Brainy guy, better sperm?

By Brian Alexander

It may seem counterintuitive to those males among us who spent more time in high school reading Dickens or studying calculus than we did making out with Stephanie the cheerleader, but a group of researchers has issued a study finding that higher IQ men have better sperm.

Take that, Mr. Quarterback.

But before the pocket protector set starts strutting in their Radiohead T-shirts, hang on a minute. As interesting and possibly important to a certain subgroup of scientists as the study may be, it says much more about our obsession with grading our masculinity than it does about brains and sperm.

The point of the study was to test a theory about “fitness factor,” explained lead author Rosalind Arden of King’s College, London. Fitness factor, according to the researchers, involves the clues, such as waist-to-hip ratios, that signal we have good genes in general and will produce tip-top babies.

“I chose to analyze the relationship between sperm and intelligence because I thought that if we were serious about the fitness factor idea, then even two [apparently] unrelated traits might be correlated,” she said. In other words, they didn’t set out to prove that smart men have better sperm.

“The bigger idea of the fitness factor,” Arden explained, “is that beauty, health, intelligence, personality - may all exist in a giant web - traced out by the spider of evolutionary fitness.” In other words, one gene or big set of genes that may bestow some fitness traits, like body symmetry, may also confer less obvious ones, like good sperm.

Conveniently for the researchers, in 1985 the U.S. government conducted something called the Vietnam Experience Study, in which war veterans underwent a battery of tests, including intelligence and various physiological measures. Some of the men supplied semen samples. Arden and colleagues examined the data to correlate IQ with semen. It turned out that there was a small link between higher IQ and better semen.

So, smarter guys tend to have higher quality sperm, they found. But the reality is, there is no intellectual push-up a man can do to give himself better— that is, more fit or more aggressive sperm.

“If you’re going to be a Go Master,” Arden said, making a pun of a movie about a genius of the Chinese board game, “do it for the love of the stones - not to improve your sperm quality.”
We’d make our sperm happier just by wearing boxers rather than tighty whities and letting those boys breathe.

While the researchers judged quality based on number, density and swimming ability, sperm experts — also known as andrologists — consider other factors to be equally important to fertility, like how the sperm interacts with an egg. The shape, structure and health of the sperm are also important. A normal sperm has a long tail and an oval-shaped head that whips it forward to the egg.

To get healthy sperm, it's recommend that men take a daily multivitamin with selenium, zinc and folic acid, nutrients that are important for sperm function, according to the Mayo Clinic. Guys should also exercise regularly and maintain a healthy weight. Smoking tobacco, pot or drinking too much alcohol can wreck havoc on sperm. Same for stress and steroids.

So, practically speaking, while possibly important to science, the study doesn’t mean much for the average guy. It is, Arden said, “akin to one tiny piece in one of those god-awful humungous jigsaws given by well-meaning aunts as 'improving' Christmas gifts to small boys.”

But the study did reveal a lot about human psychology. To read some of the breathless press coverage, it was a eugenicist’s dream come true. “There are few better ways of upsetting a certain sort of politically correct person than to suggest that intelligence (or, rather, the variation in intelligence between individuals) is under genetic control,” The Economist gleefully noted.

Yet cause-and-effect is not nearly so clear cut. Genes do influence intelligence and a number of studies have linked higher intelligence with better health, according to Douglas Detterman, a professor of psychology at Case Western Reserve University and editor of the journal Intelligence, in which Arden’s paper appeared. For example, higher IQ men have been shown to have less risk of dying of coronary heart disease. Such findings have spawned a new field called “cognitive epidemiology.” But nobody knows why it occurs.

“There is a lot of speculation,” said Detterman. “It could be that people with lower IQs receive inadequate treatment. Perhaps they require more instruction on how to follow doctors’ orders.”
It might also be that people with lower IQs aren’t inherently less fit; they just make less money and cannot afford top quality care. “Disentangling all these factors is complicated,” he said.

So it looks like smart boys are going to have to stick with bait like Shakespeare’s sonnets and Ferraris bought with proceeds from inventing high-tech gadgets to attract the women with whom we’d like to share those sperm.

ILLUSIONS

MEASURE THE DISTANCE: CLICK HERE



Stare at the middle of picture with black squares 15-30 seconds. Are those really dots that appear at the corners of the squares? What happens if you focus on a dot? Now look at the middle of the picture with the white squares. Do you see dots again? What color are they?

Afterimage

Instructions:

1. Focus on the small white square in the middle of the picture for about 15 seconds (ignore the moving circle). Try not to blink. Then LOOK TO THE RIGHT of the picture...you should see colors. What colors do you see?

2. Try the experiment again, except this time move your eyes to follow the little circle. After following the circle for 15 seconds, LOOK TO THE RIGHT of the picture. Do you still see the colors?

Instructions:

Focus on the middle stripe of this flag for 20-30 seconds. Try not to blink. Then LOOK TO THE RIGHT of the image. You should see the US Flag in the correct colors. Sometimes it helps to blink once or twice after the background changes.

What's Happening: in the retina of your eyes, there are 3 types of color receptors (cones) that are most sensitive to either red, blue or green. When you stare at a particular color for too long, these receptors get "tired" or "fatigued.". After looking at the flag with the strange colors, your receptors that are tired do not work as well. Therefore, the information from all of the different color receptors is not in balance. Therefore, you see different color "afterimages"...in this case I have used the "mirror" colors so you see the proper colors in the afterimage. You can also see that your vision quickly returns to normal since the afterimage does not last for more than about 5 seconds.

BLIND SPOT

We have talked about the blind spot in class. The blind spot is where the optic nerves exits the eye and goes to our brain (occipital lobe - visual cortex). As a result, an image falling in that region will not be seen by us...think of it like the blind spot of a driver (even though you all ride the Metro or the Jitney). :)

Let's see if we can find your blind spot: CLASS ACTIVITIES



For this image, close your right eye. With your left eye, look at the red circle. Slowly move your head closer to the image. At a certain distance, the blue line will not look broken!! This is because your brain is "filling in" the missing information.




This next image allows you to see another way your brain fills in the blind spot. Again, close your right eye. With your left eye, look at the +. Slowly move your head closer to the image. The space in the middle of the vertical lines will disappear.


Here is another image to show your blind spot. Close your right eye. With your left eye, look at the +. You should see the red dot in your peripheral vision. Keep looking at the + with your left eye. The red dot will move from the left to the right and disappear and reappear as the dot moves into and out of your blind spot.

Ch. 4 Essay

Three-year-old Dimitri frequently takes other children's toys from them, showing little concern for their feelings, even when they cry. When he does this, his mother tells him to “imagine how other kids feel when they lose their toys.” Use your understanding of cognitive development to explain Dimitri's antisocial behavior. Why is his mother's comment unlikely to influence his behavior? How would you encourage Dimitri to stop behaving this way?

Why Do Kids Kill?

8-Year-Old's Killing Spree Raises Questions About Why Children Murder

By RUSSELL GOLDMAN
Nov. 12, 2008

Investigators are still piecing together exactly what took place in an eastern Arizona home, where an 8-year-old boy allegedly shot and killed his father and another man, systematically reloading a rifle and firing at close range.

Nicholas Browning, top center, was accused of killing his parents and his two brothers. Other...

Nicholas Browning, top center, was accused of killing his parents and his two brothers. Other children who have been accused of killing include Lionel Tate, top left; Washington, D.C., sniper Lee Malvo, 17, top right; 12-year-old Nathaniel Abraham, accused of shooting a stranger in Michigan; and Florida brothers Derek and Alex King, ages 13 and 14 at the time of their trial, who were tried as adults and convicted of beating their father to death.

(ABC News Photo Illustration)

Details from the St. Johns crime scene are scant, and with a court-imposed gag order, little new information is likely to come out unless the boy is tried for the two counts of murder on which he has been charged.

Police initially suspected the boy had been physically or sexually abused, but before the gag order was imposed Monday, investigators said they had found no evidence of trauma.

"That's what makes this so troubling," Roy Melnick, chief of police in St. Johns, told the New York Times Tuesday.

Experts familiar with parental murders by young children, but not involved in this case, said abuse is almost always a factor in such crimes.

According to FBI statistics, there were 62 cases between 1976 and 2005 in which children, aged 7 or 8 were arrested on murder charges. Of those, parents were the victims in just two cases.

"The number of homicides committed by children under 11 is infinitesimal. These are very rare events," said Paul Mones, the only lawyer in the country whose clients consist exclusively of children accused of killing their parents.

"The vast majority of parricides -- the murder of a parent -- committed by minors involve physical abuse and generally involve teenagers. Seventy-five percent of such murders involve boys who kill their fathers and 15 percent involve boys who kill their mothers," said Mones, who has defended hundreds of minors in 25 years of practice, though none younger than 10.

The most recent previous case of an 8-year-old killing his parent occurred in August 1990, when a Pennsylvania boy found his father beating his mother. The boy repeatedly plunged an 8-inch kitchen knife into the back of his father William Jones, 59.

A coroner's jury cleared the boy in the stabbing after authorities urged a finding of justifiable homicide.

Psychologists said that besides abuse, mental illness or even simple feelings of frustration could set off a child and lead him to kill.

"We don't yet know what was going on in that house, so it is hard to know exactly why this child reacted the way he did," said Naftali Berrill, a forensic psychologist who specializes in juvenile perpetrators.

"Was he molested? Was he being beaten? Did he shoot his father because his father frustrated him, because he wouldn't let him play a video game?" Berrill asked.

The idea that a child would be led to murder because his desires were frustrated may seem far fetched, but in 1989 a 10-year-old boy in Houston fatally shot his father and wounded his mother after they would not let him go outside to play.

Much of the hearing that took place in Arizona Monday focused on the psychological evaluation the boy would undergo. His attorney, Benjamin Brewer, sought permission to visit the crime scene -- a two-story home where police say the boy's father, Vincent Romero, a 29-year-old construction worker, and his co-worker and roommate, Timothy Romans, 39, were shot with a .22-caliber rifle Wednesday.

Brewer complained that police questioned the third-grader without representation from a parent or attorney and did not advise him of his rights.

The boy was accompanied in court by his mother. His parents had recently divorced and Romero gained full custody of the boy and remarried.

Romero, investigators said at a press conference over the weekend before the gag order had been issued, was the first of the two victims. He was shot in the head and chest inside the house shortly after 5 p.m.

The boy stopped to reload between shots and before targeting Romans, who was also shot in the head and chest.

The boy was trained in using guns. He and his father reportedly hunted prairie dogs together, and that familiarity with weapons may have played a role in the killings, psychologists said.

"The fact that the boy stopped and reloaded only indicates that he is familiar with shooting. It also suggests he may have been in a pretty dire situation," Berill said. "We'll have to see what comes out later, but it is clear that your average 8-year-old would not have done this."

CLICK HERE to continue reading.

Should kids be able to graduate after the 10th grade?

High school sophomores should be ready for college by age 16. That's the message from New Hampshire education officials, who announced plans Oct. 30 for a new rigorous state board of exams to be given to 10th graders. Students who pass will be prepared to move on to the state's community or technical colleges, skipping the last two years of high school. (See pictures of teens and how they would vote.)

Once implemented, the new battery of tests is expected to guarantee higher competency in core school subjects, lower dropout rates and free up millions of education dollars. Students may take the exams - which are modeled on existing AP or International Baccalaureate tests - as many times as they need to pass. Or those who want to go to a prestigious university may stay and finish the final two years, taking a second, more difficult set of exams senior year. "We want students who are ready to be able to move on to their higher education," says Lyonel Tracy, New Hampshire's Commissioner for Education. "And then we can focus even more attention on those kids who need more help to get there."

But can less schooling really lead to better-prepared students at an earlier age? Outside of the U.S., it's actually a far less radical notion than it sounds. Dozens of industrialized countries expect students to be college-ready by age 16, and those teenagers consistently outperform their American peers on international standardized tests. (See pictures of the college dorm room's evolution.)

With its new assessment system, New Hampshire is adopting a key recommendation of a blue-ribbon panel called the New Commission on Skills of the American Workforce. In 2006, the group issued a report called Tough Choices or Tough Times , a blueprint for how it believes the U.S. must dramatically overhaul education policies in order to maintain a globally competitive economy. "Forty years ago, the United States had the best educated workforce in the world," says William Brock, one of the commission's chairs and a former U.S. Secretary of Labor. "Now we're No. 10 and falling."

As more and more jobs head overseas, Brock and others on the commission can't stress enough how dire the need is for educational reform. "The nation is running out of time," he says.
New Hampshire's announcement comes as Utah and Massachusetts declared that they, too, plan to enact some of the commission's other proposals, such as universal Pre-K and better teacher pay and training. Still more states are expected to sign on in December. And the largest teacher union in the U.S., the National Education Association, is encouraging its affiliates to support such efforts.

Some reform advocates would like to see the report's testing proposals replace current No Child Left Behind legislation. "It makes accountability much more meaningful by stressing critical thinking and true mastery," says Tracy.

No date has been set for when New Hampshire will start administering the new set of exams, which have yet to be developed. But to achieve the goal of sending kids to college at 16, Tracy and his colleagues recognize preparation will have to start early. Nearly four years ago, New Hampshire began an initiative called Follow the Child. Starting practically from birth, educators are expected to chart children's educational progress year to year. In the future, this effort will be bolstered by formalized curricula that specify exactly what kids should know by the end of each grade level.

That should help minimize the need for review year to year. It will also bring New Hampshire's education framework much closer to what occurs in many high-performing European and Asian nations. "It's about defining what lessons students should master and then teaching to those points," says Marc Tucker, co-chair of the commission and president of the National Center for Education and the Economy in Washington. "Kids at every level will be taking tough courses and working hard."

Right now, Tucker argues, most American teenagers slide through high school, viewing it as a mandatory pit stop to hang out and socialize. Of those who do go to college, half attend community college. So Tucker's thinking is why not let them get started earlier? If that happened nationwide, he estimates the cost savings would add up to $60 billion a year. "All money that can be spent either on early childhood education or elsewhere," he says.

Critics of cutting high school short, however, worry that proposals such as New Hampshire's could exacerbate existing socioeconomic gaps. One key concern is whether test results, at age 16, are really valid enough to indicate if a child should go to university or instead head to a technical school - with the latter almost certainly guaranteeing lower future earning potential. "You know that the kids sent in that direction are going to be from low-income, less-educated families while wealthy parents won't permit it," says Iris Rotberg, a George Washington University education policy professor, who notes similar results in Europe and Asia. She predicts, in turn, that disparity will mean "an even more polarized higher education structure - and ultimately society - than we already have."

It's a charge that Tracy denies. "We're simply telling students it's okay to go at their own pace," he says. Especially if that pace is a little quicker than the status quo.

'We' are finally part of `We the People'

Another look at Social Psychology: We often times refer to different American "experiences" based on our socioeconomic status. In February, Michelle Obama was criticized and called "anti-American" for a comment she made. Below is the quote she made followed by an article written by Leonard Pitts.

''For the first time in my adult lifetime I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.'' -- Michelle Obama, Feb. 18, 2008

I always thought I understood what Michelle Obama was trying to say.
You are familiar, of course, with what she actually did say, which is quoted above. It provided weeks of red meat for her husband's opponents, who took to making ostentatious proclamations of their own unwavering pride in country.

But again, I think I know what the lady meant to say. Namely, that with her husband, this brown-skinned guy with the funny name, making a credible run for the highest office in the land, she could believe, for the first time, that ''we the people'' included her.

It is, for African Americans, an intoxicating thought almost too wonderful for thinking. Yet, there it is. And here we are, waking up this morning to find Barack Obama president-elect of these United States.

In a sense, it is unfair -- to him, to us -- to make Tuesday's election about race. Whatever appeal Obama may have had to African Americans and white liberals eager to vote for a black candidate, is, I believe, dwarfed by his appeal to Americans of all stripes who have simply had enough of the politics of addition by division as practiced by Karl Rove and his disciples, enough of the free floating anger, the holiday from accountability, the nastiness masquerading as righteousness, the sheer intellectual dishonesty, that have characterized the era of American politics that ends here.

But in the end, after all that, there still is race.
And it would be a sin against our history, a sin against John Lewis and Viola Liuzzo, against James Reeb and Lyndon Johnson, against Fannie Lou Hamer and Martin Luther King, against all those everyday heroes who marched, bled and died 40 years ago to secure black people's right to vote, not to pause on this pinnacle and savor what it means. It would be a sin against our generations, against slaves and freedmen, against housemen and washerwomen, against porters and domestics, against charred bodies hanging in southern trees, not to be still and acknowledge that something has happened here and it is sacred and profound.
For most of the years of the American experiment, ''we the people'' did not include African Americans. We were not included in ''we.'' We were not even included in ``people.''

What made it galling was all the flowery words to the contrary, all the perfumed lies about equality and opportunity. This was, people kept saying, a nation where any boy might grow up and become president. Which was only true, we knew, as long as it was indeed a boy and as long as the boy was white.

But as of today, we don't know that anymore. What this election tells us is that the nation has changed in ways that would have been unthinkable, unimaginable, flat out preposterous, just 40 years ago. And that we, black, white and otherwise, better recalibrate our sense of the possible.
There was something bittersweet in watching Michelle Obama lectured on American pride this year, in seeing African Americans asked to prove their Americanness when our ancestors were in this country before this country was. There was something in it that was hard to take, knowing that we have loved America when America did not love us, defended America when it would not defend us, believed in American ideals that were larger than skies, yet never large enough to include us.
We did this. For years unto centuries, we did this. Because our love for this country is deep and profound. And complicated and contradictory. And cynical and hard.

Now it has delivered us to this singular moment.

Barack Obama is president-elect of the United States.

And we the people should be proud.

A Rapper Salutes the Slave Trade

This is an early look at Social Psychology, which is the last chapter in the book. This area deals with social interactions, causes of social behavior, and how social conditions impact the individual. This is an article from an interview with Soulja Boy I just simply could NOT pass up. Perhaps Hip-Hop is truly DEAD. It began as a way to express social commentary for people in the inner-city...and now this is what we have come to. Read and Respond.

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Our music critic calls Soulja Boy on the carpet.

One of the biggest songs in the country last year was an inane, sex-chant-infused Southern rap called "Crank That (Soulja Boy)," by young Soulja Boy Tell Em, from tiny Batesville, Mississippi, population 7,113. Soulja Boy Tell Em turned 18 this summer and is looking forward to voting for the first time. His monster hit song included repeated assertions of a cartoonishly absurd sex act: supermanning, or as he elaborated repeatedly in the song, "Superman that ho," which means to come on a woman's back and then put a sheet over her so it sticks to her back and she looks like she’s wearing a cape. Ridiculous stuff. He also chants repeatedly, "Supersoak that ho,” the meaning of which needs no explanation, given the neighborhood we're already in.

These are ludicrous suggestions that play into the Cro-Magnon conception of men using sex and sperm to attack and slay women. It's such a mean-spirited vision of sex that every time I heard the record I thought, I bet that before this came out, he was a virgin.

I asked him, “What historical figure do you most hate?” He said, "Shout out to the slave masters! Without them we'd still be in Africa.”

Last week in Atlanta, I got to interview Soulja Boy Tell Em. I found out just how young he really is. He was one of about ten rappers I interviewed in one day for my BET show, The Black Carpet. I decided it'd be fun to give all the rappers part of the Proust questionnaire. I thought it'd be a way to get beyond image and into who they really are. Most of the guys gave good, thoughtful, intelligent, sensitive answers. I asked Juelz Santana, “How would you like to die?” He said, "Loved."

Then came Soulja Boy Tell Em. I asked him, “What historical figure do you most hate?” He was stumped. I said, "Others have said Hitler, bin Laden, the slave masters..." He said, "Oh wait! Hold up! Shout out to the slave masters! Without them we'd still be in Africa."

My jaw, at this point, was on the ground."We wouldn't be here," he continued, having no idea how far in it he'd stepped, "to get this ice and tattoos."

Wow. Never mind that diamonds come from Africa. Never mind that there were many generations of pain in between leaving Africa and getting diamonds. Never mind that the long-term cataclysmic effects of subtracting about tens of millions of young, strong people from Africa over the course of a couple of centuries is a large part of the reason why Africa now appears so distasteful to you. Never mind all that, Soulja Boy. You put country first.

The Style Imperative

Style is more character than clothes, more attitude than affluence. It's you making visible your inner self. So forget what you learned about appearance not counting; you can no longer afford to be without style.

"Do designers dictate hemlines?" the late style doyenne Diana Vreeland was once asked. "Only if you take dictation," she replied.

With that remark she exposed a rift the fashion world seldom flaunts. There is a vast gap between fashion and style. Fashion is about clothes and their relationship to the moment. Style is about you and your relationship to yourself. Fashion is in the clothes. Style is in the wearer. The distinction could not be more revealing.

Despite the proliferation of fashion, style has been out of style for decades. As the economy expanded, America embarked on a collective shopping spree. In place of style we have honored Merchandise. Clothes. Style, on the other hand, doesn't demand a credit card. It prospers on courage and creativity.

Style goes way beyond fashion; it is an individually distinctive way of putting ourselves together. It is a unique blend of spirit and substance—personal identity imposed on, and created through, the world of things. It is a way of capturing something vibrant, making a statement about ourselves in clothes. It is what people really want when they aspire to be fashionable (if they aren't just adorning themselves in status symbols).

In some quarters, it's fashionable, as it were, to trivialize style. It's true that style doesn't have life-or-death impact, but it isn't devoid of substance, either. "Clothes are separated from all other objects by being inseparable from the self," Anne Hollander writes in her classic Seeing Through Clothes. "They give a visual aspect to consciousness itself." Through clothes, we reinvent ourselves every time we get dressed. Our wardrobe is our visual vocabulary. Style is our distinctive pattern of speech, our individual poetry.

Fashion is the least of it. Style is, for starters, one part identity: self-awareness and self-knowledge. You can't have style until you have articulated a self. And style requires security—feeling at home in one's body, physically and mentally. Of course, like all knowledge, self-knowledge must be updated as you grow and evolve; style takes ongoing self-assessment.

Style is also one part personality: spirit, verve, attitude, wit, inventiveness. It demands the desire and confidence to express whatever mood one wishes. Such variability is not only necessary but a reflection of a person's unique complexity as a human being. People want to be themselves and to be seen as themselves. In order to work, style must reflect the real self, the character and personality of the individual; anything less appears to be a costume.

Lastly, style is one part fashion. It's possible to have lots of clothes and not an ounce of style. But it's also possible to have very few clothes and lots of style. Yes, fashion is the means through which we express style, but it takes less in the way of clothes to be stylish than you might imagine. That's why generations of women have coveted the little black dress, a garment so unassuming in line and perfect in proportion that it is the finest foil for excursions into self-expression.

It's tempting to think that style is a new invention, open to us only now because we particularly value self-expression, and an extraordinary range of possibilities for doing so is available to us. But Joan DeJean, a professor of French language and culture at the University of Pennsylvania, contends that style has its well-shod feet firmly planted in the seventeenth century; it was the deliberate creation of Louis XIV of France, the Sun King. He was, she says in The Essence of Style, history's greatest exemplar of it.

CLICK HERE to read page 2 of the article.

Top 10 Mysteries of the Mind

Found this online and thought you would find it interesting. Click the link.

http://www.livescience.com/health/top10_mysteriesofthemind-1.html

Born to Be a Rapist

I thought you all might find this interesting. Read and drop your thoughts...preferably something more thought provoking than "ewww that's gross" :)

VIENNA, Austria — Josef Fritzl, the Austrian builder who locked his daughter in a cellar and fathered seven children with her, sees himself as a born rapist, a victim of his own tyrannical mother.

According to the first leaked account of interviews with a forensic psychiatrist, which is due to appear in two Austrian newspapers today, Fritzl hatched his plan to incarcerate his daughter, Elisabeth, while he was in prison for rape.

“I have realized that I had a mean streak. For someone who was born to be a rapist, I have managed to contain myself for a relatively long period,” Fritzl is quoted as telling the psychiatrist in a 130-page report leaked to the tabloid newspapers Kronen Zeitung and Österreich.

Fritzl, 73, is awaiting trial for sexually abusing and incarcerating Elisabeth, 42, in a purpose-built dungeon beneath his house in the town of Amstetten. He fathered seven children by her, one of whom died shortly after birth and Fritzl burnt his body in an oven.

Three of the surviving children were allowed to live upstairs with him and wife, Rosemarie, 69, while their three siblings were condemned to a shadowy existence with their mother in the cellar. They never saw daylight until they were freed by police on April 26. It emerged that Fritzl had a previous criminal record for sexual offenses.

In 1967 he was sentenced to 18 months in prison for brutally raping a 24-year-old woman at knifepoint in her home.

According to the report compiled by Dr. Adelheid Kastner, a prominent forensic psychiatrist who conducted in depth interviews with the builder, Fritzl found the “ideal solution” to his deranged fantasies after he was released from prison. It was then that he decided to lock up his daughter in the cellar so that he could “live out” his “evil side” while leading a seemingly normal life in the flat upstairs.

Fritzl told the psychiatrist that his relationship to women was shaped by his experience with his abusive mother, who allegedly beat him and isolated him from other children until he started school. He was an “alibi child,” Fritzl told the psychiatrist – his mother only had him to prove to her partner that she was not sterile.

Dr. Kastner came to the conclusion when she was dissecting the personality of Fritzl that the builder managed to distance himself from what he was doing by never looking his victim in the face when he raped her.

“He was not only incredibly able to lead a double life but also managed to maintain a triple life without any problems,” Dr. Kastner wrote, indicating that Fritzl played down the gravity of his crimes in his mind.

“Mr. Fritzl resembles a volcano; under the surface that appears almost banal there is an evil streak. He is torn apart by his desires that he cannot master,” Dr. Kastner wrote.

The report declared Fritzl clinically sane and fit for trial, but also diagnosed a “severe combined personality disorder and a sexual disorder”.

“It is to be expected that Mr. Fritzl would perpetrate deeds with severe consequences also in the future,” Dr. Kastner concluded.

On the basis of her report the prosecution has demanded from the court that Fritzl be tried and sentenced, then committed to an institution for the criminally insane, where he would receive psychiatric care and therapy including, if deemed necessary, medication.

The trial is expected to start early next year.

The Evolution of Man

I came across an interesting image and thought I would share it with you all. We talked about Evolution before in class. While technology has been a great resource to human beings, I wonder if it has made us "dumber." Sometimes I miss the days of blowing into my old dusty Nintendo games (Skate or Die was my favorite)...blowing so hard I accidentally spit in them. I remember when we couldn't even use calculators in math classes, yet nowadays it's expected. What do you think? How was the development of technology over the years impacted human beings? Negatively or positively?

Study Materials for Chapter 2 (Neuroanatomy/Brain and Nervous System)

You are not required to respond to this post. This is simply listing additional online resources as you prepare for your test. Should you have any questions feel free to ask me in class or just drop a comment and I'll respond.


INTERACTIVE BRAIN: These interactive sites allow you to click on different parts of the brain and see their function. Also, it helps in seeing how the several different parts operate together.

MSNBC Interactive
http://www.msnbc.com/modules/brain/

BBC Interactive Body (Brain & Nervous System)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/body/index_interactivebody.shtml

ONLINE MAPPING:

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/sagittal.html


SPLIT BRAIN ACTIVITIES: These are fun online activities in order to develop a better understanding of the Left & Right Hemispheres.

Color Test
http://www.fireworkspop.com/colortest.htm

Twino
http://www.tetris1d.org/zigah/twinoo/twinoo.php


SAMPLE MULTIPLE CHOICE: This is an online Quiz testing basic knowledge of Neuroscience (Ch.2). See how well you do, but remember you also need to be able to apply terms conceptually.

http://www.appsychology.com/HowPass/MC%20quizes/Neuroscience/neuroscience.htm


Excuse me while I revisit my youth....Pinky & The Brain!!


BRAIN RAP VIDEO!!!

Dropping the atomic bomb on Japan was an act of the utmost compassion

This is an article by Satoshi Kanazawa, published in The Scientific Fundamentalist.

Do you AGREE or DISAGREE with the argument presented?

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Just because an act happens to be atrocious does not mean that it is not simultaneously the most humane and compassionate thing to do under the circumstances. Sometimes the alternatives are much worse.

After the fall of Okinawa in June 1945, the Japanese government prepared for the ground invasion by the Allied forces and the final battle on the mainland. Back in August 1944, the government had issued a decree, officially classifying all Japanese citizens (what’s left of them, mostly women, children, and the elderly, as all young men had already been mobilized) as military combatants and armed them all with bamboo spears. Yes, bamboo spears. Here are some contemporary pictures of women and children being armed with bamboo spears and trained to fight the enemies with them.

The women and children were told to fight the invading American ground forces with their bamboo spears till death. They were told that to surrender and be captured by the enemy was the ultimate shame and that they should die fighting instead. The national slogan at the time, propagated by the government and spread to the whole nation, was “Ichioku Gyokusai” (“100 million on a suicidal mission in honor of the Emperor”). They were absolutely prepared to die fighting the American soldiers with their bamboo spears.

Imagine the D-Day invasion in Normandy where the Germans on Omaha Beach were armed only with bamboo spears. It’s not difficult to imagine what the outcome would have been. The opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan would have looked quite different.

By his decision to drop two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing only 200,000 people, Harry S. Truman avoided the annihilation of an entire nation and saved the lives of 100 million people. The Japanese Army had tanks, and the Japanese Navy had airplanes, so they were not impressed with the American tanks and airplanes. Repeated carpet bombings of Tokyo in March 1945 did not faze them. The only thing that would convince the Japanese people, and, more importantly, their military leadership, of the utter American technological superiority and the complete futility of resistance were the atomic bombs, which they did not have.

They would never have surrendered had we not dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That would have necessitated ground invasion of mainland Japan by the American forces, which would have led to many, many more Japanese to be killed, up to 100 million. You are equally dead whether you are killed by a bullet or an atomic bomb. 100 million people killed by bullets, one at a time, over weeks and months, is much, much worse, by any account, than 200,000 people killed in a flash of a second by atomic bombs.

All of this is common knowledge for anyone who is even remotely familiar with modern Japanese history.

Not that compassion for enemies at times of war is a good thing or that, even if it was, the Japanese necessarily deserved our compassion, given a large number of atrocities committed by their army. But if it’s compassion you want, you can’t do better than saving the lives of 100 million people.

Evolution Discussion

So as you all know, we embarked on an interesting discussion Thursday as Darwin's idea of "natural selection" came up. To remind you, natural selection is "The survival and successful reproduction of the organisms that are best suited to their environment." In relation to this came up the idea of survival of the fittest. However, things got interesting when the idea of Evolution came up and how we can reconcile Evolution with the Religious World.

Emmanuel shared with us an impassioned response to his belief in regards to this. While some students agreed, others did not. So you may continue the discussion here. I will leave you with some guided questions to assist in the facilitation.


Is it possible to believe in both Evolution and the Creation story of a particular religious faith?

How does religion fit into the larger framework of the Nature vs Nurture debate? In other words, is religion nature...or nurture?


There you go.

That Buck Could Strike the Lotto

I’m reminded by the rapper Nas’ address to African-Americans in regards to the ills plaguing our communities in which he states, “The buck that bought the bottle, could’ve struck the lotto.” I personally grew up devastatingly poor, often times going without food or having to get creative to satisfy my hunger. However, I do recall whenever my mother had an extra dollar to spare (which was rare) she would purchase lotto tickets, and then watch the news religiously that night waiting for the numbers to be revealed. Here is a study conducted on the fascination of families in poverty with the lotto.

"In the study, published in the July issue of the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, participants who were made to feel subjectively poor bought nearly twice as many lottery tickets as a comparison group that was made to feel subjectively more affluent. The Carnegie Mellon findings point to poverty’s central role in people’s decisions to buy lottery tickets."

"The hope of getting out of poverty encourages people to continue to buy tickets, even though their chances of stumbling upon a life-changing windfall are nearly impossibly slim and buying lottery tickets in fact exacerbates the very poverty that purchasers are hoping to escape."

The article then goes on and reports a second study

"A second experiment reported in the paper found that indirectly reminding participants that, while different income groups face unequal outcomes in education, jobs and housing, everyone has equal chances of winning the lottery induced an increase in the number of lottery tickets purchased. The group given this reminder purchased 1.31 tickets, compared with 0.54 for the group not given such a reminder."

What do you all think? Despite being reminded of their social status and the economic inequality they face, lower-income people continue to buy lottery tickets. Therefore, it is evident that this reminder actually served as a stimulus (eliciting a response) to purchase more tickets.

As I recall my own childhood it makes me wonder why any human being would willingly participate and indulge in maladaptive behavior (bringing about stress; in this sense financial). All those tickets cost money and that surely adds up, which brings more stress upon a family’s finances.

Let me also state, just because I can recall my mother’s purchasing tickets and because of the results of the experiment does not mean that this experiment would hold completely true in real life. To go further, how would the experiment have faired differently if the lottery tickets weren’t as easily accessible. I wonder, would impoverished individuals travel extra lengths in order to purchase these tickets or does accessibility play a larger role? In other words, why purchase lotto tickets if you could go to the casino? Hence, this is a problem with research and experiments (we will discuss this in Chapter 1).

I'm not going to lie...I have often times thought to myself, "I should start playing the lotto," but I never bring myself to actually purchase a ticket.

What are your thoughts?

Perception of Film

I went to see the film Dark Knight four times this summer, and yes, I even took notes. I’m not ashamed of that. If you have not seen it, I suggest you check it out because not only is it entertaining, but it is philosophical and psychological. The History Channel even aired a program entitled Batman Unmasked: The Psychology of the Dark Knight. Immediately after seeing the film for the first time I got chills and couldn’t get the film out of my mind. Every time I go see it again I notice things I never noticed before. As a result, I decided to post my thoughts about the film for your responses. Throughout the year I will point out topics in Psychology that are present in this film and other films.

In the comic book The Killing Joke, the Joker tells Batman: “All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That’s how far the world is from where I am: just one bad day. You had a bad day once, am I right? I know I am. I can tell. You had a bad day and everything changed—why else would you dress up like a flying rat? You had a bad day, and it drove you as crazy as everybody else…only you won’t admit it! You have to keep pretending that life makes sense; that there’s some point to all this struggling!”

In psychological terms it makes us wonder, how do individuals respond to traumatic events? What causes individuals to respond in the form of the Joker, a psychotic criminal, as opposed to Batman, a heroic vigilante?

In true scientific and psychological form, Joker must test his hypothesis, and he does so on Harvey Dent aka Two-Face. The “White Knight”, most law-abiding citizen in Gotham City, and is struck where it hurt most. The Joker has proved his hypothesis. Yet he fails in his attempts to prove it in regards to Batman.

Bruce Wayne (Batman) has personal issues, which is why he is Batman. He is human, not a superhero. He has absolutely no superpowers except for unrelenting determination, constantly pushing the limits. The Joker is an “agent of chaos” as he says, while Harvey Dent aka Two-Face is the existence of “chance.” This is life…this is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. We’re not talking about Superman who has to stay away from Kryptonite or any other superhero born on another planet. We are talking about a man who witnessed the tragic murder of his parents, was determined to overcome his fears (including that of bats), and now is an evening vigilante fighting crime by taking justice into his own hands. Bruce Wayne is a billionaire, highly intelligent, and again…has no special powers. The reality is, any one of us could have been Batman.

Even his nemesis Joker is merely human with no special powers, though with psychological issues like every other character in the film. Determination and motivation linger throughout the film. From the very beginning Alfred pleads with Bruce Wayne to “Know your limits,” to which Bruce Wayne responds, “Batman has no limits.” Alfred follows stating, “But you do.” So the question throughout the film is, how far will Batman go to stop the maniacal Joker? Remember, Batman vowed to never use guns or to kill.

The Joker destroys all social values and every notion of morality and he creates his own, based on his own vision of chaos. He doesn’t want money. He doesn’t want fame. He just wants to show his own perception of chaos to the world. As he says, “It’s not about the money, it’s about sending a message.” This just may be his only source of pleasure, judging from how much he truly enjoys this process. He is the “agent of chaos” who despises order, yet there is a sense of order in chaos (higher order; See: Chaos Theory).

Joker even says, “This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets the immovable object.” Which one is he? Why doesn’t Batman kill the psychopath Joker? Is it because of his respect for law and morality? Perhaps it is because they give each other purpose in life.

Reality is you can see almost anything in an allegorical context. It all comes down to perception and observation.

What are your thoughts?

What are your flashbulb memories?

A flashbulb memory is a very vivid memory that is "burned" into our minds for a VERY long time. Memories could be a variety of events and can also be quite traumatic. We will take a look at memory

We will study memory in an upcoming chapter. Take some time to think of a flashbulb memory that you have. For example, I can recall exactly where I was on 9-11, when 2Pac died, and when I first fell in love with poetry. Describe your flashbulb memory. I will ask you to recall your responses when we go over this in class if you are willing to share.

Here is one of mine:

As a young child I had an abusive father. When I was around 4 years old my mother gathered me and my sister and moved us from Oklahoma City to the State of Texas. As a child in Oklahoma there was this towel in my household. It was old, the threads were thinning and worn, and it was light blue and white. I used this towel to cover me on the Greyhound Bus on our journey to Texas. When we arrived to San Antonio we were homeless and went to the Salvation Army around 1A.M. We walked into the room where there were no beds but several dozen cots. At that time we were told that all of the cot beds were taken and there would be no room for my mother, sister, and I.

Fortunately, they allowed us to sleep in the lobby that night. Again, I used that towel as my blanket. It never fully covered me, but it always comforted me. That was especially important during this time in which it seemed from the reaction of people on the streets that no one wanted us, and now even the Salvation Army was turning us away. The next morning we were back to sleeping on the streets. Finally, we were informed of a Battered Women's Shelter we could go to, but we would have to walk several miles to get to it. At that time it was dark, my mother was frustrated and tired, and she made us leave some things behind before we started the long walk. One of the things I had to leave was my towel. I still remember the dark night in Downtown San Antonio, how I softly placed the towel on the street trash can. As we began our trek to the Batted Women's Shelter I remember looking back to make sure it was still there and no one had taken it. With no food and no home, it was the one thing I had that was mine...and just like that...it was gone.

Post one of your flashbulb memories!

Welcome to AP Psychology 2008-2009

I am extremely excited to have you all in AP Psychology. This course is challenging, but also intriguing and relevant to us all.

This blog will be utilized to introduce topics we will talk about in the coming months, continue class discussion, and provide additional relevant materials. At times I may take a position I believe the class will disagree with simply for the sake of discussion (devil's advocate). You may also utilize the blog to receive answers to questions you were uncomfortable asking in class or did not get a chance to ask.

You are expected to read and respond to EVERY blog post unless otherwise indicated within the posting. It is imperative that you take extra strides to ensure your posts are free of grammatical errors.

Also, make sure that your posts are spread out over the Nine Week period. I will not accept last minute posts. Feel free to post as often as you want and respond to your classmates. However, posts such as "I agree," will not count towards your grade. You should either make an argument, pose a question, a general comment/answer on a topic, or elaborate on another student's comment.

I encourage you to be honest in your responses to the blogs. You are not required to use your government name (real name), but I also expect you will not abuse/misuse this forum. Inappropriate comments will not be tolerated. You are all wonderful, mature, Red Raiders, and I am confident we will have no issues. This is a Hate-Free community :)

With that said, I would like you to respond to the following questions:

What are your strengths and weaknesses academically?
What circumstances may prevent you from keeping up with home learning assignments?
How can I best support you throughout this school year?

I certainly look forward to receiving and reading your responses, and I am looking forward to an eventful year of Psychology.