text:
Darwin Meets His Match
Tom Wolfe and 'Homo Loquax'
By Tom Wolfe —
On Wednesday, the novelist and essayist Tom Wolfe delivered the 35th Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, at the Warner Theater in Washington, D.C. The following is his speech, titled "The Human Beast":
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, this evening it is my modest intention to tell you in the short time we have together . . . everything you will ever need to know about the human beast.
I take that term, the human beast, from my idol, Emile Zola, who published a novel entitled The Human Beast in 1888, just 29 years after Darwin's The Origin of Species broke the stunning news that Homo sapiensa"or Homo loquax, as I call himae"was not created by God in his own image but was precisely that, a beast, not different in any essential way from snakes with fangs or orangutangs . . . or kangaroos. . . or the fang-proof mongoose. Darwin's doctrine, Evolution, leapt from the pages of a scientific monograph into every level of society in Europe and America with sensational suddenness. It created a sheerly dividing line between the God-fearing bourgeoisie who were appalled, and those people of sweetness and light whose business it was to look down at the bourgeosie from a great height. Today, of course, we call these superior people intellectuals, but intellectual didn't exist as a noun until Clemenceau applied it to Zola and Anatole France in 1896 during the Dreyfus Case. Zola's intellect was as sweetly enlightened as they made them. He was in with the in-crowd. Evenings he spent where the in-crowd went, namely, the Cafe Guerbois, along with Manet, Cezanne, Whistler, Nadar, and le tout Paris boheme. He took his cues from the in-crowd's views, namely, Academic art was bad, Impressionism was good, and Homo sapiens had descended from the monkeys in the trees. Human beasts? I'll give you human beasts! Zola's aforementioned novel of that name, La Bete Humaine in French, is a story of four murderers, a woman and three men, who work down at track level on the Paris-Le Havre railroad line, each closing in on a different victim, each with a different motive, including the case of a handsome young passenger train engineer with a compulsion . . . to make love to women and then kill them. With that, Zola crowned himself as the first scientific novelist, a "naturalist," to use his term, studying the human fauna.
I love my man Zola. He's my idol. But the whole business exudes irony so rich, you can taste it. It tastes like marzipan. Here we have Darwin and his doctrine that in 1859 rocks Western man's very conception of himself . . . We have the most popular writer in the world in 1888, Zola, who can't wait to bring the doctrine alive on the page . . . We have the next five generations of educated people who have believed and believe to this day that, at bottom, evolution's primal animal urges rule our lives . . . to the point where the fourth greatest pop music hit of 2001, "You and Me, Baby" by the Bloodhound Gang, proclaims, "You and me, baby, we ain't nothing but mammals./So let's do it like they do on the Dis-cov-ery Channel" it's rich! rich! rich beyond belief!
O. I love you, Emile, but by the time you and Darwin got hold of it, evolution had been irrelevant for 11,000 years. Why couldn't you two see it? Evolution came to an end when the human beast developed speech! As soon as he became not Homo sapiens, "man reasoning," but Homo loquax, "man talking"! Speech gave the human beast far more than an ingenious tool. Speech was a veritable nuclear weapon! It gave the human beast the powers of reason, complex memory, and long-term planning, eventually in the form of print and engineering plans. Speech gave him the power to enlarge his food supply at will through an artifice called farming. Speech ended not only the evolution of man, by making it no longer necessary, but also the evolution of animals! Our animal friends" we're very sentimental about predators these days, aren't we" the lions, the tigers, the wolves, the rhinoceroses, the great apes, kangaroos, leopards, cheetahs, grizzly bears, polar bears, cougars" they're "endangered," meaning hanging on for dear life. Today the so-called animal kingdom exists only at the human beast's sufferance. The beast has dealt crippling blows even to the unseen empire of the microbes. Stunted adults from Third World countries with abysmal sanitation come to the United States and their offspring grow six or more inches taller, thanks to the wonders of hygiene. Cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens, turkeys would be extinct by now had not the human beasts hit upon the idea of animal husbandry. So far the human beast enjoys the luxury of crying sentimental tears over the deer because she's so pretty. But the day the human beast discovers deer in his cellar, fawns in his bedroom closet, bucks tangling horns in the attic at night above his very bedroom . . . those filthy oversized vermin, the deer, will be added to that big long list above. We're sentimental about the dolphins, because they're so smart. What about the tuna? It's okay to kill tunas by the ton because they're dimwits? It would take an evolutionary mystic (and there are such) to believe these animals will ever evolve their way out of the hole they're in thanks to man's power of speech.
No evolutionist has come up with even an interesting guess as to when speech began, but it was at least 11,000 years ago, which is to say, 9000 B.C. It seems to be the consensus . . . in the notoriously capricious field of evolutionary chronology . . . that 9000 B.C. was about when the human beast began farming, and the beast couldn't have farmed without speech, without being able to say to his son, "Son, this here's seeds. You best be putting 'em in the ground in rows ov'ere like I tell you if you wanna git any ears a corn this summer."
Do forgive me, Emile, but here is the tastiest of all ironies. One of Homo loquax's first creations after he learned to talk was religion. Since The Origin of Species in 1859 the doctrine of Evolution has done more than anything else to put an end to religious faith among educated people in Europe and America; for God is dead. But it was religion, more than any other weapon in Homo loquax's nuclear arsenal, that killed evolution itself 11,000 years ago. To say that evolution explains the nature of modern man is like saying that the Bessemer process of adding carbons to pig iron to make steel explains the nature of the modern skyscraper.
Now shall we begin? Shall we take a look at the actual nature of the human beast—at artificial selection, 100% man-made?
2. High in the Statusphere
TO START WITH, I beg your indulgence in a scrap of personal history. In 1951 I graduated from Washington and Lee University, where I majored in English, and entered the Yale University graduate school seeking a Ph.D. in American Studies. American Studies was an interdisciplinary field, requiring the study of, among other disciplines, sociology. I recall having the standard literary attitude toward sociology, a pleasant assurance that the social sciences in general were undeserving arrivistes, nouveau admis, here in the realm of the higher things. That notion vanished the moment I came upon the work of the German sociologist Max Weber.
Weber was well known in academia for his essay "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism," written after he toured the United Sates in 1904. It was the origin of the unfortunately non-Protestant cliché, "the work ethic." He introduced the terms "charisma" and "charismatic" in their current usage; also "bureaucracy," which he characterized as "the routinization of charisma." He coined the term "style of life," which was converted into the compound noun "lifestyle" and put to work as the title of a thousand sections of newspapers across the United States. But what caught my imagination was the single word "status." In a very short, very dense essay called "Class, Status, and Party" he introduced an entirely new concept.
I was by no means the first person to get excited over Weber's "status." The concept was well known within the field of sociology, although it was more often expressed in such terms as "social class," "social stratification," "prestige systems," and "mobility." Six years later Weber's terms "status-seeking" and "status symbols" began showing up in the press. Soon they were part of everyday language.
The great American sociologists of the 1950s, W. Lloyd Warner, the Lynns, August B. Hollingshead, E. Digby Baltzell, C. Wright Mills, David Riesman, were turning out studies of how Americans rated others and themselves, often unconsciously, according to race, ethnic group, address, occupation, vocabulary, shopping habits, bill-paying habits (personal checks in lump sums as opposed to instalment payments in cash), bureaucratic status symbols (corner offices, fine wooden desks as opposed to metal ones, water carafes, sofas as well as chairs, speaker phones, etageres of brass and glass), education (the great divide existing between those who had bachelor's degrees from a respectable four-year college as opposed to those who didn't), even sexual practices. The upper orders made love with the lights on and no bed covers. The lower orders—in the 1950s—found this perverted. Sociologists never rejected Karl Marx's brilliant breakdown of society into classes. But his idea of an upper class—the owners of "the means of production"—and their satellites, the bourgeoisie, in a struggle with the masses, the working class, was too rigid to describe competition among human beast in the 20th century. Weber's entirely novel concept of "status groups" proved to be both more flexible and more penetrating psychologically.
Within the ranks of the rich, including the "owners of the means of production," there inevitably developed an inner circle known as Society. Such groups always believed themselves to be graced with "status honor," as Weber called it. Status honor existed quite apart from such gross matters as raw wealth and power. Family background, education, manners, dress, cultivation, style of life—these, the ineffable things, were what granted you your exalted place in Society.
Military officer corps are rife with inner circles aloof from the official and all-too-political hierarchy of generals, admirals, and the rest. I went to work on a book called The Right Stuff thinking it would be a story of space exploration. In no time at all, I happened upon something far more fascinating. The astronauts were but part of an invisible, and deadly, competitive pyramid within an inner circle of American military fighter pilots and test pilots, and they were by no means at the apex. I characterized this pyramid as a ziggurat, because it consisted of innumerable and ever more deadly steps a fighter pilot had to climb to reach the top. The competition demanded an uncritical willingness to face danger, to face death, not once but daily, if required, not only in combat but also in the routine performance of his duties—without ever showing fear—in behalf of a noble cause, the protection of his nation. There were more ways to die in a routine takeoff of a supersonic jet fighter of the F-series than most mortals could possibly imagine. At the time, a Navy pilot flying for twenty years, an average career span, stood a 23 percent chance of dying in an accident and a 56 percent chance of having to eject at some point, which meant being shot out of the plane like a human rocket by a charge of dynamite under his seat, smashing into what was known as the "wall" of air outside, which could tear the flesh off your face, and descending by parachute. The figures did not include death or ejection in combat, since they were not considered accidental. According to Korean War lore, a Navy fighter pilot began shouting out over the combat radio network, "I've got a Mig at zero! A Mig at zero! I've got a Mig at zero!" A Mig at zero meant a Soviet supersonic fighter plane was squarely on his tail and could blow him out of the sky at any moment. Another voice, according to legend, broke in and said, "Shut up and die like an aviator." Such "chatter," such useless talk on the radio during combat, was forbidden. The term "aviator" was the final, exquisite touch of status sensitivity. Navy pilots always called themselves aviators. Marine and Air Force fliers were merely pilots. The reward for reaching the top of the ziggurat was not money, not power, not even military rank. The reward was status honor, the reputation of being a warrior with ultimate skill and courage—a word, by the way, strictly taboo among the pilots themselves. The same notion of status honor motivates virtually every police and fire fighting force in the world.
Status groups, Weber contended, are the creators of all new styles of life. In his heyday, the turn of the 19th century, the most stylish new status sphere, no more than 30 years old, was known as la vie boheme, the bohemian life. The bohemians were artists plus the intellectuals and layabouts in their orbit. They did their best to stand bourgeois propriety on its head through rakish dishabille, louder music, more wine, great gouts of it, ostentatious cohabitation, and by flaunting their poverty as a virtue. And why? Because they all came from the bourgeoisie themselves originally and wanted nothing more desperately than to distinguish themselves from it. They seldom mentioned the upper class, Marx's owners of "the means of production." They seldom mentioned Marx's working class, except in sentimental appreciation of the workers' occasional show of rebelliousness. No, as the late Jean-Francois Revel said of mid-20th century French intellectuals, the bohemians' sole object was to separate themselves from the mob, the rabble, which today is known as the middle class.
I thought bohemia had been brought to its apogee in the 1960s, before my very eyes, by the hippies, originally known as acid heads, in reference to the drug LSD, with their Rapunzel hair down to the shoulder blades among the males and great tangled thickets of hair in the armpits of the women, all living in communes. The communes inevitably turned religious thanks to the hallucinations hippies experienced while on LSD and a whole array of other hallucinogens whose names no one can remember. Some head—short for acid head—would end up in the middle of Broadway, one of San Francisco's main drags, sitting cross-legged in the Lotus position, looking about, wide eyes glistening with beatification, shouting, "I'm in the pudding and I've met the manager! I'm in the pudding and I've met the manager!" Seldom had so many gone so far to feel aloof from the middle class.
But I was wrong. They were not the ones who raised rejection of the middle class to its final, Olympian level. For what were the hippies and their communes compared to the great bohemians of our time in the status sphere known as Hip Hop, with its black rappers and "posses" and groupies, its hordes of hangers-on—and its millions of followers and believers among the youth of America, white and black? The Hip Hop style of life turns bourgeois propriety inside out. It celebrates the status system of the Street, which is to say, the standards of juvenile male street gangs, so-called gangbangers. What matters is masculinity to burn and a disdain of authority. The rappers themselves always put on looks of sullen hostility for photographs. The hippies' clothes of yore look like no more than clown costumes next to the voluminous Hip Hop jeans with the crotch at knee level and the pants legs cascading into great puddles of fabric at the ankles, the T-shirts hanging outside the pants and just short of knee level and as much as a foot below their leather jackets or windbreakers, and the black bandannas known as do-rags around their heads. What were the hippies' LSD routs known as acid tests . . . compared to the Hip Hop stars' status tests that require shooting and assassinating one another periodically? How cool is that? One of my favorite sights in New York is that of a 14-or-15-year-old boy who has just descended from his family's $10 or $12 million apartment and is emerging onto the sidewalks of Park Avenue dressed Hip-Hop head to crotch, walking through a brass-filigreed door held open by a doorman in a uniform that looks like an Austrian army colonel's from 1870.
Not all status groups are either as competitive as capital-S Society's and the military's or as hostile as the bohemians'. Some are comprised of much broader populations from much larger geographic areas. My special favorite are the Good Ol' Boys, as I eventually called them. I happened upon them while working on an article about stock car racing. Good ol' boys are rural Southerners and Midwesterners seldom educated beyond high school or community college, sometimes owners of small farms but more likely working for wages in factories, warehouses, and service companies. They are mainly but by no means exclusively Scots-Irish Protestants in background and are Born Fighting, to use the title of a brilliant recent work of ethnography by James Webb. They have been the backbone of American combat forces ever since the Revolution, including, as it turns out, both armies during the Civil War. They love hunting, they love their guns, and they believe, probably correctly, that the only way to train a boy to kill Homines loquaces in battle someday is to take him hunting to learn to kill animals, starting with rabbits and squirrels and graduating to beasts as big or bigger than Homo loquax, such as the deer and the bear. Good ol' boys look down on social pretension of any sort. They place a premium on common sense and are skeptical of people with theories they don't put to the test themselves.
I offer an illustration provided to me by a gentleman who is in this audience tonight and who witnessed the following: It was the mid-1940s, during the second World War, and a bunch of good ol' boys too old for military service were sitting around in a general store in Scotland County, North Carolina, waiting for a representative of a cattleman's association. They fell to discussing the war.
One of them said, "Seems to me this whole war's on account of one man, Adolph Hitler. 'Stead a sending all these supply ships to England and whatnot and getting'm sunk out in the Atlantic Ocean by U-boats, why don't we just go ov'ere and shoot him?"
"Whatcha mean, 'just go ov'ere and shoot him'?"
"Just go to where he lives and shoot the sonofabitch."
"I 'speck it ain't that easy. He's probably got a wall around his house."
"Maybe he does. But you git me a boat to git me ov'ere and I'll do it myself."
"I'll wait'il it's night time . . . see . . . and then I'll go around to the back of the house and climb the wall and hide behind a tree. I'll stay there all night, and then in the morning, when he comes out in the yard to pee, I'll shoot him."
Quite in addition to the Good Ol' Boy's level of sophistication, that story reveals four things: a disdain for the futility of government and its cumbersome ways of approaching problems, a faith in common sense, reliance on the inner discipline of the individual—and guns.
Even before I left graduate school I had come to the conclusion that virtually all people live by what I think of as a "fiction-absolute." Each individual adopts a set of values which, if truly absolute in the world—so ordained by some almighty force—would make not that individual but his group . . . the best of all possible groups, the best of all inner circles. Politicians, the rich, the celebrated, become mere types. Does this apply to "the intellectuals" also? Oh, yes. . .perfectly, all too perfectly.
The human beast's belief in his own fiction-absolute accounts for one of the most puzzling and in many cases irrational phenomena of our time. I first noticed it when I read a book by Samuel Lubell called The Future of American Politics. Lubell was a political scientist and sociologist who had been as surprised as everybody else by the outcome of the 1948 presidential election. That was the election in which the Democratic incumbent, Harry Truman, was a president whose approval rating had fallen as low as 23 percent. Every survey, every poll, every pundit's prediction foresaw him buried by the Republican nominee, Thomas E. Dewey. Instead, Truman triumphed in one of the most startling upsets in American political history. Lubell was determined to find out why, and so he set out across the country. When he reached a small Midwestern town that had been founded before the turn of the 19th century by Germans, he was puzzled to learn that the town had gone solidly for Dewey despite the fact that by every rational turn of logic, every economic motivation, Truman would have been a more logical choice. By and by Lubell discovered that the town was still predominantly German. Nobody had ever gotten over the fact that in 1917, a Democrat, President Woodrow Wilson, had declared war on Germany. That had set off a wave of anti-German feeling, anti-German prejudice, and, in the eyes of the people of this town, besmirched their honor as people of German descent. And now, two World Wars later, their minds were fixed on the year 1917, because like all other human beasts, they tended to champion in an irrational way their own set of values, their own fiction absolute. The question Lubell asked was very much like the question that Thomas Frank asked after the election of 2004 in his book What's the Matter with Kansas? By all l economic and political logic, the state of Kansas should have gone to John Kerry, the Democrat, in 2004. But it didn't. Had Frank only looked back to Samuel Lubell, he would have known why. The 2004 election came down to one state: the state of Ohio. Whoever won that state in the final hours would win the election. Northern Ohio, the big cities of Cleveland, Toledo on the Great Lakes, were solidly for Kerry. But in southern Ohio, from east to west, and in the west was the city of Cincinnati, Ohio went solidly for George Bush. And the reason? That great swath of territory was largely inhabited by the Scots-Irish. And when the Democrats came out in favor of gun control, the Scots-Irish interpreted this as not merely an attack on the proliferation of weaponry in American life but as a denunciation, a besmirching, of their entire way of life, their entire fiction absolute. Guns were that important in their scheme of things.
More recently, I returned to Washington and Lee for a conference on the subject of Latin American writing in the United States. The conference soon became a general and much hotter discussion of the current immigration dispute. I had arrived believing that, for example, Mexicans who had gone to the trouble of coming to the United States legally, going through all the prescribed steps, would resent the fact that millions of Mexicans were now coming into the United States illegally across the desert border. I couldn't have been more mistaken. I discovered that everyone who thought of himself as Latin, even people who had been in this country for two and three generations, were wholeheartedly in favor of immediate amnesty and immediate citizenship for all Mexicans who happened now to be in the United States. And this feeling had nothing to do with immigration policy itself, nothing to do with law, nothing to do with politics, for that matter. To them, this was not a debate about immigration. The very existence of the debate itself was to them a besmirching of their fiction-absolute, of their conception of themselves as Latins. Somehow the debate, simply as a debate, cast an aspersion upon all Latins, implying doubt about their fitness to be within the border of such a superior nation.
The same phenomenon, championism, I believe, solves the mystery of something I had been unable to figure out for a very long time, namely, what is it that accounts for the extraordinary emotion of sports fans? What earthly connection do the citizens of New York City think they have to, say, the New York Yankees, whose team includes not one person from the city of New York, which is, in fact, 40 percent Latin American, and an assortment of mercenaries who will play anywhere for the top dollar? How can such a team get such a strong grip on local emotions? Here we see championism in its most elemental form. As far back as the story of David and Goliath in the Bible, the human beast has become excited by those who represent them in what at that stage of history was known as single combat. Before a battle was fought each side would send forth its fighting champion. Goliath, a giant, protected by the most elaborate armor, was so awesome, that at first no one among the Israelites dared confront him. Finally, a young unknown named David volunteered. He turned down King Saul's offer of his own armor as protection and said he preferred to travel light and fast. He proceeded to slay Goliath with a slingshot. At this point, The Philistine army panicked. The defeat of its great champion was seen as a sign from the gods. They fled, the Israelites pursued and slaughtered them. This notion of a surrogate, a champion, who can represent an entire people and give them the exultation of victory when it triumphs and plunge them into depression of defeat when he loses, has persisted for millennia.
Single combat was never pursued as a substitute for actual battle; these contests were always held as an indication of which way the gods were leaning. Nevertheless, both the exultation and the depression were real emotions, curious emotions, on the face of it, entirely aroused by status concerns. The surprising insinuations of status concerns into every area of life must be understood if one is to understand the nature of the human beast. Consider the toxic power of humiliation. Humiliation is a wound inflicted upon the beast's status picture of himself, upon the validity of his standing within the boundaries of his own fiction absolute. Not long ago, in New York, a drug dealer named Pappy Mason was out of prison on parole standing on the sidewalk in front of a bar with a group of his buddies, drinking a beer. A police detective happened to be driving by in an unmarked car and recognized him. He stopped, got out, and said "Mason, you know what stupid is? Stupid is what you're doing right now, drinking in public. You get your ass back in that building—or I'm taking your ass in." Now here was Mason, in front of his buddies. He had a terrible decision to make. Taking his ass in meant taking him to the precinct station and booking him. Drinking on the sidewalk was—a—Mickey Mouse—misdemeanor but it was enough to violate his parole and put him right back in prison. On the other hand, just caving in to some pig of a cop in front of his posse and slinking back into the bar was unthinkable . . .On the other hand, maybe it was thinkable . . .To go back to jail—so he did think . . .slinked back into the bar . . .You did what you had to do, Pappy–but the humiliation! the humiliation! A day passed, two days passed—the humiliation! Day after day it festered . . .festered . . .Eventually he found himself back in prison for an unrelated offense . . .and the same old humiliation . . .slinking back into the bar that night . . .festered . . .Finally, it became too much. He got a message out to one of his boys on the outside: "Go kill a cop." And the guy said, "What cop?" And Mason said, "Any cop."
And so three members of his posse drove about . . . looking for a cop, any cop They came upon a young patrolman alone in a police car in front of the house of an immigrant from Guinea who, as it tuned out had been threatened by drug dealers. They had already tried to burn down his house because he had reported their activities to the police. The young cop, named Eddie Byrne, had been assigned to protect him. It was now late at night, quiet, and the three assailants came up behind the car and assassinated the young policeman. It became a cause of public outrage. It had taken the life of a young man, Eddie Byrne. Yes, but the cops . . .they had trashed Pappy Mason's status picture of himself.
That a wound to one's status, not to one's body, not to one's bank account, not to one's general fortunes in life, that such a wound to one's status could have such a severe effect upon the psyche of the human beast, is no minor matter. It means that we have come upon a form of anguish that is somehow primal. Even the most trivial and the most unlikely circumstances can be colored by the beast's constant and unrelenting concern for his own status. Which is to stay, his own standing, his own rank, in the eyes of others and in his own eyes.
It could be anything as minor and trivial as a man in New York in a taxi five, perhaps even ten blocks from his destination, agonizing over what tip he should give the driver. His status verdict would be in the hands of only one person, the driver, someone he would most likely never see again. And yet, the human beast is perfectly capable of devoting the most excrutiating mental energy to such a trifling decision. When I was working on a novel about college life entitled I Am Charlotte Simmons, I kept coming upon situations in which I thought surely other emotions would rule, love, if not love, passion, or if not passion, at least lust. Instead, as elsewhere, status ruled. Undergraduate life today, involves a status system in which sexual activity can be summed up as "Our eyes met, our lips met, our bodies met, and then we were introduced." The attitude young women have toward their own sexual activity, as well as the impression others have of it, has turned 180 degrees in one generation. There was a time when the worst . . . slut . . . for want of a better term . . . maintained a virginal and chaste façade. Today, the most virginal and chaste undergraduate wants to create a façade of sexual experience. One night I was in a college lounge sitting on a sofa that was backed up against a narrow table. Another sofa was backed up likewise on the other side.. All at once a voice from the sofa behind me, a boy's voice was saying, "What are you talking about? How could I? We've known each other since before Choate! It would be like incest!" And then I heard the girl say, "Please. Come on. I can't stand the thought of having to do it with somebody I hardly know and can't trust." It turned out that she was beseeching him, her old Platonic friend of years' standing, to please relieve her of her virginity, deflower her. That way she could honestly maintain the proper social stance as an experienced young woman in college.
Even before I had left graduate school I had begun to wonder if somewhere in the brain there might be a center that interpreted incoming data and gave the human beast the feeling he was improving its status, merely maintaining its status, or suffering the grave wound of humiliation.
I turned to the literature of the physiology of the brain for the answer, only to discover that Sigmund Freud had stopped the physical study of the brain cold for 40 years. Freud had been so persuasive, had so convinced the scientific community and the academic community in general that he had found the final answers to mental disturbance in his theories of the id, the ego, the superego, and the Oedipal drama within the family, that it was rather pointless to go through the tedious, laborious business of determining what synapses, what dendrites, what circuits in the brain accounted for what one already knew anyway. The physical study of the brain didn't resume until 1969, thanks to the work of a Spanish physician and brain physiologist named Jose Delgado. Delgado was somewhat well-known already because of a striking and very public experiment he had conducted in a bull ring in Madrid. Delgado was experimenting with stereotaxic needle implants and other painless ways to reach regions of the brains of animals and eventually, as it turned out, humans. He was so sure that he had found specific regions of the brain that created specific reactions within animals that he had come into the bull ring possessing only a small radio transmitter and had allowed himself to be charged by a one and a half ton bull tormented into a state of rage by picadors. The bull charged. Delgado stood there, motionless. The bull finally reached the critical point where it would be useless for anyone, even a toreador, to flee. Delgado pressed a button on the radio transmitter—and the bull came to a shuddering halt within feet of the scientist, and then turned and trotted off in the other direction. Delgado had also run tests of sensory deprivation on healthy young college students. He put them in sensory deprivation chambers that were absolutely soundless. The temperature was set so that the human body would detect neither heat nor cold. The room was well-lit, but the subject wore translucent goggles and could perceive light but he could make out no details. The subject wore special gloves that reduced the tactile sense to a minimum. Within hours, not days, the subjects, these healthy young people, would begin hallucinating, losing their minds. To Delgado, this was proof of his proposition that the human mind is in fact not the possession of the individual but more of a town square into which anyone can come, into which any animal can come, into which even vegetation can come. And what the human beast thinks is his mind is in fact—and these were Delgado's words—a "transitory combination of elements borrowed from the environment."
Delgado's theory of the mind as totally dependent upon the environment perhaps explains some of the more bizarre anomalies of recent history. In what became known as the Stockholm Syndrome, and in the case of Patty Hearst, young women were abducted and put into an environment totally controlled by their captors and closed to any outside influences whatsoever. In both cases, the young women emerged as friends and comrades of their captors; and in Patty Hearst's case, as their confederate in a bank hold-up. Having no other basis upon which to base their own status, they adopted an entirely new one.
But even those cases seem straightforward compared to the case of Kyle Zirpolo and the McMartin Day Care Center scandal of 1984. Zirpolo was eight years old at the time and became one of a score of children claiming to have recovered repressed memories of the McMartins subjecting them to sexual molestation and the most fiendish and depraved abuse. Some of the testimony of these children seemed so utterly bizarre that the prosecution dared not introduce it at the McMartin's trial. After six years of trials and appeals, the McMartins were found not guilty. This started speculation that the children had been brainwashed by the clinicians who had summoned up the supposed memories. The truth proved to be more shocking. Last year, now 29 years old, Kyle Zirpolo revealed that he and the others had known all along that the McMartins had not abused them in any way. Kyle Zirpolo had been put in a situation in which both the clinicians and his own parents insisted, with all the certainty of adults, that these things that happened, and he, Kyle, was too frightened to admit it. After repeatedly telling his parents that nothing had happened, he caved in to the mounting status pressure and testified to things he was quite aware of making up. Ever since then he had been tormented by the hell that he and the other children had put the McMartins through, destroying their reputations as well as their livelihood.
Delgado stressed the role of culture. Culture referred to those things in human life that could not exist without speech, whether culture in the sense of the arts or culture in the sense of the manners and morays of a society. Delgado insisted that the brain and its genetic history and evolution was simply the substratum upon which culture wrought its effects. He did not know the precise neural path. After all, he was re-opening a field that had been dormant for 40 years. But just last year, barely 6 months ago, three neurobiologists may very well have discovered the answer, in a study of African cichlid fish published in an article entitled, "Rapid behavioral and genomic responses to social opportunity" in the journal PLoS Biology. Russell Fernald of Stanford, his former associate Sabrina Burmeister, now at the University of North Carolina, and Erich Jarvis of Duke studied the behavior of the fish in a laboratory tank. In the tank was an obviously dominant male and his subjects, male and female. The others were gray in color but the dominant male had swelled up within a skin of lurid stripes and was the only male who had access to the females. They then removed the dominant male in the dark of night. When light returned, another male, just as gray as before, noticed the absence of the ruler, whereupon he swelled up with a skin of lurid colors, and his gonads immediately grew to eight times their previous size, and now he had exclusive access to the females. The three neurobiologists determined that a purely social situation, a status situation, had caused changes in the brain of the newly-dominant male at the cellular and molecular level, set off by a gene, known as egr-1, located in the anterior preoptic area. They had established that a change in social status had caused a change in the brain. It was the opposite of the situation envisioned by Neo-Darwinists neuroscientists who assume is that the genetic inheritance triggers changes in status.
Only foolish writers make predictions instead of descriptions, but this fool feels certain that Fernald, Burmeister, and Jarvis are sure bets for a Nobel prize in biology, should such a social influence prove to be the case with human beasts. The Neo-Darwinists, who dominate neuroscience in America today, have not responded, but in the past they have always characterized human behavior as but an evolutionary echo of non-human beasts. On the subject of status rankings and status-seeking, they point out that not only chickens but innumerable other animals have pecking orders. As for status groups, if you put a flock of canaries in a large enough cage, they will separate into smaller groups, each dominated by the biggest and most aggressive male. When the dominant male of one group is forced to confront a dominant male from another, at the central feeding station, one will passively submit to domination by the other.
As recently as the year 1000, Neo-Darwinists might argue, the entire world was divided into warriors and slaves or virtual slaves, aside from a few highly skilled artisans organized into guilds. Not only that, when the warriors couldn't find a real war to fight, they fought each other with blunted swords and spears in tournaments. At the conclusion of a tournament, ordinary religious restrictions on sexual behavior were suspended long enough for the winners to help themselves to as many young women as they cared to. The young women were there expressly for that purpose. This reward, which is so similar to that of dominant males among the non-human beasts, endures symbolically to this day in the form of pretty little cheerleaders with short skirts and their underpants showing.
But such comparisons collapse when the human beasts' third class is taken into account. This is the clergy, the priests and the prophets. Here in the 21st century, it is impossible to comprehend the power that the clergy had 1000 years ago. In the year 1082, Pope Urban II gave a speech on a platform in a field in France in which he exhorted all the knights of Europe—of Christendom—to go to the Middle East and take back Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the Saracens, referring to the ruling Arabic Muslims. Immediately the Crusades began. Later, cynics would maintain that the Crusaders had gone to the Middle East only to bring back the booty that was eventually theirs. In fact, the warriors hadn't the faintest idea of what they would find. They were obeying the command of their Holy Father, the Pope. Until well into the Middle Ages the German Empire continued to call itself the Holy Roman Empire.
Book One, first verse, of the Book of John in the New Testament says cryptically: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." This has baffled Biblical scholars, but I interpret it as follows: Until there was speech, the human beast could have no religion, and consequently no God. In the beginning was the Word. Speech gave the beast its first ability to ask questions, and undoubtedly one of the first expressed his sudden but insatiable anxiety as to how he got here and what this agonizing struggle called life is all about. To this day, the beast needs, can't live without, some explanation as the basis of whatever status he may think he possesses. For that reason, extraordinary individuals have been able to change history with their words alone, without the assistance of followers, money, or politicians. Their names are Jesus, John Calvin, Mohammed, Marx, Freud—and Darwin. And this, rather than any theory, is what makes Darwin the monumental figure that he is. The human beast does not require that the explanation offer hope. He will believe whatever is convincing. Jesus offered great hope: The last shall be first and the meek shall inherit the earth. Calvin offered less. Mohammed, more and less. Marx, even more than Jesus: The meek will take over the earth now! Freud offered more sex. Darwin offered nothing at all. Each, however, has left an enduring influence. Jesus is the underpinning of both Marxism and political correctness in American universities. There was a 72-year field experiment in Marxism, which failed badly. But Marx's idea of one class dominating another may remain with us forever. In medical terms, Freud is now considered a quack. But his notion of sex as an energy like the steam in a boiler, which must be released in an orderly fashion or the boiler will blow up, remains with us, too. At this very moment, as we gather here in the Warner Theatre, you can be sure that there are literally millions of loin spasms and hip-joint convulsions that are taking place at this very instant throughout the world that would not be occurring were it not for the power of the words of Sigmund Freud. Today, Charles Darwin still reigns, but his most fervent followers, American neuroscientists, are deeply concerned about this irritating matter of culture, the product of speech. Led by the British neuroscientist Richard Dawkins, they currently propose that culture is the product of "memes" or "culturegens", which operate like genes and produce culture. There is a problem, however. Genes exist, but memes don't. The concept of memes is like the concept of Jack Frost ten centuries ago. Jack Frost was believed to be an actual, living, albeit invisible, creature who went about in the winter freezing fingertips and making the ground too hard to plow. Noam Chomsky has presented another problem. He maintains that there is no sign that speech evolved from any form of life lower than man. Its not that there is a missing link, he says. It's that there is absolutely nothing in any other animal to link up with. It becomes difficult for Neo-Darwinists to continue to say that structures consisting only of words are not real and durable. What accounts for the fact, to choose but one example, that Islam has directed the lives and behavior of literally billions of people since the eighth century?
Princeton anthropologist Clifford Geertz has written, "There is no such thing as a human nature independent of culture. Men without culture would not even be the clever savages of Lord of the Flies."
Now, at last, may we begin the proper study of homo loquax?
Contact us at Greater Talent Network, America's Leading Celebrity Speakers Bureau.


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Welcome to the Bratislava City website - Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia
Bratislava City website is your online information source for important news and events in the city of Bratislava. We continually add news for visitors, expats and residents in Bratislava city, Slovakia.
Map of Bratislava City :: 2011 IIHF World Championship Unofficial Guide :: Hotels in the Old Town of Bratislava
We provide you with information on Bratislava events, news.
Sightseeing in Bratislava city and Bratislava Old Town has never been easier - just tell us what you want to visit and we provide your with online map of Bratislava City and Bratislava Old Town. Bratislava city is the capital of Slovakia. Welcome to Bratislava and do not forget visit Bratislava in person. We can even provide you with the exact directions on how to get to Old Town district from your Bratislava hotel. For Bratislava hotel reservations visit our partner site listing hotels, apartments, pensions and hostels in Bratislava city (operated by Bratislava Hotels and Travel Services, s.r.o., Gajova 4, 811 09 Bratislava, tel: +421 911 468 357).

subset: commoncrawl


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Metasyntactic needed a new button or icon design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 18 designs submitted by 8 freelance designers.
My iPhone app icon is looking a bit stale. I need something that will grab someone's attention, while still looking refined and suitable for an iPhone's home page. The image should have a high class feel while still evoking the feel of going to the movies. So 'red carpet and golden ropeline' vs. 'popcorn and soda'. But if you have your own idea, feel free to 'wow' me.
Now Playing is an iPhone app used by many to help find information about movies, theaters, showtimes and much more. Currently the icon looks a bit like a movie ticket (with inverted corners), but is pretty uninspiring and needs to either be spruced up, or replaced altogether. I'll need a 57x57 icon and a 512x512 version as well. No shine or corners should be applied to either.
I would like to have PSDs of both at the end.
- Bold colors
- Something that makes me go 'wow'
- Possible Idea: film reels
- Possible Idea: red carpet
- Possible Idea: classy movie marquee
- Possible Idea: limo arriving
- Possible Idea: spotlights
- you can play off of my current icon, if you make it look *good*. I like the inverted corners, but i'm not a fan of the hokey film reel in the middle:
- Popcorn
- Soda


text:
DRAFT EDGAR Form D XML Technical Specification (Version 7.4.1)
Implementation Date: March 26, 2012
This DRAFT EDGAR Form D XML Technical Specification (Version 7.4.1), posted before Commission approval of potential regulatory changes in this release, is provided as a service to our filing community to assist filers, agents, and software developers in their preparation of responses to potential changes the staff anticipates. Since this is a draft specification, the SEC retains the right to change any part of the specification before the new system release is made final. In addition, the final EDGAR Form D XML Technical Specification is subject to Commission approval and may be revised before approval or not approved at all. Similarly, the posting of the DRAFT EDGAR Form D XML Technical Specification (Version 7.4.1) does not indicate Commission approval of any pending proposed changes relating to the potential changes reflected in the draft specification. The changes outlined in this draft specification, if approved, are scheduled to take effect on March 26, 2012. The final version of the specification will be made available if approved by the Commission on or about March 26, 2012 on the SEC's Public Website.
On March 26, 2012, EDGAR Release 12.0 will introduce the following changes:


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There is no single methodology for creating the perfect product—but you can increase your odds. One of the best ways is to understand users' reasons for doing things. Mental Models gives you the tools to help you grasp, and design for, those reasons. Adaptive Path co-founder Indi Young has written a roll-up-your-sleeves book for designers, managers, and anyone else interested in making design strategic, and successful.
At Dow Corning, Mental Models offer understanding at many levels—from a high level overview of customers' generic unmet needs, to providing a detailed examination of the atomic tasks that they carry out as part of their jobs. So too for this indispensable book—it offers both a high level overview of the value of Mental Models for executives and leaders, as well as a detailed step-by-step guide to the technique for practitioners. Indi has eloquently captured the essence of Mental Models and offers her unrivaled experience to everyone.
–Simon Parker, Global Process Manager, Front End of Innovation, Dow Corning CorporationSee more testimonials
Mental Models Blog View all Blog posts
- Recruiting Across Behaviors on
- Journeys, Experiences, & Mental Spaces on
- Picking Out Guiding Principles on
- How to Wield Empathy on
- Just Diving In: Hypothetical Audiences Segments and Interview Skills on
Table of Contents
- Chapter 1: What and Why? The Advantages of a Mental Model
- Chapter 2: When? Using Mental Models with Your Other Work
- Chapter 3: Who? Mental Model Team Participants
- Chapter 4: Define Task-Based Audience Segments
- Chapter 5: Specify Recruiting Details
- Chapter 6: Set Scope for the Interviews
- Chapter 7: Interview Participants
- Chapter 8: Analyze the Transcripts
- Chapter 9: Look for Patterns
- Chapter 10: Create the Mental Model
- Chapter 11: Adjust the Audience Segments
- Chapter 12: Alignment and Gap Analysis
- Chapter 13: Structure Derivation
These common questions about web accessibility and their short answers are taken from Indi Young's book Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior. You can find longer answers to each in your copy of the book, either printed or digital version.
- What is a mental model?
The top part of the model is a visual depiction of the behavior of a particular audience, faithfully representing root motivations. The bottom part of the model shows various ways of supporting matching behaviors. Where support and behavior are aligned, you have a solution. Where a behavior is not supported, you have an opportunity to explore further.
See page 2 for more information.
- What if I don't have a big budget?
If your organization already conducts usabilitytests with some regularity, piggyback short interviews on top of each session. Ask the participant to stay with you for an hour, and spend half the time on the usability testand half on conducting a non-leading interview.
See page 57.
- What do you mean by "task?"
The word "task" is used loosely. When I use the word "task," it means actions, thoughts, feelings, and motivations—everything that comes up when a person accomplishes something, sets something in motion, or achieves a certain state.
See page 207.
- What are task-based audience segments?
Task-based audience segments are, quite simply, groups of people who do similar things. While personality types do touch upon behavior, generative research for building mental models requires that you select from groups of people who want to get different things done. Because you will want to tailor your end solutions to fit each audience exactly, grouping audiences by differences in behavior is important. You want to end up with solutions that match behaviors and philosophies closely rather than with one solution that fits several audiences loosely. Figure out what people want to accomplish, look for differences, and group accordingly.
See page 74.
- How do I uncover the root task?
During analysis, you are required to interpret a little. This is the "art" to the process. You will find it easier if you ask yourself, "What is this person really trying to do?" The idea is to simplify to the "root" task.
See pages 211 and 218.
- What do you mean by a content map's "content"?
Let me assure you that the name "content" does not limit your map to text documents.Your content map should include all the ways you serve people, including things like monthly account statements or yearly awards banquets, registration for training courses, or a mortgage calculator.
See page 354.
- Does a content map show every detail of my solution?
It includes all functionality that exists or is intended for your solution.
See page 354.
- How can analyzing gaps in a mental model show me innovative ideas?
The first thing to look at is the obvious gaps where there is an absence of content items. Your hope is that you can find a gap that you can fill easily. Then look for scarcity of content items. Think about where you can flesh out things a bit. Look for opportunities to redefine, combine, or augment existing content.
See page 377.
- How can mental models help me make sense of all my web properties?
Each one of your web properties is a building on your internet campus. Each property has its own unique navigation that represents the mental model of the people populating it.
See page 324.
- Chapter 7 (PDF)
Book Reviews
Journal & Association Reviews
- 19-Jan-09 Johnny Holland Book Review: Mental Models
- 02-Jul-08 CMS Wire Book Review: Mental Models
- 22-Apr-08 ACM Ubiquity Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior – [post]
Reviews from Various Blogs, Companies, Consultancies, Organizations
- 09-Jul-09 UX Booth Recommended Books for Your User Experience and Usability Library – [post]
- 22-Jan-09 Flashlight Worthy The 10 Best Books on User Experience
- 31-Aug-08 Web Analytics Management Web Analytics Management Summer Reading – Part 2
- 19-Jul-08 Pleasure & Pain number nine on the UX Bookshelf
- 04-May-08 Innovative Thought Genuinely Impressed by Rosenfeld Media
- 29-Apr-08 Fucinaweb Modelli Mentali (in Italian) – [post]
- 31-Mar-08 IdeaConnection blended review/interview Mental Models – [post]
- 10-Mar-08 Steve Mezak's Blog Mental Models Book Review
Case Studies
Mental Model Sketches by Indi
- Movie-Goer Mental Model
- Cat Mental Model
- Mental Model sketch for Buying A House in the USA
- Training for a Marathon mental model sketch from the workshop I teach
Real Examples by Real Organizations
These example diagrams are the work undertaken by companies around the world. I am grateful for their permission to post each example. In some of the examples, the slotted content has been "grayed out" with respect to the privacy of the company donating the diagram. The upper half of the diagrams were each deemed "pretty much public domain knowledge." Or else the photos were just taken at a distance where the proprietary data can't be read.
- Mental models at a big box store that were made with existing research
- Rail travel mental model by Franki Chamaki in Australia
- Australian Broadcasting Corporation public contributors mental model
- Telecom Consumer Mental Model
- Project Manager Mental Model
- Intranet Mental Model
If you would like to donate your organization's diagram, please contact me.
Student Examples
Photos of Mental Models Around the World
- Futuristic-looking mental model of sticky-notes in Puebla, Mexico
*Note: Many links below are currently broken. We're working on it, but in the meantime, you can find most of the resources in this zip file.
Background for Your Boss (or Client)
- What is an "Indi" style mental model diagram? (as derived from Don Norman's definition of a mental model)
- How is generative research used? How to Wield Empathy in design work, and The Future of eReaders
- The book How Customers Think by Harvard Business School's Gerald Zaltman.
- Six Sigma and UCD and how mental models are less cumbersome than Voice of the Customer
- Put one of my recorded interviews on your bosses' iPods so they can listen while they work out, or ask them to read a written interview. Interviews make nice summaries.
- Forward for the ebook UX Design for Startups by Marcin Treder – Jan 2013
- The Johnny Holland Series: Search for Empathy, with a Chinese translation of one essay here. – Mar, Apr, May, Jul, Sep 2012
- "Intelligence vs Understanding" in Scroll Magazine, Issue Number 1 – Oct 2008 [post]
- "Look At It Another Way" in A List Apart – Sep 2008 – [post]
- Brad Colbow and I team up again for, "Mental Model Diagrams" in Smashing Magazine – 23 Apr 2012
- Slide decks: some full audio and some summary decks from several presentations I've given.
- Video: Presenting Sparking Creativity Through Empathy (42 min) at the IIT Design Research Conference, Chicago, IL – September 2008
- Video: Presenting a Google TechTalk Digging Beyond User Preferences (1 hour 3 min) at Google, Mountain View, CA – July 2008
- Video: Presenting a Yahoo TechTalk Empathy & Innovation (1 hour 10 min) at Yahoo, Sunnyvale CA – April 2008 – [post]
- Online seminar: Getting Into Your Customer's Head (2 hours, for a fee) in association with UIE – Feb 2008
- Book Club Meeting: Live tweet summary of helpful tips I mentioned at the UX Book Club meeting about mental model diagrams, Philadelphia, PA – May 2011
- Solving some common debates at your organization: Organizing Your Global Corporate Intranet, Keep Office Politics Out of Your Design, Is Your Homepage Immature?, and Message to the Masses
- The misuse of surveys: Marketing Research <–> Mental Models, Oxymoron: Scientific Survey, and Who Can Believe the U.S. Unemployment Figures?
- The difference between an organization people tell horror stories about and one people love: "Aloof" Wasn't What You Meant, Support Intentions Not Existing Workflows, Undercover Mental Model, and Heart Not Installed
Short-Cut The Process
- Getting to a mental model as quickly as possible, even using real stories from your audience segments.
- Get the ball rolling by just diving in
Employ the Model Over the Long Term
- Reference the mental model in other documents: add mental spaces to experience map diagrams.
- How mental models sustain the "Long Wow"
- Track customer satisfaction for each tower in the model
- Preserve organizational knowledge as team members come and go
Segment Audiences by Behavior for Recruiting
- Don't get too caught up in making perfect hypothetical audience segments
- Write your audience descriptions in the first person, as characters
- Getting beyond marketing demographics
- Avoiding demographics when recruiting
- An essay of mine, Task-Based Audience Segmentation, at Adaptive Path.
- An essay by Steve Baty mentioning mental models as a generative method and other approaches for evaluative methods.
Recruit Participants
- Let participants know what to expect by calling it a Conversation Instead of an Interview
Find Out What Makes People Tick: Gather Stories
- Interviews are really more like therapy sessions. The data is more qualitative and rich, providing empathy. Here's a 30-minute chat about interviewing on Radio Johnny.
- What to cover during an interview, what to avoid, and how to improve your technique
- How to understand what a participant is saying better
- Interviews are rich, but what else is rich, and what else can I use that I already have? And why shouldn't I use a survey to collect data to composite together?
- An essay of mine, Six Steps to Better Interviews and Simplified Task Analysis, at Adaptive Path
- Some helpful interviewing tips by other experts
Comb Through the Transcripts
- Refrain from using your analysis skills during Combing vs. Grouping
- Three simple rules to keep in mind while crafting labels for the quotes. (Hint: These rules apply to box, tower, and mental space labels, too.)
- Examples for Picking out Guiding Principles, how to stop Seeing Beliefs Everywhere and also look for emotions behind belief-like statements
- Avoid the classic mistakes of Granularity & Repetition
- Having a tough time? Here are some tricky examples explained.
- Guidelines for grouping 3000 line items, as per Voltaire Santos Miran's blog entry about the summer 2009 project at University of Buffalo (with mStoner)
- Do the analysis yourself (rather than using an automated tool) for a more nutritious result for your brain.
- What to do when you end up with a tower containing only one task box.
- An explanation of what Atomic Tasks are, compared to Tasks.
- What do you do with items that are vague, redundant, or seemingly non-relevant?
- Look for the intent behind each label and put those bits of data together, from the bottom up.
Format the Model
- To make the diagram look professional, Use Proper Case in all the titles and boxes.
- The height of the towers does not signify anything, really
- More on printing mental model diagrams, with real-life examples.
Slot Content Beneath the Towers
- Making a content model is hard. Here's how to capture the right level of granularity.
Derive Information Architecture & Design
- Understand the definitions of site navigation, also translated to Dutch
- Follow two golden rules: keep it to three levels & don't use product names as labels
- Design new weather forecast icons based on mental model of people who generally commute to work and exercise outdoors.
Run the Project
- Follow this visual timeline for a full-blown mental model project, and show your boss exactly what you'll produce
- How mental models synchronize with Agile development
- Use stories to spread understanding amongst global team members
- An essay of mine, User Research Abroad: Handle Logistics in Four Easy Steps, at Adaptive Path
- If your team is not co-located, here are 15 tips for remote collaboration
- Encourage stakeholders to listen to interviews on an iPod
Templates & Scripts
- Templates for Combing and Grouping data in Microsoft Word and Excel
- Updated Python script for the PC. (Python old 2006 scripts for the PC and the Mac to generate the diagram from a template.)
- Spreadsheet template to contain ideas from gap analysis and prioritize them (including the prioritization chart)
- Introduction Letter to Interview Participant explaining the research project and format of the interview
- Introduction Letter to Interview Translator outlining the role you wish the translator to play during a foreign-language interview
- Moviegoer Recruiting Spreadsheet
- Template for printing to sticky notes
- A perspective from the other side: three pages of notes by Julie Strothman from my IA Summit 2009 workshop. Recognizing me, Julie came up and introduced herself to me in the taxi line at the airport. I love that when it happens!
"You're researching all the creativity out of this project!"
I can't tell you how many times I've heard designers, developers, and even business owners say this. It usually comes just after a project has begun, as I'm preparing for interviews with users. Designers just want to start designing, developers want to start writing code, managers want the thing to ship—so why are we spending all this time talking? And all this stuff just seems so obvious. Do we really need users to tell us what we already know?
I try to be diplomatic. "Maybe a few interviews now will save us lots of grief later," I tell them. "Think of this as insurance: Let's make sure we've got the basics right before we've designed everything and written all the code." But no matter what I say to convince a team to do research early in their project, I never let them know my dirty little secret: I used to be just as skeptical as them.
I've always believed in a user-centered design methodology. Even early in my career, when I was a journalist, we always started with the mantra "know your audience." Later in my career, I'd go to conferences and watch presentations with process diagrams—boxes representing users needs with arrows pointing to boxes representing product requirements.
Intellectually, I agreed. But when I started a new project, in that intoxicating first stage when anything is possible, I'd jump straight to solutions. "Let's use Flash for this part! And over here, we'll design some awesome icons for navigation…" Our users were still important, but they were there to bear witness to how cool our designs were.
Then I met Indi Young. Indi and I were among the founding partners of Adaptive Path, a user experience consulting company that focused on research-driven design. Wefounded the company in the dark days of the Web industry. It was 2001. "Dot com" was a dirty word, companies were cutting their Web budgets, and projects were drying up everywhere.
It was then that "research-driven" started having real meaning to me. As Indi introduced her methodology and resulting visualizations, it became clear that she wasn't just trying to make designs better in some abstract way. Rather, her process was simple enough to resonate with anyone on a Web team. And perhaps more importantly, it would help connect Web teams to other core parts of their organizations who were skeptical of spending even another cent on their web sites.
In the end, using Indi's process, we were able to convince teams that we weren't researching all the creativity out of their projects. We were researching the risk out. And no matter how the industry is faring, that's a story people want to hear.
This book is an excellent guide to a research method firmly grounded in common sense. But don't let the simplicity of the process detract from the power of the change it can enable. Talking to users in a structured way, analyzing in a collaborative way, and diagramming with clarity can transform the way you approach the Web.
And it might just ignite your creativity!
–Jeffrey Veen
San Francisco, August, 2007
I would like to thank the following people for their influence on the mental model method as it continues to mature over time:
Mary Piontkowski, who is not afraid to point out where I might be wrong-headed. Thank you.
Gina Davis and Paul Stiff, who saw the strengths of early mental models and encouraged me to develop the method.
Jim Hook, who told me that what I thought was common knowledge might not really be as common as I supposed.
For beta-testing draft chapters and clearing up confusion: Craig Duncan, Simonetta Consorti, Andrea Villa, Jen Richardson, Isabelle Peyrichoux, Ingrid Hart, Marcus Haid, Ginny Redish, Todd Wilkens, Brandon Schauer, Ryan Freitas, Bjorn Hinrichs, Jay Morgan, Jon Littel, Lauren Kessler.
Clients who believed in the possibilities: Camille Sobalvarro, Yen Lee, Suneet Wadhwa, Karen Wallace, Joelle Kaufman, Lee Thompson, Terie Clement, Joel Arabia, Karen Semyan, Carey Wilkins, Renae Gottschall, Paola Dovera, Mark McCormick, Secil Watson, Georgina Corzine, Connie Frennette and Clare Barr and Kathy Parsons (the "Kh" team), Srinivas Raghavan, Hanneke Krekels, Simon Parker, Jim Mier, Tim Adams, Jackie De Muro, Bob Bebb, Lakshmi Sundar, Dan Arganbright, Suzanne Van Cleve, Bryan Vais, Eric Fain, Tom Gruber, Peter Ostrow, Maclen Marvit, Enrique Alvarez, Matthew Nelson, Chad Carson, Christina Avrett, and Kevin George, who was the first person to say, "You should write a book about this," while we were riding in a taxi out of Pasadena, in September 2000. Real examples make all the difference when explaining something. I want to thank all my clients who gave me permission to publish our work.
Teammates Donelle Gregory, Evelyn Wang, Mark Phillips, Carolyn Snyder, Laurie Bell, Chris Baum, Jen Klafin, Nate Bolt, Genelle Cate, Jean Anne Fitzpatrick, Darcy DiNucci, Adele Framer, Dave Covey, Chiara Fox, Sarah Rice, Kate Rutter, Lane Becker, Mike Kuniavsky, Peter Merholz, Jesse James Garrett, Janice Fraser, and Jeff Veen. And Gary Wang, who wrote the first Python scripts that spit out the diagrams.
I could not have done this without all the good people involved in production at Rosenfeld Media: Karen Whitehouse for inflating my ego. It's her fault that I'd like to write another book. Peter Morville for sending me an email out of the blue offering to do a technical review; I can just imagine him sitting down at his desk that morning thinking, "Gee, I have nothing pressing to do. I think I'll offer to read Indi's manuscript." Right? Liz Danzico and Allison Cecil for taking everything off my hands and making my part in the production process blissfully easy. Marc Rettig, whose comments on the "mental models versus alignment diagrams" debate, as well as the book's positioning, were quite helpful early on. Lou Rosenfeld for having the determination to start Rosenfeld Media and do something right. It is pure joy to work with him and watch his publishing philosophy unfold. I am confident that his efforts will force a sea-change on the industry.
I owe my sanity during the writing of this book to my friends: my mom, Gus Young, graduated high school in 1958, and won a four-year scholarship to a university to study math. If she hadn't turned it down in order to help support her seven siblings, I am convinced she would have been one of the first software engineers. Yes, her name is Gus. My brother, Greg Young, for urging me to write a book, any book. Philip Ramsey for urging me to continue writing after dinner while he did the dishes. Carolyn Wan for making me laugh with email about her three young daughters. I wish I could tell stories like she does. Lucy Simon for moral support and distracting workouts at the pool. Matt Stephens for all the phone calls when I was frustrated with words. Marjorie Forman for keeping me from being too much of a recluse. Carey Ritola for celebrating my 15 minutes of fame.
And for her constant presence curled up napping on my desk: Megahertz (13 January, 1988-21 June, 2007), my 19 year old cat who was really a space alien, I'm sure.
Indi Young's new book is a welcome addition, covering an aspect of the design process that is extremely important but often neglected. The book is chock-full of practical advice derived from real-world development projects, but doesn't lose sight of the broad conceptual underpinnings.
–Ray Valdes, Research Director, Web Services, Gartner Inc.
Mental Models offers a practical set of techniques for task analysis in the early stage of design thinking and strategic design planning. Developed over the course of more than ten years, Indi Young's common sense approach focuses on user behavior, diagrammatic representations, and the participation of all stakeholders in collaborative discovery. It is a book that designers and students, alike, will find useful.
–Richard Buchanan, Professor of Design, School of Design, Carnegie Mellon University
At Dow Corning, Mental Models offer understanding at many levels—from a high level overview of customers' generic unmet needs, to providing a detailed examination of the atomic tasks that they carry out as part of their jobs. So too for this indispensable book—it offers both a high level overview of the value of Mental Models for executives and leaders, as well as a detailed step-by-step guide to the technique for practitioners. Indi has eloquently captured the essence of Mental Models and offers her unrivaled experience to everyone.
–Simon Parker, Global Process Manager, Front End of Innovation, Dow Corning Corporation
Mental models reveal all those things that should be obvious during the design process, but so often come back to haunt you later. Indi's book provides a systematic and invaluable means for applying mental models; having used her method on many large projects, I'm a true believer.
–Camille Sobalvarro, Senior Director, Web Marketing & Communications, Sybase Inc.
Mental Models
Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior
By Indi Young


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Hi Everyone, Heather and Emily from Ozone Snowkites will be holding a demo in Mammoth, California this weekend (January 14th & 15th). We will be snowkiting in two different locations depending on the weather and snow conditions. We are planning on meeting Saturday morning at 10 am in front of Schatís Bakery on Main St. Come join us to check out the new Frenzy 06 and Access snowkites. Please let us know if you are interested in attending.
Heather Schenck


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Zonderkidz / 2012 / ePub
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Series: Berenstain Bears
Stan and Jan Berenstain introduced the first Berenstain Bear books in 1962. Mike Berenstain grew up watching his parents work together to write about and draw these lovable bears. Eventually he started drawing and writing about them too. Though Stan died in 2005, and Jan in 2012, Mike continues to create the delightful Bear adventures from his studio in Pennsylvania, in an area that looks much like the sunny dirt road deep in Bear Country.


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Michael says, "Hello, my name is Michael Proctor and I have been painting for competitions for about 4 years. I still consider myself a newbie compared to the awesome talent that appears on this Gallery; however, I am trying to catch up. I started painting a minis for Reaper a couple of years ago and while my most recent piece in the Gallery is probably my favorite at that moment, Marise Greyshroud (DHL 03308) will always hold a special place as it was not only the first piece I did for Reaper and it was also my very first commission piece." read more
If you've never heard of Julie Guthrie, then you must live under a rock. Julie is a legend in the miniatures industry and a member of the Origins Hall of Fame. Her incredible body of work is an invaluable reference for aspiring sculptors and artists. read more


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BD in WI, 2009
Complete coverage of Bangladesh in West Indies, 2009
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West Indies secure consolation win in Twenty20
2 August 2009
West Indies salvaged a little pride as they defeated Bangladesh by 5 wickets in the only Twenty20 interantional of the tour at Warner Park in St. Kitts today. This was Bangladesh's solitary loss in the tour after securing historic Test and ODI series victory against the West Indies.
Batting first, Bangladesh could only manage 118 after some reckless batting display and the hosts easily overhauled the victory target with 19 balls to spare. Read the rest of the bulletin »
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British Sunday Roast
"British Sunday Roast" might not be the first dish that comes to mind when thinking about Los Angeles eateries, but that's exactly what Hollywood's The Pikey has decided to bring to the table. Starting Sunday March 3, the newly opened Pikey will begin offering Chef Ralph Johnson's imaginative rotating menus, which use only organic and local produce. Enjoy beef short ribs with horseradish cream, roast lamb with mint jelly, pork with fried apples and capers, or chicken with stuffing while surrounded by the cheerful and cozy atmosphere that only a British gastropub can offer. For vegetarians the nut roast with braised carrots is wonderfully inventive, and all dishes are served with a generous side of duck fat potatoes, yorkshire pudding, market greens, and finely crafted gravy. For the perfect end to a leisurely Sunday, pair the dinner with The Pikey's full-bodied house red or delicate white wine ($5 a glass, $20 a bottle). Cheers!
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The Detroit Red Wings lost their fourth straight game Tuesday.
Wings lose fourth straight game
After a slow start this season, Shea Weber has found his stride.
Nashville's captain scored 44 seconds into overtime to give the Predators a 4-3 victory against the slumping Detroit Red Wings on Tuesday night.
Craig Smith, Gabriel Bourque and Roman Josi also scored for Nashville, which had lost its last two games. The Red Wings have dropped four straight.
Daniel Cleary, Jordin Tootoo and Pavel Datsyuk had the Detroit goals.
Less than a minute into overtime, Colin Wilson's shot from the left side went wide and bounced off the end boards. Weber came down the right side, collected the rebound and beat a diving Jonas Gustavsson, who replaced injured goalie Jimmy Howard midway through the first period.
"Lucky," Weber said. "I was just thankful for whoever installed that kick plate behind the net because that sure kicked out hard. I was just lucky to get a stick on it and find a way to slide it in."
Gustavsson, recalled from the minors on Monday, stopped 16 of 18 shots.
"I feel like the guy who took the shot, he had some time and space," Gustavsson said. "I just tried to be aggressive. I guess he missed the net and the puck bounced their way, and they were able to get it into the net. I guess that's the way hockey is — lucky bounces. I guess they had it at the end of the game."
Weber, in his third season as the Predators' captain, was held without a point in Nashville's first nine games. But he has three goals and three assists in his last four games.
"He has scored in three straight games here," Predators coach Barry Trotz said. "I just think with the bigger guys, it just takes a little longer to get going, getting your hands, getting your feet, getting your wind getting up ice."
Smith scored the game's first goal at 5:01 of the opening period.
With the Predators on a power play, Wilson had the puck to the right of the Detroit net. Wilson slid the puck to Smith on the left side, and with his skates below the goal line, he beat a sprawling Howard on the stick side.
The goal was Smith's first of the year. He had 14 goals as a rookie last season.
Wilson's assist extended his career-high point streak to five games.
Bourque doubled the Nashville lead at 10:41 of the first when he deflected Scott Hannan's slap shot from the left point by Howard on the short side.
Howard left the game less than a minute after Bourque's goal with an upper-body injury. He did not return.
Howard stopped five of the seven shots he faced in 11:22 of ice time before he was replaced by Gustavsson.
Cleary scored a short-handed goal with 4:59 left in the first and Detroit tied it at 11:33 of the third on a goal by Tootoo, a former Predator.
"I thought we battled hard, and I thought we had lots of good players," Detroit coach Mike Babcock said. In the end, we didn't have enough and didn't get it done. In this league, we don't get many moral victories."
Nashville regained the lead at 12:54 on Josi's first goal of the season, but Datsyuk tied it again at 3 just 36 seconds later.
"They had a big push in the third period," said Nashville goalie Pekka Rinne, who made 26 saves. "We have to manage the game better even though they were pushing hard."


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Bonita Springs Parks and Recreation
The goal of the Parks and Recreation Department is to revitalize the City of Bonita Springs and to enrich the quality of lives of our local residents, along with our visitors and develop their communities through quality recreation and leisure needs.
We have something for everyone, so we invite you and your family to experience everything we have to offer.
Recreation Center
The City of Bonita Springs Recreation Center sits on 41.9 acres of land which is located at 26740 Pine Avenue off of West Terry Street and has something for everyone. Our facility includes a full-sized gymnasium, a cardiovascular/fitness room, skate park, community pool, softball fields, 2 public tennis courts, 18-hole disc golf course, picnic areas and a playground. We also offer daily activities and registered classes to teach and enlighten everyone of all ages.Read More
Riverside Park
The Bonita Springs Riverside Park is located on old US 41 Road and sits on the Imperial River. The park is used for holiday celebrations, art shows, festivals, Movies in the Park, and the Celebrate Bonita Festival. Also in the park is the newly renovated band shell. Our amenities include sheltered picnic tables, park benches and restrooms.Read More
Community Pool
The twenty-five yard Community Outdoor Pool is located at 26890 Pine Avenue, just off West Terry Street. The facility offers a number of classes year round. The pool has eight lap lanes and ranges from three feet nine inches to six feet deep, and is temperature controlled.Read More
The City of Bonita Springs boasts a variety of green space with approximately 20 parks. Each park offers a unique experience. Visit today to connect with the natural beauty of Bonita Springs.Read More


text: On Fri, 2007-08-24 at 08:45 -0400, Lawrence Sorrillo wrote: > I am uncertain what this step does.... > > now we unmount the NFS share, recreate the file on the server, and remount > it to clear the client cache but leave it cached on the server > > [root at wopr1 ~]# dd if=/mnt/array3/file.dd of=/dev/null bs=4k > 524287+0 records in > 524287+0 records out > 2147479552 bytes (2.1 GB) copied, 18.5161 seconds, 116 MB/s > > > What does it accomplish? > > Thanks. I was using this step to illustrate that NFS itself is capable of transferring data across the GigE network at near wires speeds. By unmounting the NFS share we clear the file from being cached in RAM on the client, ensuring that it must be gotten from the server again via NFS as opposed to being grabbed from RAM on the client. By recreating the file on the server we guarantee that it is cached in the servers RAM. We could have done any activity that caused the file to be read on the server and accomplished the same thing. Basically the goal was to get the file into memory on the server so we eliminate any disk activity from the NFS test. At this point we mount the NFS filesystem on the client and run the dd test. The file is cached on the server and not on the client. In this situation we see the NFS read performance is basically wire speed for the GigE. That might seem to indicate the problem is the read speed of the underlying disk array, but as I've said, the NFS server can read from the underlying disk array at 160MB/s.


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Academic Programs
Duquesne University School of Law trains lawyers to a high degree of professional skill with a special, Catholic sensitivity to ethical and moral concerns.
In pursuing Duquesne University's educational philosophy, the School of Law espouses the belief that the product of education is the person who thinks, judges and acts constantly and consistently, with right reason and a view to one's ultimate end. We aim to facilitate the development of purposeful character, intellectual accomplishment, emotional and social maturity and professional efficiency. We understand that the preparation of a student for the legal profession involves the development of a special character, competency and disposition.
Juris Doctor (J.D.)
LL.M. for Foreign Lawyers
Dual and Joint Degrees
- Juris Doctor/Master of Business Administration
School of Law/John F. Donahue Graduate School of Business
- Juris Doctor/Master of Science in Environmental Science and Management
School of Law/Bayer School of Natural and Environmental Sciences
- Juris Doctor/Master of Arts in Healthcare Ethics
School of Law/McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts
- Juris Doctor/Master of Arts in Philosophy
School of Law/McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts
- Juris Doctor/Master of Divinity (Joint Degree)
School of Law/Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
Academic Programs


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Invariably, there's always something that stops me from the year-end-cleaning of the research files. Some items are not pertinent, some were never pertinent, and most all are impertinent.
I make notes in the margins of newspaper articles and columns by other commentators. One such piece was about exotic animals that were adopted by families who wanted a different kind of pet. How about a peacock dwelling in the backyard of a home someplace in Ohio? I bet the La Cañada City Hall honchos would be thrilled to ship off a few of these foul animals from our side streets and utility easements.
Or a flock of turtles (turtles don't flock, I know, but please, it's holiday time) who dozed in the horse pastures in Idaho. Not one of these odd clippings merit keeping. But I kept them anyway. One day my gracious and encouraging editor might suggest a really bizarre column about strange pets.
I must be ruthless and clean house. Yet I got no further than a printout of Victor Borge's funny quips. I figure if it makes me laugh, how can it be tossed?
Borge was a gifted Danish concert pianist who no doubt tripled his annual income when he turned his musical skills into a comedy routine. Learning English did it to him.
My personal favorite Borge shtick is the skit that describes common words with a number as part of the word, such as: "My neighbor's daughter is dating a very smart, young man who has joined the Air Fives. He scratched his fivehead many times befive he decided to enlist, but the young lady says he's not romantic: for sure he is not even a Don Two."
You get the idea: twice upon a time, or talk about your fivefathers, or she was absolutely twoderful.
He would sit down to play a serious piece, fall off the piano bench, turn the music upside down and play it backward, all of the time fracturing English.
So I am prompted to try and play with words, substitute or transpose words for other words. Anything but cleaning out the files — let's take five.
In this case, try "up" and "down." These two words are exact opposites, but by pushing them around in lots of sentences with many meanings, I can spend an inordinate amount of time avoiding doing anything else.
An up attitude is good. A down attitude is not. Why is it that up is the good part? Is it because we stand taller, pull ourselves up straighter and have a jaunty air about us as we move through our day?
People like to feel up to par. As a golfer, I would rather feel up to birdie. Or even up to an eagle.
Then there's our friend, Burt, who loves horses that run on oval tracks. "Listen, Rocko, put me down on Tootsie Wootsie in the fifth at Horseshoe Bend. Whadda ya mean, I'm down on my luck? My marker's always good. I'll make it up to ya."
Don't forget the home wine-making enterprise run by Mr. Winelover himself, a down-to-earth guy who squashes his grapes in the secret room behind the furnace down in his basement. But he looks up to make sure the local federales haven't caught on to him yet.
But if he ever gets caught with his precious product, he's locked up, even if he did look up the best defense attorney in town who promised him he'd be right down.
Or conversely, "OK, Lady, your visiting time with Studs is down." Or, "Hands down, this is a stickdown."
"This is your captain speaking. Prepare yourselves for landing. We're going up now." Or try this, "Well, team, this is it, the show-up. It's down to you to win this game. All chins down, you hear?"
Had enough? Me too.
I decided not to delete any files, toss any articles, or cross out any quips. What doesn't work today may work tomorrow. What's up can be anything we choose and every day is truly a new beginning.
GENE PEPPER is a published author and writer. Contact him by email at email@example.com or phone (818) 790-1990.


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If the system works in production, the big question is whether it will impress anyone as having been worth all the fuss. The dashboards are part of the EngageNY portal the state is creating partly to secure a $700 million federal grant under the Obama administration's Race To The Top program, which encourages the adoption of digital tools to improve education.
One of the payoffs is supposed to be to create competition between the developers of the data dashboards to do the best job of delivering useful data analytics. InBloom's role is to provide a cloud service with application programming interfaces that each of the dashboards -- and many other applications -- will be able to tap into, eliminating the need for a lot of custom application integration.
NYSED is offering three dashboard choices to school districts, charter schools and resource pooling associations known as Boards of Cooperative Educational Services: DataCation from ConnectEDU, myTrack from eScholar, and Schoolnet from Pearson. All three participated in a demonstration roadshow in August, and districts are making their choices now. The dashboard service was supposed to be ready to go live in October, and NYSED says it will go live this fall.
[ Could you become a big data guru in less than three months? Read Become A Data Scientist ... In 12 Weeks? ]
"That's absolutely our intent, and we believe we're on track for doing so," said Amrit Singh, the EngageNY portal project manager, in an interview earlier this month. The plan is to do a staged rollout, he explained, beginning with a dashboard to allow educators and administrators insight into student performance and a version for parents and students to come by next summer, subject to quality assurance checks at each stage. The portal also includes a series of educational content management services that are independent of InBloom.
"The project is going well -- it's in the green," said Sharren Bates, chief product officer for InBloom. "You will see production dashboards in the fall."
However, eScholar CEO Shawn Bay said he is still waiting for a chance to test his product against a complete production instance of the cloud service. "What I could say on the record is it's not in production today," he said in an interview in late August. Since then, he and other vendors have been directed by NYSED not to talk to the press about the progress of the education data portal project. However, Bay confirmed Monday that he still has no access to a full-featured production version of the back-end service to test against his dashboard front-end. That makes him nervous about delivering results on schedule.
Singh said the roadshow demos were run against a live version of the InBloom service, but with data stripped of identifying information for demonstration purposes. He is confident InBloom is ready to deliver a production service -- although he conceded that the version of the dashboards that goes live initially may not dazzle the first users who access it.
"The tools in some ways are only as good as the data that's supplied to power them," Singh said. To get good operational analytics back, districts will need to get into the routine of providing updates to the repository on an ongoing basis rather than only periodically. The data will also become more interesting when other applications used by the districts begin to both feed the repository and take advantage of the data it has collected.
The true value of the service will become apparent only when teachers or parents can log into a new educational application that wasn't possible before, according to NYSED's Ken Wagner, who oversees the program as associate commissioner for curriculum, assessment and educational technology. That's not going to happen instantly, he admitted, but he remains convinced that service providers, tools and standards are converging in "a magic mix that hasn't come together before."


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Make floor planning easy
As a real estate professional, you work with floor plans everyday. Therefore you know how much time and effort it takes to make a great floor plan. With Floorplanner you can start making excellent floor plans in an easy and intuitive way, right away.Sign Up for Pro
With the old black and white floor plans many people find it hard to get a good sense of the space. Our interactive floor plans solve that, allowing customers to explore the floor plan, decorate it, and get a real feel for their potential new home.
Recent studies show that more than 85% of homemovers found floorplans either "essential" or "useful". Over half of the respondents said they would actually spend more time looking at a listing if a floor plan was included.
It's all in the presentation
Selling a house is presenting a house.
Finished your floor plan? Then things are about to get even better. With your Pro account, you can create crisp and clear 2D images, and export them to different formats, like PDF, JPEG, PNG and SVG. Need your floor plans to scale? No problem! Our PDF export makes sure all plans are in perspective. Moreover, you can get your floor plans in high resolution, so they always look perfect for print.
This is the promotional material you've been looking for. Our 3D rendered visuals let clients and home-buyers really connect to your real estate marketing. Plus, with your Floorplanner Pro account you can create as many 3D visuals as you like.
You and your clients go way back. We understand and don't want to get in between. So you can brand your floor plans in your company's own style, adding your own logos and company colors.See example
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No time to draw the plans yourself?
No need to! Plenty of companies all over the world can help you bring your floor plan from sketch to finished design. Click here to see our partners.


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Liberty, Fraternity, and Unity
Welcome to the Wisconsin State Society,
United States Daughters of 1812.
Charter Granted 15 February 1901.
Founded in 1892, the National Society United States Daughters of 1812 is a volunteer women's service organization dedicated to promoting patriotism, preserving and increasing knowledge of the history of the American people by the preservation of documents and relics, marking of historic spots, recording of family histories and traditions, celebration of patriotic anniversaries, teaching and emphasizing the heroic deeds of the civil, military, and naval life of those who molded this Government between the close of the American Revolution and the close of the War of 1812, to urge Congress to compile and publish authentic records of men in civil, military, and naval service from 1784 to 1815 inclusive, and to maintain at National Headquarters In Washington D.C., a museum and library of memorabilia of the 1784-1815 period. The Wisconsin State Society is just as passionate about these purposes today, as we were in 1901.
Our Society Invitation
The State of Wisconsin Daughters have a proud history of service and dedication to the National Society, and we encourage you to learn more about our society. Please click on the links that are of most interest to you. If you are descended from a War of 1812 patriot we invite you to apply for membership.
We recognize our Honorary Wisconsin State Presidents
Peg Hart - 1999 -2003
Evelyn Farris - 2003 - 2006
Carol Orth - 2006 - 2009
Charlene Janeczko - 2009-2012
State Committees
American Merchant Marine Library Association.....Charlene Janeczko-King
Budget & Finance………Janet Brophey
Constitution......Charlene Janeczko-King
Correct Use of the Flag….Carol Orth
1812 Markers & Grave Locations.…Betty Henry
Insignia……Francine Zamora
National Headquarters....Nancy Lesh
Public Relations…Julie Stuhlmacher
Schools..…Marian Fiasca
Star Spangled Banner Flag House & Old Fort Niagara…..Diana Schneider
Veterans Rehabilitation..….Janet Brophey
The Spirit of 1812 Award....Ruth Anderson
War of 1812 Era Newspapers…Mary Ann Harding
The "Spirit of 1812 Award was presented to Charlene Janeczko-King on March 31, 2012.
The Wisconsin Society continues to grow, gaining eight members in 2012.
In May 2012, Wisconsin members marked two graves at Oak Hill Cemetery, Brookfield, WI, honoring the service of Jeremiah Rose & Nathan Hatch.
In October Michael Jacobs, Associate Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-Baraboo/Sauk County presented: The War of 1812 was important to the young USA. This was a very informative discussion comparing the events of 1812-15 with the Vietnam era. Members could identify with this on a personal level leading to better understanding of the nineteenth century events.
Wisconsin daughters and their families read, and they share their used books with the American Merchant Marine Library Association. In 2012, ten boxes of books, valued at nearly $4,000 were shipped to the AMMLA.
Searching for your 1812 Ancestors Buried in Wisconsin
Wedding Dress Restoration on display at National Headquarters. The wedding dress and slippers of Elizabeth Pingrey were restored by the Wisconsin Society in 2011.
Silver service from the Wisconsin Society used annually at the Tea Party at National Headquarters.
These lovely and functional hankies are available for $15.00 each (USD 1812 hanky, or 1812-2012 bicentennial hanky) by contacting Ruth Anderson.
Thank you for visiting our website and showing an interest in the Wisconsin State Society United States Daughters of 1812
Web hyperlinks to non-U.S.D. of 1812 sites are not the responsibility of the N.S.U.S.D. of 1812, the state societies, or individual 1812 chapters. Website created 8/14/10 - Updated 5/11/13 Questions or comments regarding this website, please e-mail the webmaster


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Communicate Effectively. .
IEBA Communications has been enabling companies to effectively inform & motivate for over 20 years. We have the production & social media integration experience you need to guide you from concept to completion. Call today to see how we will make your ideas come to life.
Anthony Burokas, President of IEBA Communications, was awarded with one of only five American Film Institute / Sony awards; ours for Excellence in Performance Coverage.
This nationwide competition gave only one award in each fiercely competitive category. Anthony Burokas was pleased to be the recipient for his ground–breaking work on the national PBS series "Flavors of America" and "Healthy Flavors."
Web Video Is Mandatory


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Recently my 24-105mm L lens started showing the "aperture" problem - Err 01 - no communication between lens and body. Most likely because an aperture blade got stuck or the ribbon cable serving the aperture mechanism got dislodged/damaged.
This seems to be a fairly common problem with this lens and requires expensive repairs ($350 - $650).
Although I read quite a few reports here and there about this problem Canon seems to ignore it and pretends it "does not exist". IMHO this must be a design fault or inherent weakness which they should recognise and take resposibility for - especially as this lens has the "L" label for "professional" use.
I would like to make an inventory of all complaints and with this inventory build a case against Canon. Here in Australia I could report the case to the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission).
Please report your personal experience in this thread or send me a PM with details.