Friday, November 30, 2012

Accessing Scholarly Journals

Many of the articles on this website would not have been possible without access to sholarly, peer reviewed journals. Being a university student makes journal access 1,000 times easier, as there are hundreds of walls set in place for sholarly journal access due to large bloodsucking publishing companies whom universities and colleges pay millions of dollars to a year. Open access can't come soon enough! In a year I'll be out on my ass, and my fortunate opportunity will have passed on by. I have compiled a short list of alternative ways to access scholarly journals without necessarily being a college student. Please comment if this proves helpful to you in any way, or if you know of an alternative method.

/r/scholar - is probably the easiest way to access whatever you're looking for. It is a community of redditors who have journal access, and will find for you whatever journal article you need. If you currently have journal access, consider "paying in" to the system with the hope that others will do it for you in the future. If you are going to post there, read the guidelines on the right of the page.

Get in touch with your nearest university library - My host institution has gratuitous requirements for obtaining a library card. This will grant you journal access in the library, and perhaps e-journal access. It may sometimes be possible to get journal access just by using the library's Internet to access the databases. This probably works best with public institutions.

Get in touch with your former university or college - Nazareth College was willing to set me up with my old .edu email address even though I transferred four years ago. Many schools will not let you keep your student email after graduation. I found that I was also able to use my library account. Although this may have been a fluke, it's worth the phone call.

Directory of Open Access Journals - requires no membership or fees.

Your local library - has a list of databases you can access with a library card there, once again just a phone call away. They may get you copies of journal articles through inter-library loan if you cannot access the digital version of the article.

Google Scholar - Provides a search of scholarly literature, although is very limited in that it may only pull up certain pages of the journal article you are trying to read.

arxiv - is
Cornell's open access archive of physics, mathematics, computer science, Biology, Finance and Statistics journal articles. 

Regrowing Hair Cells in The Cochlea

A piece of pop-science that you may be fammilar with (and irks me to no end) is this small snippet from Children of Men:

Besides Strawberry Cough, it seems as if this is the only part of the film anyone remembers. The statement is wrong essentially. Explosions and the ringing sounds are motifs throughout the film, and with an attitude, the viewer is given the impression that loud sounds will make it so that they will never hear certain frequencies again. Yes, the ringing in your ear means that the hair cells in your ears are breaking. No, you are not going deaf.

This piece of pop triva is usually passed on by the same people who in the same breath call the cochlea the "co-chell-a". It's co-clee-a"... not a California based music festival. These hair cells, which reside in the cochlea, break when exposed to loud sounds. They also break over time which is why every one in a while yo will hear a faint ringing in your ears, and the reason why the mosquito ringtone can exist. In such an instance, you will not ever hear that frequency again. However going to a concert will not damage your hearing long term, just for the next few days. Operating a jackhammer every day will. Studies reflecting this have been around since the eighties.

My psychology 100 textbook explained the issue like so:
Imagine these hair cells as a carpet. Sometimes you walk on it, you place furniture on it, and you might rearrange the furniture for a day or so. All of this leaves imprints in the rug that go away fairly easy. However there will always be an impression of where a sofa had sat for a year or so, and over time the carpet will begin to age as well. You will always be able to see where that sofa was for so long, and it will never return to the original state. Such is the case with your cochelear hair cells.

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Human Use of Echolocation

Daniel Kish wears prosthetic eyeballs. Legally blind, he produces short, sharp clicks with his tongue in order to navigate. He can describe the architecture of buildings one thousand feet away, and describe the distance, size, shape and texture of objects without touching them by using echolocatio . He can dance, ride a bike and even roller blade.

By having two ears, we are able to have the same sort of depth perception that we have with vision. We also hear better than we see. This is why it is so easy to have certain three dimensional illusions. For example we can see a shape in three dimensions on a computer screen, but we will always know it is an image. Meanwhile you will never see a shape that is behind you, but you will hear it.

The processing of these clicks takes place partially in the visual cortex. It is typical that regions essential for visual processing take on new roles in the brains of blind subjects. After all a piece of folk psychology that we are all familiar with is that blind people have exceptional hearing. And while I want to write this off as an example of the marvelous plasticitic brain, the truth is also that blind people must practice this skill, because they rely on it so much more.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Patrick Henry College

Patrick Henry College was founded in 2000, one hour away from Washington D.C. The unaccredited institution solely exists in order to place Evangelical Christians in future federal leadership positions in the United States. And yes, despite what Wikipedia might say, the institution is unaccredited. In the U.S. regional accreditation is the only thing that matters, not national accreditation. Receiving any sort of 'national acredidation' is equivalent to me sending you an official looking degree saying you have met my strenuous requirements as an institution of higher learning by cutting me a check for a few thousand dollars. So while Patrick Henry College may be accredited by the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools, they are not accredited by the DeMaio Institutional Association of American Colleges and Other Bullshit. The only good news here is that this institution (not school) has an enrollment of four-hundred.

A German reporter published an article in Die Zeit earlier this month about going to the institution undercover! (English translation here.) Many of the students are home-schooled. Something the author notes with a marked interest, because homeschooling is illegal in Germany. In the US the practice of home-schooling is often seen as backwater and is primarily reserved for religious fanatics. In 2007, the most common reason parents gave for home-schooling was a desire to provide religious or moral instruction. Which means that the educational reality of a significant portion of home-schooled children is similar to this:

Amrai Coen lets the school get off too easily. In 2006 NPR interviewed three audiogenic Patrick Henry College Students, and it is really easy to see with American eyes what a typical student from PSC is like.

At about twenty minutes into the interview a student states that the seperation of church and state exists to protect the church from state involvement. When the interviewer asks if it also means that a Muslim student should not have to participate in Catholic prayer in public school, the student stalled and said that he had not really thought through if that is something separation of church and state would recognise. At twenty-three minutes a student makes an appeal to complexity fallacious argument for intelligent design. Later on the female student talks about how lack of religion has created a moral vacuum in Europe, and that Christianity needs a non-hostile environment... because of course every one knows that the United States has always had Christians on the top of the "Who Are We Oppressing This Decade" List. Right next to Blacks, Gays, Lesbians, Muslims, the Irish, Japanese, and Native Americans. The visual equivalent of the bullshit these three PSC students spew would be someone vomiting feces that they've ingested back into the other person's mouth.

Paradoxically I agree with a point made by the caller at thirty-four minutes. About how he had attended Brown and that although the school was advertised as being diverse, "they" did not accept opinions of conservative Christians, and how can one claim to be diverse when they do not provide an open square for discussion? Then he starts to trail off about how no one's truth can challenge that of the Biblical truth.

Towards the end of the Die Ziet article, Coen wraps up my sentiment of the institution:

Könnten diese Studenten wirklich eines Tages Amerika regieren, frage ich mich nach ein paar Stunden und vielen Gesprächen auf dem Campus. Die meisten von ihnen kennen nur ihr Wohnzimmer als Klassenraum, nur ihre Geschwister als Mitschüler. Ausgerechnet diese jungen Leute wollen in die Politik, wollen einen Beruf ergreifen, der mit sozialer Verantwortung zu tun hat, wollen Entscheidungen treffen, die das Leben von Millionen Menschen bestimmen.
English translation:
'Could these students really govern America one day?' I ask myself after a few hours and  discussions on campus. Most of them only know their living room as a classroom, only their siblings than classmates. Ironically, these young people want to take a job in politics, one that has to do with social responsibility, and will make decisions that affect the lives of millions of people.

Students from this school DO get internships with the Federal Government, CIA, and FBI. If you listened to the NPR interview, or read the Die Zeit article you will know that these students are charismatic and professional. Teresa Scanlan, Miss America 2011, is a student at PSC and she states that she plans to be a 2028 presidential candidate. Is it a far stretch? Arnold Schwarzenegger won California on the republican ticket. Do you think Miss America could be our first female president even if she was homophobic, republican, anti-choice, and an Evangelical Christian who believed the revisionist history that American was founded on Christian values? Maybe if the Republican party keeps up their "anti-woman" rhetoric, there will be only several positions Scanlan will ever get to presume in their party:

Censorship on Campus




s All-Party Parliamentary Group Against  Anti-semitism
  Antisemitism  , and the Organization for Security
and Co-operation in Europe have adopted or endorsed the European
Union Agency for Fundamental Rights' working definition of
anti-Semitism, which notes that in context certain language or
behavior demonizes and delegitimizes Israel or attacks Israel with
classic anti-Semitic stereotypes, such as denying the Jewish people
their right to self-determination, applying double standards by
requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other
democratic nation, drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli police
inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust...



Sunday, November 18, 2012

Civilization Music

Two things in this world I have soft spots for are the Civilization franchise, and study music. Incidentally the two cross over really well. The Civ series incorporates classical music, and as a result makes great background noise for studying. A few months ago I created a very incomplete Spotify playlist of music from Civilization V and it has picked up a number of subscribers, so maybe it is worth sharing? The fourth game's music is just as worthwhile, and includes Jonh Adam's Shaker Loops.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of in-house music that is missing from this playlist. Field of Poppies is a stand out piece all on its own, as the title suggests, it invokes the imagery of a serene field of poppies waving in the wind. You can't find this music on Spotify, but if you buy the games you can extract them uncompressed no problem. A few years ago I got the game complete with expansions on Steam for $19.99, and it is possible that you can get it for even cheaper now, especially during a sale season. Then all you have to do is go to the music directory, which is located (if you bought the game on Steam, and installed it into the default path) in: C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\sid meier's civilization iv beyond the sword\Assets\Sounds :

Civilization IV Music Directory


Friday, November 16, 2012

Coursea To Offer 'Drugs and the Brain' Course


Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Bees & Bombs



Bypassing Craigslist Phone Verification

As a preface to this post I would like to say that Craiglist's phone verification system is fascinating to me. Phone phreaking is a topic I have a lot of interest in even if it has now more or less become an artifact of the past. I figured it would be interesting to discuss the various ways one can approach the problem, I do not intend any harm by providing any of this information. If you have any other insights into the verification system, please contact me.

If you do not have a valid US number, and you are trying to post on Craigslist... well you're probably reading this now. There are a few avenues you can try to take to get past the verification step, but all of them are probably going to result in you getting a US number somehow. You can not get past verification without providing the code they give you.

My would-be go-to answer, a 711 pre-paid phone won't work... unfortunately. Craigslist does have guidelines, you will need to keep them in mind:
  • You may only enter the code five times.
Disallowed numbers:
Some phone numbers are not usable for phone verification, including the following:
  • phone numbers from outside the U.S. or Canada
  • pre-paid mobile numbers
  • toll-free numbers (area codes 800, 877)
  • some Voice over IP (VOIP) phone numbers (including Cricket, MetroPCS)
About a year ago I tried verification through Skype, and it did not work, so I would not recommend wasting money trying this step unless something has changed since this article was last posted (11/14/12). Getting a 800 number is a hastle in itself anyways. Perhaps a mailbox on a non-800 number phone system would work though. Maybe getting the verification to dial in to a conference call? Once again if you know anything about this, email me from one of the links above.

A method which used to work was using Virgin mobile phones, because you could change your number online for free. They now charge $10 each time you want to do this. However if you post on Craiglist often this could be worthwhile to you as it is likely that making multiple posts within 48 hours of each other will end up with your ad not getting published, even if they tell you otherwise. Services like Textplus has been suggested to me in the past but I have never used it. Use at your own discretion, for all I know it's a terrible virus that texts all the pictures on your phone to the "Mom" contact in your phonebook.

If you do have a problem with your ad not showing up, you can try calling Craigslist here:

Phone: 415-566-6394 
Phone: (408) 988-6395
FAX: 415-504-6394 
Toll Free: 800-664-0633

...however it will be impossible to get in touch with a human.

Another simple option is to ask your American friend to register using their phone, after all most people still have landlines laying around anyways. Alternatively there are suppliers out there that will try to sell you verified numbers. I would recommends against this as Craigslist now has you reverify your number repeatedly if need be. This method also counters the Virgin Mobile method as well. If you are still interested in purchasing a number, you can try googling "PVA accounts". Ironically, asking an American is probably your best bet. If you live near a pay phone that still exists, you could try getting the verification code through it too.

Let me know if ANYTHING here was helpful at all.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Liberty University IS a Joke

Liberty University is a hoax in the world of higher education, and the title of university should be taken with just as much weight as the designation of college in the title ‘clown college’. Founded in 1971 by televangelist Jerry Falwell, the tax-exempt institution teaches creationism, Christian revisionism of American history, and intolerance. Liberty claims to be the biggest Christian college in the world. Obviously they are ignoring other larger Christian schools such as Notre Dame, but as you will see facts do not hold much esteem at Liberty. Iindoctrination is more important to them than education, as the institution barely is an educational establishment.  


"Knowledge Aflame"

In 2010, Kevin Roose, an undergrad at Brown transferred over to Liberty University for a semester. His book documents some fascinating phenomena that may not be not too surprising depending on how familiar you are with the institution: homophobia, arcane rules surrounding facets of personal life especially male and female interaction, a masturbation support group entitled “Every Man’s Battle”, and a list of rules called “The Liberty Way” that student must adhere to which include a curfew, dress code, and restrictions on the media which one can consume. If you check out that link, you will find a lot of baffling and confusing stuff. For example, students can be fined $500 for having an abortion, or receive a $25 dollar fine for going to a dance, which raises the question of why does this video exist?  
“They say we're close minded saints from the south /
But if you're too open minded than your brains will fall out”’
What to look for in an institution of higher learning.

This is also the video where they claim that they are “the biggest Christian school on the planet”. The most unfortunate aspect of this video is that it creates an unrealistic image of Liberty. Liberty does not make it's Liberty Way policy or code of conduct publicly available; so besides Roose as a primary source, it is hard to find a lot of strong sources against them on the Internet. Imagine the poor sap that didn't do his research and found out on the first day of university that he is not allowed to listen to contemporary music, or that his first amendment rights are not valid on campus!

In May 2012, Jerry Falwell Jr. released a statement in regards to comments Bill Mahr made on his on Real Time regarding the school. A point Mahr brings up is worth mulling over. "Liberty Cheapens my degree from a real school." And he has a point, if your school is under the jurisdiction of the
Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (there is no such legitimate thing as national accreditation in the U.S.), this means that if your school is in Virginia, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee or Texas, then your degree is just as valid as a liberty degree in the eyes of the state.

This was Falwell Jr.'s statement:


Almost all of these statements are true. As mentioned earlier, Liberty University has full regional accreditation. Their large enrollment base not only comes from the scholarships they are able to dole out due to the amount of grant money they take in, (it is not unusual for students to receive unsolicited scholarship offers from the school) but also their online enrollment which contains over 60,000 students. Roose's book, as well as accounts online, state that there are instances where students' parents would not help them with college financially, or in any way, unless they attended Liberty or a school like it. For the record, as far as I know, no other schools report online students as full time students. However as long as online students are lumped in with full time students, it does technically make Liberty the Biggest school in Virgina. 

Things to Consider When Soliciting a Creationist Medical School
(Doonesbury, 12/18)
ALL of the statements Falwell’s son made are all statistics that have been inflated specifically so that whenever somebody questions the legitimacy of Liberty's curriculum, he can say something to the effect of “sixty thousand students can’t be wrong”. Little Falwell is the son of a bigot bullshit artist whose actions when alive were akin to selling doves outside of a temple. Should we expect any less from him after assuming the position of his father? His mention of a school of medicine opening at his creationist institution should emanate an equal feeling of worriment from you. Would you feel safe having a practitioner that rejects a fundamental process in how pathogens develop? If it's any consolation this problem is not exclusive to the United States.

Then again, reality doesn't matter to ideologues. Falwell was infamous for invoking the "Christian values that America was founded on". To paraphrase Orwell, they don't just believe that the United States was founded on Judeo-Christian values, they know that the United States was founded on Judeo-Christian values. Anyone who has read the treaty of Tripoli wold know otherwise. Or you know...

"It does me no injury formally neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

- Thomas Jefferson

- Thomas Paine

- Thomas Jefferson

- Abraham Lincoln

Once again, our reoccurring motif that facts don't matter at Liberty.

The concerning thing is that Liberty isn’t some lone weird school where students aren’t allowed to dance. Institutions similar to it exist all over the country: Wheton in Illinois, Bob Jones University in South Carolina, Brigham Young University in Mormon Country, Oral Roberts University in Tusla, and Pensacola Christian College in Tusla all have similar rules and because they are institutions of higher learning students can use federal aid to attendI am not saying all of these places are creationist, or as backwater as Liberty. But I am saying that if you need to treat your students like children, maybe YOUR establishment should not be considered a higher institution of learning for adults.

My final point I would like to make is that Liberty is still a prejudice place. In the Liberty University School of Law’s Notice of nondiscrimination is this gem:
"In its employment practices, the School of Law does not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, but does discriminate on the basis of sexual misconduct, including, but not limited to, non-marital sexual misconduct, homosexual conduct, or the encouragement or advocacy of any form of sexual behavior that would undermine the Christian identity or faith mission of the University. This policy statement is neither intended to discourage, nor is it in fact applicable to, any analytical discussion of law and policy issues involved in the regulation of sexual behavior, or to discussions of any recommendations for changes in existing law. Discussions of these matters are both practiced and are welcomed within our curriculum.”
Essentially Liberty University does not discriminate based on sexual orientation, unless it violates their code of sexual misconduct, which involves being homosexual. A few years ago, the school had a panel on the discussion on the word “gay”:
“‘Gay’ is a left-wing sociopolitical construct designed to create grounds for fundamental rights [based on] whimsical capricious desires. Gay identity does not exist.”
and later on:
"Sorba proposed alternatives to the word “gay” that received unanimous approval from the 40 audience members. His suggestions included the words “same-sex attraction,” “same-sex intercourse,” “sodomy,” and “unnatural vice.” Later it was suggested that gays should be referred to as “anti-Christian"."
This is what counts as scholarly at Liberty... and this behaviour isn't new. At this point the only thing Liberty University has going for it is that they allowed interracial dating before 2000 (see: Bob Jones University).

The fact that these establishments of incognition receive any sort of accreditation is a drollery, and makes the United States an international laughingstock for providing places like Liberty an ounce of legitimacy. Furthermore it cheapens the authority of the regional accreditation boards that are responsible for legitimate universities. These institutions are babysitters for adults, yes institutions, not ‘schools’, do not actually want to be centers of learning, their whole point is to promote their distorted fantasy of what a moral adult is supposed to be. The people running these institutions don't like universities, so Instead they provide an artificial substitute.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012


Website under maintenance, expect nothing to work. Here are some links of our most popular articles that may work to hold you over until we're back to regular scheduled programming.

Visual Accessing Cues

The Cases Against Learning German

Six Flags is a Terrible Employer

Mental Benefits of Learning a Second Language

The Unanswered Question of Bee Domestication

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Phoenix University and For Profit Colleges

Yesterday after posting about how Phoenix University and Liberty University are accredited shams, I received an email from a reader who accused me of pointing fingers when I had in fact, never attended either school. Therefore here is PBS' Frontline view on for profit colleges like Phoenix University. The next article will be on Liberty.

Watch College Inc. on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Udacity To Offer $100 Degrees?




Thursday, June 14, 2012

How To Bypass DMCA Complaints on Google

Today's post is sort and sweet. Lots of us have seen the above message at the bottom of our Google searchers before. The easiest way to bypass this censorship, without using a proxy, is to simply click "read the DMCA compaint" link, and you will be able to see all the links that were requested to be removed from your search (and by whom) on

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

LSD as a Treatment for Alcoholism

I am a huge fan of the Joe Rogan Podcast. However, after regurgitating something I heard from the show over dinner with other international students, I decided to do some fact checking. In an episode Rogan mentions an LSD study where 90% of the subjects had no desire to drink alcohol after being administed the drug. This is incorrect; however considering Rogan releases two to three episodes of his show a week, often lasting up to three hours in length, mistakes are going to happen.

The study, which was conducted by Teri Krebs at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, found that 59% of the subjects reported that they used less alcohol after being administered 50 mcg of LSD. More importantly, 38% reported using less alcohol after receiving a placebo! Even if it is expected, I guess I am excited to see actual placebo results from a recreational drug. This is sure to make a great party trick!

Nevertheless, there were no statistically significant long term results (defined as follow-ups after six months). On top of that, there are perceived problem with running a study like this. For example, results simply being reported can be misleading as the subjects could simply lie. The sample size, which is barely over 500 participants is a little small. The study also notes that while research with LSD has been done before, the few studies that have been done almost all use different dosage amount (with the median dose being 500 mcg). Almost all of the studies also report that a small portion of the subjects had an "adverse reaction" to the LSD.

On the other hand, the short term results are still impressive, and the authors note that a single dose of LSD "compares well" with other medications given to alcoholics (naltrexone, acamprosate, and disulfiram), if LSD can stop patients from relapsing into alcohol dependency then more research need to be done. For example, instead of daily doses of the aforementioned drugs, what if a patient only needed to receive a dose of medication every three months instead? The article also notes that LSD had been used before in conjunction with psychosocial intervention by "eliciting insights into behavioural patterns and genersating motivation to build a meaningful sober lifestyle".

The most important thing to take away from this study are two quotes given in the discussion section from previous psychedlic studies:
"It was not unusual for patients following their  LSD experience to become more self accepting, to show greater openness and accessibility, and to adopt a more positive, optimistic view of their capacities to face future problems."
This suggests to me that there are much more, and possibly greater, clinical (and non-clinical) uses for LSD outside of alcoholism. 

Krebs, Teri S., and Pål Ø Johansen. "Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD) for Alcoholism: Meta-analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials." Journal of Psychopharmacology (n.d.): n. pag. Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD) for Alcoholism: Meta-analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials. 8 Mar. 2012. Web. 13 June 2012.

Monday, June 11, 2012

Innsbruck, Austria

Last week I took a trip to Innsbruck Austria. People there speak German as well, even if it is with a different dialect. Now originally, I thought I had a really good article in the bag. You see, I visited the the university's anatomical museum, which had all sorts of dissected brains. After speaking with the professor he told me I could take pictures of the brains if it was for academic purposes only, and after explaining my major, he permitted me to. Joyously I was off, and after thinking what a great article all these pictures would make he chimed in, and shaking his finger he said in German "now remember, don't go and post those pictures on the Internet".

Nevertheless dear readers, in place of photos of jarred grey matter, I hope that you find these mundane humdrum photos of the alps that every person with a camera who has ever visited Innsbruck has already photographed interesting. A separate article about the anatomical museum will come at another time.

Click photos enlarge.

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Verbs and Lexical Access

(This time around, I have included a response paper that I originally wrote for a 400 level linguistics class at UMASS. I have made minor revisions, and this article is shorter than the original paper. For example, I have not included the original speech error list.

If anybody has any criticisms, comments, or additional information on my paper or the subject I would be glad to hear them.)

      Irregular verbs and past participles are stored and accessed differently in the brain than regular verbs. During speech, irregular verbs and verbs that use the past participle are often used in the wrong form, nevertheless the mispronounced sentence still makes sense to the listener. Just as children often add the suffix -ed to verbs in order to place them in the past tense, adults tend to make similar mistakes with the irregular and past participle verbs, showing us that unconscious grammatical decisions are being made.
      When looking for data, the criteria used was recorded speech errors overheard in everyday discussions on the UMASS campus. The errors collected were written down at the exact time and place of the utterance. From the list, errors were compiled together into appendix A. In this case the errors were irregular verbs and past participles used in the wrong tense. Later, several examples were traded with other students in the Linguistics class. Sentence [1] is a basic example of the speech errors being dealt with.
       [1] Yeah and then I drunk it.
Sentence [2] is an example of the speech errors where a past participle was not used.
       [2] He brung us the paperwork yesterday.
While these errors were encountered often, there was never a case where a regular verb was used in the wrong tense. The sentence below is an example of such a nonexistent sentence:
       [*] She had heal the wound.
In the case of regular verbs, it is nearly impossible to get the tense wrong because the form never changes. However, without realizing it, people seem to know when a verb is irregular and that they need to change the form of it some how. Often the case may seem to be made up, as in sentences such as [3] and [8].
       [3] I throwed him the keys.
       [8] Yeah, I dreamed of the same thing.
      The fact that people need to change the word reflects that the speaker has identified irregular verbs as being different from regular verbs, and need to be handled differently; the speaker may recognize that the word needs to be slightly conjugated, although not necessarily conjugated correctly.
       Proposed methods to study this hypothesis would be to present a subject with an identification test with a mixed group of sentences containing regular and irregular verbs in both correct and incorrect tenses. Then letting the subject decide which sentences are fluent or not fluent from a scale on one to five, and then mapping the results against one another. This will provide us with a graphic representation of which sentences are considered more fluent than others and at which point sentences become completely disfluent altogether.
       Further research could give us answers to questions such as; at what point does the use of the wrong tense make the sentence incomprehensible? Which sentences fall in the middle? Every sentence in Appendix A is not grammatically correct, but we still understand what is being communicated. For example:
       [6] I ain't got any.
       Furthermore, in a separate study subjects could be tested by asking them casual questions where full sentence responses from them would be likely to include irregular verbs and past participles such as “Tell me about your last dream.” or “tell me who brought you into the room”. Separate subjects could be asked the same questions, already using the wrong form (“Tell me about when you last dreamed.”, “Who brung you into the room?”) If the subject answers the questions while still using the incorrect form it would mean that they still completely understand the sentence, if they used the same incorrect form when answering a question it may mean that they have not dried to think about the grammar of a sentence anymore because there seems to be is already enough grammatical information available. However, this could also be seen as a form of priming.
       If the subjects were monitored using an ERP or fMRI device, it could be possible to see which neurons fire, and where in the brain they fire when a sentence that uses an irregular, regular, or grammatically incorrect sentence is uttered. Certain forms of irregular verbs may also be considered correct to the speaker or listener depending on colloquial speech or even slang. In which case a national or international survey or research which draws in subjects from various English speaking cultures could be compared with the same identification task mentioned above. An abnormality in verb conjugation from a group of speakers from a certain region may reflect this. Examples include “sunk” and “sank”, or possibly even the use of “y'all” as “you all” and which verb tenses are often used along with it.
       From a connectionist perspective is there a way to map verb conjugation in a similar way to word recognition? If this was the case maybe it would be possible to discriminate between when speakers use the past participle and when they don't. Is it possible that we may be subconsciously communicating something when we do or do not use the past participle? Either way, which mental processes are, or are not taking place?
Apendix A

Errors Involving wrong verb form being used.
  1. Yeah, and then I drunk it. Friend (drank, had drunk)
  2. He brung us the paperwork yesterday. Customer (brought)
  3. I throwed him the keys! Father (threw)
  4. I hate it when I make coffee and it don't get drank. Traded (nobody drinks it)
  5. I sweeped the floor. Traded (swept)
  6. I aint got any! Traded (I don't have any)
  7. He had took the receipts! Coworker (had taken)
  8. Yeah, I've dreamed of the same thing. Student (I've dreamt)

Friday, June 8, 2012

The Obscenity Case Over ‘Penis Landscape’

(This is a paper that I originally wrote in 2008 for freshman year writing, I have made revisions based on the notes given to me from the professor after receiving my grade, as well as other miscellaneous changes such as grammatical corrections, and the addition of pictures. You can find the This American Life episode here, and the track Tales From the Trial from The High Priest of Harmful Matter is available on Spotify. There are no sources provided, because we were supposed to use 'signal phrases'. )
Poster of Penis Landscape, Original by H. R. Giger
            The story here I am about to share is about a musician who the government tried to censor. In the eighties when the PMRC and Tipper Gore tried to repress the American music industry, many small independent artists who would have trouble defending and representing themselves in a court of law were particularly targeted. This is a specific case of a punk rock musician who was singled out.
In 1986 the Los Angeles police department raided the home of Jello Biafra. Biafra, whose real name was Eric Bouher, better known as the lead singer for The Dead Kennedys, was asleep when the raid took place. He tells of the whole incident himself in the spoken word album “The High Priest of Harmful Matter”. The nine police officers that showed up with a search warrant told Biafra that he was under suspicion of distributing harmful matter. The officers didn’t find drugs or guns, they found records; which is exactly what they were looking for. What would follow in a year and a half would be a three week long court case that eventually would be thrown out by the judge.
            The specific record the police were looking for was ­Frankenchrist by the Dead Kennedys. Every Frankenchrist album comes with an insert poster done by H.R. Geiger entitled “Penis Landscape”. While many people might not know him, Geiger won an Academy Award for set design on the movie Alien, as well as the Oscar for best effects. When the deputy chief of Los Angeles County, Michael Guarino saw the insert, he knew right away he had an open-shut obscenity case.
Dead Kennedy's 1985 Frankenchrist
LP, complete with warning sticker.
When the police left Biafra’s home they had three copies of the Frankenchrist album, three copies of the Geiger poster, and Biafra’s private mail as well as business paper work; not only from his home, but also from Alternative records, the record company that Biafra owns. Biafra was one of four people charged with distributing harmful matter, including a wholesaler, a guy who worked at Alternative Tentacles, and a 67 year old man who owned the factory that pressed the albums. Each could expect maximum of a year in jail and a two thousand dollar fine for what the Dead Kenndys had to say with an album. On top of that the Dead Kennedys would be blackballed from any music distributor; otherwise that distributor or retailer would be subject to similar fines for carrying “harmful matter”. The only reason the record store where the album was purchased was not prosecuted, was because they had already taken all Dead Kennedys albums off their shelves.
            The next day the district attorney said that prosecuting the Alternative Tentacles label was “a cost effective way to prosecute”. By singling out an independent label it was easier to enforce the censorship the Parents Music Resource Center headed by Tipper Gore had in mind, rather than go after a multimillion dollar record company such as Time Warner, Sony or Universal, and their musicians such as Prince or Madonna. Rather than pay the fine, Biafra fought the case which ended up costing him over eighty thousand dollars. Fortunately, not only was the No More Censorship Defense fund put into action where fans from all over the world sent in money, but a California criminal justice lawyer toke Biafra’s case for free, the ACLU sent a lawyer as well.
            The trial itself dragged on for three weeks in L.A. Testimony was given by a young girl who said that the album was purchased for her little brother as a Christmas present by her mother, and that the album had been opened by someone before Christmas. This is allegedly when the mother then seen the Geiger painting. The mother then sent the artwork to the Los Angeles district attorney’s office. The reason why this story seems so bizarre is because it’s not true. Years later Guarino alleges that he had found and listened to the Frankenchrist album himself and thought it would be an easy case to take on. After three weeks, the media had turned the case into a joke and the jury was hung, in favor of acquittal. When Guarino wanted to retry the case, the judge threw it out.
In 1995 on the Chicago Public Radio show This American Life, Guarino and Biafra talked on the phone. Guarino had in his own words “changed his ways”, apologized to Biafra and said that at the time he thought he was doing the right thing and thought he had the moral high ground in the case. The funny thing was, Biafra thought he himself had the moral high ground as well. After a while the reporter that did the story, David Segal, said “the two started talking like old war buddies” and “it was hard to get a word in edgewise”. In the background a recording on their phone conversation can be heard where the two discussed everything from politics to going out and getting dinner with Guarino’s son, who incidentally ended up being a huge Dead Kennedy’s fan.
            So in the end Biafra and company got off, and in the process won a civil liberties battle on free speech. Had they lost, all Dead Kennedys material would have been deemed “harmful” in the state of California, if not the country, and anyone charged with distributing it would have been fined and possibly jailed. Guarino would have then gone on a harmful matter slash censorship triad and gone after other artists, and though it took three weeks, Biafra stopped him dead in his tracks. Jello Biafra fought the law, and Jello won.        

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Coffee Drinkers May Have Lower Risk of Death

I love coffee. In fact right now I am gulping down a hot cup of (unfortunately) instant coffee. However a few months ago I tried to quit drinking coffee all together, and the results were, simply devastating. Two weeks ago I picked it up again, and came to the conclusion that after drinking coffee heavily, I am an addict; only reassured by the fact that I will hopefully never have to suck cock in a dark alley way for my Folger's instant.

While browsing online for academic articles on coffee  I found this academic article; "The Association of Coffee Drinking with Total and Cause-Specific Mortality" (citation at bottom of post) which suggests that coffee drinking is correlated with lower mortality.

402,260 subjects were assessed twice, once in 1995 and then again in 2008.While it was originally found that there was an increased risk of death for coffee drinkers, it was also found that the coffee drinkers were more likely to smoke, and adjustments were made for in relation to this. After the modifier was applied, an inverse assosiation between coffee consumption and onset of mortality (with the exclusion of cancer) was found. The results were simmilar to those that had reported that they never smoked.

This study doesn't suggest why coffee drinking is associated with living a little longer; however it suggests that antioxidants many play some sort of role in this. It could be just as likely that "coffee drinkers" lead some sort of different "lifestyle". Honestly I would have thought the results would be the opposite considering caffeine is a stimulant. 

Freedman, Neal D., Yikyung Park, Christian Abnet, Albert R. Hollenbeck, and Rashmi Sinha. "The Association of Coffee Drinking with Total and Cause-Specific Mortality." New England Journal of Medicine (2012): 1891-904. Print.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012


Dear Readers,


American Drug War

Beer Wars

Independent documentary about microbreweries in the US.
link. (US only)

Cocaine Cowboys

About the rise, and fall of cocaine runners in Miami.

Ecstasy Rising


FrontLine: Anything


Good Copy Bad Copy

About mash-up culture. Contains interviews with Gregg Gillis.

GG Allin - Hated

Guerrila: The taking of Patty Hearst

Louis Theroux's
America's Most Hated Family
Hunt for General Tso

Into The Wind, The Story of Terry Fox

Making a Killing: The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging

OUTFOXED: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism

The Two Escobars

The Union
Doc about the marijuana industry.


VBS TV: Anything

Waco: Rules of Engagement

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Announcement Update

Dear Readers,

I hope this post finds you well. Finals are done, and the semester has ended. As a result I will be working on the site less infrequently. I figure this transition period would be a good time to let everyone know what I am doing with the site.

As always, there has been background work for the website going on. I eventually want to move this site off of Blogger, and onto my own server. I also want to make the site look distinctly not like a cookie-cutter Blogger template as much possible. In the process of doing this, I have been learning a lot about web design outside of my primitive knowledge of HTML.This usually includes banging on the keyboard over the frustration of getting a mouse-over drop down menu to work.

If I could get published, this is how the cover of
the book would look like when you hold it open.
Second, about a few months ago I lost the sixteen pages, including the outline I had written, for Motherfucker Why You Reading; the "book" I would eventually like to give out for free through the website. It looks like that when I return home, I will be able to restore the hard drive with the documents I have lost. So instead of jumping right back into writing MFWYR I have decided to work on a project, which I want to finish writing during my six week break. This will be an "alternative" college guide, which just like MFWYR, will be released for free through Always Avoid Alliteration. I am thinking about having the download happen through an online store where if you want to, you can download the guide for $0.00 . More information will follow as the project reaches it's conclusion.

Other than that, I am still trying to write interesting articles that I know readers will enjoy. As far as I can tell, there is not much in common between the top read articles (more on this in a few months).

Until then, expect a new update tomorrow.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Germany's Cool, When It Isn't Crap

I have dragged my feet for a while before showing you this article, because... well of the host site. Some time ago I was instructed to go to a website, and I misheard the name as being . A common mistake. What I found instead of what I was looking for was some German guy's website devoted to crappy things, and features RandomFarts one of which plays when you access each page on the site. ಠ_ಠ

What I did find was Germany's Cool When it's Not Crap which lists the pros and cons of living in Germany. For a page from a website that has not left the year 1995, I actually think these things hold true today.