posted 07-23-2006 11:42 PM            

I was driving north on Interstate 15, enjoying the silence and wondering to myself "why do we have Utah?"

The I realized I was seeing signs for Payson and Spanish Fork and had passed the interchange for Interstate 70 some time back.

(I'm going to be really fun when I'm old - wandering around my own neighborhood asking someone to remind me of my name and address - my kids 'll have to chain me to a tree and throw kibble to me to keep me out of trouble)

So, I added about 60 miles to my drive, and headed south onto State Route 28 to reconnect with I70 at Salina...

About 5 miles south of Gunnison (UT) the Subaru Outback had a lot of flashing instrument lights. One mile later it was DOA - in Podunk Utah. I had already been through one repair on this trip, as I caught a bunch of gravel in the air conditioning condensor on the drive to Las Vegas - on the fun stretch of Utah desert between Green River and Salina (110 miles of no services). I had the condensor replace in Vegas - no way am I driving home without Air conditioning.

It seems that Subarus are made of really thin metal, and they will not go where jeeps go.

Now, of course, I was stuck 6 miles south of Podunk/Gunnison (nice town actually). To make matters worse the whole little valley is devoid of cell phone towers, and had never heard of Qwest, Sprint, or Verizon (can you hear me now?) So, i was afforded the opportuntiy to wear out a few miles worth of new running shoes on the hot Utah asphalt.

So meanwhile back at the ranch (in town that is), I was informed that it would be an hour or more for AAA to arrive from Salina or Richfield or wherever they have towing conveniences in rural Utah. I was also informed that everything in town was closed or closing early for the holiday celebrations - Utah Independence Day??? (has Utah ceceded from the union???).

Anyway, some very helpful folks rounded up a service shop guy (who had never seen a Subaru before, but told me I needed an alternator). He looked online and informed me that there were no alternators for my vehicle in any of the nearby towns, but they could get one for me in a few days.

So about now I'm longing for a good old-fashioned four wheel drive truck - the kind that doesn't mind rocks, and for which you can find spare parts alongside any highway.

So, I continued to widen the search for a mechanic or parts shop who had heard of Subarus, and found a guy and hour and half away who had my alternator...

Now, one of the great things about Utah (aside from the heat, wide open spaces, and rocks) is that you can stop a celebration at full-tilt and lotsa folks are still sober 'nuff to drive. So this fine fellow delivered the alternator to me himself, and then returned to the formidable task of partying like a banshee in a crew-cut and white dress shirt.

Not one to wait two days just to pay someone to do something I could do immediately, I broke out the little tool kit and changed the alternator in about 10 to 15 minutes. I think you can take apart an entire Subaru with only a 10mm and 12mm wrench (kind of like scandinavian furniture from Ikea).

Lucky me, I had a fresh supply of rubber gloves in my first aide kit, after my 14 year old son and recently splinted a woman's unstable/fractured leg/angle during extrication after an ice storm (7/1/06) while climbing a 14000 ft peak.

I was on the fence about going to the conference, and then saw all the fun on this board regarding election. And I needed some training hours.

It was an interesting conference. Aside from all the politicking, electing, discussing, and cussing, hyperbole, rhetoric, dogma, and strong opinions, there were some very interesting presentations.

Among the pearls of wisdom that I learned:

- having sex can be an effective countermeasure to defeat the polygraph...

- psychopaths can beat the polygraph...

- attaching poylygraph component sensors to one person's body can determine another person's state of being (victim or non-victim), even if the victim disagrees with the label...

- DI to one means DI to all, or if a person lies to a question about guilty knowledge that is the same as lying about doing it (I think it may be time for some updated conceptual language here)...

- some quesions have a threat value of 6 and others have a threat value of 7... units of fear, that is... (remember Nygel Tufnel from Spinal Tap - his amplifier goes up to 11 "that's one louder than 10.")

One of the really neat things is that a lot of the presenters were very approachable. I enjoyed talking directly with Mssrs Sosnowski and Slupski, and Randi Stephens. Mr. Phil Ledford was very gracious about my desire to have an argument with him at the end, and I hope we get to speak again in the near future.

I aslo met some of the people from this board, including J.B. McCloughan, and Lou Rovner (sorry if I can't remember everyone right now), and other great people whose names I haven't seen around here.

And Jaimie Brown, allowed me to sneek a peek inside the box as he made an update/improvment to the little Limestone datapac that I've been using with increasing frequency. He has extended the EDA sensitivity on new datapacs from 60K - 9meg ohm to 20k - 9 meg ohm, so my sweaty-palmed sex offender clients will not bottom out the EDA range.

Attendance for me was a late decision, and it was a little late to get a cheap plane ticket. Plus I usually like a little road-time to listen to some John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk. I was going to ride the motorcycle, but opted for the car because of the heat and air-conditioning (that'll teach me). The missed turn onto I70 was fortuitous in the end, as the mileage to failure would have put me somewhere about halfway into the 110 mile stretch of desert between Green River and Salina.

In the end, it was a worthy adventure, and not too many were lost.

**I'm quite tired and punchy right now and I know I'll have to edit this later.**

------------------
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the war room."
--(Dr. Strangelove, 1964)

posted 07-24-2006 02:53 PM         

I have some advice for you:

1. Raise your rates for testing.
2. Dump the Subaru.

Glad you made it back safely!

posted 07-24-2006 04:54 PM            

I too was going to ride my bike but when it was 101 in SLC, I opted for the air conditioning of my vehicle instead of the Road King in the heat of Las Vegas. It's too bad you had all the vehicle problems. I also wish I could have seen/met you there - its always fun to put a face with the writings.

Maybe at the next conference everyone that chats on this site can meet one night for drinks (not all Utahn's remain sober - but I guess I don't live in the podunk area - ha ha)

posted 07-24-2006 05:56 PM            

Sorry I missed you there. It would have been great to meet.

I was stopped at the fires on my way to LV.

I agree about the Utah mountains - particularly those around Spanish Fork and Payson.

I've been having vehicle trouble in Utah and Oklahoma since I was 16.

The Subi is great for my 50K miles of commuting, and cruising along at the posted legal limit. Plus it has a lower center of gravity than my former SUV and stays right side up more reliably.

Road King huh? I have a nice set of RK pipes I'm fitting onto a 1979 Yamaha XS11 touring bike (hard to find OEM parts for those old UJMs). They look really great on the Yami, but don't move nearly as much air, so I've already rejetted the carbs twice (6 sizes smaller) - that's the difference between a low-rpm hog and high revving foreign bike. The XS11 is a monster from a different era (before sport bikes existed) - 105hp in 1978, the first production bike to push 10 second 1/4 miles. Like old muscle cars, there are not many around any more - the boy-racers and slam-shifters tore them up. I have three now (79, 80, and 81, in standard, special/cruiser, and touring config). Mine have never exceed the posted legal limit, and have definitely never been driven over 138 mph.

------------------
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the war room."
--(Dr. Strangelove, 1964)

posted 07-24-2006 09:54 PM            

I guess I found it hard to believe that the Hilton didn't put up some sort of coupons for us for any discounts (shopping, casinos, eateries, transportation etc.) as other places do. You would think with holding such a major conference that they would pull out the plugs and hope for return customers.

Wife and I went to other places on the strip and after getting a players club card from most other places we got cash back, discount buffett's, shows, t-shirts etc. This was my first time in LV and all in all I enjoyed it.

The seminar was good (couple dropped presenters) and I missed the Sex Countermeasure talk!

I was really impressed with Bob Krapohls presentation although I had to ask my school director as to why an MZOC with Sky wasn't mentioned as a validated testing technique.

Ive never been to New Orleans but hope to be there next year and hopefully the scouting mission by the APA will score the APA membership some perks!

I have heard from some people that set up seminars for other associations that when the negotiate with the perspective venue perks are often benefits extended.

On the way home I found myself sitting next to a Voice Layered Analysis proponent...What a flight...turned out we both knew the same people from "V" here in Wisconsin....

Tony

posted 07-25-2006 12:18 AM            

quote:

---

Okay Ray, you've got me curious. I need to know more about these nuggets of wisdom. Was that part of the entertainment, or did somebody really talk about this stuff?

---

yyeahh...

Randi Stephens was a little caught off guard with the room's reaction to her statements about psychopaths. However, she remained composed and presented well. Her information was well referenced, though not revolutionary. Overall she was seemed credible, knowledgeable and experienced. She handled the room reasonably well during a minor free-for-all over her reportedly "false-negative" tests, and I believe she got the point that we would not figure out from the conference room how that happened. The only (personal) disappointment was that, when asked about female offenders, she quoted verbatim my off-the-cuff thoughts about female offender typologies, from our brief conversation during the break - and she didn't attribute her statements to the guy in the back of the room who had just given her that information during the break (end of rant).

It was good to see Mr. Sosnowski stand up and talk about Ms. Stephen's concerning tests. However, I still believe that such tests are great learning opportunities, and are best excavated through a QA or peer review. I still have the impression that has not been done and that Ms. Stephens found the suggestion to be somewhat novel.

The units of fear was a teaching metaphor that I felt became belabored to the point that it was being emphasized literally, not hypothetically. My Spinal Tap retort (goes up to 11) is simply a fun illustration of the need to be careful when we are describing various types of raw data for empirical measurement(i.e., ratio, interval, ordinal, and nominal). Though OSS and rank order schemes use ordinal ranks, they do not assume in advance the fear-value of any particular question. To suggest that we know in advance the "units of fear" of a relevant or comparison questions suggests mind-reading.

Ever the back-row gadfly, I was somewhat vocal about my concerns with Mr. Ledford's offerings. To his credit he remained composed and was tollerant, if not gracious, about my need to argue with him further at the end of the conference.

I think the sex-countermeasure thing, and some of the other ideosyncratic practices described are an example of the risks of working and learning in isolation. I am not convinced that it holds any clinically informative value to a sex offender therapist to know how many times an offender had masturbated and when was the last time. I do not seen these variables described in any theoretically or actuarially derived clinical assessment or risk prediction scheme. It would make more sense to me to be concerned about current frequency of masturbation (and perhaps patterns throughout one's lifetime), along with other information such as prefered fantasy material, pornograpy or object use, and intrusive deviant fantasies, and such... as this information would allow a therapist to evaluation the presence or absence of sexual compulsivity and sexual deviancy issues (both of which do appear in risk prediction schemes).

The idea that we could possible know "everything" that was done to a victim is to me both specious and absurd. It is also a potentially harmful diservice to a victim to assume or pretend we know everything that was done. We will never know "everything;" we weren't there. The most we can achieve is some knowledge about some factual behaviors, in attempt to assure a reasonable degree of accoutability to assure that the offender's denial and minimization do not continue to harm the victim or place the victim at further risk of harm, and to (hopefully) assure the offender is adequately engaged in treatment and that some therapeutic progress will occur. I've ranted about "complete truth" and "lie on paper" questions before - I'll resurect that for anyone who wants.

I also disagree that the number of victim's is clinically or actuarially informative in Mr. Ledford's setting. He works in a state hospital with Sexually Violent Predators (the highest level of risk). What is the difference in risk between an SVP with 50 vs 30 victims. The victim's are not identified, and the well being of the victim's is not the objective of the tests that Mr. Ledford described. SVPs are already at the highest risk level. How much higher can one ratchet their assessed risk. (Remember the movie Animal house[/u] in which the university president put the college fraternity on [i]double-secret probation.)

I also disagree with Mr. Ledford's use of the word "victim" in the test question, as this is not a behavioral action verb, but references another person's (not the polygraph subject) categorical label, or state of existence/being (i.e., victim or not victim). The word "victim" is jargon that should be avoided in the test questions. We should ask "did you do it" or "Besides those X people, did you do it to anyone else," where do it is a behavioral action verb describing some form of sexual behavior or victim selection behavior. To ask about "victims" is to ask "what are they" not "what did you do" or "whom did you do it do." Couple this with the fact that some victim's don't like to be called victims, I find this both ineffective and insensitive.

And finally, the "DI to one means DI to all" discussion is I believe incomplete. Mr. Sosnowski had a rousing exchange with Nate Gordon about this, after Donnie Dutton set the stage so nicely. Mr. Gordon's point was that DI scores (assuming a specific issues test using some time of Zone technique with SKY) to questions about knowledge, does not necessarily mean the subject did it himself, and is different in investigative meaning from the test of another subject who score DI to the "did you do it" question. To carry the "DI to one means DI to all" mantra too literally would prevent us from accurately investigating some employee theft or other siutations. I think the point of this may have been to admonish the conference participants against split calls. As I indicated earlier, I think its time for some updated conceptual language and retire this arcane mantra.

I'm not advocating split calls here. However, it seems to me that it is never adequately specified whether Mssrs Dutton, Sosnowski, or Gordon would consider reporting the spot scores as DI where indicated and require that other questions be reported as NO/INC when they do not meet DI thresholds (or would that be a split call). And, what about common screening tests (which may employ only veritical or spot scoring) in which the subject may produce NDI/NSR scores to one or more questions while producing INC/NO numbers that do not meet spot-scoring thresholds for NDI/NSR or DI/SR. Would it be considered a split call to report such vertical scoring results.

"DI to one means DI to all" would have us rendering DI opinions to questions about sexual contact with minors while attending treatment, if the question is asked in concert with questions about anything else to which the subject/offender reacts significantly. So we report DI to all and our average probation/parole officer gets the report and consequences the offender for the most intense community safety concern (reoffending) whether that is really the problem or not. While supervising officers will impose sanctions and consequences, they will generally not revoke an offender based only on the polygraph, so the offender usually remains in the community. Sex offenders are by nature cynical and inauthentic. I believe there is an obvious iatrogenic potential here, as this is unlikely to promote authentic engagement in treatment. Moreover, perceived arbitrariness is likely only to make the sex offender more cynical, superficial, and dangerous.

Some of what we hold to be important and theoretically sound may not have been derived from empirical inquiry. Mr. Sosnowski appeared to be getting at this when he helped us see how opinionated examiners can get about such things as the separation between treatment and probation concerns.

Mr. Krapohl presented some very interesting information on evidentiary decision rules (and mentioned Barry C by name). While evidentiary rules most likely do not apply to PCSOT situations, it may be time to clarify this issue with some data and empirically based rules (vs. some arcane scoring mantra that may cause more trouble than its worth).

Peace,

------------------
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the war room."
--(Dr. Strangelove, 1964)