Today's post is about Susan Ervin-Tripp, she is a sociolinguist who is a professor at UC Berkeley. In 1964 Ervin-Tripp conducted a study with Japanese women who had married American soldiers after World War II. In the study the women were asked to complete a sentence completion task where they responded to open ended questions twice; once in English, and once in Japanese.
For example:
"Real friends should...
Japanese: help each other".
English: be very frank".
"I will probably become a...
Japanese: housewife".
English: teacher".
"When my wishes conflict with my family..."
Japanese: it is a time of great unhappiness".
English: I do what I want".
As you may have noticed the responses varied based on the language. While the results of this study are fascinating, it does not tell us a lot about why this happened. The results may illustrate that language influences how we think, but it certainly does not prove this to be the case. It is just as likely that the two answers reflect the cultural values that are tied to them respectively.
Ervin-Tripp, S. (1964). An Analysis of The Interaction of Language, Topic, and Listener. American Anthropologist, 66, 86 - 102.
One of the many things a college freshmen probably notices after their first semester is that they are not paying for what they are learning in class, but their degree. In fact I would argue that if one can get away from college with a vocational skill, then they are much better off than any of their fellow students.
Do to this bizarre set of circumstances; college classes are free, unless you want the credits. Thanks American academic system! Honestly, does this not make a college degree virtually worthless? I will give an awkward back massage to anyone who can persuade me otherwise. Many courses are mostly homework anyways, where you go home, read a few chapters, and then your professor briefly covers it all again in the next class. Like Frank Zappa says; if you want an education, go to the library.
Nevertheless some colleges place their courses online. Thanks to sites like Youtube, as well more and more professors switching over to power-point style presentations. I remember about five years ago when a particular college decided to start recording, and posting professors' lectures online. The files were only audio files, and after picking a Sociology lecture I was a little frustrated when the professor decided to play a fifty minute film on homeless people for the class.
UC Berkley has uploaded over two-thousand video to Youtube, many all of which are lectures. This is particularly appealing to me because Berkley has a Cognitive Science department. Yes, there are lectures for at least one Cognitive Science class:
Hm... Rene Descartes looks like an awful lot like Frank Zappa.
For the record, you can skip the first twenty-eight and a half minutes, it is all administrative stuff for the school. That is, unless you are interested in learning how to reschedule an exam.
Stuff like this makes me drool. FREE KNOWLEDGE! YUM! If CS classes are not your thing they also have electrical engineering, statistics, and chemistry. Why not take a semester's worth of classes before the semester actually starts and guarantee yourself a less stressful semester as well as one with more free time? If you do watch the administrative stuff you can find what textbook the class is using, or other resources they may use.
When I can, I actually like to get the textbook for a class I know am going to take, and read the whole thing over the summer. You will always be a step ahead of the classes, and you are that much closer to the A. Chances are there is only a week or two until your semester starts, what else are you gonna do with the rest of your summer that is as worthwhile?
You can find all the German videos here. I have linked to a few below. They also have separate lessons specifically concerning pronunciation, grammar, and specific phrases! They even have an RSS feed! If German isn't your thing there are lessons in Chinese, English, French, Spanish and Swahili! For the low price of nothing, how can you go wrong? Especially when compared to the price of Rosetta Stone, or even Muzzy.
Each of the short videos revolve around The Angry Family, a cast of bizarre cartoon characters. I am reluctant to admit it, but I don't think I would like these videos as much if they were not weird!
Point made? Anyways I really suggest watching a couple of these each day. Keep up the awesome work at Newcastle University!
On first sight one of the things that throws off many people when they see the German language is the Germanic umlaut. To them it is a weird symbol reserved for metal bands;
If you're reading this site, you're probably more familiar with something like this.
An umlaut is really a way to let you know that a vowel should be stressed more like following vowel. In German the word umlaut is a compound of the words "um" - "around" , and "laut"- "sound" . I went a little nuts the past couple days trying to find the IPA symbols, and pronunciation for vowels with the umlaut. While not a vowel, the German letter ß ( sharp s) for example is pronounced [s] .
The sharp s is a pretty cool letter in itself.
These pronunciations do exist and Wikipedia does list them on the page for German grammar. However simply knowing the chart is not enough because there are special rules regarding syllable stress, and of course exceptions for certain words.
I don't think I should really be surprised after searching out for something I thought I really wanted, that it's not what I wanted at all. The chart still is important though, because you are going to want to know when someone is using an umlaut. The use of the umlaut can help designate past tense "fallen - fällen" "to fall - to fell" , "Fuß - Füße" "foot - feet" , "lang - Länge" "long - length" . Although rules for written and spoken German can be different.
In my search for videos on pronouncing these letter, I was bombarded with videos of different bands named Umlaut. I wish I was fucking kidding. I did find a cute video that covers the pronunciation of German words with the umlaut in them. It sort of supports the suggestion that has been made to me concerning the pronunciation of them; which is to stress any vowels that have an umlaut above them.
Part of me now thinks that the pronunciation and inflection of words is impossible to teach through the format of text because there is so many different ways people say, or can say words. There's the classic example of "ghoti" spelling the word "fish" . Hell, I pronounced the word "pint" like "stint" until the junior year of high-school! While I lay awake in bed and contemplate German phonology, check out that video, and leave a comment or e-mail me if you have something interesting to say!
Time is ticking away until I ship off to Germany. Recently most of the content on the site has been geared towards cognitive science, and not language. In order to prepare for the massive amount of immersion I am about to face, I figure it is time to change gears. In order to get us kicked off, here is a list of German learning websites and resources. If you can think of anything to include just leave a comment below and I'll be sure to add it.
Forums - I actually do not think any of these forums are worthwhile, but they are here if you want to check them out. About.com's German Forum - Might help you find other resources. Krautchan - German image board. Adult material and bad taste, it's 4chan in German. politik.de
People will like you more as well as pay attention to you more if you mimic their body language and speech patterns.
There have been a handful of peer-reviewed studies that show subjects perceive others as being more honest and likable when they use verbal and non-verbal mimicry and rapport. The first time I ever heard about this was in a Wired article written by Kevin Poulsen about a study conducted at Standford. The study was conducted in virtual reality, and found that when a virtual person sitting across from the subject mimicked head, and hand movements on a four second delay; not only did the subjects like the virtual person more, they paid more attention to it! What is more concerning about this study is that the presenter was proposing a fictitious new rule that said all students would have to have university identification cards on their person at all times.
The Virtual Reality Experiment at Ohio State
The Wired article by Poulsen describes another study where students liked the picture of a particular presidential candidate (Kerry or Bush) more than the other when their own face was morphed in with one of the candidates. It is interesting considering social psych tells us that we find attractive people more trustworthy. Think of the past presidential elections, has the most attractive candidate not won? Obama and McCain. Bush, Kerry and Gore. Clinton, Bush Sr and Bob Dole.
These studies have also been conducted one-on-on with humans. The Ohio State researchers for the peer reviewed study suggest that everybody actually does this unconsciously. "Matching another person's representational language enhances perceived empathy" says the paper. I know that in the few NLP training videos I have seen, Richard Bandler suggests matching the breathing patterns of your subject.
Another very successful method is called predicate matching. If you don't know what a predicate is, the best way is to do this is to repeat back to the subject the verb phrase of the sentence. If you don't know what that means, you can read a paper Bandler and Grinder published in the eighties. However, their results "weakly supported a claim of enhanced accuracy of understanding on one measure of objective understanding", so take that as you will.
Bandler and Grinder argue that something like predicate matching works because people communicate through different modes of experiencing; they internally represent the world in different ways. People may not understand one another when they use different sensory predicates to relate to similar experiences. If you are more interested in this work, check out the article linked above. Inside you will find all sorts of academic sources which back up their argument.
Update (8/11/11): I got a few questions about the source for Doc Ellis saying the catcher's mitt looked bigger at times. The only primary source I know of for this incident, other than the game itself, is an interview with Ellis about the game. In it he says that sometime the ball changed size. It is a minute detail, but I was still wrong.
The magazine Scientific American Mind has a small article on a study where students were asked to putt a golf ball into a hole. When asked to estimate the size of the target, students who had successfully sunk the ball described a bigger target.
This is in line with what a lot of baseball players claim to experience before they hit a home run, they report the ball being huge. When Doc Ellis pitched a perfect game on LSD, he reported at times that the catcher's mitt seemed enormous.
It is important to note though, that visualizing a bigger target is only correlated with being able to hit it. So while it might be possible that because we perceive a bigger target we are more likely to hit it, it is just as likely that once we hit the target, we remember it as being bigger.
At the bottom of the article, Scientific American's site let's you buy the rest of the article. However when I went to my local grocery store, and picked up a copy of the magazine, there was nothing more to the article. If you want to buy a copy of this magazine, don't do it for this article, but do purchase it because there are tons of other articles pertaining to thought, cognition, and the mind.
Anderson, Andrea. "Towering Targets: Why the Ball Looks Bigger When You're on Your Game: Scientific American." Scientific American. July 2011. Web. 06 Aug. 2011. <http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=towering-targets>.
Computer AI in strategy games has been proven to be... well stupid. It usually is way too much of an undertaking to create anything that really classifies as artificial intelligence. Instead the game developers give the computer an unfair advantage by letting it cheat. Maybe supplying it with more resources for example. Racing games like Need For Speed are infamous for incorporating this into their games. Called "rubber band" AI: the computer simply speeds up to catch up with you, and offer more of a challenge.
In this study the researchers incorporated the CIV rule book into a search framework, and in this case, also had the AI learn strategies through playing. The Monte Carlo search framework has been used in board games before, and considering Civilization is essentially a high functioning board game, it makes a good choice for this study. It is important to note that the instruction books for Civilization games are notoriously known for being massive.
The Guidebook for CIV II, not the box.
Parts of the manual were selected for relevance. Knowing to build your cities on tiles with rivers running through them is more important than say, being able to name your city whatever you want. The AI then incorporates states with actions, such as "use engineers improve" with "terrain within the city radius". It also does a calculation for an "action value" which is based on different states in the game (including simulated game play), and decides the best move to make. I am curious as to how much more machine resources all this new computing requires.
Due to the massive size of the civilization books I wouldn't expect this sort of AI to show in in every video game just yet. But as a big fan of strategy video games I hope I start encountering smarter AI soon!
I really am interested in the content of this academic article. If there is anyone out there who knows about this stuff I would love to talk to you! For everyone else who is interested, you can read, the academic text here. Just in case I also have cited the article at the bottom of this post. The project website can be found here.
Branavan, S.R.K., David Silver, and Regina Barzilay. "Learning to Win by Reading Manuals in a Monte-Carlo Framework." (2011). MIT.edu. MIT. Web. 5 Aug. 2011. <http://people.csail.mit.edu/branavan/papers/acl2011.pdf>.
This is a supplement to today's post! Simply scroll down, or click here to see it.
Well it took much longer than one week, but it is finally complete! Random week was a new project I wanted to work on. I actually was not as interested in writing a lot of these article as I usually am when I am writing about linguistics, or Cognitive Science, or anything related to the two subjects. But then again, that's what I wanted to find out, and now I have a backlog of really interesting things to write about!
In case you missed it, here's a recap of what was posted:
Depending on traffic, reader as well as personal interest; I may do this again. Be sure to check out #5 especially because it was posted only a few minutes before this post.
I quit my summer job at Six Flags. I was in the fortunate position of not needing the job thanks to ad revenue through this site, selling stuff on Ebay, and other projects I take on the side. God bless the people who do need the money bad enough to work and stay there.
Now before I get started on my personal experiences at Six Flags New England I would like to clear some things up. When I brought up the fact that I did not make overtime (more on this later) with my grandfather, he told me all about when he was a kid how he worked on a tobacco farm, and he did not make overtime because it was seasonal work, and how he could not go to the bathroom whenever he wanted, and how I should be lucky to find a job so late in the summer and so on and so on. I am sure that there are other people out there who would love to ostracize me for not being hard working.
It seems to be a cultural thing, that complaining about your job and that if you're not happy slaving away at it, then you are subhuman garbage. After all the American dream is all about; if you want more out of life you should be happy to work harder for it. For more on this check out this video:
Ride operators have to stand outside at their ride all day, most of us were scheduled for eight to twelve (or more) hour shifts. During my one month stint at six flags, we had to close down our rides twice due to thunderstorms. All ride operators were told to stay at their posts even while lightning struck inside the park.We would be given two breaks which had to be taken in a designated area, and included the time it took you to walk to and from the break area to your position. Getting a bathroom break could take 30 to 45 minutes. I once had a supervisor ask me why I had to go to the bathroom when I had my break two hours ago. I often would leave my post in order to use the bathroom, although this is grounds for immediate termination:
"This year there was a girl at a ride who had to go to the bathroom, she called for the job coach to come down and relieve her, she called for a supervisor to come down and relieve her, she even called for any available person including silver tags to come down and run the ride for 5 minutes so she could go. No one came, so after two hours she unloaded the ride, and went to the bathroom. There was no staffing shortage that day, she was fired over it." Link.
As I mentioned before, Six Flags employees are not subject to overtime because the work is "seasonal". I found this peculiar considering the park is open until Halloween. I looked up Massachusetts law on the subject, and found that a stipulation exists for amusement parks. Seasonal employment is defined as one-hundred twenty days in this law, but then goes on to set seasonal employment for amusement parks at 150 days. Why was this stipulation made?
On my second day of work a woman accused me of calling her a slut because I would not let her daughter drive the car on Route 66 due to the height restriction (she was under 48''). She then stormed off looking for security. Being yelled at by guests is a common occurrence. You can expect a promise to be fired or a personal insult at least once a day. On a separate occasion I had a guest call me a "moolie" because according to the rules of the ride, he had to ride with his children and he did not want to.
During my first week I also had a team leader fail to give me a break. I was afraid that this would continue to happen, so I documented the case should it happen again. Originally when I was hired, I was given a stack of papers to sign. The last two forms at the end of all the mandatory forms were optional. They were pre-written statements that waived the employee's rights for a break or for the mandatory one day off in a week. When I did not sign these forms, human resources asked me why did I not sign them, and then told me that my supervisor would want me to sign the forms. I still declined. When I went to my ADP account to take a screen shot of my "virtual" time slip for this article (we cant have real ones) I was notified that I was unauthorized to access my account.
The event that lead to me leaving on the spot had to do with the grooming standards at Six Flags. This was more or less the straw that broke the camel's back in my long list of catalysts. Men have to be shaved when working at Six Flags, as is part of the grooming standards. When I went to the window to punch in I was told that I would have to shave before coming into work. The girl behind the counter took out a can of Noxema and a pink razor. I asked about where could I shave and she said "yeah about that..." I said "What?" and she said "Yeah...". A woman from a desk behind her walked up and said "The bathroom in the park." I said "what" again, and then with a very stern demeanor, she articulately said "go through the security gate, into the bathroom and shave". I looked at the Noxema, then the girl, then the pink razor, then the woman, and I shrugged my shoulders and walked away.
Not coming into work is a "No call, no show" which effectively puts you on probation. I don't know what that means but I returned my uniform the next day. When I tried to turn in my red dot rewards, I was promptly told people who don't work at the park can not turn them in.
The red dots didn't bother me, nor did losing the job, or the six hour shifts that turned into twelve when your supervisor asks you to stay longer. It was the damn pink razor. Why was it pink? The only way body hair can be out of grooming standard is if it is male facial body hair. If they are going to keep shaving cream and a razor handy for men to use in a public restroom, why is it pink? Never mind the fact that those types of razor are not even supposed to be used on somebody's face. It was very deliberate.
I hope this article is useful for anybody whoever is considering working at Six Flags New England. I find it interesting that a google for "six flags bad employer" does not yield anything about working for the park, but "Six Flags red dot" does, or Six Flags ESO (Employment Service Office). Although you would not know to search for these things unless you already worked there. Here's your heads up!!
For more information on Six Flags (or other parks such as Ceder Point) check out the links I provided in this post. They all provide a wealth of information, and can let you know what a hell hole it can be to work in any of these places.
"All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States -- and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!"
It is unbelievable that in 2011 censorship is something we have to deal with. Originally I wanted to write about self-censorship in video games. I had briefly touched upon that topic before but then I realized I would be paraphrasing a lot of what was already posted in those links at the bottom. I figured this topic tied more into my project Motherfucker Why You Reading anyways.
"In high school English classes, children are required to read and view material that should be classified as soft pornography.One such book is called "Speak." They also watch the movie. This is a book about a very dysfunctional family. Schoolteachers are losers, adults are losers and the cheerleading squad scores more than the football team. They have sex on Saturday night and then are goddesses at church on Sunday morning. The cheer squad also gets their group-rate abortions at prom time. As the main character in the book is alone with a boy who is touching her female parts, she makes the statement that this is what high school is supposed to feel like. The boy then rapes her on the next page. Actually, the book and movie both contain two rape scenes."
...
"Lastly, there is a book in the library recommended for reading called "Twenty Boy Summer." This book glorifies drunken teen parties, where teen girls lose their clothes in games of strip beer pong. In this book, drunken teens also end up on the beach, where they use their condoms to have sex. I confronted the school board with these issues at the June school board meeting. As far as I know, nothing has been done to address these issues to date. This is unacceptable, considering that most of the school board members and administrators claim to be Christian. How can Christian men and women expose children to such immorality? Parents, it is time you get involved!"
As an alumni of a catholic high-school I can personally vouch as these accounts being closer to reality than any pornography I have ever seen. Secondly, Scroggins is calling for outside intervention into the public school system appealing to people's religious beliefs. Shouldn't this be at least a little concerning?
"In English, children are also required to read a book called "Slaughterhouse Five." This is a book that contains so much profane language, it would make a sailor blush with shame. The "f word" is plastered on almost every other page. The content ranges from naked men and women in cages together so that others can watch them having sex to God telling people that they better not mess with his loser, bum of a son, named Jesus Christ."
In a book about the fire-bombing of a city, in a book where men soil themselves on the battle field over fear of being killed, in a book where the same men are stuffed into cattle car like freight, this persons complaint is over sex. Sex. In Wesley Scroggins twisted worldview, the worst thing a child can read about in a book is not mass destruction, war or death, but copulation.
In personal experience when somebody did not want me to read or consume something, there was usually more to the story. Kurt Vonnegut was a humanist, and as long as humanism has existed, religious people have had something to say about it. The reason why people like Wesley Scroggins do not want you to read is because it if in direct conflict with his personal beliefs. Scroggins and the superintendent are making a decision for everyone else because of they think is right for everybody else.
I sometimes worry that the only reason why the story cam up is because it's taking place at a public school. At my private catholic high school I wonder how many conversations went on behind closed doors about books, ideas, and class discussions that were to be avoided because they opposed those ideas ideologically. I hope kids will learn what books are on the banned book list. I hope the ones that are curious enough will get a copy of the book will enjoy it. I hope the knowledge that they have pushed past the boundaries set by their narrow minded authority figures opens their minds.
Wesley Scroggins, when I think of the people that undermine our academic system and fail to challenge us to think critically about the world around us, I think of people like you.
On my days off I like to hold up in my room until the wee hours of the night, eat bad food, play old computer games, and listen to Loveline. I don't know when my infatuation with the show began, but I have listened to it religiously since I started.
Loveline is a radio show that Dr. Drew Pinsky has been doing since he was just a med student. Through 1995 to 2005 Adam Corolla did the show along with Dr. Drew. Considering Drew is a doctor and Adam is a comedian, not only will you learn something from listening to this show, you will laugh too! I promise.
These Drew and Adam episodes are what many die hard fans listen to, although not exclusively. Currently, the website to get Loveline episodes is lovelinetapes.com, before that it was The Loveline Archive and so forth. At one point all the shows were hosted on a server you would have to connect to with DC++. There also have been extensive Loveline discussions on online forums like Something Awful, which is actually a really good resource for this topic.
Every episode is an hour and a half long, many of the shows have guests. David Allen Grier, who is really only known for being on In Living Color, is a recurring guest. The format of the show is supposed to be Drew and Adam taking question-and-answer calls from youths and young adults with relationship, sexuality, and drug addiction problems, through the expertise of Pinsky, an addiction medicine specialist. When it's just Dr. Drew on the show, he will plow through calls and try to help as many people as possible. If it is Adam, well, I think the phone screeners try to put the dumbest callers though to the show just to piss him off.
Every episode usually starts off with a rant from Adam Corolla. Gusts also usually chime in on calls, and this can go either way. For example in one show Kelly Osbourne was plugging her then new album. During the show Adam says that women know nothing about wars, and Kelly insists that she knows everything about World War Two. When Drew asks her who fought in the war, she claims that Germany and England fought together. In another episode The Darkness walk off the show because they feel uncomfortable, and then there is the infamous Pennywise episode.
Here is the description for the episode:
"Promoting their album Straight Ahead. Fletcher Dragge, intoxicated on alcohol, barricaded the studio door and threatened to throw his feces at Adam and claimed to have a hand grenade. Six police officers arrived to defuse the situation."
They were on the show at least four more times after that.
The callers on the show are usually not intelligent. Some of the best (and most extreme) examples are what comes up when you Youtube "loveline". I'll let the videos speak for themselves:
Here is another:
There are also repeat callers. For example there is a guy who calls in to play Germany or Florida. The caller reads a news story and then Drew and Adam have to guess if the story took place in Germany or Florida. The caller also has a song that he sings before they play the game. Drew and Adam also have a knack for telling when a prank call is being made. After listening to many episodes it is actually simple to tell when a caller is fake, they push the point. Drew will answer the questions and then the caller will say "yeah but...". Still I was baffled by how easily they were able to call out fake callers.
