Psychology, Hope College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Nothing more to add to this most interesting article.

The Winter solstice

We pass from 2023 into 2024.

So here we are, 2024, and the year when I become 80! However, I still have eleven months before that happens. Like an amazing number of people, I do not really think long about this New Year but there are plenty that do.

Here is an article that explains much more. It is from The Conversation.

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What winter solstice rituals tell us about indigenous people

The Blackfeet always faced their tipis towards the rising sun, including on winter solstice. Beinecke Library via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Rosalyn R. LaPier, University of Montana

On the day of winter solstice, many Native American communities will hold religious ceremonies or community events.

The winter solstice is the day of the year when the Northern Hemisphere has the fewest hours of sunlight and the Southern Hemisphere has the most. For indigenous peoples, it has been a time to honor their ancient sun deity. They passed their knowledge down to successive generations through complex stories and ritual practices.

As a scholar of the environmental and Native American religion, I believe, there is much to learn from ancient religious practices.

Ancient architecture

For decades, scholars have studied the astronomical observations that ancient indigenous people made and sought to understand their meaning.

One such place was at Cahokia, near the Mississippi River in what is now Illinois across from St. Louis.

The Cahokia mounds. Doug Kerr, CC BY-SA

In Cahokia, indigenous people built numerous temple pyramids or mounds, similar to the structures built by the Aztecs in Mexico, over a thousand years ago. Among their constructions, what most stands out is an intriguing structure made up of wooden posts arranged in a circle, known today as “Woodhenge.”

To understand the purpose of Woodhenge, scientists watched the sun rise from this structure on winter solstice. What they found was telling: The sun aligned with both Woodhenge and the top of a temple mound – a temple built on top of a pyramid with a flat top – in the distance. They also found that the sun aligns with a different temple mound on summer solstice.

Archaeological evidence suggests that the people of Cahokia venerated the sun as a deity. Scholars believe that ancient indigenous societies observed the solar system carefully and wove that knowledge into their architecture.

Scientists have speculated that the Cahokia held rituals to honor the sun as a giver of life and for the new agricultural year.

Complex understandings

Zuni Pueblo is a contemporary example of indigenous people with an agricultural society in western New Mexico. They grow corn, beans, squash, sunflowers and more. Each year they hold annual harvest festivals and numerous religious ceremonies, including at the winter solstice.

At the time of the winter solstice they hold a multiday celebration, known as the Shalako festival. The days for the celebration are selected by the religious leaders. The Zuni are intensely private, and most events are not for public viewing.

But what is shared with the public is near the end of the ceremony, when six Zuni men dress up and embody the spirit of giant bird deities. These men carry the Zuni prayers for rain “to all the corners of the earth.” The Zuni deities are believed to provide “blessings” and “balance” for the coming seasons and agricultural year.

As religion scholar Tisa Wenger writes, “The Zuni believe their ceremonies are necessary not just for the well-being of the tribe but for “the entire world.”

Winter games

Not all indigenous peoples ritualized the winter solstice with a ceremony. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t find other ways to celebrate.

The Blackfeet tribe in Montana, where I am a member, historically kept a calendar of astronomical events. They marked the time of the winter solstice and the “return” of the sun or “Naatosi” on its annual journey. They also faced their tipis – or portable conical tents – east toward the rising sun.

They rarely held large religious gatherings in the winter. Instead the Blackfeet viewed the time of the winter solstice as a time for games and community dances. As a child, my grandmother enjoyed attending community dances at the time of the winter solstice. She remembered that each community held their own gatherings, with unique drumming, singing and dance styles.

Later, in my own research, I learned that the Blackfeet moved their dances and ceremonies during the early reservation years from times on their religious calendar to times acceptable to the U.S. government. The dances held at the time of the solstice were moved to Christmas Day or to New Year’s Eve.

The solstice. Divad, from Wikimedia Commons

Today, my family still spends the darkest days of winter playing card games and attending the local community dances, much like my grandmother did.

Although some winter solstice traditions have changed over time, they are still a reminder of indigenous peoples understanding of the intricate workings of the solar system. Or as the Zuni Pueblo’s rituals for all peoples of the earth demonstrate – of an ancient understanding of the interconnectedness of the world.

(This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.)

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Jean and I wish you all a Very Happy 2024. Please be safe and careful, and be happy!

This IS a rescue story.

A woman who knew no bounds when it came to rescuing three large dogs.

This is such a beautiful account of Veronica Shea taking action, and personal risks, to provide, firstly trust, and then love for Princess George, Grace and Steve, as they were named. The story was published on The Dodo.

Please read for yourself.

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Woman Visits Mountain Every Day To Convince Huge Dogs To Let Her Rescue Them

“They couldn’t be touched. They couldn’t be leashed. They were just terrified.”

By Elizabeth Claire Alberts

Published on the 26th October, 2023

In 2020, Veronica Shea was out hiking with her dog in the Angeles National Forest in California, when she spotted something strange moving ahead of them.

“We whip around the curve, and I look over and there was this huge black thing,” Shea told The Dodo. “He went up the side of a cliff.”

Veronica Shea

Shea followed the furry animal and came face to face with three malnourished dogs alone in the wilderness. Realizing the dogs had been abandoned, she knew she had to help them. Every day for several weeks, Shea trudged up the mountain to feed the dogs and work on gaining their trust.

Veronica Shea

Slowly, the dogs got used to her and even began eating out of her hand. But Shea had no idea how to get them off the mountain. If she trapped one dog, would the others flee? She knew she couldn’t do it alone.

Veronica Shea

When she asked for help, a whole team of rescuers stepped forward. Together, they carried equipment up the mountain and put together a makeshift cage. The rescuers carefully lured the dogs inside and carried them down the mountain.

The three dogs —mastiffs named Princess George, Grace and Steve, who are believed to be siblings — were safe now. But they still had a long journey ahead.

Veronica Shea

The rescuers approached Cheri Wulff Lucas, a well known dog behaviorist and trainer in California, to see if she could help the nervous dogs learn to trust again.

“They weren’t adoptable the way they came,” Lucas told The Dodo. “They couldn’t be touched. They couldn’t be leashed. They were just terrified.”

Princess George, Grace and Steve responded well to Lucas’ training. Still, they continued to have a “very strong startle reflex,” said Lucas. This made it difficult to find them the perfect home.

“It was going to take a very special home for them to go into because they’re not the kind of dogs that are going to go to the dog park,” Lucas said. “Even walking them on city streets would be a lot for them. And if they do spook, they weigh 125 pounds, so [they would be] very hard to contain.”

But Lucas knew the dogs were safe on her own property.

“I’m out in the middle of nowhere,” Lucas said. “There’s no traffic around here. You can’t even see another home from here. So if they did get out, they would just come back here to me.”

Veronica Shea

While Lucas never planned on keeping the dogs herself, that’s exactly what she ended up doing. This turned out to be the best decision for everyone. Princess George, Grace, and Steve continued to live in a safe and supportive environment. And Lucas discovered that the dogs could help her with her work as a trainer.

“If I get dogs that needs socialization — to be more familiar and less reactive with other dogs — I use my pack to help rehabilitate them,” Lucas said. “And all three of them are highly social with dogs. They know how to smell properly, how to not overpower the dog that needs the socialization. They’re just flawless. And that’s not something I taught them — they came that way.”

Veronica Shea

The threesome were particularly helpful when Lucas started working with another dog named Andi, who was rescued from a hoarding case.

“She had lived in a pen for seven years without human touch or being leashed or anything and she was terrified,” Lucas said. “They just came in and really made her feel comfortable. It was really sweet to see. They brought her around in a way that I never could as a human.”

Lucas ended up adopting Andi as well, bringing her personal pack of dogs to 12.

Princess George, Grace and Steve have been living with Lucas now for over three years, and they’re completely different dogs now.

“They’re incredibly playful,” Lucas said. “If you came to my house and did not know their backstory, you would think they were like any other dog.”

Lucas describes George as a “couch potato” who loves hanging around the house and socializing with the other dogs. Steve is the one who likes to play endless games of “chase” out in the yard. Grace remains a bit timid, but she shares a very close relationship with Steve.

“They’re pets — they’re really pets now,” she said. “They’re not cases for me anymore.”

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Lucas sums it up perfectly in that last sentence; “They’re pets – they’re really pets now,“

Lucas reminds me of Jean for when we first met, in December 2007, Jean had more than twenty dogs at home, all rescues, and led to me publishing my first book in 2009: Learning from Dogs.

An inspiring TED Talk

Hannah Ritchie raises a very important question.

I was born in London before the end of World War II and to a great extent my upbringing was in the times of yesterday. But the world has moved on in many, many ways. It is too easy to say that we live in very strange times.

Thus it was enlightening to come across this talk, under the TED Talks banner, quite recently. I have great pleasure in sharing it with you. Plus, Hannah’s website is here. (From which I have taken the following words!)

(P.S. The YouTube video is just over thirteen minutes long. It automatically runs into the next video so you will have to stop it yourself.)

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The word “sustainability” gets thrown around a lot these days. But what does it actually mean for humanity to be sustainable? Environmental data scientist Hannah Ritchie digs into the numbers behind human progress across centuries, unpacking why the conventional understanding of sustainability is misleading and showing how we can be the first generation of humans to actually achieve it.

Why you should listen

Hannah Ritchie is deputy editor and research lead at Our World in Data, an online publication making data and research on the world’s largest problems accessible and understandable for non-experts. She is a senior researcher at the University of Oxford, where she studies how environmental issues intersect with others like poverty, global health and education. She has also done extensive research into the question of how to feed everyone in the world a nutritious diet without wrecking the planet. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vox, Wired, BBC, Al Jazeera, The Economist and New Scientist.

In 2022, Ritchie was named Scotland’s Youth Climate Champion. She is also an honorary fellow at the University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation, and a fellow at the Energy for Growth Hub, focused on ending global energy poverty. Her forthcoming book, The First Generation, makes an evidence-based case for why we have a meaningful chance to solve global environmental problems for the first time in human history.

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It is a very inspiring talk; please watch it!

The expansion of the Universe

I am reproducing a recent article published by The Conversation.

It is a reflection of the latest research undertaken by NASA, it is beyond fascinating!

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The universe is expanding faster than theory predicts – physicists are searching for new ideas that might explain the mismatch

The James Webb Space Telescope’s deep field image shows a universe full of sparkling galaxies. NASA/STScI

Ryan Keeley, University of California, Merced

Astronomers have known for decades that the universe is expanding. When they use telescopes to observe faraway galaxies, they see that these galaxies are moving away from Earth.

To astronomers, the wavelength of light a galaxy emits is longer the faster the galaxy is moving away from us. The farther away the galaxy is, the more its light has shifted toward the longer wavelengths on the red side of the spectrum – so the higher the “redshift.”

Because the speed of light is finite, fast, but not infinitely fast, seeing something far away means we’re looking at the thing how it looked in the past. With distant, high-redshift galaxies, we’re seeing the galaxy when the universe was in a younger state. So “high redshift” corresponds to the early times in the universe, and “low redshift” corresponds to the late times in the universe.

But as astronomers have studied these distances, they’ve learned that the universe is not just expanding – its rate of expansion is accelerating. And that expansion rate is even faster than the leading theory predicts it should be, leaving cosmologists like me puzzled and looking for new explanations.

Dark energy and a cosmological constant

Scientists call the source of this acceleration dark energy. We’re not quite sure what drives dark energy or how it works, but we think its behavior could be explained by a cosmological constant, which is a property of spacetime that contributes to the expansion of the universe.

Albert Einstein originally came up with this constant – he marked it with a lambda in his theory of general relativity. With a cosmological constant, as the universe expands, the energy density of the cosmological constant stays the same.

Imagine a box full of particles. If the volume of the box increases, the density of particles would decrease as they spread out to take up all the space in the box. Now imagine the same box, but as the volume increases, the density of the particles stays the same.

It doesn’t seem intuitive, right? That the energy density of the cosmological constant does not decrease as the universe expands is, of course, very weird, but this property helps explain the accelerating universe.

A standard model of cosmology

Right now, the leading theory, or standard model, of cosmology is called “Lambda CDM.” Lambda denotes the cosmological constant describing dark energy, and CDM stands for cold dark matter. This model describes both the acceleration of the universe in its late stages as well as the expansion rate in its early days.

Specifically, the Lambda CDM explains observations of the cosmic microwave background, which is the afterglow of microwave radiation from when the universe was in a “hot, dense state” about 300,000 years after the Big Bang. Observations using the Planck satellite, which measures the cosmic microwave background, led scientists to create the Lambda CDM model.

Fitting the Lambda CDM model to the cosmic microwave background allows physicists to predict the value of the Hubble constant, which isn’t actually a constant but a measurement describing the universe’s current expansion rate.

But the Lambda CDM model isn’t perfect. The expansion rate scientists have calculated by measuring distances to galaxies, and the expansion rate as described in Lambda CDM using observations of the cosmic microwave background, don’t line up. Astrophysicists call that disagreement the Hubble tension.

An illustration showing the progression of the Universe's expansion after the Big Bang. The Universe is depicted as a cylindrical funnel with labels along the bottom showing the first stars, the development of planets, and now the dark energy acceleration
The universe is expanding faster than predicted by popular models in cosmology. NASA

The Hubble tension

Over the past few years, I’ve been researching ways to explain this Hubble tension. The tension may be indicating that the Lambda CDM model is incomplete and physicists should modify their model, or it could indicate that it’s time for researchers to come up with new ideas about how the universe works. And new ideas are always the most exciting things for a physicist.

One way to explain the Hubble tension is to modify the Lambda CDM model by changing the expansion rate at low redshift, at late times in the universe. Modifying the model like this can help physicists predict what sort of physical phenomena might be causing the Hubble tension.

For instance, maybe dark energy is not a cosmological constant but instead the result of gravity working in new ways. If this is the case, dark energy would evolve as the universe expands – and the cosmic microwave background, which shows what the universe looked like only a few years after its creation, would have a different prediction for the Hubble constant.

But, my team’s latest research has found that physicists can’t explain the Hubble tension just by changing the expansion rate in the late universe – this whole class of solutions falls short.

Developing new models

To study what types of solutions could explain the Hubble tension, we developed statistical tools that enabled us to test the viability of the entire class of models that change the expansion rate in the late universe. These statistical tools are very flexible, and we used them to match or mimic different models that could potentially fit observations of the universe’s expansion rate and might offer a solution to the Hubble tension.

The models we tested include evolving dark energy models, where dark energy acts differently at different times in the universe. We also tested interacting dark energy-dark matter models, where dark energy interacts with dark matter, and modified gravity models, where gravity acts differently at different times in the universe.

But none of these could fully explain the Hubble tension. These results suggest that physicists should study the early universe to understand the source of the tension.

Ryan Keeley, Postdoctoral Scholar in Physics, University of California, Merced

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Ryan Keeley explains it above. Hopefully most of you who read this understand the physics involved. Ryan has a website here.

As I said at the start it is beyond fascinating! In the truest sense, out of this world!

Dog names in the USA

I read recently a review of the most popular dog names by State.

This was an article on US News dated November 6th. It showed the names for our dogs in the U.S. in a table:

The article also reported that dogs and puppies were living in more than half of the nation’s households. That is one heck of a lot of dogs and it just shows how great dogs are as companions to us humans.

Then the article went on to declare the most popular dog name by State, and there was another graphic:

So much for the names of our three remaining dogs: Brandy; Cleopatra; Oliver.

More on The Beatles

I know this is not my normal post for a Thursday.

But I wanted to include an hour-long video of The Beatles. So I decided to do it today!

Just settle down and watch/listen to this fabulous music.

Nostalgia

The final song from The Beatles!

I cannot easily put my words together about this iconic British rock band formed in 1960; I was 16 then.

‘Now and Then’
The final song from the iconic English rock band The Beatles was released yesterday, a track that relies on AI-enhanced vocals from former co-frontman John Lennon. Listen to the song, titled “Now and Then,” here.  Regarded as one of the most influential bands of all time, The Beatles are the bestselling artists in music history, having shipped more than 180 million albums. Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and (for most of the time) Ringo Starr, were nominated for 21 Grammys in the span of six years beginning in 1965. The group broke up in 1970, and Lennon was tragically killed by an angry fan in 1980. The new song was originally written by Lennon in 1977 and surfaced in 1994 by McCartney but was shelved due to Lennon’s voice being muffled by a piano. New technology reportedly allowed Lennon’s vocals to be isolated and enhanced to the point of being usable. 

Now for some reason I cannot play that YouTube link but hopefully it will be alright when I publish it.

Dogs are such perfect creatures.

A re-publishing of a post from 2009.

I was looking through posts from a few years ago and came across ‘Dogs – their deep ties to man” and thought it would be a grand post to publish again.

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Dogs – their deep ties to man!

It’s impossible not to admire, respect and love a dog

(First published on the 4th August, 2009 but it relates to an event even before I left the United Kingdom. I met Jean in December, 2007 and Pharaoh and me travelled out to Mexico a year later.)

An incident last night reminded me of the complexity of the dog’s mind.  It has not been the first time this has happened.

Our 6 year-old German Shepherd dog, Pharaoh, was given a bone as a treat during the previous day and, as sometimes happens, it was a bit tough on his stomach.  So at around 1.30 am, I was woken up.  Nothing so special about that.  But reflect on how this happened.

1.30 am is the part of night where, hopefully, we are in that very deep phase of sleep.  How then does Pharaoh calculate the best way of awakening me so that he can be let out into the yard?  One might consider the various options:

– He barks

– He paws at the bed

– He jumps on the bed

– He scratches at the door

and so on.

What Pharaoh did (and has done before, so this is a calculated behaviour) is very gently put his damp nose onto the side of my face, just below my left ear, which was the part of my face nearest to the edge of the bed.  It woke me so gently from my deep sleep but made me immediately aware (as a parent is when their young child cries) that Pharaoh required urgent attention.

A moment later he was standing by the bedroom door, letting out that soft, quiet whine that is only used when he needs to use the yard.  Within seconds his collar and lead were on and he was outside doing what nature was prompting him.

Pharaoh resting on an English lawn
Pharaoh resting on an English lawn

No big deal but it stayed with me this morning as I reflected on the empathetic way that Pharaoh had communicated with me during the night.

Dogs sensitivity to the world around them is a powerful reminder that the less we focus in on ourselves the more we learn.

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Memories!

A repeat of my post ‘Being scammed’.

I thought it very worthwhile to repeat this, plus a real treat at the end of the post!

Scamming in all its forms has only got worse in the last couple of years, since I parted with $9,000 in 2021!

As a direct result of that error, I changed my bank, installed a VPN at home (Proton), changed my email account to ProtonMail, and also changed my calendar (also to Proton).

But I still do not take it as important as it is. I guess because it is not my first thought whenever I come across an unfamiliar email.

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Please read this; and do not make the same mistake as me!

The Story of a Scam

(or how I lost the thick end of $10,000.)

On Friday, 6th August, 2021 at 05:51 in came the following email:

Norton Customer ,

User name:paulhandover

*we like to confim you that the NortonDesk re-newal. has been done on your request*

It is very easy to unsubscribe it,

and related to your any query,  reach us at +1-(860) – (852) – (6259).

Product-Name : NortonDesk

……………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Price : $475.04

……………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Subscription ID : 8837-77942826-947192-8126

……………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Expiration Date　:　3 Year from the Date of Purchase

………………………………………………………………………………………………

* If you wish to Cancel this Membership then please feel free to Contact our Billing department as soon as Possible*

……………………………………………………………………………………………………..

*Please do not write to this mail address, that will not help*

Reach us on +1 – (860) – (852) – (6259)

……………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Regards,

Billing department

Contact: +1 – (860) – (852) – (6259)

693 Amwell Rd, Hillsborough, NJ 


My first mistake was not to check the incoming email address. It was mahaliashomakerxhv928@gmail.com

I telephoned the number given and told the person that I wanted to cancel this membership. Indeed that I had never subscribed for this membership in the first place.

I spoke with ‘Adam’. I was then asked to go to a webpage where I filled in a Refund Application Order form. I filled in my details including the refund amount and my bank details: Sort Code & Account Number.

I then submitted the form and imagine my surprise when a few minutes later I was informed that I had received the sum of $10,000. I quickly checked our bank account online and there was the $10,000 credit in our checking account. 

My second mistake was me not examining the total in our accounts. I have the facility to show the total funds in our accounts. Why I didn’t do that I can not explain.

Then it was back on the telephone and Adam also was surprised (later I realised that this was a feigned surprise and all part of the scam) and said could I go to the bank and fill in an International Wire Transfer for the amount of $9,500. Adam also said that he would give me the details of the person in Thailand that was to receive the funds, and could I say this was for a medical operation because it would save ‘Norton’ the taxation.

My third mistake was not to discuss this with Jeannie and to assume that it was just a harmless error.

The details came through and I went to our bank in Grants Pass. I got to the bank a little after 09:00. I saw a staff member of the bank and explained what I needed to do. The bank member queried this and said that it sounded like a scam. I lied and said I knew the woman in Thailand and wanted to go ahead. That was what I had been instructed to say.

My fourth mistake was not listening to the woman at the bank. (And I still thought that the ‘Norton’ funds were in my account.)

The International Wire Transfer was completed and I signed it. I also asked the balances on our two accounts. It was about $10,000 less than I expected and I queried it but was told that there had been a transfer from my savings account to my checking account of $10,000 for Norton. I thought that this was still a little low but that I could check it carefully once I got home. I had a thirty-minute window to change my mind.

Mistake number five, a huge mistake, was while at the bank not to ask them carefully to go through all my transactions that day because that would have revealed that the receipt of $10,000 that I had seen online had mysteriously disappeared. Indeed had never been received. That would have enabled me to stop the wire transfer within the thirty-minute window.

I returned home and found out the truth. I had been scammed out of $9,500.

The strange thing was that ‘Adam’ of the billing department of so-called Norton kept ringing me throughout the day to say that the funds would be sent back to me and gave me the details of three wires and that the funds would be back in my bank account on Monday, 9th August!

Later that morning I rang Kevin Dick who manages our investments and told him the tale. He said that there was a huge amount of scamming about and that I should make three phone calls: to the bank and report the fraud; to the Sheriff’s office and report the fraud; and to my insurance company. The first two were done straight away. Kevin also told me to close my bank accounts and amend my email address. Alex, my son, said to use my Proton mail account and straight away I started to make the change.

A person from the humanists group that we belong to said also to inform The Daily Courier.

Kevin also sent me the following links:

From a recent Podcast I created:

 https://pivot-with-kdi-wealth.simplecast.com/episodes/financial-fraud-and-how-to- keep-from-being-a-victim

A video from our site:

https://www.kdiwealth.com/resource-center/money/data-thieves-from-outer-space

From Finra on Fraud to dos:

https://www.finra.org/investors/insights/investment-fraud-awareness

On Monday morning Ryan of ‘Norton’ called me at 07:15 and said that Adam Prescott was no longer with the firm. Ryan said that their General Manager, Ron Cooper, would call me shortly. Ron did indeed call me and said that they would return the money but that the minimum cheque they could write was $30,000. I was then told that in advance of me receiving the money I would have to pay a small amount to them. At this point I put the phone down for it was clearly a second attempt to steal more funds from me.

Finally we went back to the bank on Monday morning. We were informed that there was never a credit of $10,000 but that a clever switch of the money from one account to another made it look as though the money had been credited. The event had been reported to the bank’s fraud department.

On Tuesday morning, the 10th August, the bank said that as well as our two accounts being locked out from us and that only cheques and cash withdrawals would be honoured for the time being, the fraud department had made the decision to issue us with a ten-day notice to terminate our accounts. In other words, within ten days the bank would no longer want us as customers. Since then I have done much research and found out via the Forbes website that this was more to do with the bank being ultra conservative than anything else. Indeed Kevin said that he had spoken with his IT department and they thought that it was strange that my ex-bank had terminated us so quickly. The IT department thought that the teller at the bank realised that she had been partly culpable.

However the bank did recommend another bank to go to in Grants Pass.

I have since reset my iMac and changed my email address.

It is a most humiliating affair. I have beaten myself up several times over and have at last understood the frame of mind that I had gotten myself into.

To explain that, first of all I thought that I needed to stop the billing urgently and because it was early on a Friday morning thought that the best thing to do was to call immediately.

Secondly, during the call that scammers spoke to me in friendly tones and quietly complimented me on my integrity. I am sure that this ‘spoke’ to my psychological fear of rejection that I have had since I my father died in 1956.

Then in the morning of the 11th August I received a call from a regular contact at the English company who manage my UK SIPP. He wanted to check if I had tried to log on at 09:00 UK time and I replied that there was no way that was me for that UK time was 01:00 Pacific time. There were apparently three attempts to log on. Unsuccessfully as it turned out and my SIPP account is temporarily closed as a result.

The scammers are very thorough in their crooked craft!

Now as of Thursday, the 12th August, we are pretty much out of the grim shadow of this event. We have new accounts at The People’s Bank here in Grants Pass. I have changed my email address and yesterday afternoon I decided that the only safe way of protecting myself was to get another iMac. I was speaking to the sales department of Apple and mentioned the scam and the woman immediately said I should speak with their Technical Support and transferred me. Then I was helped via screen sharing to go through many pages deleting unnecessary files and other stuff. And the helpful woman found another item of malware that was deleted and removed. She spent 54 minutes getting me properly cleaned out and then forwarded an email with all the links for me to do the same process at a later date. It was a superb experience.

So that is it.

Now watch these two YouTube videos. The first is just 5 minutes long and is important to all who use computers and want to be protected against scammers. (NB: This first video is now not included.)

and then watch this slightly longer video from Jim

Be safe! Please!

An addendum dated Saturday, 14th August, at 7am Pacific Time.

Only to say that I also posted my scamming report on Ugly HedgeHog under their General Chit Chat forum. Of the many responses that came in I wanted to post here two of them.

The first from ‘Stanikon’:

Sorry you had to go through this. Your first clue should have been the grammar and phrasing of the original email. That would have given it away. Legitimate companies go to great lengths to make sure their grammar, phrasing and language are correct. I have avoided several scams by paying attention to that so there is some value in being slightly OCD.

and the second from ‘Red6’:

The safest thing to do in these situations is simply not to open the email. I receive on a daily basis, emails telling me that the items I ordered are being shipped, my subscription to something has been renewed etc, etc. 99.9% of these are scams and nothing bad will happen if you just delete them. Older working people often have the fear that there’s a bill out there that has not been paid and they are afraid of getting a bad credit report. So they aggressively try to send someone money for something they cannot even recognize. If it is a true debt, you will be reminded of it several times before any reports are made.

I follow several simple rules in preventing scams. There are many more but this will take care of most of them.

1. Examine the sender’s email address, if you do not recognize it then DO NOT OPEN and DELETE immediately. Most of these scammer’s email addresses will not have the company name in the email address OR it will be combined with other names. Most will not have the .com, .org, etc but will be gmail, Hotmail, or other generic URL. Many of these scammers “broadcast” their emails to everyone on a purchased email list not knowing whether some or valid or not. If you open or reply to these it verifies your email as valid and active and worthy of more attention. Also, if it is an unknown email address, it could be a carrier of a virus or some other bad computer/software infection.

2. If you do get involved with something that does not feel right and you take it to the bank – TRUST THE BANK if they tell you it is suspicious. They see these things every day and develop a feel for them. I received a cashier’s check for something I sold on craigslist. I took it to the bank to deposit and the bank rep immediately recognized the cashier’s check as a fake. She even called the bank the check was supposed to be drawn on and they checked the records and told her that it was counterfeit. You trust your bankers, credit union, etc with your money every day so trust them when they tell you something does not seem right.

3. Scammers know that many older people do NOT like to use credit cards. So a lot of their dealings involve checks, bank transfers, and other forms of older less secure payment methods that older citizens are comfortable with. I NEVER, NEVER send money for something I purchase or order online unless it is through a credit card. In fact, I rarely buy ANYTHING anymore that does not go on the credit card. They are safer, quicker, and easier. If somehow you do get something on your bill that you did not authorize, the credit card company will investigate and go after the person or company that charged you. This is one more safety step that protects the consumer. This does not always apply to debit cards. Debit cards are issued by individual banks or credit unions and some have policies in the fine print that they do NOT have the same policies as the big credit card companies and may not forgive or relieve the user for bad charges made to their debit card.

4. Just do not believe anyone or any company that says they sent you a huge refund or overpayment or some amount of money by mistake. That rarely happens. It is even rarer if they also tell you to return the money to some foreign address, email, or wire transfer. When in doubt, wait for a week or so before you do ANYTHING. If they sent you the check, transfer etc, wait to see if it clears or is valid. We are conditioned by TV and movies that we need to act immediately in situations such as this. This is rarely the case. Take time to see what happens. During this cooling-off period check them out, research the internet to see if others have experienced this scam. It is almost a sure thing that if you are being scammed, others have been also and it has been reported somewhere with law enforcement agencies or on websites on the internet. Check them out before acting. Or better yet, do nothing for a while and most likely they will just go away. Much like the telephone scammers, they make their money on volume, calling as many as possible in the least amount of time. Scammers will not waste time working on you for days, they have thousands of other emails, accounts to call. Remember, they are after the fastest, easiest targets – the low-hanging fruit.

If it is a true mistake or debt you owe then most likely you will receive some official correspondence in regards to the debt. A good example is the IRS and Social Security phone scams in the past couple of years. You get a call from the IRS or Social Security informing you that you may have committed fraud and law enforcement is on their way to arrest you. But if you arrange repayment with their representative, an arrest can be avoided. The IRS and Social Security NEVER take action without first sending several official US Postal letters to you.
If you are still inclined to send money to someone in a foreign country then discuss it with your bank and listen.

Hope this helps.

ooOOoo

All very sound advice and as relevant today as it was when first published.

Finally, for something completely different; have a look at the recent Hunter’s Moon as featured on YouTube.