Pink Floyd on German TV in 1971

This is a rare clip of Pink Floyd on German television cira 1971. Here you can see a lot of the unique equipment they use. For example, at around four minutes they demonstrate the use of one of their effects, which worked by controlling speakers based off of the movement of a 360 degree control stick.

Yes, more articles and original content are on the way, please be patient.

George Carlin Albums on Youtube

In 2008, during my senior year of high-school I skipped out on seeing George Carlin in Northampton Massachusetts even though I had listened to ever one of his albums. Tickets were forty dollars each, and I couldn't find anyone to go with. Two months later he died. I still haven't forgiven myself.

Why I am posting about him now (and have before) on this site is that Carlin often covered the theme of language, and it's role in society, and thought thought. In his Inside The Actors Studio episode, when asked "what turns you on"? He responded "Reading about language".

It seems someone has recently uploaded a wealth of George Carlin albums to YouTube including interviews, and audio books. What made Carlin such a great comedian, and ranked him with others such as Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks, and Richard Pryor, is that he was a social critic.

There have also been some interviews uploaded that I have never seen before, here is one of them:

The Boy Band Effect

Social proofing is a very powerful tool. There are all sorts of examples of this; another well known (academic) study was conducted by Milgram in 1969 (see source at bottom) where he had people stand around and look up at a window. Forty-five percent of the people on the street stopped if one person was looking up, eighty-five percent of the people on the street stopped if fifteen people were looking up. Social proof has also been used to cure phobias. In a 1967 study, children who were afraid of dogs were more likely to handle a dog themselves after watching another child play with the animal.

So whenever I see mountains of screaming fans I have to wonder if there isn't some social engineering happening. Do you remember that South Park episode where Cartmen goes to Chef for advice about making a boy band?

Cartmen: Chef, God told me I was to start a boy band and make ten million dollars. The problem is, it isn't working. I mean I feel the music burning inside me, but I just can't express it right, you know?

Chef: Well Eric I... I think you're just focusing in on the wrong thing. Boy bands aren't about music, they're created by corporations to make money, they're all based on the Garmlich effect.

Cartmen: What's the Garmlich Effect?

Chef: The law of physics that states if one girl screams for something, it will make other
girls scream and then it grows exponentially until all girls within a five mile radius are screaming.

Cartmen: But then how do boy bands use that?

Chef: All they do is make videos, showing tons and tons of girls screaming for the boy-band. Once you get them screaming you can't stop them, they're crazy. Ex.. except for Liz of course.

Cartmen: Thanks!

Chef: You're welcome! Now go away.

Cartmen: OK!

Chef: And a cucumber down the pants never hurt either!

Cartmen: Cucumber down the pants, got it.

I have to wonder if there is some truth to the fictional Garmlich effect. Have you ever seen the first Backstreet Boys, or The Beatles music video? They're all being chased, or surrounded by by hordes of screaming women! In all fairness N'Sync doesn't get chased until their second video, and there is only one woman. In their first video, they're all dancing together on a moon-base, 238 thousand miles from the closest female.

One cannot help but think that there is an artificial standard being created. I remember hearing about screaming fans being placed up front at Elvis and Frank Sinatra concerts, although I have no source for this.  Televangelists place plants in their audiences, why wouldn't music promoters do the same?

Social proofing is a heuristic, a shortcut to mental decisions. "If that worked for them, then the same must also work for me"! I would argue that this is the same behavior that makes men already in a relationship more attractive to other women. "If she's in a happy relationship with him, I can be in a happy relationship with him". Finally we may have an answer to the loaded question "why are all the good men taken"? There are of course other factors involved in this. It is a rule of logic for example, that the less of something there is, the more valuable it is.

Of course, our best defense against social proof is our knowledge of it. The book The Psychology of Influence has a lot more information on how marketers, and other people try to exploit these mental heuristics we are all prone to.I highly suggest this book as further reading material into the subject.

Bandura, A. (1967). The role of modeling processes in personality development. In W. W. Hartup & N. L. Smothergill (Eds.), The young child. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children.

Milgram, S., Bickman, L., Berkowitz, L. (1969).  Note on the drawing power of crowds of different size. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 13, 79-82.

Steven Pinker Returns to The Colbert Report

Yesterday, the Harvard Cognitive Scientist Steven Pinker returned to the Colbert Report for the third time. In order to plug his new book The Better Angels of Our Nature. According to the short plug, he argues that we are currently living in the least violent times ever. Can't wait to read the book when I get back state-side. 

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Ein Stusie Zimmer

I decided to take pictures of my room at Die Studentensiedlung (Stusie) in Freiburg for future students who might interested in living here. Unless your program makes you live here, in which case I guess you don't have much of a choice. Nevertheless it is student housing that will cost less than a dormitory in the U.S. And although you are not on campus, you are down the street from the lake-side park.

Here is my room. Yes, all rooms are singles. My favorite thing is the giant window that opens up. At least here they trust students enough to not put bars on the windows.

Back shot of my room. Some students just have a regular bookcase instead of the wall mount one. The shelves are adjustable. However this morning I tried to bring the bigger shelf down to desk-level so I could have some more work space, and almost broke it.  

One of my complaints is that I can hear my flatmates pee when my door is open.

Here is our kitchen. I share it with eight other people. We have two refrigerators, an oven and six stove tops. Students who live on the ground floor have more room in their kitchen for a small living room space.

This is our porch. We are only one floor up, but it makes for a nice view. It's a great place to eat, expecially with a large group of people.

All in all this is a nice place to be, especially compared to student housing in the U.S. However my only other complaint is that I was placed in a hall with three other international students. It is frustrating to come to a different country to learn another language only to find out that no one that lives with you can speak the language fluently. Oh well, at least I'm still in Germany! Hope this helps.