Mr. No-Name

This is absolutely not my weekly blog post, and it is definitely not number seven or something similar! It just looks, feels, smells, tastes, sounds, and sweats like it.
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Mr. Myers discussed sexual orientation in the chapter on motivation. He said some interesting things and made me cringe at some others. One of the cringe-worthy things that he seemed to be assuming or implying is that "gay"/"lesbian" == "homosexual", which is simultaneously absolutely not true and a huuuuuge pet peeve of mine. Anywhat, that's beside the point.
He discussed how homosexuality may be caused or influenced by prenatal, in-utero activity. In a way that is neither a "choice" nor necessarily due to genes(kind of defeating both arguments, hmm?). I think it was pretty much the mother's body inhibiting the development of typical male brain-patters, I do believe, which happens more the more often the mother spurts out male babies. It sort of gave reason to the really weird "if you have older brothers you're more likely to be homosexual" thing, too - why would that have a genetic influence and/or why would a male with older brothers be more likely to "choose" to be homosexual? And, for the other wheel, it creates a predisposition that draws more lines for the coloring book that nurture fills in. Maybe.
Maybe is a baby until you throw in a T-Shit a T-shirt and sunglasses and call it a fact.
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P.S. From Freudian perspective, is asexuality due to a fixation in the latency phase of psychosexual development?

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.)

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.

Weekly Blogging Assignment No. I

We read an article that talked about how the median age of "puberty onset" in girls is movin' on up, and how very young, developed girls are more common these days. I remembered reading a while ago about that one Peruvian girl (Lina Medina, I believe?) showed signs of puberty at the tender age of three, and got pregnant at age five. This was a while back, too - maybe in the forties or fifties. Her father was arrested for incestual, statutory rape, but he was later acquitted of all charges.
It's absolutely terrifying, in my opinion. Especially the last part - girls don't just randomly get pregnant without any sexual contact (unless you're Mary... but how the crap does that work, anyway?), so that means that SOME man had some form of sex with her. Aside from that, it's kind of scary, anyway. I saw a picture of her when she was pregnant and she looked so... young. Completely unequipped to carry a baby at her age. She delivered by cesarean section, of course, or the baby probably would have split her open.
The family treated the baby like a "younger brother", and Lina preferred to play with toys more than she did her child. He was not told of his "sister's" actual relation to him until he was older.
This is probably, hopefully, a once-in-a-blue-Moon case, but relating to the article we read, what is the possible evolutionary benefit to entering puberty at such a young age? Correct me if I'm wrong, but, aren't most qualities attained through evolution somehow beneficial to the current people that have them (but not necessarily the later ones - I'm looking at you, fear of spiders!). I just can't muster the brainpower to even comprehend why this could possibly be due to actual evolution - with our life expectancies so high, why would we need to attain the ability to become pregnant so much more early?

Color Sightongue

Technology is amazing, to be honest. Especially in the studies profiled in this article.

When the subject receives pricks or pulses on their tongue [based on sophisticated technology that changes the intensity of the pulses or pricks based on things such as contrast, in white or black, or in spatial positioning, in the form of balance], the sensory neurons *on* the tongue are activated. These neurons, feeling input, generate action potential and "fire" down the dendrites, through the cell body, down the axon, out the axon terminal, and across the synapse (with the use of neurotransmitters), where the message/impulse/action potential is sent to the next neuron. This process is repeated, in a startlingly short amount of time, until the message/impulse reaches an interneuron in the spinal cord. It ascends to the top of the spinal cord, into the thalamus.

The thalamus, being somewhat similar to a flight-director with bright orange batons, figures out where to send the sensory input. In the case of the blind-person-that-"sees"-with-his-tongue, the thalamus recognizes the input as optical input. The input is sent to the occipital lobes, the main house of vision.

The message is then read and interpreted. The more often the brain uses this pathway, the more strong it gets. Older, infrequently-used pathways are pruned and discarded. This illustrates the brain's ability to reassign and make new pathways at its best. The strength of the little powerhouse that is the brain is simply amazing.

Writing Assignment #1 - Expectations

I went into this semester not quite sure what to expect - I'd never, before now, taken part of an AP course. The format of the class isn't quite what I expected, but that's to be expected, isn't? I like how "technologically" advanced this class is seeming to be, but I'm not sure if I like it quite yet. It's definitely something I'll have to be used to.

The class itself is good, so far. I really like the textbook - it has a lot of information, but it's stated and conveyed in a way that doesn't put me to sleep after the first page. The author seemed to include his own comments, which is actually pretty nice. It adds some wit to the book, I'd say. And the pictures and vocabulary sections in the margins are nice, too.

I felt rather strange about doing the quiz online like that. I'm used to shaving trees when I take tests. It's fine that it was online, though, since I'm running low on shaving cream. I didn't get the best score - 22 out of 30 - but now I have expectations as to how thorough tests will be. I read all the information, but I guess I didn't retain all of it. I have no doubt that actually taking notes helped, though.

I'm looking forward to the "Interview with a Corpse"... because I'm working on my own, and my subject is Mary Calkins. I'm not afraid to make a fool of myself, especially for a hopefully good grade. This will, however, be the only time I will ever wear a wig. I might be able to get a friend of mine to mess with "Mary"'s voice so it sounds more woman-ly [Feminine? Womanish? What adjective goes here?]. I'm planning on doing a lot of cuts.

I ponder about what we learn sometimes. If I come up with anything good, I'll post it. Or something.