Okay, I know that this is my "Psych" blog, but my first college love was Political Science, and it will always be important to me. This is why I have to vent on one of the worst choices for peace prize ever.
First off, let me state that I am not in Climate Change denial. I just think our time and money would be better spent preparing for natural disasters (caused by climate change or not) than hobbling our economies based on incomplete science.
The real tragedy in giving the Nobel to Al Gore is that his view of Global Warming is more likely to increase violence and anonymity in the world than reduce it. His view is based on a global Marxist perspective of "haves" (those causing the problem) and "have nots" (those on the receiving end of the disaster). This is the same ideology that Chavez of Venezuela, Ahmadinejad of Iran, and Castro of Cuba use to enslave their own populations. Sooner or later these renegades are going to start using Global Warming rhetoric to defy the world community.
Who thinks giving these guys more ammo against America will bring peace to the world?
Friday, October 12, 2007
Monday, October 8, 2007
Another First
A couple of months ago I did a post commenting on how, for the first time in my life, I had read a textbook from cover to cover. Well, that might not have been the best thing to brag about at 29 years of age, but this sure is:
For the first time in my life I SET THE CURVE ON AN EXAM!
I just finished my History and Systems of Psychology class and we went over the test from last Friday. Now, when I finished that test I did not feel confident about my score at all, and it was the first time I finished a test this semester not feeling good about my performance. There had been 64 questions, 2 of which I didn't remember the material at all, and about 12 of which were familiar, but I didn't know for sure what the answer was. As we sat down in class today the professor states that as a class we did good, and that he had adjusted the scores so that our raw scores would be out of 52 questions instead of 64 to set an accurate distribution. So I sat there in agony as they handed out our tests (waiting for a graded test to be handed out is one of the areas of my life where I have no control whatsoever over my internal stress and anxiety). Low and behold, I got a 53.
It turned out that my own personal assessment following the test was pretty accurate, I mean I did get 11 wrong, but fortunately for me the test was hard enough that no one else did better than that.
For the first time in my life I SET THE CURVE ON AN EXAM!
I just finished my History and Systems of Psychology class and we went over the test from last Friday. Now, when I finished that test I did not feel confident about my score at all, and it was the first time I finished a test this semester not feeling good about my performance. There had been 64 questions, 2 of which I didn't remember the material at all, and about 12 of which were familiar, but I didn't know for sure what the answer was. As we sat down in class today the professor states that as a class we did good, and that he had adjusted the scores so that our raw scores would be out of 52 questions instead of 64 to set an accurate distribution. So I sat there in agony as they handed out our tests (waiting for a graded test to be handed out is one of the areas of my life where I have no control whatsoever over my internal stress and anxiety). Low and behold, I got a 53.
It turned out that my own personal assessment following the test was pretty accurate, I mean I did get 11 wrong, but fortunately for me the test was hard enough that no one else did better than that.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
An Argument For Monogamy
This last week in my Human Sexuality class we were discussing difference in sexual behaviors and preferences between men and women. We already discussed gender differences in general a couple of weeks ago, so this time we were only talking about sexual behaviors specifically.
During the course of our discussion our professor brought up a theory that argues women are biologically driven to cheat during their most fertile days of the month. Some of you may have heard of this study before where you have women rank the attractiveness of various pictures of men during different points of their cycle. An alternative method is to have them take pictures of men on a computer that can be manipulated to adjust basic features (jaw line, brow, nose, etc.). What they've found is when women are menstruating or during normal days they prefer men's faces that are slightly feminine; however, when women ovulate they prefer faces that are more strongly masculine.
The researchers who did this study then argued that women must have a biological drive in them to find spouses who can take care of them, but when it comes to getting pregnant, may secretly look elsewhere for better genes. (A sad fact of DNA genealogy projects is that there is about a 10% paternity discrepancy, meaning about one in ten people are not biologically related to the man they think is their father).
I was not about to let this theory go unchallenged though so I asked the teacher about a specific study I had read about once that presented a biological argument for monogamy. He had never heard of it before but told me if I found it he would like to read it. Well, find it I did, and since I can't link to it because I found it on one of those proprietary campus search engines, I'll summarize it for you all here:
The study was done at the University of Adelaide in Australia to try and figure out why some women with perfectly healthy reproductive organs had repeated miscarriages. What they discovered was that their partners didn't produce a specific protein in their semen (only about 1% of semen is sperm). When trying to figure out what this protein is they realized it had implications beyond simply miscarriages. You see a pregnancy is a lot like an organ transplant, it is a body of foreign material growing inside of a human, and human immune systems do not like foreign material. What they discovered is that this protein tells a women's body that the DNA from her husband is permissible and not a hazard to her system. The thing is though, is that it doesn't work perfectly until there has been a critical mass. One thing that I think a lot of us know is that for a good number of people, that a first pregnancy is a bit tricky in terms of conception. In addition, if a women becomes pregnant within 4 months of her first sexual encounter with a specific man, the incidence of preeclampsia is 40%, while those who waited 12 months or more only had an incidence of 5%. Preeclampsia is in terms of symptoms very similar to organ transplant failure.
Well, I hope you all found that interesting. My professor did, I got 2 extra credit points for my effort. Of course, it would mean a whole lot more to me if this information became a part of his regular lecture.
During the course of our discussion our professor brought up a theory that argues women are biologically driven to cheat during their most fertile days of the month. Some of you may have heard of this study before where you have women rank the attractiveness of various pictures of men during different points of their cycle. An alternative method is to have them take pictures of men on a computer that can be manipulated to adjust basic features (jaw line, brow, nose, etc.). What they've found is when women are menstruating or during normal days they prefer men's faces that are slightly feminine; however, when women ovulate they prefer faces that are more strongly masculine.
The researchers who did this study then argued that women must have a biological drive in them to find spouses who can take care of them, but when it comes to getting pregnant, may secretly look elsewhere for better genes. (A sad fact of DNA genealogy projects is that there is about a 10% paternity discrepancy, meaning about one in ten people are not biologically related to the man they think is their father).
I was not about to let this theory go unchallenged though so I asked the teacher about a specific study I had read about once that presented a biological argument for monogamy. He had never heard of it before but told me if I found it he would like to read it. Well, find it I did, and since I can't link to it because I found it on one of those proprietary campus search engines, I'll summarize it for you all here:
The study was done at the University of Adelaide in Australia to try and figure out why some women with perfectly healthy reproductive organs had repeated miscarriages. What they discovered was that their partners didn't produce a specific protein in their semen (only about 1% of semen is sperm). When trying to figure out what this protein is they realized it had implications beyond simply miscarriages. You see a pregnancy is a lot like an organ transplant, it is a body of foreign material growing inside of a human, and human immune systems do not like foreign material. What they discovered is that this protein tells a women's body that the DNA from her husband is permissible and not a hazard to her system. The thing is though, is that it doesn't work perfectly until there has been a critical mass. One thing that I think a lot of us know is that for a good number of people, that a first pregnancy is a bit tricky in terms of conception. In addition, if a women becomes pregnant within 4 months of her first sexual encounter with a specific man, the incidence of preeclampsia is 40%, while those who waited 12 months or more only had an incidence of 5%. Preeclampsia is in terms of symptoms very similar to organ transplant failure.
Well, I hope you all found that interesting. My professor did, I got 2 extra credit points for my effort. Of course, it would mean a whole lot more to me if this information became a part of his regular lecture.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Another Interesting Excerpt from one of my textbooks
This is from my Abnormal Psych book for you ladies:
(Hint: read it slow, and read the whole quote, this one is pretty technical)
Please do me a favor, the next time your husband calls you "hysterical," and you throw this information back in his face, don't tell him you learned it from me.
(Hint: read it slow, and read the whole quote, this one is pretty technical)
- Hippocrates (Greek Physician from about 400 BC) also coined the word "hysteria" to describe a concept he learned about from the Egyptians, who had identired what we now call "somatoform disorders." In these disorders, the physical symptoms appear to be the result of an organic pathology for which no organic cause can be found, such as paralysis and some kinds of blindness. Because these disorders occurred primarily in women, the Egyptians (and Hippocrates) mistakenly assumed that they were restricted to women. They also presumed the cause: The empty uterus wandered to various parts of the body in search of conception (the Greek term for Uterus is "hysteron"). Numerous physical symptoms reflected the location of the wandering uterus. The prescribed cure might be marriage, or occasionally, fumigation of the vagina to lure the uterus back to its natural location. Knowledge of physiology eventually disproved the wandering uterus theory; however, the tendency to stigmatize dramatic women as "hysterical" continued unabated well into the 1970s, when mental health professionals became sensitive to the prejudicial stereotype the term implied. Somataform disorders (and the traits associated with them) are not limited to one sex or the other.
Please do me a favor, the next time your husband calls you "hysterical," and you throw this information back in his face, don't tell him you learned it from me.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Never Again
I saw this post on my Jenni and Brad's blog and it got me thinking.
Since going back to school I haven't made it to the gym as frequently as I was before. So I went through some old photos to remind myself why I need to go to the gym.
This is me maxed out at 210 in March 2005:
Currently I vary between 175-180, but I was below 170 earlier this year.
I guess I need to start being careful again and get some gym time back in my schedule. Thanks for the reminder Brad.
Since going back to school I haven't made it to the gym as frequently as I was before. So I went through some old photos to remind myself why I need to go to the gym.
This is me maxed out at 210 in March 2005:
Currently I vary between 175-180, but I was below 170 earlier this year.I guess I need to start being careful again and get some gym time back in my schedule. Thanks for the reminder Brad.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Sunday, September 9, 2007
PSYC 4470
I've been sitting on this blog post for a while now, but finally got around to writing down my thoughts on my PSYC 4470 class, aka Psychology of Sexual Behavior.
Now, first of all, let me state that I wanted to take Psychology of Marital Adjustment. Unfortunately that class was only offered at 6:00 pm on Tuesdays, and being a one-day-a-week class, it goes until 8:50 pm. That would have been acceptable except for the fact that my Tuesday morning class gets out at 9:45 am. So in order to avoid being stuck in Denton for 10 hours between classes, I opted for the Sex class, which starts at 2:00.
For those of you wondering, this class would definitely be rated "R" if anyone ever made such a scale. In fact, the teacher warned us that one class will be "NC-17" since he will show a sex instruction video that leaves nothing to the imagination. Fortunately, that is the only lecture in the course that is optional, and will not be in the tests. Also, I've read ahead through the textbook, and it is to say the least from a "liberal" mindset.
Now, let me tell you about some of the students in the class. In our first class as everyone was sitting down I saw a guy walk in who was wearing socks with his Birkenstocks. This caught my attention because I always got annoyed by the Californians at BYU who would say that socks and sandals was a fashion faux pas only preformed in Provo. Then I looked over the rest of this guy: his hair hadn't been washed in days and he wore it in a pony tail, I think he was trying to grow a mustache but couldn't, and was wearing a white t-shirt that had stains all over it. As the teacher [totally unrelated: Laura just turned on Christmas music, feel free to mock her] was asking what professions we students are interested in he asked if anyone was planing on becoming a sex therapist (think Barbara Streisand in Meet the Fockers) this guy's hand shot up so fast, he looked like a preschooler being asked "who wants candy!?!" During the class he kept on interrupting the professor asking about theories no one in the class seemed to have ever heard of. The professor professor handled himself quite professionally, and kept on replying that these theories went beyond what we'd discuss in this class, and kept on asking him to save such question until after the lecture. Fortunately this individual did not attend our second class, so I'm hoping he dropped the course.
During the second class though, despite the weirdo being gone, several other students in the class surprised me with their attitudes. The lecture was on the specific techniques used to study sex, which is by far one of the hardest areas in both psychology and medicine to study properly. We had just finished discussing interview and survey techniques, so the teacher asked the class who would be willing to participate in a detailed interview with a researcher. In our class of about 100 all but about two raised their hands (myself included, I'm willing to sit through an embarrassing interview in order to make sure that our conservative viewpoints aren't overly underrepresented). Then the teacher asked who would be willing to participate in a laboratory experiment . . . seven people raised their hands, including the guy I was sitting next to. The professor was even surprised by that, and he said that in previous classes he rarely had more then two people raise their hands.
Given all that information, some of you may be wondering why I'm sticking to this class. I actually have several reasons. First of all, it is very relevant to what I want to do as a professional. My end goal is marriage and adolescent therapy, and no doubt sex tends to cause a lot of problems in both of those areas of life. We'd all love to assume that things are fine, but sometimes big problems do occur. Whether it is something as dramatic as a teenage being raped, or something that may seem innocuous, such as using sex as bribery in marriage, I need to be educated in what the problems can be, what to look for, and how to help clients find solutions. The second reason is more general, the scriptures teach that we need to seek for light and truth. Unfortunately, too many in our church subscribe to the old Victorian notions of sex, which are extremely unhealthy, while at the other extreme we are surrounded by a world that is as dark and stupid as it could be regarding sex. Somewhere in the middle is truth, and I think we need to find it.
I'll leave it at that, I'm interested in any thoughts you may all have. Let me just say for any of you who read this, and find yourselves wanting more information, I recommend The Act of Marriage. It was written by a minister and his wife and provides good information balanced against Christian beliefs.
Now, first of all, let me state that I wanted to take Psychology of Marital Adjustment. Unfortunately that class was only offered at 6:00 pm on Tuesdays, and being a one-day-a-week class, it goes until 8:50 pm. That would have been acceptable except for the fact that my Tuesday morning class gets out at 9:45 am. So in order to avoid being stuck in Denton for 10 hours between classes, I opted for the Sex class, which starts at 2:00.
For those of you wondering, this class would definitely be rated "R" if anyone ever made such a scale. In fact, the teacher warned us that one class will be "NC-17" since he will show a sex instruction video that leaves nothing to the imagination. Fortunately, that is the only lecture in the course that is optional, and will not be in the tests. Also, I've read ahead through the textbook, and it is to say the least from a "liberal" mindset.
Now, let me tell you about some of the students in the class. In our first class as everyone was sitting down I saw a guy walk in who was wearing socks with his Birkenstocks. This caught my attention because I always got annoyed by the Californians at BYU who would say that socks and sandals was a fashion faux pas only preformed in Provo. Then I looked over the rest of this guy: his hair hadn't been washed in days and he wore it in a pony tail, I think he was trying to grow a mustache but couldn't, and was wearing a white t-shirt that had stains all over it. As the teacher [totally unrelated: Laura just turned on Christmas music, feel free to mock her] was asking what professions we students are interested in he asked if anyone was planing on becoming a sex therapist (think Barbara Streisand in Meet the Fockers) this guy's hand shot up so fast, he looked like a preschooler being asked "who wants candy!?!" During the class he kept on interrupting the professor asking about theories no one in the class seemed to have ever heard of. The professor professor handled himself quite professionally, and kept on replying that these theories went beyond what we'd discuss in this class, and kept on asking him to save such question until after the lecture. Fortunately this individual did not attend our second class, so I'm hoping he dropped the course.
During the second class though, despite the weirdo being gone, several other students in the class surprised me with their attitudes. The lecture was on the specific techniques used to study sex, which is by far one of the hardest areas in both psychology and medicine to study properly. We had just finished discussing interview and survey techniques, so the teacher asked the class who would be willing to participate in a detailed interview with a researcher. In our class of about 100 all but about two raised their hands (myself included, I'm willing to sit through an embarrassing interview in order to make sure that our conservative viewpoints aren't overly underrepresented). Then the teacher asked who would be willing to participate in a laboratory experiment . . . seven people raised their hands, including the guy I was sitting next to. The professor was even surprised by that, and he said that in previous classes he rarely had more then two people raise their hands.
Given all that information, some of you may be wondering why I'm sticking to this class. I actually have several reasons. First of all, it is very relevant to what I want to do as a professional. My end goal is marriage and adolescent therapy, and no doubt sex tends to cause a lot of problems in both of those areas of life. We'd all love to assume that things are fine, but sometimes big problems do occur. Whether it is something as dramatic as a teenage being raped, or something that may seem innocuous, such as using sex as bribery in marriage, I need to be educated in what the problems can be, what to look for, and how to help clients find solutions. The second reason is more general, the scriptures teach that we need to seek for light and truth. Unfortunately, too many in our church subscribe to the old Victorian notions of sex, which are extremely unhealthy, while at the other extreme we are surrounded by a world that is as dark and stupid as it could be regarding sex. Somewhere in the middle is truth, and I think we need to find it.
I'll leave it at that, I'm interested in any thoughts you may all have. Let me just say for any of you who read this, and find yourselves wanting more information, I recommend The Act of Marriage. It was written by a minister and his wife and provides good information balanced against Christian beliefs.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)