He's on to us!
Psychology suffered a crushing blow yesterday as Tom Cruise announced he did not believe in it. Psychologists and psychiatrists across the world shrugged their shoulders, admitted defeat and packed their couches and salivating dogs away.
Mr. Xenu Cruise was interviewed by Matt Lauer a day or two ago and he
knows the history of psychiatry. Matt Lauer does not. Brooke Shields does not. Therefore, they are susceptible to misinformation and the nefarious pseudoscience of psychiatry and psychology. The above is from a funny post about this incident on Psyblog. Read the rest at
Psyblog. The end is very funny.
Why my eyes went bad...
I read all the time. In front of the computer all day reading news, blogs, articles; at home reading books, textbooks, research...
So, I will heed
Ep's tag and answer these questions:
1. How many book do you own?
I estimate around 500. When I finish a book, I usually give it away, sell it, or donate it somewhere. So, that 500 is a much lower number than the number of books I've
once owned.
2. Last book read?
I am in the middle of
SGJ's All the Beautiful Sinners and it is really great. He can make me read a sentence over and over again. I attempt to dissect it and suck all of the beauty out of it until I must move on or risk getting stuck in an infinite loop of rereading that one sentence forever more.
I finished
Haunted by
Chuck Palahniuk before ATBS.
3. Last book purchased
I preordered the next Harry Potter book for the lovely and talented Bly, my wife. I think it's
Harry and the Half-blood Prince.
The last books I purchased before that one were Amy Hempel's
reasons to live, and
The Guide to Gettin' It On, and
WCB's Hell's Half Acre and
Kiss Me Judas.
4. Name five books that mean a lot to you
The Holy Bible, for obvious reasons
Fight Club, got me into Chuck Palahniuk
DSM-IV TR, even with the inherent flaws, couldn't do my job without it
The Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut; if I have to pick only one of his books I guess it's this one
Any of the Harry Potter books, because my wife loves them (it's cute how excited she gets) and we share the books together
So, I guess that's it. Those five are off the top of my head. If I think of any that should be on there, I'll add them. I would like to pass this to
Xon,
Jmac,
Cari, and
Charles.
States I've Visited:
Countries I've Visited:
Ricky forgot to lock his door…
I ran across this on ifilm.com:
The ABC of Sex Education for Trainables from 1975
While I think the intention is grand, the actual video is pretty funny. Here are some highlights…
First, I had no idea mentally retarded people used to be called “trainables.”
Apparently, the ABCs of sex education start off with an ‘A’ but the producers of the video couldn’t come up with a ‘B’ or a ‘C.’
The intro is just dang creepy – especially because it’s completely devoid of context. The music doesn’t help.
While showing pictures of a nude male and female:
Counselor: “Do you know any other words for those?”
Boy: “Tits!”
Counselor: “Do you think that’s a nice thing for a woman to have?”
Narrator: “The technique used is drawing out, rather than pumping in…”
That’s called your vah-gi-nah and that’s the hole from which you menstruate.
The menstruation instructions are painful to watch. So, stilted and rehearsed.
Counselor: Hey Frank, how come you haven’t gotten up yet?”
Frank: “I’m all wet and sticky!”
Counselor: “Oh -- When did that happen, did it happen during the night or did it just happen now? Do you know?”
Frank: “No.”
Counselor: “Oh, well, if you’re sticky, maybe it was a wet dream. Do you know what a wet dream is?”
Frank: “No…”
Counselor: “Well, you know, how old are you now? You must be, ahhhh…”
Excuse me, why all the sudden does it seem like the counselor is really a little too interested in this kid’s wet dream and age…
Narrator: “The simple mechanics of reproduction, or sex, or screwing, or whatever you want to call it.”
If the retardate can understand the mechanics of sexual intercourse….
And then we have a scene of Ricky masturbating under the covers. Mom comes in and catches him, says she saw what he was doing, and asks if what he was doing feels good…
And next we have Sandy who is masturbating during arts and crafts, or maybe she was just itchy, or suffering a wedgie…
And a while later a young Harold Ramis tries to molest a “trainable” in a men’s room at the urinal…
Long shot of an adult store while someone whistles…
The saddest thing about this is that a lot of normally functioning kids today don’t get this kind of education. As funny and fumbling and out-of-date as it may be, it is honest and thorough. And makes a fine point that the family should be involved in the sex education of their children, but if that’s not possible, then someone qualified should do it.
Ka-whozawhatzit?
I'm sitting here watching 20/20 and they are talking to the modern-day trio (mom and two sons) that has made Kabbalah so dang popular. They spin it as taking something that was rooted in intellectualism and long, difficult study and taking it to the masses -- everyone, Christians, Jews, non-believers, etc. This is obviously so there are no barriers for who can buy their
$26 red string
bracelets and their
Kabbalah water, which apparently can cure cancer. They've drawn parallels to Christ bringing his message to the masses on the mountain top. They've said that your subconscious mind can open the power of The Light (i.e., God) just by scanning characters (i.e., Aramaic & Hebrew) that you cannot read and cannot understand. But, by far, this is the best (rough) quote so far:
Said by the son wearing all black, including a Kangol hat, for what it's worth: Nothing we do comes from our brains.
I think that pretty much sums it up. Oh, if you need more evidence that this is goofy, your poster children for this movement are as follows:
Madonna (Ester)
Guy Richie
Aston Kutcher
Demi Moore
Paris Hilton (mostly her parents)
Rosanne
Marla Maples
I'll take Mel Gibson anyday. Heck, I'll take Tom Cruise and Xenu over these yahoos.
You really can't handle the truth
Year they divorced or broke up:
Mimi Rogers -- 1990
Nicole Kidman -- 2001
Penelope Cruz -- 2004
Age of Each at Time of Break-up:
Mimi Rogers -- 34 Cruise -- 28
Nicole Kidman -- 34 Cruise -- 39
Penelope Cruz -- 30 Cruise -- 42
Age of New Beard:
Katie Holmes -- 26
So it seems the newly engaged Ms. Scientology-to-be has about eight years before the crash and burn. Mimi Rogers was a CO$ member, too, so it must be something about her age. Nicole Kidman got too old and wanted to stay Catholic (and raise the kids as such). Penelope Cruz didn't even make it to the "old-lady cutoff" so she must have done something particularly heinous. Katie Holmes, it seems from recent interviews, is as stupid as Cruise and is "really excited about" $cientology. So, they should have no problem getting that brain squeaky clean. As long as her movies stay well below his box-office numbers and she doesn't start winning awards, they should have a happy, nauseatingly public marriage (for a maximum of eight years).
If Chairman Mao had been as effective as L. Ron, we'd all be in big trouble.
Friday Pug Blogging
Ferocious to the core.
Now you see it...
The mind is capable of some
weird wild stuff.
Fix your stare to the small cross in the middle of the violet dots.
So which is it, then?
This week I got back my evals and thought I'd share some of the comments. I find the comments mostly helpful and on point, but some of them make me smile for different reasons. I taught two research design classes during Spring '05.
Thank you for making a fairly boring subject entertaining and easy.
Russ was an excellent professor!
Russ is great. It is not eash to take a completely boring course and liven it up. He did an excellent job.
Good class I wish we had more powerpoint and better communication if class was being cancelled.
The tests were tricky and sometimes the material was not explained clearly.
It might help if you talk slower while giving notes. Sometimes it was hard to keep up but the typed notes were greatly appreciated
So, those are the laudatory and constructive criticism comments I received. There were more, but they mostly echoed what those folks said. I know I talk way too fast a lot of the time and I do, in fact, need more overheads and powerpoint slides. I actually did miss class once because of illness, and I hadn't the foresight to get the classes email addresses so I couldn't warn them. Two other times I did warn them when I would be miss class or be gone. And they are right, for the most part, research design is boring to learn about while not
doing it in real life.
This comment, though, takes the cake...
This class was the most boring class I've ever experienced in my life. This class make [sic] me want to kill myself. The class could have been a lot more interesting if he had used videos, visuals, group discussions, class participations of any kind. We're here to learn, don't just stand up there and lecture at us, we're not going to learn anything, teach me, include me. If you're going to miss a day of class, you should email the entire class the night before or at least right afterwards.
This, by far, was the best comment I received. I picture this student on his or her knees begging me, "teach me, include me..." Then come to class and
participate. Maybe this person did come to every class, so maybe that part of the last sentence isn't fair. In my defense, I will say that I did try to teach and include you, but all my attempts at discussions or getting you to answer a simple question about the readings were met with blank stares and utter silence. Sometimes gaping fish mouths, too. You must come to terms with the fact that your professors and instructors must teach many people with differing styles of learning and they must choose the best way to teach particular material. Research design is very much a lecture class. It would be similar to having a group discussion on mathematics or statistics. What's funny is that the vast majority of students earned high Bs or As. I have no idea what this student earned, but obviously my lectures and their work outside of class helped them learn
something.
Welcome to the future...
I finally got the wireless card in my laptop to work with my router at home. This is after multiple BSODs -- the fix...
Taking the D-Link monitor out of the startup sequence. I called tech support and the guy said he had no idea why it was BSODing and that his supervisor said to return the card for a new one -- that this one is broken or something. I still may do that, but for now this one is working. Why did taking the monitor out of the startup sequence do anything, I have absolutely no idea, but so far, so good. I was chugging approx 760kbps just a little while ago. Which is so much nicer than 52kbps.
This kind of crap makes me want a Mac.
Friday Pug Blogging
What did you call me?
Friday Pug Blogging
Extreme Closeup
Keep your eyes closed...
Wired has an article discussing experiments with AI in which the digital agents mimic participants' movements influencing the subjective perceptions of the participants. This is scary and interesting stuff.
The applications are discussed and some are quite nefarious.
New Times
Obviously, I tweaked some template stuff. And by "tweaked," I mean totally revamped the whole site. I think this one is dang cool since it's so unique. I still might play with colors and the background picture, but I
love the way the text floats over it. I also like the absence of wasted space. It's simpler, yet more complex than the last one I had. And it's not mass-marketed for Blogger users.
I did this at home, where I use Firefox and have the resolution set at 1024 x 768. It looks goofy in IE, but everyone should be using Firefox, so I'm not worried about it. I think it should look ok using different resolutions, but let me know if anything's too wacky.
