I Have No Electricity…

by   •   General
 

This post is over 14 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

As a result of a ridiculous storm from this morning, I am sitting in the dark with my laptop because my entire town has no electricity. I’m probably not going to end up posting this until sometime tomorrow because my router at home has no power to send out an Internet signal, and I have nothing else to do in the dark until then, so I’ll make this blog post nice and long.

Fortunately, I have a 9-cell battery, I closed all unnecessary applications, I turned down the screen brightness all the way, I set my background as a solid black screen, and I turned off the wireless function so my battery has over 6 hours’ worth of power left.

I woke up a little bit before 8:00 AM this morning to get ready to go to class. At that time, it was storming worse than I think I’ve ever seen it storm before. The house was shaking enough that it felt like an earthquake, and a house nearby had all their roof shingles blown off. While I was getting ready, the power went out. I finished getting ready and left to go pick up my buddy and go to class.

When I got to my buddy’s house, I saw that portions of the edges on his siding was bent and blown off. I picked up my buddy and started driving to the local community college where we’re taking classes for the summer.

The drive there was ridiculous and it felt like I was driving in an obstacle course of fallen tree branches and downed wires. There were tons of police cars everywhere redirecting traffic, some in areas where the road were perfectly fine.

When we were almost there, there was a random police officer who was stopping people from taking the road that would have led me straight to my destination. As some of you might know, I have a horrible sense of direction and can’t find my way to any place without the use of a map. I didn’t want to risk getting lost, so I turned into a parking lot from one end and exited the parking lot from the opposite end, effectively placing me past the police vehicle and on the road he was blocking. The road was perfectly fine.

We kept going and finally made it to the community college just in time for our 9 AM classes. I parked in my normal parking spot and opened the door to go inside when a woman told us that the college was closed until 1 PM due to a power failure. Unfortunately, my buddy and I were unable to go straight back home because we had a class at 1 PM. We decided to just wait out the three hours, go get some lunch like normal for another hour afterwards, and resume our day as if nothing had happened.

After about an hour or so of waiting, a college police officer came up to us and told us that the college was closed for the remainder of the day (which meant that we had effectively wasted an hour of our lives for nothing). My buddy and I drove back home.

When we got back to our home town, I stayed for a while at his house and helped his dad fix the broken shingles on the side of the house. I was there until about 4 PM and had nothing to do except put my buddy in leg locks, arm bars, and choke holds.

After I got back home, I took my dog out for a short while and went to the family business. At first I was under the impression that the power was out there as well, but when I called my mom before I left the house a little after 5 PM, she said that the power was fine there now, and it was only out during the morning. I quickly grabbed all my electronics and chargers and headed out to the family business to charge up and check my email.

After tending to almost 50 emails that I got throughout the day, I went to do normal martial arts training at 6:45 PM, ate dinner, and came back home at about 9 PM.

And now I’m sitting here blogging in the dark while my dog is laying down next to me snoring because there’s nothing else that I can do.

I tried calling our electricity provider, ComEd, to find out how much longer it would take for our power to come back on. The response I got was along the lines of “Our crew is currently out working to repair the damages and restore the service. The recovery process may take several days. We appreciate your patience.”

It’s funny how they’re appreciating my patience when I never said that I was being patient.

I’m lucky that my family owns a business over 10 miles away from my house so I don’t have to suffer from not being able to use electronics or checking the Internet for several days.

So what have I learned from this?

If you’re in a storm-prone area, try to keep a hand electricity generator handy (one of those little machines where you crank up the knob and it generates electricity, then you can plug stuff into it). I’m not sure how much those cost, but if they’re reasonably affordable and you rely heavily on electronics and the Internet, it’s probably worth having one of those lying around for instances like this. I’ve never actually experienced a power outage like this one before where it lasted all day and it’s expected to last for another several days, and I sure hope that I don’t have to experience another one in the future.

Also, dial-up Internet isn’t all that bad. I’m not able to use the Internet right now because I have DSL and the only way I can connect to the Internet is through a router, which requires electricity to operate. I’m not sure if you can just plug your computer directly into the phone jack and have it somehow work, but unfortunately, I was unable to test it out because my laptop only has a port for a LAN cable and not a regular phone jack. And yes, I tried plugging the phone jack into the LAN cable spot already, and no, it didn’t work.

Nine-cell batteries are definitely worth it. I’ve been blogging for quite a while already, and I’m still at about 6 hours of battery power remaining. Sure, 9-cell batteries are bigger and heavier, but I usually don’t carry my laptop around very much, and the extra weight is definitely worth the extra power it provides, even outside of severe storm and power outage conditions.

Always know where your flashlights are, and if you don’t have one, go buy one, even if you’re not in storm-prone areas. My mom told me to look for a flashlight next to my dad’s side of the master bed, and I found a massive yellow lantern that can pretty much act as a main light source. I’m not using it now because I don’t need light to use a laptop, but it’s useful for trying to navigate through the house in pitch black darkness.

I’m rapidly running out of things to blog about, and it’s still only almost 10 PM. I’m probably just going to go to sleep soon and wake up early tomorrow so I can actually see what I’m doing. Also, I happen to have a handful of books I got from the library that I can read all day tomorrow (and the days after, if needed).

 

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Fail Advertisement Sample

by   •   General
 

This post is over 14 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

Back on the first of this month, I mentioned that I’ve seen some advertisements that are unfilled templates. A few people had difficulty understanding what I was talking about, and I said that I would take a screenshot the next time I saw one.

While I was working on a project today for the Badger Herald, I saw a generic unfilled template ad­vertisement on our home page in an ad zone served by Google AdSense. I took a screenshot; this is what it looks like.

As you can see, it might be a failure in that the advertisement doesn’t say anything about the company, but it might also be a win because you (or at least I) want to click on the advertisement just to see what company would use an unfilled template advertisement, thus bringing more traffic to their website.

In other news, I’ve been doing way too much Shakespeare homework and reading lately.

 

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Done with Summer Classes for 2011

by   •   Daily Post
 

This post is over 14 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

I am officially done with summer classes as of today. I took my final exam for my abnormal psychology class this morning during class, and I just submitted my final assignment and exam for my physical science online course.

In other random news, Ed Lam (also known as your best friend) filmed a video a few days ago of me doing my homework while he was reviewing for his introduction to psychology exam. I know a handful of you have been requesting more videos with Ed Lam lately, but scripted comedy for videos doesn’t seem to be one of his strong points, and most of what he films ends up being boring. No, he’s not a boring person, but he seems to be an expert at not catching funny things on camera.

I’ll see if we can get another video up together before we both leave for university. If not, then there will be one up either around Thanksgiving break or winter break.

 

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #215: What is a strength you have that you haven’t used? Recently? Maybe a secret skill, or perhaps an ability that only surfaces under tough times?

I don’t think I have any strengths left that I haven’t used yet. If I discover that I have a strength in a particular area, I try my best to take advantage of and use the strength as much as possible, even if it means manipulating or modifying the situation so it turns into my favor.

I’m not sure if I have any secret skills, but if I do, then I want to keep them a secret, because as we all know, the element of surprise is a powerful one.

 

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The Ultimatum Game

by   •   Academics, Daily Post
 

This post is over 14 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

 

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Topic #183: Are you happy or sad the Space Shuttle has been retired? What do you think the next goal for humans in space should be, and what do you think Russia and China, the new leaders, will do next? Is it important enough to get funding before other needs?

I’m actually pretty glad that the Space Shuttle has been retired and we’re not going to waste any more money sending stuff into space. I don’t have enough background knowledge about the Space Shuttle project to know what good it’s for, but at the point America is right now, we don’t need to waste money on extraneous things.

Stopping the Space Shuttle mission might save us enough money to delay the amount of time before we fall so deep in debt to China that they pretty much own us.

 

My Homework for Your Reading Pleasure

This is a thought paper I wrote today for extra credit for my abnormal psychology course. Thought papers are basically papers about anything psychology-related that make us think. The topic of my first thought paper is the ultimatum game.

A few days ago, I got a $350.00 check in the mail as payment for completing a psychology research experiment about two months ago, back when I was in Madison for this past academic year. I forgot that I was supposed to be expecting my payment, and it was a nice surprise when I opened up a letter and found a check inside. Getting the check reminded me of one of the many small tasks I did as part of the experiment, an economics game of altruism called the ultimatum game.

If you don’t know what the ultimatum game is, it’s simple – the experimenter gives you $10 and you get to decide how to split the money with another participant. Then you present the proposal to the other participant, and the other participant can either accept or reject the offer. If the other participant accepts the offer, you both get to keep the money in the proposed proportions. If the other participant rejects the offer, you both get nothing.

Following basic economic theory, the person deciding how to split the money should keep $9 for him or herself in order to optimize gain, and give $1 to the other participant. The other participant should theoretically accept any offer, regardless of what it is, because some money is better than no money.

And of course, that’s not how things actually turn out.

Most people doing the splitting of the money don’t decide to keep $9 and give $1. Instead, they usually split the $10 50-50 or 60-40. This means that instead of maximizing personal gain, people will freely give a greater-than-minimum amount of money to others. When experimenters found this out, they thought they had made a revolutionary discovery – humans are not in fact hardwired to optimize self-gain, but are instead hardwired to be altruistic to other humans.

On the other hand, most people receiving money don’t actually accept all incoming offers. If the offer is extremely low, like $1 or $2, they will reject the offer, sacrificing what they could have gotten in order to show their disgust of how selfish the other individual is. This means that, again, instead of maximizing personal gain, people will freely give up money to make other people suffer for their socially unacceptable behavior. This suggests that people think other people are supposed to be altruistic to others.

This brings us back to the original thought process of the splitter. Is the splitter giving 40% or 50% of the money to the other participant because they are actually altruistic, or is it just because they don’t want their offer to be rejected?

And if people are really this altruistic, then why is there so much crime and theft?

Let me take you back to when I was a participant of the ultimatum game. The full experimental session took a total of eight hours. I happened to be really good at the puzzle games at the beginning of the session, and ended up finishing about an hour or so ahead of schedule. The researcher then told me the next task was the ultimatum game, and that I would be playing against a real human being. This immediately set off a red flag in my mind – I knew that the chances of someone else doing the same eight-hour experiment as me at the same time and finishing the same puzzle games as me at the same speed to be ahead of schedule the same amount was near-zero. I concluded that I wasn’t actually playing with a real human being, but most likely a computerized recording of a previous participant’s choices.

I was randomly selected as being the receiver. The whole game was three rounds long, each round involving $10. The first offer was split 80-20, with me receiving the 20%. I still had the slightest thought that this might really be a human, so I rejected the offer to let my partner know that I wanted more money than that. I waited for the next round to begin.

The next round had the same result – the second offer was split 80-20 again. At that point I had solidified my hypothesis that I was not playing against a real human, because unless my partner was autistic, they would’ve decreased their selfishness to make sure I wouldn’t reject the offer again. I realized it was pointless to try and condition my opponent to give me more money because a set of recorded offers wasn’t going to change, so I just accepted the offer to leave the experiment with as much money as possible. The third offer was even worse – a 90-10 split – but I accepted it anyway because there was no point rejecting the offer to make a computer feel bad.

This brings up a very important methodological flaw in the experiment process. Out of the participants of this experiment, how many of them felt as if they weren’t playing with a real human being, and how did that affect the level of altruism? I personally think that humans are really altruistic, but altruism is heavily dependent on how emotionally connected one feels with the other human he or she is dealing with. One additional control placed on how the ultimatum game is run can easily find out if this is true or not.

The additional control is set-up. There are three basic different possibilities for the set-up of the ultimatum game: participant playing with a computer, participant playing with another participant via a computer, and participant playing with another participant face-to-face.

As clearly seen by my experiment experience (and the experience of my mysterious partner, if those responses were in fact those of another human), if we think that we’re not playing against another human, our signs of altruism and expected altruism are neutralized and we play just to optimize our personal gains.

But what if we do really believe that we’re playing against another human? Does our level of altruism change if we’re playing with them through a computer versus face-to-face? I haven’t been able to find any specific research results for variations of the ultimatum game with that set-up control, but I do know of a very similar experiment that did have this set-up control: the Milgram experiment.

The Milgram experiment was originally created to prove that Germans were genetically predisposed to following the authority of Adolf Hitler during the Nazi revolution and that Americans would never do such a thing if such an opportunity came to America. The experimenter, Stanley Milgram, played the role of the teacher. Another experimenter played the role of the learner. The participant played the role of the shocker. The experiment involved the teacher asking the learner questions; if the learner got the question incorrect, the shocker would electrocute the learner. The twist was that the participant didn’t know that the learner was another experimenter, and instead thought the learner was another participant. The participant also did not know that the electric shocks were not real.

The results of this experiment were shocking (in a figurative sense) to Milgram – his hypothesis was wrong, and Americans were just as compliant to authority as Germans. Americans were just as likely as Germans to shock the learner with the maximum voltage, simply because the teacher said so and claimed it was okay. Once Milgram figured this out, he started making some alterations. The one we’ll be focusing on to connect with the ultimatum game is the alteration of the level of personal connection between the shocker and the learner.

When the experiment started, the shocker had different roles in setting up the experiment. Some would be sitting across a glass wall far away from the learner and would never make contact with him. Some would be instructed to go strap the shocking devices onto the body of the learner. Some would be given some time to chat with the learner. Overall, the more physical and personal contact the shocker had with the learner, the less severely the shocker would shock the learner, most likely because the learner was more easily able to put him or herself into the shoes of the learner.

My guess is that the same will apply to the ultimatum game. The more we increase the amount of personal contact with the other participant, the more willing we will be to split the money fairly and equally. This means that altruism between two people has a direct positive causational correlation with the level of personal connection between the two.

So back to the big question from a while back – if people are so altruistic, why is there so much crime? Based on the results from the Milgram experiment and the assumed results from a variation of the ultimatum game, crime and theft occurs because, although we’re altruistic, we don’t have something that reminds us of how altruistic we actually are. Once that personal connection is sparked, our altruism comes back and proves that the original finding of the ultimatum game – that we’re hardwired to help others – is actually true (even though the specific instance of altruism in the original ultimatum game might have been fueled by something different).

 

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Preview Gmail’s New Look

by   •   General
 

This post is over 14 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

If you’re a Gmail user, you might have noticed that there is a new link at the top of your Inbox called “Preview Gmail’s new look.”

Being the Google fan that I am, I tried out the new design and was moderately disappointed.

If you go to the Theme tab in your mail settings, you can change your theme to either Preview or Preview (Dense). The dense preview is the regular size, and the preview is an overextended size that was most likely created for people with 24-inch monitors.

The new preview theme doesn’t have enough contrast among the elements on the page, making everything mix and blend together. Each email isn’t distinct enough, and it’s not split up into easily-identifiable sections.

Google updated their Calendar to a similar theme, and the Calendar is bearable (even though I still switched back to the classic look). But, the new colors just don’t work well for Gmail.

I’m hoping that they’ll still permanently keep the option of using the classic design, because it’s much neater and easier on the eyes to use.

 

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Topic #182: Write about your earliest memory, or the strongest early memory that comes to mind.

My earliest memory is of me eating a rice cake.

… That’s just about all I remember.

 

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Response to Benjamin Chow

by   •   Academics
 

This post is over 14 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

 

Response: Benjamin Chow’s “A Little Insight” (July 06, 2011)

Yesterday, one of my buddies, Benjamin Chow, wrote a blog post about the trial regarding the death of Caylee Anthony. The overall theme of his article was that Caylee Anthony’s mother, Casey Anthony, was in fact responsible for the death of her two-year-old daughter and should have been found guilty of the indictments of murder, manslaughter, and child abuse.

You can read his article for yourself on his website.

http://benjaminchow.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/july-6th-2011/.

If you remember the last time I analyzed one of Ben Chow’s blog posts, I went through everything he said section by section and pointed out flaws in his argument and why the opposite of what he said was true. Although I do not completely disagree with Ben about everything he said, I will still be doing the same thing with the parts I do believe are poorly constructed.

In his case summary, Benjamin states that Casey’s mother, Cindy Anthony, dialed 911 because she thought she smelled a dead body in the trunk of the car. Benjamin left out the important fact that, although it supposedly smelled like a decomposing body, it was merely an interpretation from a woman who happened to be deprived of seeing her granddaughter, and she had a clear predisposition to inter­preting a bad smell as a rotting body because she was concerned about the safety of her granddaughter. Sure, both Cindy and her husband testified that they both thought the smell was a rotting body, but we all know how powerful groupthink is.

There were five key chemical compounds present during decomposition found in the trunk of the vehicle after a forensic investigation by Dr. Arpad Alexander Vass of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, but it was not specified that the decomposition was that of a human. So what exactly was in the trunk? According to Anthony, it was just a dead squirrel.

Benjamin then criticizes Anthony for spending 31 days after her daughter went missing partying and getting a tattoo. Although that might be considered abnormal and bad behavior, just because she acts differently than a conventional mother would does not make her guilty of a crime. It is very possible that she was experiencing unconscious psychological trauma and was exhibiting defence mechanisms like denial (refusing to accept that something has happened – in the case of Anthony, pretending that everything is still fine) or thought suppression (pushing thoughts away in order to face reality – in the case of Anthony, the reality that she may no longer have a daughter but still has a life she has to live).

The fact that Anthony does not tell anybody that her daughter is missing may seem like something shocking, but if you look closely, it’s simply just a slightly more extreme form of something we all do. How many times have you made a mistake like forgetting something at work or making a miscalculation, and didn’t tell anyone because you didn’t want to experience the shame and thought you could take care of it yourself? Or, if you’re a student and don’t have a job, how many times have you gotten a bad grade on an exam but didn’t tell your parents or guardians because you didn’t want to get punished and thought you could make up for it by doing well on upcoming exams?

Further down in his argument, Benjamin states that the babysitter Zanny (who was supposedly looking after Caylee) never existed. This is false; Zanny is a real person named Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez, and the prosecution never stated that she never existed. Gonzalez was actually brought into court and she testified that she did not know the Anthony family. On a side note, Gonzalez will be filing a civil suit against Anthony for defamation that is scheduled to take place on August 29, 2011. Gonzalez claims that people suspect her of kidnapping everywhere she goes, and that she has been unable to find a job.

Next, Benjamin addresses the issue with the “startling” web searches of phrases such as “neck breaking,” “homemade weapons,” and “chloroform,” stating that this had a direct connection to the murder. If this was the case, then I must be pondering suicide, because I’ve been doing a lot of suicide-related searches lately. … Or, I was just writing a paper about suicide (that you can actually read in yesterday’s blog post) and my searches had nothing to do with what I’m feeling or planning to do. If this evidence was really considered a strong indicator that she did commit the murder, then I think it’s a better indicator that the accusers are running out of evidence to back up their claims.

Finally, Benjamin concludes his piece by stating that he is severely dissatisfied with the judicial system. I actually agree with this, and I think that the concept of juries should be abolished. Almost always, the members of the jury do not have any background information about the themes of the case and end up making a poor decision because they either misinterpreted the information, overweighed one insignificant component of the case, or did not fulfill their duties properly.

For example, if a court case has to do with something as a traffic violation, the bulk of the case will involve traffic laws. How much do you really know about traffic laws? Sure, you may have passed your exam and gotten your driver’s license, but that still doesn’t mean you know all the traffic rules. Did you know that in Glendale, California, there is a statute that explicitly states it is illegal to jump from a vehicle traveling at or above 65 miles per hour? Did you know that in Eureka, California, there is a statute that explicitly states it is illegal to use the road as a bed? The members of the jury simply don’t have enough specialty knowledge to make valid judgments on all cases.

As for overemphasizing insignificant details – did you know that eyewitness testimony is one of the most inaccurate pieces of evidence that can be presented at court, but it is the most influential? People’s memories are easily changeable. Every time you recall a memory, you rewrite it into your brain. The rewriting, however, is not always an exact copy. Each time you recall a memory, it is slightly altered with the thoughts and values you hold at the time of the recollection. By the time an eyewitness appears in court, important details of the memory could be long gone. Unfortunately, most jury members don’t know this, and an eyewitness confidently saying “I know he did it” is extremely convincing.

So here’s my unexpected twist. I think Casey Anthony’s jury did a relatively excellent job.

When interviewed, the jury members believed that Anthony should have been guilty, but they were unable to convict her as guilty because the evidence presented in court was not sufficient to prove that she was responsible for the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. This means, Anthony’s jury members set aside their personal beliefs and morals and followed the jury procedure carefully and properly.

So who’s at fault? I think the prosecuting team should take the responsibility for this failure. From what I see, I think they were too focused on convicting Anthony of murder and sentencing her to death, and depended too much on the humanity and sensitivity of the jury to get their work done. Fortunately, the jury made a decision from a completely neutral standpoint. The evidence may have been enough to convict Anthony of negligence, but the prosecution decided to overshoot their charges, and ended up paying the price.

 

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