Bipolar[ism] - Part II

It's been a good eight weeks or so since I discussed anything about bipolar, which I said I was gonna do a little bit of research about.
It's kind of funny, actually, because I totally did research, I just didn't post it.
I can't recall the exact specifics, but I learned that the amygdala in bipolar people have a smaller volume than those in people that aren't bipolar. The hippocampus is a little smaller, too.
And yes, actually, apparently, the onset of this disorder is congruent with menarche or the onset of puberty.
I figure women probably have bipolar more often than men, too. I have no case to back it up, but I'm hazarding a guess that it's because adolescent girls have pretty unstable hormones (more than boys of the same age?) due to puberty and their menstrual cycle. I have no idea if this is right or not, so I won't shoot myself in the face if it isn't.

The real reason for this blog post, however, is because of something that occurred today.
One of my friends said that she doesn't believe bipolar exists. That it's just people looking for an excuse to act erratically (but she said it in a way that was much, MUCH more ignorant than that). The likelihood that she's ever learned or researched anything about this disorder, or any mental disordar, is slimly slim to none-ly none.
I was sitting next to her, trying to hold my tongue, not wanting to argue, since she was REALLY pissing me off today, but I could feel the anger rising like a helium balloon released into the endless sky. Except this balloon of mine was expanding exponentially as it came up. Like a marshmallow in a microwave for too long. I've always had a bit of intolerance of people who have opinions they know nothing about, but this was just too much.
"I absolutely disagree. It's been proven." [I know that using the excuse or reasoning of 'it's been proven!' often to leads to fallacies or 'common sense', such as quoting bullshit or nonexistent research as proof that cats/dogs/marmosets/antelopes have cleaner mouths than humans {which is absolutely false}, but if it was truly nonexistent, wouldn't psychologists and bipolar-ologists know by now, and wouldn't it not, for the most part, affect people so strongly? I also didn't want to get into it too much, because I knew I would get angrier as I was telling her why she was so wrong, so I kept it vague. Excuses, excuses, right?]

I felt like I wanted to scream at her about how insolent and stupid it was of her to say things like that. I can understand maybe thinking that bipolar is sometimes a scapegoat (for people that use it as such), because it absolutely is, but I can't understand the complete dismissal of something that affects the lives of people with it so profoundly. Yes, it's in their mind (and their genes), but many "deviances" from personality and cultural "norms" are due to such things, things that aren't always physically evident. It's also because I feel empathy/sympathy (but not pity) for people with bipolar - they've told me how difficult it can be, how devastating it almost always is, and how it can ruin relationships in a blink.

Excuse, pardon, and allow my oncoming French.
People who know not a goddamned thing about something should not be allowed to ever fucking have an opinion about it. And the only reason they ever should be allowed to have one is if they're willing to learn things that contradict their hard-set beliefs. Maybe I'm just justifying my rage, but I can understand both points of view (to some extent about the "IT IS FAKE DURRHURR") and that's how I formed my opinions about it. I've always felt this way about politics and things like this, but my GOD, it is downright infuriating.

I completely understand Wollersheim's point of having us learn about both arguments about the death penalty ("for" and "against") in Sociology. I just wish I could... just... I don't know. I really don't know what I wish I could do.

You're as random as...

IV

Wollershimmy (who happens to get at least one new nickname each time I write up a post) said something in class on Monday that caught my attention - that random thoughts aren't random. She said it in context, but maybe as a bit of an afterthought.
I sat it on it a few days (it hatched, surprisingly, even though I've had a cold for a while) and talked with her about it yesterday.
We discussed how people calling people "random" is a fallacy - retrieval cues underlie everything. Unconsciously. Some retrieval cue in your environment is activated, which fetches more cues, and the line goes down, but you're not aware of it. All you're aware of is the end result - a conscious thought, of something usually unrelated. To call oneself "random" is clearly false dichotomy, then; it's certainly a process, even though the result seems nowhere or "out of left field" (why is it "left" field and not "right" field?). And one cannot, therefore, act or think randomly... there is always a reason or process (conscious or unconscious). I may blurt out something about purple pudding (like I did in Ancient Civilizations second term), and you may be like, "That was completely random!" but it really wouldn't be. It would just be my filter between my unconscious "thoughts" and my spoken words being blurred.
One acquaintance in my [now previous] fourth hour said something about him having random thoughts. I countered and told him about retrieval cues and how he was surely unconsciously going down a list. He said I exploded him mind (and one of my friends said mockingly, "I'm Joey, and I'm the king of psychology!", which was maybe a little insulting, but I laughed it off, because it's true... my crown and scepter just haven't been polished with the souls of teenagers, yet).
You know what else is truly never random? Computers.

Wollersparkler also told me a wonderful anecdote about how she [TEXT DELETED FOR THE VICTIM'S SAFETY], and how it made her seem or feel rude, even though it wasn't something she had real control over. I felt bad ("bad" being "damn, that sucks") for her, because my mirror neurons were being stimulated, and because I knew exactly what it felt like to be in that position - it's not like I've never been there before.
All I have to say about that is that maybe it happens because sometimes, it offers a good distraction from some problem at hand. I'll also say that it's a very bad thing when you say the exact wrong thing without consciously regarding it... I made one of my dearest friends cry harder when she was dealing with something hard, and I will never forget it.

The Sextet of Doom

I'm supposed to apply six concepts (in the reading or in the article) to our in-class experiments/activities. I suppose I'll do it... I mean, this is just such a pain! DOESN'T WOLLERSHEIM KNOW THAT I'M TERRIBLY, TERRIBLY UN-GRAMETICULLL AND THAT MY FINGERS ARE PROSTHETICS MADE OF WOOD (like George Washingtooooooooooooooon's teefs!?) GOD, YOU THINK YOU KNOW A PERSON, AND THEY JUST TURN AROUND AND ENTHUSIASTICALLY ASSIGN AN ASSIGNMENT THAT YOU CAN'T DO BECAUSE YOU'VE GOT A BABY HIPPOPOTAMUS SITTING ON EACH OF YOUR HANDS, FORCING YOU TO type the rest f this entence with my nose. Yes, I really just did it, too. I am now realizing that these hippos are phantasms (phantom hippohands syndrome?), and that I'm only imagining them... and that I JUST PUT MY NOSE TO A KEYBOARD MULTIPLE TIMES, LIKE A WOODPECKER (keyboardpecker?). I'm going to go disinfect my nose, thanks... it smells like something's burning.
Okay, phew. Now that I'm back and okay with this silly, exacerbating, fantabulous assignment, let me begin by saying two things: One, I like applesauce; Two, I like the color purple; and $, I REALLY like applesauce.

For one of the thingies, we had to balance 10 nails on the head of only one. There were multiple ways to go about it (leaning them against the one, or, as Katie did, putting your nails on your cranium), but Wollersheim was totally intending only one way. Joonho totally took the cake and ate it, right in front of us. He managed to get, like, twenty-six on one nail! That's nuts!
Anyway. None of us knew what we were doing, really (I was really fuzzy today, and Katie and a few others were obsessed over figuring out that icky logic problem). So we just kind of farked around, the magical Wollersaurus Rex gave us a clue with her magical clue-y powers. That's when Joonho was like, "... oh." And he totally nailed it. Anywhere, this proved that my intuition was pretty not-right - my immediate idea wasn't feasible, at least, it wasn't the desired solution. Jared was seemingly overconfident all the time (it was sort of funny, in a grating sort of way). None of us had the correct mental sets, as none of us had done it previously.

We had to make an oldschool record play using some random materials - a pencil, a needle, tape, a piece o' paper, a rubber band, a band-aid, and a tootsie roll - which is a little less awesome than it sounds. It took us a while - we were mostly fixated (meaning "unable to see the problem in a new way") and unable to actually progress. Jared was fixated on wanting the cherry-flavored tootsie roll... that people in our group had touched not inappropriately, but not necessarily appropriately (!).
It took us a bit, but we got it. It was mostly a bout of insight (nudged by an extremely vague question that THE WOLLERSHEIM posed). We totally PWN'D everyone in that you could hear the person's voice and make out the words (Satan-style or chipmunk-style, to be exact), because the needle was sort of skimming the surface of the record, rather than trying to stab it in the face.
Also, SOMEONE (I won't name names... but The Amazing Dubulator totally knows who it was!) told ... Wollershizzle that she should know how they work and what they look like, because she grew up with them, didn't she? I just kind of... stared at the person who said it, unable to fathom that they thought that either she's older (C'mon! She looks young and sometimes like she could totally be a college student!)/that records were around in the late eighties.
Her response was three halves hilarious. I couldn't tell if she thought it was more funny or insulting, though.

Cognition was obviously used for all of these. We thought. Therefore, we were?

P.S. Blogger's examples for tags never change. I want to tag this as "scooters" (because, didn't you know, we rode little scooters around the room while we did this?), but I won't, because nonsense tags go into my sociology blog...
... BUT I'LL TAKE A COOKIE JUST THIS ONCE.

If you reach into someone's mind, you can feel emotions.

I had a pretty nice debate with you today, Mrs. Wollersheim. You're a good person to bounce ideas off of and to talk to about interesting little nuggets I find lying around.
For all of you that have no idea what I'm talking about, we talked about motivation today in AP Psych. There are two (main) types of motivation - intrinsic and extrinsic. Basically, they break down into "doing it just for doing it" and "doing it to receive a tangible reward".
My argument was that the line between intrinsic and extrinsic is not clear-cut and defined. There's a lot of blur. My main point is while you can't exactly touch emotions, they are tangible, because they manifest themselves in physical ways - after all, aren't they just mostly mechanisms and chemicals?.
If a murder takes pleasure in killing someone, they may do it because they extrinsically get to witness their victim dying by their own hands, but I think they also do it because seeing that makes them feel good. But the "good feelings" are tangible - they feel the happiness inside of them, the "happiness" maybe even ... makes itself noticeable physically (you know exactly where this is headed, right?).
If you reach into someone's body and grab a fistfull of something and yank it out, you'll most likely get guts (or blood vessels, etc). Physical physical things. If you reach into their brain, you'll get neurons and gray matter and gunk. But if you reach into their mind (which in itself isn't strictly a tangible thing, now is it?), you'll pull out thoughts and feelings and emotions and maybe even personality traits.
As far as we know, emotions and thoughts don't exist on a physical plane the same way, say, we do (excluding the biological processes that make them, which means they're tangible, I'd say!), but I don't think that they don't serve as a source for motivation. Double negatives, baby!
What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that feelings can absolutely be extrinsic motivation. Maybe I like reading because I get benefits, rewards for doing it - an increased vocabulary, a growing ability to understand what I am made to read. I don't think we necessarily have to be aware of our motivation, however.
(Three.)

Strangedreams Numeros 1-3

I've decided to record my dreams again, but this time, they'll be on my blog. I have lazy hands and don't want to write, but my fingers are always rarin' to type out blog posts that are much too long.
3/16 I dreamed a series of related, connected dreams. Or maybe it was all part of one, I don't know. Maybe they were truly three parts of one giant, meaty tentacle; or maybe they were three tentacles on a huge, throbbing octopuuuuusssssssssssssssthhhhhhh. Anyway, they all had some friends in them. One of which is John (HIIII JOHN!), and another is Kelsey.

#1 I was in school, but in a room I've never seen before. I think it was probably made up. There was a gigantic circular table in the middle of the room, with a few desks scattered around it. I picked one of these desks, and I looked around to see if there was anyone I knew. Suddenly, I noticed Kelsey was sitting right next to me, already talking. We idly chatted until I noticed the teacher (an obese old man with a terrifying face) was staring at us with a snarl displayed on his face, much like a television displays a crowd of rabid babies. We quickly shut up and he handed out a test and told us, without words, to DO IT. I remember looking at the sheet and seeing mostly essay questions (but I don't remember what they actually said, of course). I read them and felt that there was no way I could do them. Then the rest of the class, including Kelsey, suddenly left, and the teacher told me I had five minutes to complete the test. My dream ended.

#2 I got a phone call from John to come to the mall. I felt really excited. I went into the connected ShopKo and by the bathrooms, where I found John with a pretty large circle of people. The few that I actually recognized were Ashley G. and Lindsey S. (I'm not entirely sure either of them are in John's immediate hanging-out group), and some girl was hanging all over John, who was acting with slight indifference to her. She removed her death grip from his waist and sauntered up to me and presented me with a box, and said, "If you're a good boy, you'll get a reward." John was frowning sadly. I took hold of the box and fumbled it, crashing into Lindsey and saying, "Sorry, Lindsey!", but she turned into Ashley and complained about being called Lindsey. I tried to tell her that she was Lindsey a second ago, but it fell upon un-hearing ears. Suddenly, everyone was at a really long table (still in ShopKo, mind you), and I opened the box. In it were strangely shaped glass goblets (their bases/"stems" were curved like a dragon's horn). I instantaneously knew it was my job to pass them out to everyone. The girl lead me to believe that I was only there because there was an extra goblet, and because they couldn't think of anyone else to be their servant. Everyone except John (who seemed to be rather subdued and sad or angry at the treatment I was getting, but not saying anything) echoed this sentiment as I laid the goblets on their plates. I took my seat (not even at the table) and frowned because I didn't want any wine - I felt so isolated.

#3 I was back at the school, but in some strange, grandiose hallway with a very high ceiling. I was standing absently by the middle of a wall, looking upset (which, of course, no one noticed). John walked by and started talking to me and asked what was wrong. I told him that it was nothing and he told me that he was terribly sorry, but that the girl wouldn't let him speak out (for reasons he didn't get in to), We walked to my class, idly chatting, and sat down in a few desks. We kept on talking until I noticed the teacher (the same setting and person as dream #1) was staring at us, seemingly waiting for us to talk. John was saying something, so I didn't want to cut him off. Suddenly, it cut to a scene at the back of the room... some guy was strangling a sad-looking teddy bear, which was bleeding profusely out of the mouth. The teacher ran back to the guy to ask him how he managed to do that (he seemed VERY excited!) and it was SUDDENLY REVEALED that the teddy bear was actually the teacher.
And that's where it ended and I woke up. Trust me, I was pretty confused.

World of Warconditioning

I found an article that talked about how conditioning is used to keep users subscribing to MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online) video games, such as World of Warcraft.

Perro es muy, muy ... muerde?

While I believe that, in most cases, simply posting about the most obvious relations to what we've learned in the week is somewhat lame, I am forced to do it. At least for now. Therefore, I am a part-time lame-o. Silly blog assignments! Trix are for children!
(Neither my pants, my shirt, nor the chair I am leaning upon have zig-zag patterns... why is that pattern stamped all across my knuckles?)

We're learning about learning this week. (I can't wait until we get to memory, finally...) Which is kind of funny, in retrospect, but in a completely unfunny way.

When I was NUMBER (I don't remember what age I was, but I was fairly young; therefore, NUMBER), I walked across the street to our mailbox, not to do anything crazy, but to get our mail. After I grab the mail and start to turn around to walk back, this HUGE dog, a giant golden retreiver, runs towards me, snarling and barking and scaring the bajesus (bejesus? bejeesus?) out of me. Naturally, I book it for our house, screaming my little head off, and the dog chases me. Conveniently, my dad was in the van at the time, and I ran onto the porch while he chased that stupid canine away.

Naturally, the k-9 belonged to the adjective man that lived on the corner of the street (I can't think of an adjective that was mean enough to describe him and his family.) I distinctly remember many encounters with him and his what-load of animals - he had a chicken, I think, and a bulldog (I accidentally typed "bulldozer") that always liked to dump in our front yard. I also remember his children being absolutely nuts - his little girl was running around on our half of the block in her skivvies and screaming like a loon. My dad and our cool-neighbor-to-the-left, Jerry, called the cops on him multiple times for his general shenanigans. I think he moved because no one liked him (and because my dad and Jerry weren't going to take disrespect sitting down), or because he got kicked out by the sasquatches or something.

Anyway, me getting the mail would definitely count as the neutral stimulus, which ended up becoming the conditioned stimulus. The dog galloping after me was absolutely the unconditioned stimulus, and my natural, unconditioned reaction was to be scared out of my skin (not my hair though, because my hair was nowhere near as impressive as it is today). My conditioned response was fear. This "incident" also most likely maybe a little bit hardened my fear of dogs.
Therefore, every time I go get the mail, I look around nervously or am acutely aware of my surroundings, just waiting for a dog to materialize outta nuthin' and try to moiduh me. I've generalized about being vaguely nervous about street-crossing in general. And dogs.
The street-crossing part has become partially extinct. I don't usually think about it anymore. BUT THE DOGS ARE ALWAYS THERE. If I'm walking down the street and I hear a dog barking, my heart starts to race and my fight-or-flight response kicks in. I've been known to scoot to the other side of the street or to start running away as fast as I can, even if it's a poodle, even if it's obviously chained up securely.
My friend Sig's mother, Peggy, has a little chihuahua. How do you think I feel anout the damned thing?

Colorize me to the moon, baby.

I was thinking this week about colors. Especially the ones our cones detect - red, blue, and green. There's nothing inherently interesting about them if you look at them only as three colors (out of millions, billions, trillions, quadrillions?), but combined, they have interesting properties.
It's pretty obvious that the light spectrum doesn't necessarily match up with the color wheel of art. According to the color wheel, blue and orange are opposing colors (while the book says that yellow and blue are, in fact, the complimentary color set). There are other obvious discrepancies between the systems.
Red and green makes yellow, at least, according to our sight/when mixing light. When you mix them physically, with any medium (color pencils, watercolors, pastels, paints), you get an icky, brownish color that results from mixing two opposing colors. But how does this work?
To the right is a depiction of the RGB color model. As you can see, colors
like oranges and purples are results of different primary color balances (orange has a higher red concentration, while purple is more blue).
This has a biological basis - this is how our eyes perceive color.
But the art-y RYB color model, pictured to the left, seems to be how most physical media works. If you mix equal amounts of red and green... you don't get yellow! SURPRISE! Did that startle you!? I hope it did! I understand how this theory came to be, though - it was "invented" long, lonnnng, lonnnnnnnnng before the structure of the eye and color sight were adequately understood.
But the big picture, the big point to this wad of colorful text, is this question:
Are these two color models related? That is, while physical media may mix according to RYB, do we see it thanks to RGB? * **

*The answer, I think, is "probably". But, at the same time, there are many other different types of color models and they're all probably somewhat correct.
** THIS POST IS SECRETLY THE SECOND EDITION OF "Weekly Blogging Assignment". Don't take off its mask, or the festering bodies will get'cha!

PSA

http://www.youtube.com/user/appsychology1023

"Kelsey, Meghan, Allen PSA - Ashwaubenon"

http://www.youtube.com/user/appsychology1023#p/a/u/2/6I1L6LT_0NE

"Jared, Alicia, and Katie PSA"

http://www.youtube.com/user/appsychology1023#p/u/5/j0qoY_5ymOo

"Mariah, Katie, Patrick PSA"

The last one, by Mariah, Katie, and Patrick is by far my favorite PSA. The information is well put-together, incluing shots of the actual places they're talking about. The humor aspect is great, too - it keeps it really entertaining (and Mariah was probably really cold). The little song is amazing, too. They actually made it seem like a public service announcement! I really liked how they connected school to learning how to employ abstract thought.

This is where the title goes.

I'm feeling really interested in becoming a psychologist. I don't know what... kind, though.
Being an art therapist might be neat. Or a clinical psychologist.
But I don't know if I have enough self-confidence in order to do either of these things. Nor do I have money - I'd almost have to go to grad school to be able to actually work in my profession, wouldn't I?
I'd ask what you think, but I don't know if anyone really pays attention to my quaint, little blog. Hahaha...