Friday, September 30, 2005

Pavlovian conditioning

On my way to Statistics I got into a little bit of a debate over whether or not Pavlov used a bell or a metronome. I was the one who was arguing against the "fact" that Pavlov used a bell in his experiments. What the person I was debating with used as an argument in support of the bell belief was that some books publish about the bell. As a counterpoint to that I pointed out that as it doesn't matter if some books publish as true it it's still not true. Where as it's known to be true that he, Pavlov, used metronomes among other things to condition the dogs.
 
A quote that I like that I believe pertains to this but I didn't use in the argument is "Reality doesn't care if you believe in it."-Boba Fett
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Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Yipes...

I went to the zoo this afternoon and before I left I had an odd experience. Ok before I get into that I'll explain why I was at the zoo in the first place because it's sort of important. The reason that I was at the zoo was that for my animal behavior class was going to observe animals and since captive animals is one class of animals that we're supposed to observe this works out well. On with the story, I finished my observation and had about fifteen minutes before the zoo closed so decided to explore and look and some of the animals that are indigones to the US. Anyway I stopped at the mountian lion display because one of them was fairly close to the edge of the cage. When I was watching the mountian lion it of course was watching me since we were standing relatively close to each other. Over the course of the five minutes or so the mountian lion seemed to take a serious interest in me or a scent I picked up over the course of the day. I moved along the display to see if it was me it seemed to have taken an interest in or the deer that was kadicorner to it's display. It was me. I made a game out of testing this. What I did was I walked one way and than the other way. It followed both ways. I repeated this whole process a few times I even threw in a variant I started walking one way one time about a minute into this little game and stopped and went the oppasite way instead. The mountian lion fell for it.What made this experience a little odder was that the mountian lion was doing what appeared to be a Flehmen response.
 
If it weren't for the Flehmen response the whole situation would have just been kind of weird and really amusing but with it and not knowing for sure how exactly to interprit the behavior the situation was really weird and amusing. Since the response took place that's why I said that I must have picked up a scent that the mountian lion found interesting. The only scents that I can think of that the mountian lion could have possible have found interesting was that my class got a fairly close look at a couple of the tigers. Also we got a fairly close look at some Asian elephants. I'm talking possibely a closer look than most people are likly to get. Now obviously we wern't in the cages with these animals but close enough. We got so close to the tigers that I was standing about a little over three feet from the cage. Ok maybe a little further since that was a rough estimate, and don't complain saying that you want a better estimate since you aren't going to get it.
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Monday, September 26, 2005

Rant stuck in the on position

 I seriously can't figure out why to a lot of people the homecoming football game is so important. In my opinion making a big deal about it is just an empty headed and worthless tradition. I don't mean to come across as harsh or bitter and if I do it's just because I just don't see any point behind electing homecoming royalty and making a big fuss over a game. If it's an identity issue than those who gain a sense of identity by cheering for a team that they aren't even on than those people need a life. Coming from someone who has no life that's pretty bad. And could someone please explain what the point is behind electing royalty by popular vote? This so called royalty doesn't even have any authority to change policy or anything as far as I know so why bother running for the title or even voting for them. The only reason that I can see for people to run for the title is to gain more attention to their group but how lame is that? They have to pay twenty-five dollars or something like that to enter their candidates so in my opinion those groups are just wasting their money.
 
Ok, I'll stop before I get really mad.
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Saturday, September 24, 2005

"Community, Identity, Stability."

I just finished reading "Brave New World" this past week. It's an alright book but I seriously doubt that I'll be putting it on my top five favorite books list. I'm not sure I like the ending, though I shouldn't have expected any other type of ending for the book. One of the reason that I read "Brave New World" in the first place was that I had to choose a book from a list to do a presentation in my British Literature II class and it happened to be on the list. Another reason that I read was that I had been wanting to read it since I had heard about it a couple semesters back in an intro to philosophy coarse.
 
I think that "Brave New World" is an interesting, albeit extremely odd, novel. If you are wanting to read "Brave New World" be prepared to be weirded out a little bit.
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Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Eh...

For those of you who didn't know, there is a new version of Opera available for download. In this version there are no ads, which I have mixed feelings about. The reason that I have mixed feelings about there being no ads is that I had gotten so used to there being ads that not seeing them there just seems odd. The reason that I'm glad that the ads aren't there is that they were a bit annoying at times since they weren't anything that I was typically interested in. But now that they aren't there Opera just doesn't seem like Opera.
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Monday, September 19, 2005

International Talk Like a Pirate Day, gar!

Aye, today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, gar! Be you obser'in' this fine day by talkin' like a pirate?
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Sunday, September 18, 2005

Football Frenzy

I ended up going to part of the football game yesterday. The reason that I bring this up is that I watched the Kansas City Chiefs/ Oakland Raiders game tonight. So between those two games that makes the most football that I've watched in what seems like forever and a day or at least since I lost interest in football a few years back. This in and of itself isn't bad but the thought occured to me just a couple minutes ago and I was vaguely surprised.
 
I didn't enter the drawing for the bribe money but did get to spend some time with some friends, eat food and have some fun doing said activities which is always good. Just as a side note I'm not anti-sports; I do like watching/playing basketball.
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Avast me hearties!

 I know that this is short notice but I thought that I'd mention that tomorrow is International Talk Like a Pirate Day.
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Friday, September 16, 2005

Go Team...Sort of.

It seems silly, to put it nicely, when a school has to bribe it's students to go to sporting events and then complain when they don't have school spirit. Ok, I'll explain. My school has in the past couple years adopted a program to put one hundred dollars per game into a pot and students who attend enter into the drawing. If that student isn't around when the drawing occurs than the pot rolls over to the next game and the whole process goes on until someone wins. This bribery carries on until the end of the basketball season. The school started doing this because they didn't think that enough people enough school spirit. How can they expect very many people to have school spirit when the football team sucks. Well actually they are better now than they have been in the past but still not outstanding. As if the whole bribery situation weren't laughable enough they (those who run the program) are still complain about people not having any school spirit and leaving after the drawing.
 
Hello!! What they think that if they wave the magic money wand over the problem that the problem would disappear? I imagine that if there is a spike in the attendance in sporting events it might be due to the possibility that there is money that can be won and not to the sudden sprouting of school spirit. I mean really I, like other college students, could do with a little more money, even if it does being bored by going to a football game. Football is fine if you like it but I personally don't want to go watch it, I have better things to do typically.
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Thursday, September 15, 2005

Oh crap!

Don't you just hate the feeling that you've lost something that you seriously shouldn't lose for example keys or wallet? I absolutly hate that feeling. It seems as if I'm almost always hiding stuff from myself and it's always unintenionally. Though I don't see why I would hide this kind of stuff from myself intentionally. I at the point that I think that, please excuse the almost cliche joke, I could hide my own Easter eggs. I just found what I was looking for so no worries, for now anyway.
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Sunday, September 11, 2005

Three for the price on none

I watched "Man with the Screaming Brain" tonight. My overall impression was that it wasn't as amusing as I had been hoping for but that's not to say that I didn't enoying at at all. I did find it extremely amusing at points. I did get a pleasant surprise before the movie actually started. That surprise was that there were two other Bruce Campbell's movies playing back to back. Those movies were "Army of Darkness" and "Alien Apocalypse." These movies are both typical Bruce Campbell movies, meaning that they are pretty much camp and thus lame. Oh, and did I mention that as a result they're funny as all get out.
 
Some people may not understand why I'm a fan of Bruce Campbell but hey who cares if this baffles them.
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Crappy machine

 Last night was laundry night for me. The reason that I bring this up is that when I went to put my cloths in the dryer I was jipped because the machine was out of order and yet there wasn't a note or anything on the dryer to indicate that people shouldn't use it. I'm not sure but I think that the campus policy is that if this happens there isn't a refund of money. Which to me qualifies as robbery. I want to stress right now that I'm not one hundred percent that that this is the policy. I don't know how many times this has happened to me and I've just written it off, not all that many but I've just forgotten. This time however there was an S.A.(Staff Assistant) you may know the position by different names, was around to see this and so I have a wittiness that works for the school to vouch that the crappy machine was broken when I got to it and might have a little bit more pull in getting me my .75 cents back. I know it's not that much but hey if I can get it back that's one more load of laundry I can dry.
 
Update: I got a notice in my mailbox today (Monday) saying to take the notice by the business office to get a refund of my .75 cents. I still think that the machinces on campus are still crap. It always seems as if at least one on the side of campus wher the dorms are is out of order, whether it be vending, the change machine, or washer/dryers.
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Monday, September 05, 2005

"Man with the Screaming Brain"

The SciFi channel is showing "Man with the Screaming Brain" this coming Saturday. I'm really excited about it to and since it's a Bruce Campbell movie I of course am going to watch it. I'll give quick run down of the movie's plot, all the while trying to not ruin the movie.
 
Bruce Campbell's character, William Cole, is a rich industrialist that is killed. There is another murder this time of a Russian taxi driver.  A mad scientist takes part of the brain of the taxi driver and puts it in the body of William Cole and brings the body to life. There is a conflict between the two halves of the not quite unified brains. The two brains/personalities do have a common goal, revenge. I won't go any further into the description.
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Saturday, September 03, 2005

Dogs on the prowl

When I came home this morning for Labor Day weekend I found out that my two dogs had killed two or three raccoons and treed two more. The closest things to describe what I felt right then are pride and excitment. My dogs haven't been taught to go after raccoons or other wild animals that come into the back yard they just do it on their own. I know of at least three other wild animals that they've gotten. What I mean by wild animals are animals like gophers or marmmots and now raccoons. They've never gone after other pets. Neither I or anyone else in my family would ever stand for that.
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Friday, September 02, 2005

Bigwords Part II

In early August I posted on Bigwords. Well, an example of why I enjoy the website so much is that I was required to buy a book for my Western Civ class. When I went to the campus book store to check on the price it was fifty two dollars new and forty dollars used. I seriously refuse to pay for anything that expensive. So I went to Bigwords and did a search for the book that I needed and found it for three dollars and seventy five cents total. True my copy is an edition back from what the professor is requiring us to buy but it's close enough and by far less expensive. I absolutly refuse to do business with the campus book store if I don't have to. Ok, I do rent books from the book store but that's only because it costs less to rent books. I do have my grips about that program that I probably won't ever get into.
 
I can't stress enough how awesome Bigwords really is. If you go to Bigwords and use it to buy something it will most likely save you money, which is most often a good thing.
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