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.

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.

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

A recent post just bumped off of the front page was about Liberty University's restrictive policies. A couple of days ago an anonymous reader sent me a Slashdot article entitled How Free Speech Died on Campus. It links to The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education's website, an organization founded by Alan Kors designed to help protect first amendment rights at universities and colleges. The website also contains a database of campuses, listing what 'speech code rating' they have been assigned (red, yellow, or green).

My host institution received a red light. Interesting, because one would believe that the flagship university of Massachusetts would receive a better "free speech" rating. However when looking at other schools, it became apparent that I could not find a single school with a GREEN light. The WSJ suggests that The Fire is really trying to stop is censorship though political correctness. Almost the radical opposite of what is going on at a school like Liberty, in some cases schools are so vague in their guidelines they actually legislate political correctness. (There is of course more to the issue of censorship than that.) At UMASS another problem is that 'conservitive' ideas do not receive as warm of a welcoming by students. I am ashamed that some of my fellow students consider being liberal as some sort of team, rather than a philosophy. Then again I wounder what an individual's definitions of the word 'liberal' would be?

When I spent time at Nazareth College, political correctness and diversity was an issue they really liked to push. Of course, this was really to hide the facade that about eighty percent of the student population was Caucasian. Issues that needed support from groups like FIRE never really arose because of how apolitical the students were; that is just AS scary as schools limiting your first amendment rights.

In an example of campus censorship not provided in the WSJ article, it is illegal in the state of California to criticise the state of Israel on college campuses, within certain vague contexts:

   WHEREAS, The United States Department of State, the United Kingdom'
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
to that of the Nazis, and accusing the Jewish people, or Israel, of
inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust...

During a time when this certain country is engaged in a military conflict, it is illegal to "delegitimize" them. Now what is the definition of THAT word in a legal context? Also, is it not a double standard to make certain inclusions for a certain group of people. Does this mean that it is legal to burn an American flag in protest, but not one from the state of Israel, because it is a delegitimising act? It is easy to see where The Fire is coming from, and what the implications of such campus and state policies could be.

On one hand there are religious schools, and on the other liberal ones that restrict their students on ideological grounds. The religious schools do tend to be more strict, Liberty students claim that their school monitors on-campus Internet usage. I suppose that the real question lies within the domain of political correctness. In that the system that was created to fight intolerance is itself intolerant because it restricts freedom of speech. Which is in strong contrast of a principle of free speech: " I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".

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

Enjoy!

Coursea To Offer 'Drugs and the Brain' Course

On December first, a free (as always) Drugs and the Brain course will be starting on Coursea. It is being taught by Cal Tech professor, Dr. Henry Lester and lasts for five weeks. It might be a good way to keep your brain fresh over the long winter break. You won't receive any college credit upon completion, but you do receive a certificate stating that you satisfactorily completed the course.

Bees & Bombs

If only this was an animated .gif  (Bridget Riley, Cataract 3)

Bees & Bombs is what happens when Bridget Riley smokes meth and reads Holyloly. Go there now.  Cooljava is also related and is ran by Reed Silverstein (though it could use less indie band albums).

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 try to call a phone number once every five minutes.
• You may only enter the code five times.
• You may only try three phone numbers per account every twelve hours.
• You may only receive three calls per account every twelve hours.

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.

SITE MAINTENANCE

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

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.

Video

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

Udacity To Offer $100 Degrees?

The website Udacity offers free computer science related courses. They offers certificates of completion for these courses as well. However I have avoided mentioning websites like this, as compared to established universities who have been doing the same thing because, well... Stanford and Princeton are a lot more prestigious than some website nobody has ever heard of.

However Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun plans to change that. In this interview he mentions that he is looking to pair up with testing centers so that students can receive a more valid form of certification in the classes they take. While the classes will remain free, the certification is what would cost money.

This situation offers an interesting question. Can websites receive certification? If University of Phoenix can be run as a for profit school, and Liberty University can give away science degrees with full accreditation while teaching creation science, why not Udacity? This could be a tremendous slap in the face to all the private and public colleges and universities in the US that have gradually been increasing tuition every year. This can't happen soon enough.

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 ChillingEffects.org.

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 rather common for patients to claim significant insights into their problems, to feel that they had been given a new lease on life, and to make a strong resolution to discontinue their drinking."

"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.

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.

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)

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.        

---

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.

Documentaries

Dear Readers,

I have been hard at work with the college guide, and the first draft will be sent out to be proof read soon.With all of my time normally dedicated to the site going towards this side project, I decided that the site is long overdue for an update. While you wait, here is a list of documentaries that I have not only seen, but highly recommend:

American Drug War
Film produced by Kevin Booth, long time friend of comedian Bill Hicks.It concerns partially with the issue of the CIA bringing cocaine into the coutry in the eighties.
link.

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

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

Ecstasy Rising
Narrated by Peter Jennings before his death. About how Ecstasy helps in curing port traumatic stress disorder. Also discusses what the perceived health risks of ecstasy were, to what they turned out to actually be.
link.

FrontLine: Anything
Frontline covers a plethora of trending subjects, and allows you to watch them all for free on their site.
link.

Good Copy Bad Copy
About mash-up culture. Contains interviews with Gregg Gillis.
link.

GG Allin - Hated
Documentary on the "Shock Rocker" GG Allin done as a NYU film project. Shows many of the vulgar things that he was known to do.
link.

Guerrila: The taking of Patty Hearst
Comprehensive doc on the Patty Hearst case. I used this as a starting point on learning about it for a project I did on this legal case.
link.

Louis Theroux's America's Most Hated Family
I highly recommend any documentary by Louis Theroux. In his Weird America series he lives with American families, or persons that he, or the British people find of interest. In this case it was the notorious Westboro Baptist Church.
link.
 
Hunt for General Tso
This is actually a short TED Talk about the history of General Tso's chicken, and Ameircan Chinese food in general. I was thinking about saving for a post on lectures I recommend, but if I ever do that, I will probably post it again because I like it so much.
link.

Into The Wind, The Story of Terry Fox
About amputee marathon runner Terry Fox. It's what I suggest to anyone who says they could never run a mile in their life.
link.

Making a Killing: The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging
Fair warning, this one is alarmist documentary. However, I think it makes a good point of showing the pharmaceutical companies as just another drug dealer.
link.

OUTFOXED: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism
Criticizes the Fox News channel, and accuses it of consumer fraud.
link.

The Two Escobars
Shows how Pablo Escobar was directly involved in the rise of Columbia's national soccer team, and the role his life played in the shooting of soccer player Andres Escobar.
link.

The Union
Doc about the marijuana industry.

link.

VBS TV: Anything
Vice TV's Travel Guide is more provocative than anything I have ever seen in the mainstream media; specifically the North Korea, Liberia, episodes.
link.

Waco: Rules of Engagement
Makes a strong argument that the United States government outright killed the Branch Davidians.
link.

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.

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 worldofcrap.com . 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.

Learn To Program

Just think of it like a puzzle.

Academic advisers have told me that if I ever expect to work under them in a lab, I better learn to code, or expect to be taught how to code. I have found a couple of resources since then to help me out. The most likely one to hold my, and your attention alike is codecademy, which treats learning to program in Java more or less like a game; you are taken through stages, given achievements, and there are even hints available. This is how I have been spending my Saturday nights as of lately.  

Another option is the book Invent Your Own Computer Games With Python:

This is a trend setting programming book
simply for the fact that it has a cool cover.

I purchased this book when it came out, only to realise that the book was released under Creative Commons, and you can download the PDF for free. (I command you, go forth dear readers and succeed where I have once failed!) It honestly is a good book, although it is actually geared more towards children. I have also read books in the "Dummies" series, such as "C For Dummies", and as expected; these books move at a boorish pace.

The website Coding Tortoise is another place to learn Java. I believe the person running it has cut back to posting once every two weeks, but there is still a backlog of posts.

Parrots Receive Thier Names From Thier Parents

I once attended a lecture by a guest speaker at UMASS. He talked about his research recording monkeys, pointing out parts that might be considered grammar or syntax. At the end of his talk he admitted that all of his research could be for nothing, and that he could be completely wrong.

In under six minutes this video conclusively covers something more fascinating. An ornithologist from Cornell was able to conclusively show that parrots receive their names from their parents by switching eggs in nests. Even after this is done, the newborn parrots' names more resemble their foster parents' names.

What Is Darkpsychology.co ?

It is usual for study abroad programs to spam the comments section on this site. I usually respond to them by writing on their Facebook page and telling them that if they want to advertise on my site, they can buy ad space like everyone else. Earlier this week I offhandedly mentioned that I thought the website Darkpsychology.co was a spam blog. The next morning I received these two comments on the post:

Dear AAA,
Good Morning AAA, My name is Dr. Michael Nuccitelli and I'm a NYS psychologist and forensic consultant. I have my Google Alerts set up to send me posts and information on "Dark Psychology" and received your post this morning titled "Dark Psychology." I notice you write asking for the definition of Dark Psychology. Having an interest in Theoretical Criminology and a forensic psychologist, I've attached my link to academia.edu that I've posted my theory on all criminal and deviant behavior I've termed Dark Psychology. I hope this provides you the definition. http://psychology.about.com/library/bl_psychosocial_summary.htm Thank you, Dr. Michael Nuccitelli, drnucc@hotmail.com

Dear AAA, Good Morning and my name is Dr. Michael Nuccitelli and I'm a NYS psychologist and forensic consultant. I have my Google Alerts set up to send me posts on "Dark Psychology" and I received you post this morning. I notice in your post you ask what the definition of Dark Psychology is. As a theoretical criminologist, this year I finalized my construct on all criminal and deviant I've termed Dark Psychology. Provided is my link to my theory of Dark Psychology I've posted at academia.edu. Good Luck and Thank you. Respectfully, Dr. Michael Nuccitelli, drnucc@hotmail.com Dark Psychology Academia.Edu Link: http://independent.academia.edu/DrMichaelNuccitelli/Papers/1233777/Dark_Psychology

A website I accused of being a spam blog spammed the article I wrote about them being a spam blog. Sometimes life will write the jokes for you. The first time I heard the term Dark Psychology was through a Lavender Hour podcast, apparently this guy has crated his own definition and is trying to create a business model out of it. I read through the academia.edu article, and then googled "Dr. Michael Nuccitelli". He also runs iPredator Inc, a company that shares a name with The Pirate Bay's VPN service:

Apparently the term "troll" was not sensational enough as "iPredator" is.

When I was a kid I remember "Internet police" web pages on sites like Geocities and Expage. Their whole premise was that if you put their "protected by the cyber police" banner, disclaimer, or whatever on your site, they would protect you from somebody copying your site, or god knows what else. How is this any different?

I found a late night radio show where Michael Nuccitelli as a guest. Right at the beginning the radio host mispronounces diploma as "diplomat", at forty minutes he says "computer swaby". At 56 minutes Nuccitelli says that if we don't create "methodologies" then cyber terrorism will create something "fifty times worse than 9/11". At 64 minutes a listener starts reading from The Talmud of Jmmanuel. Honestly, this show is like public access Coast to Coast AM for rednecks.

Anything Michael Nuccitelli talks about in his Theory of Dark Psychology article, or on that radio show, you can learn in Psychology 100 class. As far as I can tell, he is trying to monger fear into getting people to purchase his useless product. What is the service he is providing? Protection from cyber bullies? A defence against cyber attacks? What is that supposed to mean?! Snake oil? I'm not even sure. I tried to access their ipredator site, but the domain is currently up for sale.

So what is What Is Darkpsychology.co? I stand corrected, I have no fucking idea.

Propaganda

Not many of the articles on this site pertain to the site description under the title: "A site concerning language learning and the influence of language on non-linguistic behavior." I leave it there because... well what else would I put?

I figure that this article on American Propaganda by Noam Chomsky belongs here because it has a lot to do with that title description, sans learning:

"The Vietnam War is a classic example of America's propaganda system. In the mainstream media--the New York Times, CBS, and so on-- there was a lively debate about the war. It was between people called "doves" and people called "hawks." The hawks said, "If we keep at it we can win." The doves said, "Even if we keep at it, it would probably be too costly for use, and besides, maybe we're killing too many people." Both sides agreed on one thing. We had a right to carry out aggression against South Vietnam. Doves and hawks alike refused to admit that aggression was taking place..."

"During the Vietnam War, the U.S. propaganda system did its job partially but not entirely. Among educated people it worked very well. Studies show that among the more educated parts of the population, the government's propaganda about the war is now accepted unquestioningly. One reason that propaganda often works better on the educated than on the uneducated is that educated people read more, so they receive more propaganda. Another is that they have jobs in management, media, and academia and therefore work in some capacity as agents of the propaganda system--and they believe what the system expects them to believe..."

Livemocha Unlimited Free Content

I posted about this before, unfortunately in that case the premium content was limited; you had to spend points that you were rewarded through grading other users' submissions. There is however, a way to receive unlimited premium content:

Hi Carm,


Thank you for applying to become an Apprentice Livemocha Expert! It is definitely not too late and we are pleased to invite you to join our force of Expert Reviewers. This is a special type of Livemocha membership that gives you unlimited access to our premium learning content in exchange for helping others on the site.

Expert Reviewers provide a consistently high caliber of feedback that students can trust. A key part of the position is providing words of positive encouragement to remind students that they are on the right track. Language learning can be daunting, which makes it hard to stay motivated - so you will play a key role in spreading enthusiasm and confidence.

Another important aspect of an Expert Review is helping the student improve grammar and pronunciation. Sometimes free reviewers provide incorrect suggestions, and it can be difficult for language learners to decide whose suggestions they can trust. Your feedback will be marked as an Expert Review so the student knows they can count on your accuracy.

Now for the nitty gritty details:

You will receive unlimited, uninterrupted Gold Key as long as you complete at least 10 quality Expert Reviews each month. An Expert Review typically takes anywhere from 5 - 15 minutes depending on the complexity of the student's exercise.

This of course, means that you have to spend some time grading users until you get to this point, but in the meantime you can practice whatever language you want to learn as well. This is "free" in the sense that you do not have to pay any money, and the fact that other users will be evaluating your submissions as well makes the system seem more fair than, "hey, come work for us for free!"

"Dark Psychology"

As far as I can tell there is no definition for the term "dark psychology". If I had to guess, I would say that it is something along the lines of; "the influence on people to do things they normally would not do in the first place through exploitation of irrational and unconscious fears". Does anyone else think this is also a fitting description for advertising? (Recently a new website popped up called "darkpsychology.co", but as far as I can tell it is a spam blog. How appropriate.) Quebec's ban on Fast-food advertising reduced fast-food expenditures by 13 percent per week in French-speaking households. Even the price of a product may affect your perceived quality of it.

Woman in particular have been assaulted with ads, informing them of problems they did not know they had until the they were told so:

The gist of the article is that U.S. women were browbeaten into shaving underarm hair by a sustained marketing assault that began in 1915. (Leg hair came later.) The aim of what Hope calls the Great Underarm Campaign was to inform American womanhood of a problem that till then it didn't know it had, namely unsightly underarm hair.
Link.

Another example: vaginal cleansing advertisements. I am certain your vagina is not supposed to smell like a fresh meadow.

There is a BBC documentary called The Century of The Self which touches upon all of this. It is about Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's American nephew that; helped tie smoking to the woman's rights movement, increased Betty Croker sales by adding an egg to their instant mix, worked for Woodrow Wilson, and established the idea that people needed objects to express their inner self to others. Simply put, he was able to influence large amounts of people through linking products with the unconscious fears of people.
This is the exploitative foundation that modern advertising has been built on top of.

Verben Mit Präposition Übungen

Last week my Schriftlich Übungen professor gave us a work packet that he printed off from the Internet in order to have us practice German prepositional verbs. The file can be found here, and is hosted at Universitas Pendidikan, and Indonesian university.

Unfortunately, there is no answer key, so I have taken it upon myself to provide one at the bottom of the post! Have fun!

Previously: List of German Prepositional Verbs









Übung 1: 1.f,c 2.j,e 3.i,k 4.b 5.g,a 6.h,l 7.l,d  Übung 2: 1.darüber 2.damit 3.dafür 4.danach 5.damit 6.darum 7.darüber 8.daran 9.daran,darüber 10.daran Übung 3: 1.an ihn, 2.an ihn / daran 3.darauf 4.damit 5.darauf 6.darüber 7.dafür 8.darüber 9.nach dir 10.danach, damit an  Übung 4: 1.über, mich, auf 2.auf 3.damit / mit ihn 4.Woarn, An, über 5.bei 6.Worüber, Auf 7.darüber 8.mit ihr 9.darüber 10.bei, auf