(re)designing Chicago's lakefront for the 21st century

Had an excellent class last night, though we spent a little too much time talking about the Yankees for my taste. True, a fair amount of that time was spent criticizing George STeinbrenner, but then more of it was spent praising Joe Torre. It is, after all, a decision-making course.

You picks your battles and you fights 'em.

In class we also watched a couple videos that made us all doubt a lot of things. In the first, six people are passing a ball around, and we were asked to count how many times the ball was tossed. About half the people in the room didn't notice a person in a gorilla suit walk into the middle of the ball-throwing, do a little dance, and exit. I only noticed because I heard a laugh and wanted to know why. In the next videos, of which we saw several, something even more bizarre happens. Opening shot: Man giving directions to younger man. Young man is holding campus map (it looks like professor-prospective student, or something), looking confused, professor type is pointing. Then two men carrying a large sheet of plywood walk directly through this interaction. One of the plywood carriers and the asking directions man switch (the plywood blocks the prof from seeing this). The direction giving continues, no pause, no startle at the change. We saw a couple different versions of this, with different extremes of differences (though always from one white man to another). Apparently more than half of the innocent direction-givers didn't notice. And as the prof said (after joking that this means we never have bad hair days), what about eyewitness testimony?

Another fascinating thing from class was the result of an online poll of all 3 sections of this class (about 200 people). 27% said they were likely to vote for Bush, 52% for Kerry, the rest undecided. We were also asked what we thought our classmates would vote--and that was split, 46-42.

First, I'm shocked that a group of baby-businesspeople is so supportive of Kerry. Perhaps the numbers are influenced by international students? That's about 25%, which still doesn't explain it all (especially if one assumes that more international students were "undecided", though I'm not sure that is a reasonable assumption).

It makes me feel a little better about the world if only 27% of the future leaders of tomorrow want Bush to be reelected. Sure, people grow more conservative as the get older, but at least they aren't starting right and moving extreme right.

And maybe, just maybe, there's hope after all. (My professor would rip apart that argument. Sample Size! he'd scream. Underlying bias! No control! But still, it gives me hope).
- posted by Heidi @ 8:13 AM