Motor Cortex for Sale (as is)

The motor cortex is the part of the brain responsible for movement. When you go to sleep, the motor cortex is inactive so that you can dream about doing stuff without physically doing it. When you wake up, the motor cortex becomes active and your body again responds to directions.

My brain did not get this memo.

Occasionally I wake up before my motor cortex becomes active. The result is that I’m awake but paralyzed for several seconds (called sleep paralysis). It’s extremely unpleasant.

The other side of this is that sometimes my motor cortex is active when it shouldn’t be. Last night, for example. I had a dream that some villains at the local Ford/Mercury dealer stole my truck (I don’t have a truck, but maybe this is a sign?). I was on a mission to get my truck back, and I had to lay waste to a bunch of guys in the process. Only the recipient of my awesome karate kicks turned out to be my sleeping wife—and not for the first time.

Brains are cool, and mine has proven pretty useful. This is not to say I don’t have any complaints about mine. And I’m pretty sure Deb would prefer my vengeful swath of destruction remain isolated to my brain.

I lied to my shins

I have been doing a little jogging in the morning, and it hurts. My knees hurt, my shins hurt, and my feet hurt. I have had the same pair of running shoes for a while, so I just bought a new pair of Asics Nimbus shoes to reduce the pain.

Apparently 250 pounds X 2 miles just does not lend itself to the feeling of running on clouds.

Skepticism

Daryl Bem just published an article in the very prestigious Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in support of the phenomenon of precognition (people reacting to things--in a small way—before being exposed to them). That’s right: there is empirical support for spidey-sense.

I have seen too many experimental and data-analytic shenanigans not to be skeptical of the findings. I have always been a skeptic, and my experience as a researcher has only made me more skeptical of science. I think that’s the way it should be.

But my experience is contrary to the current trend. I think scientists are becoming increasingly gullible and less skeptical. Reasonable people disagree on important questions, but what I don’t understand is the deep and abiding faith of supposed skeptics. A scientist states that the earth is getting warmer, and other scientists (and journalists) tamely accept that the world is coming to an end. Or someone says that there is no room for God in science, and people conclude that God must not exist. I understand that reasonable people disagree on these things; what bothers me is the absolute certainty espoused by people who consider themselves skeptics. The biggest difference between religious people and scientists is that religious people acknowledge they rely on faith.

This is why I am glad that the spidey-sense paper was published. It’s the position of a skeptic that we don’t know everything about psychology and the nature of the universe, and that stuff like precognition could occur.

(Although I doubt it does.)

Negotiation 101

In class today a student asked if I would consider canceling next Tuesday's class. Next week is Thanksgiving, so I assume he wanted to leave town earlier that he otherwise would. The other students were definitely on board. So I asked: What's in it for me?

After a few lame offers, I made my demands. The students were to bring something with bacon and something sweet to this Thursday's class. Then I'd cancel class next Tuesday.

We're having breakfast burritos and snicker-doodles.

I'm partly proud and partly ashamed to admit that I was planning on canceling that class anyway.

Who is Hannah Nakerson? The sequel

After the initial exchange of emails (below), the recipient/victim forwarded me her emails in the spirit of "these kids today". (He sent them to the real me, not the illiterate and unstable female me).

Tee hee! I said that her remarks about Vitamin D might constitute slander.

A day later I received another email from him:

I just looked up Nakerson in the FSU directory and there's no one listed as an FSU student with that last name, except there was a footnote to Tyler Stillman :)

Game over. Next was a graduate student who taught the same class as I.

DEER ________ I DON'T KNOW U VERY WELL BUT I CAME TO YOOUR LAB BY ACCIDENT AND I LOVED YOUR CLASS SOOO MUCH. I HAVE NOT GONE TO MY LAB INSTRUCTORS CLASS VERY MUCH THIS SEMSTER BECAUSE HE WAS SO MUCH NOT AS GOOD AS YOU. HE WAS RUDE AND MADE ME DO THINGS. DO U THINK U CAN GIVE ME CREDDIT FOR GOING TO YOUR CLASS INSTEAD? I LOVE YOU SO MUCH THANKS SO SO MUCH. TELL ME ASAP!!!

Hannah Nakerson

Hannah,
I do not know you nor can I speak to your class attendance. Please contact you professor for the class regarding this matter.

I expected more entertainment value from her. Next!

MR. (female instructor)

I DID YOU'RE STUDY AND I NEVER GOTS NO CREDITS NOW I NEED TO DO MANY CREDITS AS PUNISHMENT CAN YOU GIVE ME A BREAK HEAR ? I WAITED FOR OVER 4 HOURS AND NO ONE CAME I AM STILL WAITING HERE FOR SOMEONE TO TELL ME WHAT 2 DO.

HANNAH

Hi Hannah,

This is the first I've heard of your situation. I'll be happy to work with you but I'll need to know the name of the study, as well as the date and time you were scheduled to participate.

Cheers,

________

I didn’t realize she was a freaking Zen master. I had to step it up:

WELL THANKS SO MUCH BUT HOW DO I FIND OUT SUCH INFORMATIONS? THIS IS NO WAY TO TREAT A FUTURE LEADER OF THE TEE PARTY MOVEMENT.

Hi Hannah,

Follow these instructions…

(instructions)

Hope this helps,

__________

Wow. If this is how a good person responds--and I think it is--I am not a good person.

who is Hannah Nakerson?

There is a great deal of variability in the kinds of emails students send their professors. Most emails are courteous and clear. Others are angry and barely comprehensible. I enjoy sending emails to my colleagues pretending to be an angry, unstable student.

A colleague had completed an experiment in which students had to answer a lengthy questionnaire after taking Vitamin C (or placebo). They also had to put on a blindfold and draw a few figures. I sent the following email to the graduate student running the experiment (from HannahNakerson@yahoo.com):

Subject: YOU’Re STUDPID ESPERIMENT

I DID NOT GET ANY CREDITS FOR THE STUDY AND I WNET TO THE ROOM AND I ANWERED 100000000000000000 STUPID QUESTIONS THAT MADE ME FEEL FUNNY INSIDE. THEN I HAD TO WEAR A DIRTY RAG ON MY FACE AND DRAW STUPID DRAWINGS. PLEASE TELL ME HOW TO GET CREDIT FOR THE EXPERIMENT OR I'LL andj plus i had to take vitamin d and i hate that stupid vitamin it's the worst for you.

Sincerely,

Hannah Nakerson

The response:

Sorry if you didn't read the instructions. Let me know who your instructor is and I'll let them know that you got confused and did the wrong survey and ask if they would give you points.

p.s. In the future I would never talk with such disrespect and threat to a teacher, especially when you are asking your teacher to do a favor. Most teachers would give you nothing in response to such a mean-hearted email.

Hannah Replied:

I FEEL SAD WHEN YOU SAID THAT I WAS MEAN IN THE LAST EMAIL YOU SENT TO ME TODAY.

I TRY TO TREAT PEOPLE WITH REFLECT AND HUGS. NOW MY EYES ARE CRYING.

ALSO SOMETIMES I DO

The response:

Your message was cut off and I never got your breakout teacher name and section #.

Also if someone called what you do for a living "stupid" wouldn't you feel like it was kind of a mean thing to say?


More Hannah to come.

my bold stand against serial killers

I finished the first season of Dexter last night. I give it a B-. Michael C. Hall, who plays Dexter, is AWESOME, but he's working with pretty lame material.

At some point, people (I use this term loosely, as I'm referring to the creatures who populate the film industry) imagined a righteous serial killer. He is brilliant in his own dark way, seeking to improve the world through his cruel lessons (Seven, Saw) or by killing worse people (Dexter). My problem with this storyline is that it's trying SO HARD to be controversial. Yawn.

The other problem with it is that serial killers are far from brilliant. They actually tend to be brain damaged. They aren't great plotters--they actually have insanely poor impulse control. And they don't have anything to teach the world. They're just assholes.

art show

Apparently there is a reality show on Bravo in which artists compete with each other. I know this because I saw an advertisement for it, featuring a guy who painted mutilated genitals in the shape of the Mickey Mouse logo.

Here's the script:
1. Artist tries really hard to be offensive.
2. People are offended.
3. Artist publicly claims he is misunderstood.
4. Artist privately celebrates that his work is getting attention.

We get it, artists. You are all independent thinkers, as demonstrated by your many tattoos. You are cutting-edge. And controversial. And opposed to the policies of the Bush administration. And mad at Daddy. We get it.

Me = 1, State of Florida = 0

When I learned that I would be moving out of Florida, I realized I could park anywhere--at least for a while. The last month in Tallahassee, I established quite a collection of parking tickets. I never parked in a handicapped zone, because that's not cool. But I did park on a Manatee's face once.

He had it comin'.

I'm out of Florida now, and it's a good thing-- one more and I would have been impounded. The bottom line is that I WIN.

Goodbye Tallahassee

Six years ago I jammed all of my stuff into a tiny Saturn and drove from Utah to Tallahassee. I lived alone (except for my Xbox) in a total dump. I thought I had it good.

I'm leaving tomorrow in a very different fashion. I have a wife and two kids, and a house full of furniture. Our truck will be filled with old diaper boxes we've packed full of stuff. I know what a duvet is. I know what throw-pillows are. Worse: I care what they look like. My stomach is bigger and my arms are smaller (but my lungs and liver are probably in better shape).

Sure, I got a degree while I was here, but the biggest change: I've been domesticated.

thank you, trial lawyers

My neighbor is a bit of a strange guy. But we both love our gardens, so we always have something to talk about. (Though I'm pretty sure he does some indoor gardening of dubious legality). He's normally awkwardly polite, but today he was extremely eager to talk to me. He rarely smiles because he is missing most of his upper teeth (no, really). Today he was all grins. Why?

Guy: I got some good news.

Me: What's up?

Guy: I got run over by a truck. Look at my leg.

Me: Eww. It looks like you got run over by a truck.

Guy: I'm fixin' to get paid!

Answer THIS

I would like to suggest that at this point in human history, we no longer need instructions on how to leave a phone message. But if you want to leave somebody a message, you have to wait through a lengthy description of what to do.

Do people REALLY need to be told what to do when they hear the tone?
The other thing is, don't give me the option of paging someone. No humans have been paged since 1993.
Your life slowly slips away as you are forced to listen to the same answering machine instructions day after day. Personally, I have better things to do—like writing a blog. About answering machines.

good for us, bad for you

My wife and I just sold our home. We received an offer the day it was on the market. We can't be sure, but in all likelihood it would still be on the market if it weren't for the tax credit.

But that doesn't make me a fan of the tax credit. Like everything the government does, there are unintended consequences. A good friend of mine got a job shortly after I did, and he didn't get a chance to put his home for sale in time for a buyer to take advantage of the tax credit. The housing market is now artificially depressed, because anyone who buys a house in the immediate aftermath of the tax credit would feel like a sucker. The market he faces is very different than the one we faced, and I don't like his chances.

One solution might be for the government to be permanently involved in providing incentives for housing. Except we tried that. It's called Fannie May and Freddie Mac, and they are partly responsible for the collapse.

Markets go up and down. The government needs to let the market bottom out so that we can see a real recovery.

I watched Avatar this weekend

It was so refreshing to see a Hollywood type portrait corporations in a negative light. Didn't see that coming! Cameron's shots at the US were similarly bold. What a maverick that guy is! Who else can reduce US history into a simplistic good vs. evil parable ? I mean, beside 5th graders. And adults who live in caves.

"We fight terror with terror!" Is it possible things are a little more complicated than that?

The thing that drives me crazy is that James Cameron actually thinks he making some kind of a gutsy statement. What a coward.

This country has been very good to Cameron--not to mention the rest of the world. It's despicable to me that he makes vast amounts of money--from Americans--by telling Americans how awful their country is. He's an ungrateful ass.

It's the equivalent of living in Mom's basement and mooching off of her, while constantly berating her.

I hate LA. Go LA!

The Los Angeles Lakers represent everything I hate: Sports dynasties, celebrities, ugly uniforms, and Phil Jackson-- who is possibly the worst human on earth. Throughout the playoffs, I cheered for every team that played them... until they faced Boston.

I wasn't planning on cheering for LA, but I just couldn't bring myself to cheer for a team from Boston. I realized I might actually hate Boston more than Los Angeles. The most prominent sports figure in LA is Kobe, and the most prominent one is Boston is Tom Brady. Neither is an especially upstanding citizen, but I detest Tom Brady with an unquenchable hatred. He's just so handsome.

Kobe is sort of ugly, and he also has an ENORMOUS chip on his shoulder despite being extremely successful. That's kind of an achievement. Kobe is angry; Brady is fussy.

Speaking of fussy, Rasheed Wallace is a 9-year old girl on the basketball court. His inner tweets: "Life is SO UNFAIR :(" and "These refs don't understand me >;("

The NBA should make it a foul to flop and cry before basketball becomes soccer.

Last thing is Ron Artest. Artest is not exactly a pillar-of-the-community guy, but he thanked his psychiatrist after winning. That redeems him from all previous misdeeds.

barbershop time machine

I am going to miss Tallahassee. I am also going to miss my barbershop. It's a different world in there.

North Florida has more in common with rural Georgia than it does with Orlando or Miami or Tampa. This is captured in the oft-repeated phrase "The farther north you go, the farther south you go." Nowhere is this truer than my barbershop.

Three guys work there:

Boss: This guy cut my hair once, and he was drunk. It was 11:00 AM on a Monday. He did a good enough job, and I got the impression it wasn't the first time he had started out the day with a few drinks.

Creep: Dude makes lots of unfunny jokes and laughs hysterically. Once we were talking about financial bailouts, and the conversation turned to government intrusion. He talked about how it wasn't fair for "the law" to put people's pictures online who were guilty of crimes. He then said that his picture was online for something that happened with his hated ex-wife. I didn't inquire further because NOTHING would surprise me about this guy.

Old Timer: He is at least 80. We were talking about the discipline problems with FSU's football teams. He said they didn't have these problems before "they let the blacks play." The guy is genuinely nostalgic for the segregationist era. I once asked him what the biggest change he has seen in his lifetime. His answer: "Biggest change? Me. I'm old now." Well said, old-timer.

fruit

My tangerine tree blossomed and there might even be a couple tiny little tangerines growing. It puts a big smile on my face.

I also got a one-year job at Southern Utah University. I will admit this university was not on my radar a year ago, or even 4 months ago. But I could not be happier. I have yet to hear a bad thing about Cedar City or the university. I am really excited that I get to teach consumer behavior.

fruitless, for now

When Deb and I bought our first home together, I ran out and bought a tangerine tree for our yard. That was five years ago, and it is yet to yield any fruit. It is in the sunniest part of our yard, and it has grown quickly. It seems to be thriving, but it bears no fruit. Two years ago there was one blossom. I got excited and tried to take a picture of it, but I hit the blossom with the camera and the blossom detached.

Whoops.

You might think that Florida is a great place to grow tangerines, but the truth is that Florida is too humid for citrus. (That is why Florida orange growers struggle with a number of diseases that California growers do not). My tangerine tree attracts white flies, who like the leaves. The white flies excrete a sugary substance on the leaves, and a black fungus grows on their excretion. The black fungus chokes the leaves and prevents photosynthesis. So for the past two years, I have cleaned the leaves individually, by hand and with a rag.

Cleaning fungus growing on insect crap isn't as fun as it sounds.

Anyway, during this year's leaf-cleaning, I thought about that tree as a metaphor for my job search. Lots of patience and effort, but nothing to show. At some point, I will land a great job and that tree will produce delicious tangerines. Maybe this is the year for both.

over her

I won't say that I ever liked Sarah Palin, but I thought that the attacks against her were unfair. I didn't think she was as bad as Joe Biden, who is a blunder machine. And some of the nastiness against her is due to the fact that she is an unrefined woman from rural America, which is the kind of person I tend to like. So I had some sympathy for her.

Not anymore. In fact, I can't stand her. In a lot of ways she's like Rush Limbaugh or Al Sharpton; people who value fame and recognition over solving problems. I think she'd rather get a lot of press than actually do some good. And her resignation as Governor was a joke.

She was unpolished and uninformed when she was a VP candidate. She had an excuse-- her only experience was as Governor of Alaska. What's her excuse now? She's had plenty of time to read books, reflect, and come up with thoughtful answers to America's problems. She hasn't done that because she'd rather snipe at Obama in front of a large television audience.


She is an embarrassment.