Okay, so I'm still alive. In the last ten days, there's been a lot of vacationing going on. There was the drive to Michigan (2 days, it is a LONG trip). Then there were the days leading up to Christmas. And then there were the days after Christmas. And that is all.

It's been great working 0 hours per week instead of 100 hours a week. It's also been great spending time with my family and being back home. That's all for now!

Before about three days ago, Barney had never howled. My previous video showed what happened when I 'sang' in his ear.

Well, I sing and play my acoustic guitar all the time. Barney sometimes looks annoyed, but he's never said anything about it or made any noise whatsoever while I was playing. Today, I pulled out the electric guitar, which he'd never seen before. Turns out, he likes poor approximations of Jefferson Airplane. Never mind my lack of ability. Keep your eye on the dog.

Here was the feedback I got for the class that I wrote that paper for (note: this came in an email with no subject line and with no other information whatsoever--no hello, no goodbye, no nothing):

Social Cognition Course Grades

Hypotheses A

Presentations A

First Manuscript B

Second Manuscript B

Course Grade B

As you can see, the 100+ hours of work (and 36 additional pages) I put into the revision did not improve my grade. What you don't see is the fact that a "B" is lowest grade you can get in my program and still pass. It is also the lowest grade I have ever gotten in any subject at any level.

This from the same professor who is the graduate program adviser. From the same professor who made me re-take Stats I (despite having taken Stats I and II previously) and will make me re-take Stats II. From the same professor who made us come to class when the university was closed for fall break and all classes were canceled. From the same professor who assigns a paper--every year--that ruins Thanksgiving break. From the same professor who runs a 2.5 hour meeting every week that could easily be finished in 50 minutes. From the same professor from whom I have to take three more classes in the next three years.

I'm not surprised by my grade, but my current question is this: can I put up with this guy for 4.5 more years, or should I quit and get a job?

After hundreds of hours of work, I finished the paper (almost, I still have to read through it and do the editing, etc., but that can wait until tomorrow). It's not as good as it would have been if I had a month to do it, but at least it's finished. For now. I'll have to work on it again if I try and publish it or use it as thesis/dissertation material. In reality, I never want to see it again. All 60 pages of it can be boiled down to what you see below.

Undergraduate students (n = 162) thought and wrote about a time they were excluded or a time they were accepted. The students rated photos of men and women on 9 dimensions of attractiveness, on anger/aggression, and on the desire to befriend the person in the photo. The students also estimated their ability to attract a mate and rated their degree of agreement with statements about their desire for sexual partners. Compared to the students who wrote about acceptance, the students who wrote about exclusion gave higher ratings on humor, physical strength, social influence, and facial attractiveness, and they gave similar ratings on the other dimensions. The students who wrote about exclusion believed it would be easier to attract a mate and expressed a greater desire for both short-term and long-term sexual partners.

The results paint a pretty nasty picture about what happens to people who are subjected to social exclusion. They show that even remembering a time when you were excluded (and then writing about it) makes you think other people are more attractive, makes you think you're more likely to find a mate, and makes you want to have sex more often.

Turns out, social exclusion is just like beer. Or so I'm told.

I'm not sure what they were doing before I came in the room, but I'm pretty sure Mowgli knows it was inappropriate.

This is what happens when you write a paper for too long and the dog won't leave you alone.

I mentioned a certain professor who ruined everyone's Thanksgiving break by assigning a paper that could only be completed over the break. I did not mention that I have to take this class, with this professor, every year for the next three years. So I have that to look forward to.

The professor gave back my paper on Tuesday with 'suggested' revisions. I say 'suggested' because he insinuated that he would throw it in the trash if I didn't make them. So nice to be threatened with failure. Anywho, I have about three more days to do the revisions, and they're going to take so much time that I won't be able to study for my exams to nearly the extent that I would prefer. It's a good thing I prepared during the semester and don't need to 'cram'. The probable scenario is that I end up getting lower grades than I would prefer but that I don't get so hurt that I flunk out of my program. I do say probable scenario.

I'm about 1/3 to 1/2 of the way through my revisions now, and my paper has already grown from its initial 24 pages to a still-expanding status of 33. It would have been a pretty good paper if I'd had a month or two to do it. Finishing in a total of two weeks, though, is going to result in about 50 pages of trash. Good times.

You may hear a news story today about a man who threw tomatoes at Sarah Palin while she was doing a book signing in a mall. I just want to go on record saying that it wasn't me.

Our city is in the middle of a metropolitan area with millions of residents. Our house is in the middle of a city of hundreds of thousands of residents. I just looked out the window and happened to see two people riding horses, bareback, down the sidewalk and across all of my neighbors lawns across the street.

This is the South.

The weather has turned 'cold' here in the South, the high temperature today is only expected to get into the 40s. It even snowed (big flakes) for 40 minutes this morning during my train ride to school. I did not expect snow in early December, especially given it was 70 degrees two days ago.

I've been busy visting with family and writing a paper that was ridiculously assigned so that it could only be completed over Thanksgiving break, so my moments to write have been few.

Barney has been teething lately, so we've been giving him rawhide bones to chew on to try and keep him away from more important things like our remote controls and our cats. Because he loves the bones, it's been pretty effective in limiting his inappropriate chewing, but I guess I didn't realize the true extent of his passion until today. He'd gnawed down his old bone to pretty much a nub, so we decided to give him a new one. He got really excited when he saw it, and when Sarah gave it to him, he grabbed it and ran to one of our upholstered chairs to start chewing as soon as possible. Then, with all the excitement, a little pee squirted out.

A little part of me wishes that I could get so excited from everyday things that a little pee would come out.

Things I did yesterday, a long list.

5:30 AM
Ate breakfast.
Edited the materials for a new study.
Made soup.
Went to church.
Got gas.
Went to Costco.
Ate soup.
Cleaned and rearranged the pantry.
Ate 1/4 of an Oreo cheesecake.
Cleaned and rearranged the garage.
Raked and composted leaves.
Mowed the lawn.
Hung a clock.
Hung a sign.
Reinstalled (properly) a door.
Installed a light fixture on a ceiling fan.
Ate a snack.
Watched TV.
Went to bed.
9:30 PM

This morning, after dropping me off at the train station, Sarah dropped Barney off for his mandatory neutering (the shelter where we adopted him will 'prosecute' us if we don't do it by December something or other). Also this morning, the bus had a distinct urine smell. Wait a minute... Somebody call the AP!!! Neutering your dog causes city buses to smell like pee!!! I've made a discovery!!!!

Correlation does not mean causation. Call the AP.

I got an email the other day from my university saying that they were going to raise tuition next year about 6%. Though I wish they wouldn't do it, I recognize that it's pretty typical. For example, the AP reported today that the regents of the University of California (UCLA, UC Berkley, etc.) announced that they were raising tuition 32%, marking a threefold increase in tuition in the last decade! Atrocious, right?

Then I bothered to actually look at some numbers. Next year, it will cost students in the UC system about $10,000 for tuition only (no room and board). At my school, it will cost undergrads $30,000 for tuition only. For some reason, I'm not feeling all that sorry for all those who are complaining in California.

Every workday for the past few weeks, I've been leaving home around 6:45 AM and getting back home around 6:45 PM. Part of this is due to the public transit schedule, but a larger part is due to the fact that I've been running a couple of studies and doing a ton of data analysis on top of my regular workload. The funny thing is that I'm pretty sure I've been enjoying it.

I've never been excited about doing research, but I've not exactly hated it either. In the past, I'd always seen it as a necessary step in the long path to a college teaching position, and I've been involved in an acceptable amount of research even though I always would have preferred to have been learning something in class. As it turns out, I now find my classes to be pretty much getting in the way of my research and my own learning that I'd like to be doing on my own, being directed by my own self.

In reality, I think what really happened is that I found out that when I do research, there's pretty much no one who gets to tell me what to do. Sure I have to follow rules and ask for permissions and submit to the wishes of my various advisers, but there's also no one telling me what topics I have to investigate or exactly how I have to go about investigating them.

Unfortunately, I've been sick for a week, so I doubt that I can sustain my current pace without some ill effects. But even if I get burned out soon, I'm sleeping 8+ hours a night, eating 3 meals (and one snack!) a day, and playing basketball a few times a week when I'm not sick. So it's not like I'd be better off spending my free time watching TV instead of doing work.

On the other hand, in a month, or a year, or a decade, I'm sure I'll want to throw all the world's research into the garbage and open a bakery. So goes the cyclical nature of life.

In the news today:

President Obama bowed to the emperor of Japan, and lots of conservatives are mad. The American leader should stand tall in front of other leaders, they say. Personally, I applaud diplomacy with our allies. I reject the idea that our leader should be the supreme authortarian leader of the world. If we were talking about Lord Voldamort of Iran, on the other hand...

Despite the buzz from her new book, Sarah Palin's popularity and credibility continue their descent into the abyss. A real shame. Too bad no one predicted a year ago that she wasn't qualified to lead a girl scout troop, much less a tiny city, much less a sparsely populated state (a job she quit to make money on a book tour), much less a country. Oh wait, someone did say something like that. A lot. It was me.

A new study on some people from some island off the coast of nowhere says that you can predict a person's future criminality by their startle response at three years of age (whether they jump when you startle them with a loud noise). Criminal masterminds don't jump as much. Point one: a relationship between two things doesn't mean one causes the other. Point two: there's no point two--A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TWO VARIABLES DOESN'T MEAN YOU CAN INFER CAUSALITY. I am not going to say this again. (Yes I am.)

There was another likely heart attack on the train this morning. It was in another train car, so I didn't really see what happened, but there was one major difference: on three different occasions, the conductor announced over the intercom that there was a medical emergency, and he asked if there was a doctor or nurse on board. This call for help could have been because the staff on the train was better prepared after the last time, but I also couldn't help but wonder if it was because this person was White and affluent (I saw him when they wheeled him off the train), whereas the last one was Black and homeless (who was forced--literally--to walk off the train). According to the conductor, the White guy didn't even want medical attention. The Black guy couldn't even move and could barely speak.

On the bus today, the bus driver almost rear-ended a car in front of us. The bus driver's response: "I need a drink." Later the driver announced to the bus that her sister just had twins. From an adult female in the back of the bus, "Ain't her butt hurt?!" I had to try and stifle my laughter because I was sitting next to one of my professors. Good times on public transit.

The other day at the gas station, a van cut in front of me in line. I ended up at a pump at the same time as the van anyway, so I wans't terribly concerned. When an older gentleman (65ish) got out of the passenger seat, I laughingly said, "You kind of cut in front of me there, sir." His response? "You weren't in line, and you're dumb!"

Wow. Really? So I went about pumping my gas, and as I thought about it, I figured that they (an older woman was driving) could have made an honest mistake. I went over to say that it was ok if it had been an accident. "It wasn't an accident!," he said as me moved menacingly toward me. Really? Menacingly?

Then the woman got out of the car, walked right up to my face (all 4'10" of her), and gave me the finger. "Go back to your car, a**hole!," she shrilled as she told her husband to stop talking to "that piece of trash." I told him I was sorry for the life he must be living, and I walked away.

She followed me to my car, wrote down my license plate number, and yelled back to her husband, "Ohhhh, and he's a Yankee!!!" As if that explained my 'behavior.' Sorry to tell you lady: that war is over, and the Yankees won, so I guess that makes us all Yankees. Even those of us who are missing some teeth and are filled with vitriol and spite and perhaps demons or turds of some sort. I told her to "have a nice day," and I drove off.

In an unrelated matter, if anyone wants to get me a Taser for Christmas, I wouldn't turn it down.

I noticed an unkempt man on the train this morning. He stood out because I've started to be able to recognize all the regular riders. He was wearing a dirty sweatshirt with the hood up. He looked back at me with bloodshot eyes as I walked past him to my usual seat. He looked troubled. A few stops later, he staggered past me to exit the train, and I briefly wondered where he might be going.

I turned my attention back to the book I was studying, but as the train pulled away, I heard and felt a loud thump, kind of like the noise the wheels of a plane make when they're pulled back into the plane's body after takeoff. "New train noise," I thought.

I didn't think more of it, but a man in front of me pivoted in his seat to look and see what was going on. "Hey!", he said. I turned around and saw the man crumpled motionless on the floor of the train, about a foot behind my seat. He looked dead. He wasn't. He was clutching his skinny left arm and contorted in pain. He hadn't been drunk when he staggered by me before, he had been having a heart attack.

I whipped out my cell phone to call 911. It wasn't on. By the time it had booted up, the train attendant had made his way to us and was radioing dispatch to have the paramedics meet us at the next stop, which wasn't for about 10 minutes because we were in the middle of nowhere, not even near a road. It felt like eternity. He was clearly getting worse. His lips were turning blue. I thought about yelling across the train to see if anyone had an aspirin to give him, but I didn't want to make it worse if he wasn't having a heart attack or was already taking something else.

I led him in some cognitive-behavioral pain reduction breathing exercises instead. His lips lost the blue tinge, but that might have been a coincidence. When we finally reached the next station the paramedics were gruff as they examined him, helped him to his feet, and made their way out of the train. I couldn't see any more as the train pulled away.

The other passengers resumed their usual morning conversations about TV and the weather and what they'd had for breakfast, and the train schedule. I tried to go back to my book. I could only stare at the pages.

I've recently become a firm believer in the idea that sale prices are worthless indicators of something's value. Yes, there are times when you can get discounts on products, but stores don't generally do things for the benefit of their customers. So, when something is marked down from $199.99 to $99.00, it's unlikely that you're actually getting something worth more than $100.00. That being said...

Yesterday Sarah and I went mattress shopping. We weren't intent on buying anything, but we do have two spare bedrooms that we eventually wanted to get beds for. Long story short, I used some negotiation techniques I've been studying. I walked around the store and made the salesman chase us every time he tried to show us something. I offered to buy two if the price was good. I offered to buy a manufacturer's sample. I allowed him to believe he offended me (which got me the manager's discount). I even asked for a better price flat out--and got it--and then asked for a better price flat out again--and got it. All told, we ended up with one high end mattress, one quality mattress, two sets of box springs, two frames, delivery, and setup. Total listed price: $2,000+. Price we paid: $780.

Yet as much as I worked the salesman, I couldn't help but wonder if somehow he was still working me. I'm sure he was.

I've been running a study all day today in a computer lab on campus, and all day, I've felt like I was on some sort of extended caffeine buzz: I've been flitting around like a hummingbird and talking about 2x as fast as I normally do. Me on fast-forward. Me on research.

I guess there's something strangely exhilarating about waiting to see if the results of the study I've designed are going to turn out like I think. Because if they do, in the next few days, I'll have scientifically proven (or maybe 'scientifically suggested' would be more accurate) something about human nature that has never before been scientifically proven/suggested--which is the point of all scientific research, not something special about my study.

Worst case scenario, the data will show that I was wrong, and I'll get some sort of research hangover. I'll deal with that as it comes.

I read a news report today about some research that was recently done investigating the connection between a high fat diet and symptoms of depression. The results indicated that a high fat diet is connected with increased levels of depression, such that those people with more depressive symptoms also tended to eat the highest proportions of fat. The news article suggested that, obviously, a diet high in fat causes depression.

No researcher with even a rudimentary knowledge of statistics would ever contend that the results of this study could even begin to suggest that a high fat diet causes depression (which may or may not be the case, but this research can't prove anything either way); however, the media likes to grab these stories for quick and easy headlines.

Here's a news headline for you: Pirates Cause Global Climate Change. As everyone knows, piracy has been on the rise. So has climate change. Therefore, pirates cause climate change. Right? Right??!!?? But wait, maybe there's a third variable. Maybe there's some other explanation. Maybe depressed people try to make themselves feel better by eating lots of Doritos. What about that? What about that!??

IF ANYONE OUT THERE IS LISTENING, A SIMPLE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TWO VARIABLES DOES NOT MEAN ONE CAUSES THE OTHER.

When we brought Barney home from the shelter, he was so sick he was almost dead. We didn't know this, and so we thought his energy level was always going to be on the low side. In addition, they told us that he was basically full grown at a little over 5 pounds. So you can imagine our confusion that his recent level of energy and resulting mischief have been INCREDIBLE, and also that he has been growing--as of yesterday, he weighs 9 pounds. To find out how much bigger and more active he could get. I decided to research his breeds (Toy Fox Terrier and Papillon, which they had guessed at the shelter) with a little more depth.

Imagine my surprise to see that he is already WAY taller than he's supposed to be, and he's also substantially heavier (and he's skinny). This brought me to the revelation that the shelter was probably wrong about his breed. So I did some research. Hmm: long legs, very active, likes to hunt and torment cats, good watch dog, very smart, needs mental and physical exercise, tries to be the boss, etc.

I'd known all along that he looked like some types of Jack Russell Terrier, only he has always had long legs (and some of you commented on this as well), but what I didn't know is that THERE IS A LONG-LEGGED VARIETY OF THE JACK RUSSELL TERRIER, known as the Parson Russell Terrier. Crap. Double crap--JRTs are known for being FULL of energy (explains his need for a minimum of 2 walks per day), prideful (think they're the biggest dogs on the block), bossy, and rash. Some people call them Jack Russell Terrorists. On they plus side, they're incredibly smart, brave, loyal, and skilled (originally bred for farm/hunting work), and they can be tamed with VERY consistent training.

So, the good news for Barney is that, even though we would NEVER have brought him home if we had known that his ancestry included at least part JRT (I suspect that if he isn't a purebred, he may be a "Jack Rat"--half JRT half Rat Terrier), but we like him enough to train him to stop being a jerk.

Everyone in the department is really big on Halloween, and there's even a costume contest going on today. I figured I'd better participate, so I taped a piece of paper to my shirt with a bunch of obscure questions on it (e.g., Kenya is the world's largest exporter of what?; In 1773, the British Parliament passed what act that enraged American colonialists?; etc.). The answer to all the questions was "tea," making me a "tea test."

What's interesting here is that a t-test is a statistical procedure used in the social sciences to determine if the difference between two groups (e.g., people in a room that smells like oranges vs. people in a room that smells like nothing) on some dependent variable (e.g., amount of money kept) is likely to have occurred by chance alone. In other words, a t-test tells you if your experiment worked.

In other words, I am a nerd for Halloween.

I played basketball at the rec center today with some guys who mostly spoke Spanish. Basketball is basketball, but I did notice something peculiar: the guys kept saying things to each other like, "tiene tu novio" and "ven a tu novio." I understood the phrases to mean, "have your boyfriend," and "see your boyfriend." I got the idea (i.e., guard your man, see your man), but I guess I never really understood how much of a Romance language Spanish actually is--even in basketball, there is abundant, unavoidable, systemic man love.

Also, here's my take on the orange scent experiment: the scent of oranges, or any food for that matter, signals something very important to our brains--namely, it signals that important resources are nearby and are probably accessible and abundant, and if our brains believe there is a safe supply of resources, then there's a lot less pressure to have to hoard other resources, such as money that belongs to someone else.

Picture this: You're in a room participating in a psychology experiment. An experimenter comes in and gives you $12 in cash. The experimenter says that this cash was taken from someone in another room, someone you'll never meet, and your job is to decide how to fairly divide the money between that person and yourself. You could give it all back. You could divide it evenly. You could keep all $12 and send $0 back. What do you do?

As it turns out, what you do depends in part on what the rooms smells like. See, in this experiment half of the participants were in a room that smelled like oranges. The other half were in a room that didn't really smell like anything, but either way, people in both conditions didn't notice any particular smells. What's super interesting is the result: the group in the orange flavored room gave an average of $5.33 back, while the group in the regular room gave $2.81.

So the question, then, is why does a non-detectable smell of oranges lead to more fairness?

The secret of the triangles is that there is no secret of the triangles. They're just triangles moving around a screen. The interesting thing is that you're still thinking about them. What could they mean? What's this about? What just happened? What's happening now?

The experiment I'm going to be running a little later has to do with how the events going on in our social world influence what we see in neutral stimuli--like triangles moving around on a screen. It's like a Rorschach test, only different.

I said there would be triangles. Here are triangles.

I saw two brilliant shooting stars this morning as I walked Barney the amazing pooping dog (it shoots right out his rear!!) in the pre-dawn darkness. When I spotted the first one, I thought I was just seeing things (like planes at the nearby airport), but when I saw the second, I figured that there was either a meteor shower, or I was going to have a really weird day. As it turns out, the annual Orionid Meteor Shower peaks tomorrow a little before down.

It's probably time for an update, but there's nothing all that new to report. Barney has been eating both (a) poison mushrooms and the yard (which made him throw up) and (b) poison excrement from the cat box (which made him throw up from his back end, if you know what I mean...wait for it...wait for it). So that's been exciting. And smelly.

On Friday (and into Saturday), I spent seven or eight hours putting together our new dining room table and six chairs--in the midst of cleaning up after said dog--also exciting. And yesterday, I made what I think was a sponge cake from scratch. It was a surprisingly good cake; based the recipe on something I saw on TV.

For a smallish cake:
Beat three eggs for about 4 minutes on medium speed.
Add 2 tsp vanilla, beat for about 30 seconds.
Add 3/4 cups sugar, 1/4 cup at a time, beating about 30 seconds for each addition.
Using a spoon, stir in 1 cup flour, sifted, 1/4 cup at a time until all is dissolved.
Do not over-stir (you'll lose volume).
Bake at 375 until a knife comes out clean (15-17 minutes for a cake pan; 25 minutes for a bread pan).

I topped it with a peach and apple reduction (with brown sugar and cinnamon), but I think it would have been better with raspberries or Nutella.

The other night I woke up in a panic thinking there was a tarantula on my face. Still 99% asleep, I slapped myself on the cheek and whipped my head around to try and fling it off. As I drifted back to sleep, I hoped that Sarah hadn't woken up by my silly, sleep/dream-induced behavior--not because I was worried I'd disturbed her sleep, but because I knew she'd laugh at me.

When I woke up a few hours later, I was still a little creeped out by the dream, but then I spotted the GIANT cockroach on the wall by the bed, and I felt a lot better about myself. The only question that remains is WHY THE HECK WAS HE ON MY FACE!?!?

At least it wasn't a tarantula.

In response to one of the comments from the previous post: interestingly, I have done some research on the differences in the forms of aggression used by men and women. For a long time, people thought that women weren't really as aggressive as men, and then someone remembered that punching people isn't the only form of aggression out there.

As it turns out, women prefer to use what's called "relationship" or "indirect" aggression (big shock right?). So while a woman isn't nearly as likely as a man to actually stab you in the back, she is probably a little more likely to metaphorically do so--by gossiping about you or sabotaging your social life, career, etc.

Or she might just lynch a doll beside your desk.

I've mentioned to a few people about how everyone down here in the Metroplex seems to be a little too concerned with power, authority, and the maintenance of established hierarchies. I'm sure you'll recall Sarah's interactions with the secretary formerly at her building.

Maybe it's a holdover from the traditions established during slavery, but from what I can tell, everyone down here has to submit to somebody else, and as a result, when somebody gets an opportunity to wield power over someone else, that opportunity is absolutely relished.

Among my new fellow students at my new school, I don't really fit very well into the established hierarchy, in which the "first years" don't know anything about anything and aren't really treated with all that much respect as a result. I'm not all that special, but I have already been a grad student for a while, and it turns out that I'm good at it. Although it surprised me a little at first that some of students with more seniority turned a little cold when they found this out, I think I get the picture.

A few weeks ago, my office mate, who is a fifth-year student who doesn't spend any time on campus, told me that I could take her desk and do "whatever" with the office. I told her I would do just that, and a few days later, I rearranged it to my liking.

Which brings me to the above picture of a baby hanging from the wall of my office. It was accompanied by a nasty note from said office mate that said something to the effect of, "How dare you touch my things."

Apparently, the baby is passed back and forth among the grad students as a joke, but I'm not sure if it's typically done as some sort of a warning. Oops.

Christ instructed his followers to forgive offenses committed against them. For most of us, this isn't exactly an easy task. As it turns out, that guy from Nazareth might actually have been on to something.

Carlsmith, Wilson, & Gilbert (2008) did an experiment in which the participants played a game where the goal was to work together with the other participants (who were actually in on the experiment--confederates) to make money. One of these confederates always screwed up the game with negligence and ruined it for the real participant. Later, some of the participants were told they were going to be allowed to punish the confederate by taking money away from him. Other participants were told simply that the game was over.

All participants predicted that they would feel better if they were allowed to punish, but in reality, those who punished (a) continued to think about what happened and couldn't move on, (b) were in significantly worse moods than those who didn't punish, and even (c) thought they would have felt even worse if they hadn't been able to punish--THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT ACTUALLY WOULD HAVE HAPPENED.

In other words, even if forgiveness is hard, even if it seems like it isn't fair, even if it sometimes doesn't make sense, it's the better way. True 2000 years ago. True today. True always.

There's a notion out there that "tempting fate" is a bad idea. If your favorite basketball player is at the free throw line with the game on the line, and the announcer says that the player is a 90% shooter, chances are, he'll miss and your team will lose. If you hear there's a 50% chance of rain, and you go out without your umbrella, it will probably rain. If you don't read my blog regularly, you'll get a horrible disease and there will be weeping a gnashing of teeth. And the like.

Even though our rationality says otherwise, even though we know a 50% chance of rain is a 50% chance of rain--regardless of what we do with our umbrella--we're still nervous to "tempt fate." As it turns out, we believe these things because it's less taxing for our brains than actually figuring out rational likelihoods and probabilities (Risen & Gilovich, 2008).

So good news, if you're superstitious, or even "a little stitious," you actually have more of your brain power available to do other, more important, things; like figuring out why people keep trying to mess with David Letterman.

Recent research out of the University of Toronto suggests that, although women are initially less tolerant of pain than are men, they adapt to the pain better than men do, and it bothers them less in the long run.

Finally, an explanation for why women wear high heels and uncomfortable clothes and men don't.

New research from Duke has shown that eating with a skinny person who has a high metabolism can actually lead you to eat more than can eating with other people--even if your companions (skinny or non) eat the same amount. Let me explain.

There were two groups. One group watched a skinny person take some candy from a bowl. The other group watched a heavier person (actually the skinny person in a fat suit made by a Hollywood movie company) take some candy from a bowl. In reality, both the skinny person and the heavier person took the same amount of candy. The people who watched the skinny person both took and ate more of the candy.

In opposition to what you might be thinking, the results aren't suggesting that obesity is the fault of those people who don't have to watch their weight. The implication is simply this: WE NEED TO STOP TAKING OUR EATING CUES FROM OTHER PEOPLE.

Here's my magical three-step weight loss solution.

1. Eat less food than your body requires to maintain its current weight.
2. Remember step 1.
3. Don't forget step 1.

It's math. To gain weight, you must consume more calories than you need. To lose weight, you must consume fewer calories than you need. I'm not saying it's easy--we're surrounded by easy calories, and many people have intervening factors (i.e., genetics, health conditions, etc.)--but I am saying that it's not only possible, it's a mathematical certainty.

I was on the train the other day when a tallish man with a crumpled little hat and a paper bag in his hand sat down beside me.

Him: I'm not a bum.
Me: Me either.
Him: No really, I'm not a bum. But I did just get out of jail.

He showed me the contents of his bag, which included a used plastic razor, a mostly-empty package of medication, a worn bible, and mail, addressed to the jail and stamped with that day's date.

Him: I need $5 to get a bus ticket.
Me: I need $19,000 to pay for school, and doesn't the train ticket come with unlimited bus fare?
Him: I need a Greyhound ticket, and I'm not a bum.
Me: Oh.
Him: Well, can you help me or not?
Me: I'd be happy to talk to you for a while.
Him: I don't need a friend. I need money.
Me: I don't give money to people who aren't my friends.
Him: I think I know a verse about that. God told me you were going to bless me.

Then he showed me his 'broken' Mp3 player and asked me if I could fix it. I did and showed him how to use it. He encouraged me to look at his book, a set of four novellas on sale at Amazon.com for $12.95. I said I would. He showed me his gang tattoos and said he wrote the book after a prison term in California when he became a Christian and decided to give up the "gang life." I asked if prison was as bad as they make it out on TV. He said it was worse. I asked how Christianity was working out for him. He showed me his favorite verse (It's better to live on the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife.) and called the recent jail term and separation from his wife "setbacks."

I looked up his book later. My favorite part is the description of, That’s What It Is, novella number three: "a young convict finds out an older convict is a cross-country pimp, so he’s out to pick his brain for the pimp game."

If I could make this stuff up, I'd probably be an author myself. At least I made a new friend.

Things that have been happening lately:

• The dog has taken to cornering the cats and barking at them until we go over and pet the cats and tell him that they are not vermin.
• The dog has roundworms and at least one tape worm (thanks animal shelter).
• The cats don't have worms. Yet.
• I have three presentations in the next two weeks. One is scheduled for 20 minutes, one for 75 minutes, and one for 160 minutes.
• I don't have anything to talk about for the long presentation because, 12 hours before our meeting to talk about the topic of my presentation, my adviser unexpectedly had her baby several weeks early.
  
• On Tuesdays, I leave the house at 6:45 AM and don't get back until 8:45 PM.
• I hate Tuesdays.
• I put fire ant bait all over the yard, and I think the fire ants are all dead.
• I'm not sure it will be safe to have a garden in the yard because of all the poison.
• I hate fire ants and poison.
• I said "y'all" today (on purpose).
• I'm not sure how I felt about it. On the one hand, I recognize the clear need in the English language for a second-person plural. On the other hand, I'm not that acclimated yet.
  

I don't think we realized how sick Barney had actually gotten. He's been getting healthier and healthier as the days go by, and I think he actually must have been pretty sick already when we brought him home from the pound.

Every time I think he's reached his upper limit on how much more active he's going to get, he just gets a little more hyper and exceeds my expectations. Yesterday he was bounding across the couch pouncing on imaginary things in my and Sarah's laps. This morning he was chasing me (and catching me) as I sprinted around the potted plants in the backyard.

Then came this afternoon, when he became a teenager. As I was trying to get some work done for school, I noticed that he was fiddling with the stuffed moose that he brought home from the shelter (they said it was his favorite toy). He kept chewing on it's legs, pulling at its ears, and wrestling with it. After a while, I looked closer. Wrestling? Or humping?

Favorite toy indeed. New euphemism: "humping the moose". It'll catch on, you watch.

Are you left handed, or do you know a person with left-handedness (person first language is typically appropriate when you're speaking about someone with a disability--e.g., person with down syndrome, person with depression, person with left-handedness, etc.)? Were you cutting open some bags of dried beans today? And did it take you 10 minutes to get the scissors to function properly? Did you end up using both hands?

Friends, LH isn't as bad as any other disability in the world, but it does impair a person's ability to use scissors. If you or someone you know never learned to use scissors, please call 555-Scissor-Illiterate, and get access to needed help. Just because you or your loved one failed to learn this skill in 1st grade doesn't mean suffering should needlessly continue. Help is on the way.

After some poking around outside, I found that there are far more ants than I initially thought. After going to Lowe's to buy supplies for the ant fight, I've come to believe that there are far more ants in the South than I initially thought--because there are a LOT of anti-ant products out there. In any case, the fight is on hold for now, because it's been raining for three days, and I think the ants are hiding from me. Or from the 6 inches of rain we've gotten. But I suspect it's from me because I said some stern words to them before heading to the store.

I've been thinking a lot lately about my buying habits. As most of you know, I'm generally a frugal person, not a tightwad, but almost. In deciding whether or not to buy a product, I typically consider three factors: (a) the price, (b) the value/quality of the product, and (c) my own personal need of the product. In other words, I only buy things that are cheap, or offer good value for the price, and I usually only buy things that I need (relatively speaking).

But recently, a philosophical shift in my thinking has led me to consider another factor: (d) the business practices of the company who sells the product. Yesterday Sarah and I decided to go out to eat after church. We could have gone to McDonald's and spent $3.17 (one dollar menu sandwich each, plus one dollar fry to split), but instead, we decided to go to Whataburger, a slightly smaller company (only in 10 states) that happens to give health and retirement benefits to ALL its employees (that's right, health insurance for flipping burgers). We spent $5.37 for the same meal we could have gotten at McDonald's for 40% less money, but at the same time, we used our 'wallet' to encourage the free market to compensate ALL workers well.

I'm not saying everyone should do shop this way. Some people just don't have enough money to spend 40% extra everywhere they go. But let me tell you this, at Whataburger, we were greeted with a friendly hello upon entering, stunned by the liveliness and conversation of the employees while dining, and sent off with a friendly goodbye and "come again" when we left. As it turns out, well-compensated employees make good workers.

Places I have been shopping more lately: Costco, Lowe's, Whataburger. These companies offer employees medical, dental, and vision plans, as well as retirement options, sick leave, and other benefits that similar companies do not always provide.

"If money talks, I want to make sure mine is saying good things about me." ~ Me

Did he just quote himself? That's perverse. This is a paid advertisement, isn't it?

I can't believe I haven't posted in over a week. I've been busy trying to get work done and impress the people who decided whether or not I'll get funding next year. Things in that regard are going well enough, but I'm not sure what factors will actually influence any decisions that will be made.

In other news, we have fire ants in the back yard. I know because they attacked me two nights ago when I was taking the dog out so he wouldn't pee in the house. My first mistake was going outside without shoes. My second mistake was standing on top of a rock that the fire ants had (unbeknownst to me) built their little kingdom under. As I shifted back and forth on the stone, waiting for the dog to finish his business, I think I upset them.

At first, I thought I was getting bit by a spider (we have lots of spiders in the grass too, those I had seen before) because it felt like I was being electrically shocked in my foot. By the time I had reached down to swat the 'spider,' I'd already been 'shocked' about 10 more times, and I really hoped I wasn't getting attacked by some sort of a flock of spiders. So, like any man would do, I grabbed my tiny dog and ran into the house like a little girl.

The angry terrorists were still biting and stinging (they do both) me well after I came inside, but they were so small (and flat, after I squashed them) that I couldn't be sure what they were. A trip to the rock and a little cautious excavation the next day confirmed my suspicion that they were fire ants.

If they think it was upsetting that I was standing on their rock, I wonder how they'll like it when I pour a bucket of boiling water on their nest?

Sarah and I have been talking about getting a dog for a long time. We've even made several trips to various animal shelters and humane societies. Yesterday's trip resulted in a new addition to the household. Meet Barney.


He's three months old, weighs 6.2 pounds, is 1/2 Papillion and 1/2 Toy Fox Terrier, and won't get too much bigger than he is right now. Both his breeds are intelligent, athletic, and bred to be responsive to human emotion, and Barney seems to be all of those things so far (inside the house, he follows us around or stays on our laps; outside, he loves to play and romp around).

Next up, getting him to stop peeing in the house.

I think I've mentioned to everyone in the world that I've been annoyed with my new department because they're making me re-take statistics, a class I've already advanced beyond in the typical course sequence. Imagine taking Spanish I and II, getting an A in each, and then being asked to take Spanish I again instead of Spanish III. Oh, and you have to pay $2700 to do it. Acceptable? No?

Their answer to my pleas has been something along the lines of "It doesn't matter what you say. It's department policy. But at least it should be easy for you!" Easy for me?!?!? That doesn't fit into my worldview. Why don't I go back to third grade. It won't be a waste of my time because it will be easy. See you in 17 years after I've repeated everything.

Anyway, I think I've figured out how I'm going to make the class worthwhile. Given that I believe I could teach it, and given that my professor is retiring at the end of the semester (after 40 years teaching the course), I'm going to borrow all his best methods and create my own stats course in case I ever need to teach one in the future.

Now, you might be asking yourself, "Why is this interesting to me?" Here's the thing: it isn't. Talk to you later.

In three weeks, I'm giving a presentation in one of my classes about the current state of research about self control. I didn't get to choose the topic, but it's of mild interest to me.

The point: there's a whole bunch of evidence to show that when we exercise self control, it depletes some sort of self-control reservoir, making it less likely that we'll able to control ourselves when another temptation presents itself in close proximity (in time or space) to the first.

Imagine you're on a diet. At work. You've got some down time, and you can either slack off and check your personal email, or you can finish the report that's due not due for three more days. You choose to do the report. Later that day, there's a birthday party. Your self-control reservoir is depleted because of your positive choice to finish your report, and you have two pieces of chocolate cake and screw up your diet. Nice work.

Conclusion: fat people must be getting a lot done, and I don't think anyone's giving them any credit for it. I'm off to find some cake.

Happily, I found out yesterday that the train schedule is going to change in mid-September. My commute in the morning will be shortened to an hour, and the ride home will be 1 and 1/2 hours. (The difference, again, is because I'll have to wait at the train station on the way home for a while).

In other news, I don't get why everyone is so freaked out about the proposed changes to our health care 'system.' For as long as I've been paying attention to the news (days now), people have only been complaining about health care. First it was about how HMO's are the devil. Then it was about how the rising costs of health care and the burgeoning presence of probably 4 trillion senior citizens in the next 20 years was going to bankrupt the world.

Then, somebody had the bright idea to try and fix the system. "Hey, I know, let's fix the system." Then somebody else came around and said, "What!!!!!!! The moderately well-off people in my social class already have semi-adequate health care that usually covers a few things most of the time. I won't let you kill senior citizens and puppies with your dirty Nazi death panels!!!!!! Over this hockey-mom's dead body." And somebody else whispers under his breath, "If only." Then everybody freaks out and starts yelling at each other, bringing guns to protests, and spreading less-than-accurate information all over the place. It's as if some sort of information terrorist (you know who you are) set off dirty bomb of ignorance. Too much ignorance fall out around here.

What the heck? Right? Right? But I think there's a bigger issue here that nobody's talking about. Some sort of conservative/liberal split? Not exactly. Have you considered that it might be an upper-middle class/lower-middle class thing? Ah, duh? The UPC's have all the health care they want, and it doesn't cost them much. The LMC's could have all the health care they want, but they'd have to ditch a few of their luxury items (e.g., cell phones, too-big houses, high-speed internets, cable TV subscriptions, etc). "But those are our RIGHTS!!!!!"

See the difference? And that's why everybody is arguing: cable TV.

The short of it is that most of us have access to health care, even though some of us choose not to sacrifice for it, but some of us don't have access to health care at all. In the best-of-all worlds, health care reform would lower costs of health care for us middle-class folks, and ensure that it's widely available to everyone else who couldn't normally afford it (or was unwilling to sacrifice their cable TV for it), but we're too into this argument, this us against them mentality, to realize that we're fighting about something for which we all want the same outcome.

So let's put aside our differences and recognize that all of us share one very important philosophical ideology: we all want to live forever. If we can get our heads out of our proverbial butts, we might be able to figure out a way to ensure that all of us can get all the pills we want until the wrinkly and shriveled (yet fatter) versions of our former selves can pass on in some sort of a drug-induced stupor with the dignity we deserve. It's our right as Americans.

Now go play nice.

Today is my first day of classes, and it hasn't been all that exciting so far. I had statistics at 9:30, a canceled class (conditioning and learning) at 2, and then later I'll have a seminar in social cognition (thinking about groups, or the ways groups influence thinking--I'm never really sure; I guess I'll find out soon enough).

On that note, I need a nap.

I'd been working on the house all day yesterday when I decided to take a 'break' from putting together office furniture and install a new fluorescent light above the sink in the kitchen. It wasn't a really complicated job, but when I finished, I saw that the electrical chord was dangling in an unsightly way under the cabinets. Easy fix, I thought. I'll just take that staple gun I found in the garage and staple the chord to the underside of the cabinet. Mistake #1.

I was careful not to put a staple through the chord--didn't really want any loose electrical current discharging near running water--but when I pressed the end of the gun into the wood and squeezed the trigger, nothing happened. Strange, since the gun appeared to be both loaded and brand, spanking new. I pointed the gun at the floor, and since I didn't have much leverage without pushing its business end into the wall, I squeezed it tightly with both hands. Mistake #2.

No staple shot out, but I felt quite a bit of reverberation in my hands, especially my right hand. Suspiciously lots of reverberation in that hand. I looked down at it. Crap. As it turns out, this particular brand of staple gun SHOOTS OUT THE BACK. Mistake #3.

Upon seeing that the staple was lodged in my palm at the base of my middle finger, pressing my flesh against the bone, my first thought was singularly this: HOW MUCH IS THIS GOING TO COST!!!!!!!!!!!!!?????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I tried to pull it out with my fingers, but it didn't budge. Double crap. I turned to needle-nose pliers, but they didn't work either: when I pulled it, it felt as if it was wedged inside a bone. Triple crap.

Unfortunately, Sarah wasn't home, so I had to call her and ask her to come home so she could take me to the hospital. I iced it with a bag of frozen vegetables until we made it to the emergency room about 45 minutes later. When I told the intake nurse that I had a "staple in my finger," it didn't really get me much attention, and she ushered a little girl with a potential owie into the back in front of me. When it was finally my turn and the nurse took a look at my situation, I got A LOT of attention, and she was very apologetic at not having me go first.

The X-ray indicated that the staple missed all the important structures in my hand, but its prongs were completely lodged in the space of the joint between my finger and knuckle. Several people crowded into the room to watch as the doctor tried unsuccessfully to pull it out. He ended up having to inject a VERY large amount of lidocaine (a pain med) into the space around the staple. He was doing it to dull the pain, but I suspect that the fluid lubricated the joint and tissue, allowing the staple to slide out with some more yanking. I felt it scrape the bone as it went by. The doctor lamented that we didn't record the procedure "for YouTube." He said it was probably a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing for him as a doctor. Hopefully it will be a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing for me as a stupid idiot.

So now I'm on antibiotics for the next two weeks, and my finger is super sore and has a limited range of motion due to the swelling, but I think I'll be fine. I definitely don't need the Vicodin they told me to take. I'm saving that particular prescription, though, for the day when the bill comes. I just signed up for my new school's insurance plan last Wednesday, and I suspect it will be a headache getting them to pay--if I can get them to do it at all. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Anyway, 10 days of home ownership, and I already wound up in the ER. It wouldn't be nearly so humbing if I didn't think I was so smart. So you say you're studying for your PhD? And you shot yourself with a staple gun? What's your PhD going to be in: dumb-dumbery?

Apparently, not everyone should do their own home maintenance.

The good news is that the train has free WiFi. The bad news is that my commute between home and school will vary between 2 and 3 hours each way. You heard me right--each way.

The actual ride time isn't too bad on the way to school. Total time door to door is about 1 hour and 40 minutes, and I can spend the majority of the reading and working. Coming home takes a little longer, somewhere between 2 and 3 hours depending on the bus and train schedule, because I have to take an extra bus to get home (Sarah drops me off at the train station in the morning but can't pick me up in the evening). Still, I can spend the majority of my time working, so it's not as bad as it might seem because I'm going to be working anyway.

Worst case scenario, we buy a second car (it's a 50-60 minute drive) and spend the estimated $6,000 a year it costs to maintain and use a car. Best case scenario, I do most of my work on public transit and tell people that I'm getting my PhD by riding the bus.

I realize it's been quite a while since I last posted. Quite a few things have been going on. Go ahead and feel free to blame the interruption on our internet service provider for installing our internet five days later than they were supposed to. Here's a summary of what's happened in the last week or so.

1. We returned from Europe and spent a few days in Michigan saying our goodbyes and prepping for our move.

2. We got a new (used) car.

3. We moved to the South, driving all 22 hours and 1275 miles with three cats in the back of the car.

4. We closed on our house.

5. We rented a U-haul truck, got our things out of storage, bought a washer, dryer, refrigerator, 2 chairs and 2 ottomans, and a non-motorized push mower (think green!).

6. We set up our new place: cleaned, unpacked, hooked up the washer/dryer, mowed the lawn, and turned on the water (by myself, with a crescent wrench, no thanks to the city but thanks to the city office worker who told me how I could do it so I wouldn't have to wait for a technician).

7. Made about 56 trips to Lowe's.

8. Went to our new schools for our first days.

9. Passed out.

On the way home, we stopped in Salzburg, Austria, known best as the birthplace of Mozart, the place where much of the filming was done for the Sound of Music, and the real-life hometown of Maria von Trapp (the nun whose life on which the Sound of Music was based).


Above and below: Salzburg castle.




Above and below: near the city center of Salzburg, another UNESCO World Heritage site.


And that's it. Tomorrow, Sarah and I fly back home from Frankfurt to Michigan. It will be a full 24 hours of travel, so we're not exactly looking forward to that...

We took a quick day trip from Bratislava to Vienna, Austria. It probably turned out to be my favorite part of our trip, as evidenced by the many photos I've posted. Unfortunately, the Vienna leg of the trip wasn't exactly planned, so we didn't have tons of information about the buildings we were looking at.

Above: the Imperial Court Theater, whatever that means.

Below: soaring above the trees the towers of, get this, the mayor's office (Rathaus, in German).


Above: Hofburg Imperial Palace.

Below: more of the palace.


Above: I'm not sure, more palace?

Below: Karlskirche (St. Charles Church), commissioned by Charles VI. There was a terrible plague, he prayed and vowed to build a church if God would take away the plague. And so it was built.


Above and below: the city center of Vienna, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


Above and below: more from Vienna's city center.


Above and below: the city of Vienna.


Above and below: Votivkirche (candle church), one of the most important neo-Gothic religious architectural sites in the world (so says Wikipedia). Apparently the site was chosen because of a failed assassination attempt on Emperor Franz Joseph (Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary).


Above: more Votivkirche.

Below: we parked in Vienna, I hit "points of interest" on the GPS, and the first item that came up, 200 yards from our parking space, was the home and office of one Dr. Sigmund Freud. Of course we had to stop by.


Above: look closely at the picture, and you may actually spot a Sigmund look alike in the background.

Tomorrow, finally, the last few pictures (from Salzburg, Austria).

So I was going to try and put in all the pictures from the last leg of the trip today, but as it turns out, I have way too many. Instead, I'll do Bratislava, Slovakia today; Vienna, Austria tomorrow; and Salzburg, Austria the next day.

Bratislava is an interesting city. Sitting along the banks of the Danube, it's the capital city of Slovakia and the only national capital (e.g., Washington D.C.) that borders two separate countries (Hungary and Austria). In addition, it's only 37 miles from Vienna, Austria, making them the two closest national capitals in the world.


Above: Michael's Gate: the only remaining structure from the city's medieval fortifications. It was built around 1300 and renovated in the 1700's.

Below: one of the narrow, crowded streets.



Above: the banks of the Danube from atop a hill in the city.

Below: note the Novy Most bridge, topped with a UFO-shaped restaurant, in the background.


Above: Bratislava Castle. The site has been inhabited since about 3000 B.C. Also, the back of some lady's head.

Our next stop was Wroclaw, Poland, a city that, over the years at various times, has been a part of Germany (formerly known as Breslau), Prussia, Austria, and Bohemia.

Above: one of our first stops was to climb a cathedral tower. This particular tower was actually attached to a church that became Lutheran during the reformation in the 16th century, but it was reclaimed by the Catholic church in the 1940's.

Below: but we only reason we knew to climb the tower was because of a recommendation from our waiter at lunch (tasty authentic Georgian cuisine--the former Soviet republic, not the southern U.S. state).



Above: on the way up.

Below: from the top.


Above and below: more from the top.


Above: more row houses!

Below: rival cathedral.



Above: another cathedral.

Below: a lady I saw.


Up next: the last leg of our trip.