So Saturday morning I woke up early, while Hannah (much like Jana) slept in to get her full 10 hours. I dressed in my conference attire and headed down to the university for registration. I found out when I got there how small the conference was-- there might have been 50 people total in attendance. We mingled for a few minutes eating tea and pastries (croissants mmmm) and looking at the small number of posters that had been set up around the room.
First of all, I noticed that the posters had not been very well-cared for, and I'm willing to bet most of them were transported with 2 rubberbands tied around them. Also, while most posters had small grammatical or spelling mistakes, others were the result of huge printing errors, in which people had to tape in pictures of graphs or whole blocks of text. I guess even making a poster for a small conference is pretty impressive, though. Most single-lecture-theater conferences simply have all-day powerpoint presentations.
I have been to a similar conference before-- you have your huge gatherings like MPA, which is held in a hotel, several rooms are used at once, and an entire ballroom area is reserved for posters. And then you have your tight-knit, single-subject conferences where the whole thing takes place in one room and everyone knows each other. The Synaesthesia conference was the latter.
Pretty soon, we were ushered into the lecture theater where the presentations were to be given, and as I situated myself, I saw Hannah (finally up), come into the room. She spotted me and quickly took the seat to my left.
"You missed pastries!" I said.
"Ugh." She made a face. "I can't eat until about 4 hours after I wake up."
We turned to the front of the room and the presentations began.
As you may already know, someone is considered a synaesthete when they confuse at least one sensory modality with another. The most common type of synaesthesia is grapheme-color, in which the subject will see each letter of the alphabet as having a specific color attributed to it, no matter what the actual color of the letter is. Most often, A is red, but it can be different depending on the synaesthete. The synaesthete sees these colors very consistently, and tested many times over, they have about a 99% accuracy in indicating which color goes with which letter across a number of tests. This shows that some people really do attribute different colors each letter. Some synaesthetes claim that they can actually see the synaesthetic color, while others say they only imagine the color in their mind's eye, but for all of them, the same color appears every time, and sometimes if a letter is presented as the "wrong" color, the synaesthete will be irritated by it.
Most of the studies were about grapheme-color synaesthesia, but as the presentations went on, we started to suspect something funny going on...
First of all, most of the synaesthesia scientists were synaesthetes, themselves. They spoke of their own experiences and many people used those experiences as the basis for their research question. One person even treated herself as a case subject. Only one presenter admitted that her being a synaesthete might actually bias her judgment, and she wasn't even a scientist-- she was from an English department. Kind of gives psychologists a bad rap, eh?
Second, many of the studies had striking methodological errors. This might be expected from a small conference such as this, but coupled with the synaesthete's high fantasy proneness and flair for the dramatic, it seemed that every presentation ended with, "As you can see, I've discovered this new and amazing thing that will alter the course of future synaesthesia research forever", as they ignored their messy, confirmatory designs.
One study looked at fMRI data from eight synaesthetes.
"Look at the brain areas that light up in all of these subjects," the experimenter said, pointing at pictures of brains that were all in a neat little row. "The brain areas that activate during synaesthetic experience are bilateral insula, left anterior cingulate cortex, right superior frontal gyrus, and left caudate tail. These areas have been found to be involved in emotion. Therefore, emotion plays a key role in synaesthesia." Whatever the hell that means.
OK, maybe you've noticed the big error here? If not, let me point it out to you. The researchers never directly measured emotion. Obvious now? They should have had synaesthetes look at emotional words, or watch an emotional movie, or they should have at least tried to make them laugh or something while their brains were being scanned. But nope-- they just let the synaesthetes do their normal, unemotional synaesthetic thing, and just because a few brain areas lit up that are sometimes involved in emotion, they decided their scans gave some kind of conclusive evidence for an integral role of emotion in synaesthesia. I bet you didn't know this, but the anterior cingulate cortex is also used in visual mental imagery. In fact, a lot of those brain areas are used for other things besides emotion. Nice try though.
One presenter (another person from an English department), looked at "synaesthetic metaphor" in WWI poetry.
"These poets claimed that being on the battlefield mixed up their senses, so that they could see the sounds of explosions and gunshots, could taste the fear in the air, feel the hurt color of blood," she said. "This was expressed in popular poetry of the time, which indicates the possibility of a universal capacity for synaesthetic expression." She went on to say that many of these poets were synaesthetes, and since people liked their poetry, were able to understand the synaestheic experience-- and perhaps we all have a propensity for synaesthesia in some form or another!
Or else, synaesthetic metaphor is not really synaesthetic. Oops. Yeah, I write "synaesthetic metaphor" all the time, and I don't claim to be synaesthetic on any level. You know why I do it though? Because in writing, it's good to involve all the senses. You don't need to be a WWI poet to understand that. And you don't have to be a synaesthete, either.
Another study claimed that there's this exciting new type of synaesthesia called "swimming-style synaesthesia" that nobody's heard of before! The evidence for this is that the experimenter is a swimmer and a synaesthete, and hey-- she saw different colors for each of the different swimming styles. Too bad she already had other forms of synaesthesia. Also, that type of synaesthesia was probably learned through expertise, and could probably be seen in expert synaesthete racecar drivers as well, or what have you.
Another study posited that normal people can learn synaesthesia through hundreds of repeated learning trials. Sorry fellas, but that's associative learning. Again, nice try.
But the most grossly-flawed study (the one which made Hannah decide not to go to the conference at all on day 2, on principle) is as follows:
The study looked at 13 grapheme-color synaesthetes using a color-priming paradigm. This means that subjects had to look at a computer screen, and a letter (the prime) would flash onto the screen. After a delay, that same letter (the probe) would appear again. The letters were sometimes colored synaesthetically. The experimenter had to ask each synaesthete what their specific letter-colors were to make letters the synaesthetic color.
So, for example: say subject 1 saw the letter A as red. So the different categories of trials are as follows:
1) Prime (red) Probe (red) -- synaesthetically congruent*
2) Prime (blue) Probe (blue) -- print congruent, but not synaesthetically congruent
3) Prime (red) Probe (blue) -- incongruent
4) Prime (blue) Probe (red) -- incongruent
The experimenters found that synaesthetes were faster at identifying the probe when both prime and probe letters appeared as the synaesthetic color (category 1), than in any other condition. This, they said, not only proves that synaesthesia exists, but that greater mental imagery makes synaesthetes faster than controls on this task.
OK first, they studied expectancies (i.e., expecting the probe to be the same color as the prime), not imagery. COmpletely different internal processes. But that's not the worst thing. Hannah caught this: the experimenters never masked their primes! Masking, for those of you who don't know, involves presenting a picture (such as a circle of TV white noise) on the screen in between the prime and the probe. Without a mask, the after-image of the prime will remain for hundreds of milliseconds (and in a reaction time task like this, milliseconds are everything).
So no matter what their conclusions were, their study was complete crap from the get-go. No mask means no way of knowing whether results came from the long exposure to the prime or not.
Boy, did we tear the presenters apart. But it was unfair of them to put their "Synaesthetic AA meeting" under the guise of an academic conference.
Not only that, but they never convinced me that synaesthesia actually exists. While they claimed that synaesthesia leads to heightened imagery, creativity, fantasy proneness, and memory-- maybe synaesthesia is a symptom of a combination of all those things. In my opinion, synaesthesia seems likely to result from some mild form of OCD. In effect, a symptom... not a "disorder" in itself.
But the conference wasn't a complete loss. It was a good test of our methodological knowledge, and showed that we have actually learned something from our Masters course, yippee hooray. Also, it was admittedly cool hearing the synaesthetes' personal experiences, even though a scientific conference is not the place for them.
There were a couple of big names there as well that nobody would have heard of before, though one of them wrote my undergraduate Cogntive Neuroscience textbook though, so that is pretty cool.
Okay, done with conference rant-- may update more later, but I'm going to practice my presentation some more now.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
London Synaesthesia Adventure
Wow, so it's been over a week... but what with lab work and class on Monday, more lab work on Tuesday, on top of preparing for Thursday's presentation, I have some very good excuses as to why I did not update earlier. So let's see, where shall I begin...
Friday: In the morning, I packed my favorite heavy duty backpack for a 3-day London Synaesthesia conference. If you remember, Hannah (a friend/classmate) found the conference advertized on facebook a while back and thought it sounded interesting, so we registered, reserved a hotel room and bought train tickets, and it seems in no time at all, it was time to go.
Jana, in an uncharacteristic energy, agreed to accompany me to the train station that afternoon. I would be traveling alone, and Hannah would meet me later that evening because she had some last-minute lab work to do. I figured I would get situated at the hotel and go to a lecture that evening that would be given by the keynote speaker at the conference, then meet Hannah back in London for a show.
So, with my bag full of conference clothing and bedtime reading (Sensory Deception by Slade and Bentall), we tramped the 20 minute walk to the station. Everything went smoothly here-- I bid Jana goodbye and got on the train with no trouble.
As I said, Hannah and I were interested in seeing a West End show (if you don't know, London's West End is kind of like Broadway, except apparently not as good), so I spent most of the train journey calling ticket bookers who didn't think the play we wanted to go to existed. After texting Hannah the problem, she did her own research and found some relativey unexpensive tickets to Chicago instead, so we bought the tickets and that was that. Looking forward to a great show later that night, I spent the rest of my train journey in happy peace.
I arrived at St Pancras and decided to spend much of the afternoon getting acquainted with the underground. I found the theatre we were going to that night (I thought it wouod be smart to find it in the daytime first), then headed off to East London, which was where the conference was going to be held.
This is where things got weird...
So I exited the train station and saw a sign pointing right that said University of East London. Since my hotel was close to the university, I headed off in that direction. I walked. And walked. The sidewalks were enormous, the buildings towered above me-- the air was hazy and warm, and I felt kind of like I was in a dream. I soon passed a small branch of the campus (about the size of a fast food restaurant), but figured the rest of the university would be further along. I walked some more. After about a half hour, I came to a ring road, and like a mirage in the desert, a McDonalds was positioned right in the middle of it all. A man was sweeping up outside.
"Excuse me," I said. "Can you tell me the way to the University of East London?" The man pointe down the road I had just come. "No way," I said. "I just came from that direction. The sign was pointing this way."
"The university is in that direction," he said. "I am 100% sure." That was when I realized the sign I had passed must have been indicating the small branch of the university, and the rest of it was somewhere else. So, dejected, I started the long journey back towards the train station, while a couple of ambulances whizzed by (foreshadowing what was to come-- but don't worry now, it had nothing to do with me -- but I will tell all in a bit).
So I made my way back to the train station, wound my way down confusing roads, and started to see more and more students with backpacks (I knew I had to be getting close). Finally, after a few more wrong turns, and about an hour and a half later than I expected, I found the main campus of the University of East London. OK, one place down... now for the hotel.
I knew the hotel would be further down the same road, so I kept walking. But as I reached the next block, I could see a crowd of people stuck on my side of a police barrier that stretched from one end of the street to the other, and about 10 blocks or so were completely empty save for the odd police car. I approached the barrier and flagged down the nearest officer.
"What's going on?" I asked.
"There's been a serious incident here," the policeman informed me. "Nobody's getting through here."
"I need to get to my hotel," I said. "It's right down this road."
"You'll have to go around, I'm afraid," the officer said, indicating a residential road off to the left. So I started to walk, and soon found myself weaving through slums and back alleys, trying to stay parallel with the road I had to get to. Every now and then I looked down a rightward facing road only to see my road was still blocked off, and people were gossiping all around me.
"They won't let anyone through."
"What happened?"
"I don't know."
I walked for about 10 blocks and suddenly found that stretched across the entire neighborhood, was more police tape. I followed it until I reached my destination road again, which was still blocked off. I turned around and headed one more block down, but it turned into a dead end. There was a guy walking his dog.
"Is the road still blocked?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said. "Do you know what happened?"
"Someone was shot," he said. He walked with me toward the road I needed to get to, and was stopped by a neighbor.
"Man, did you hear someone was murdered?" the neighbor said. I gawked.
"Nuh uh," I interrupted. The guy turned to me.
"Yeah, the whole neighborhood is waiting to get out but the road is blocked from here to Sainsbury's."
I walked back to the police tape and flagged a female officer. I could see my hotel from where I stood.
"Excuse me," I said. "My hotel is right there. Can't I get through?"
"Yeah, let us through!" someone in the crowd piped up.
"Unfortunately no," she said. "The incident happened right across the street from that hotel. It's still a crime scene, so until we get it cleared up, nobody's allowed on this road, not even the buses are running here right now." (The English and their dependable bus system.)
I saw a couple of policemen hop the tape with a k9 unit and my imagination suddenly decided to tell me perhaps the killer had escaped and they were now searching for him through the back alleys I'd just traversed.
"Are we in danger here?" I asked.
"You're safe on that side of the tape," the female officer informed me.
I had been fervently texting Jana and Hannah this whole time, updating them on the situation, texting things like: i saw the ambulances shoot past as i was walking in the wrong direction... what if i had gone in the right direction!?!
Jana texted back: ya, u woulda been a witness, u would b stuck w the police for hours
Hannah, ever the scientist, texted things like: it was probably a directed murder. dont worry. also our hotel should b the safest place in the world tonight. the chances of a murder happening twice in the same place are astronomically low.
I backtracked through the alleys toward the university. Hannah called me then.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
"Yeah," I said. "I'm trying to find the university. I think I can still make the keynote lecture before the show."
"I called my brother," she said. "He's looking up different hotels for us now."
"The police said the road should be OK again by this evening," I told her.
"Oh," she said. "I thought you might not want to stay there anymore after what happened."
"No, that would be a big hassle. Besides, I'm brave."
"Why don't you just come meet me at St Pancras?" she said.
"OK sounds good. I've been wandering around enough as it is without having to find the building where the lecture is being held." It was also getting dark at this point.
"All right, see you soon."
"See you."
As I walked back toward the train station, I came to a crossroads and didn't know which way to turn.
"Excuse me," I said for the third time that day, this time to a young, well-dressed black dude. "Is the train station that way or that way?" I asked, indicated each road in turn.
"It's that way," he said, pointing left. "I'm heading that way if you want to follow me!"
As it turns out, this guy was really chatty.
"I'm a maths teacher at one of the schools here," he said. "I'm originally from Guyana."
"Cool, I have a friend from Guyana!" I said, thinking of Chantal, a girl who was part of my friend group the time I'd studied abroad. Guyana, if you don't know, is the only native English speaking country in South America, a tiny country up on the northeastern coast.
"Maybe we could go out sometime," the man said.
"I don't live here," I told him. "I'm only in Stratford for a conference. I'm leaving in a few days."
"Oh, well... that's too bad," he said. "It was nice meeting you." By this time we were outside the train station. We shook hands and parted ways, never to see each other again.
Soon enough, I was at St. Pancras again. I changed into my nice clothes in one of the station bathrooms, only for Hannah to emerge from the crowd of women.
"You know, people don't dress up for shows here," she said as I powdered my nose.
"Oh well," I said, "I've been walking in bad shoes all day I needed an excuse to get into my Clarks anyway." Comfy Clarks.
We hauled our luggage through the underground and made our way to the West End. The show was great. The singing was good, and the dancing was excellent. The fake American accents were laughable, but easily overlooked. We had a generally good time the rest of the night, took a taxi from the Statford Station to our hotel around 12AM, and went to bed, eager for the next day's conference.
But the conference, I will save for another post-- now I must go practice my presentation a couple of times. Stay tuned for more in a bit!
Friday: In the morning, I packed my favorite heavy duty backpack for a 3-day London Synaesthesia conference. If you remember, Hannah (a friend/classmate) found the conference advertized on facebook a while back and thought it sounded interesting, so we registered, reserved a hotel room and bought train tickets, and it seems in no time at all, it was time to go.
Jana, in an uncharacteristic energy, agreed to accompany me to the train station that afternoon. I would be traveling alone, and Hannah would meet me later that evening because she had some last-minute lab work to do. I figured I would get situated at the hotel and go to a lecture that evening that would be given by the keynote speaker at the conference, then meet Hannah back in London for a show.
So, with my bag full of conference clothing and bedtime reading (Sensory Deception by Slade and Bentall), we tramped the 20 minute walk to the station. Everything went smoothly here-- I bid Jana goodbye and got on the train with no trouble.
As I said, Hannah and I were interested in seeing a West End show (if you don't know, London's West End is kind of like Broadway, except apparently not as good), so I spent most of the train journey calling ticket bookers who didn't think the play we wanted to go to existed. After texting Hannah the problem, she did her own research and found some relativey unexpensive tickets to Chicago instead, so we bought the tickets and that was that. Looking forward to a great show later that night, I spent the rest of my train journey in happy peace.
I arrived at St Pancras and decided to spend much of the afternoon getting acquainted with the underground. I found the theatre we were going to that night (I thought it wouod be smart to find it in the daytime first), then headed off to East London, which was where the conference was going to be held.
This is where things got weird...
So I exited the train station and saw a sign pointing right that said University of East London. Since my hotel was close to the university, I headed off in that direction. I walked. And walked. The sidewalks were enormous, the buildings towered above me-- the air was hazy and warm, and I felt kind of like I was in a dream. I soon passed a small branch of the campus (about the size of a fast food restaurant), but figured the rest of the university would be further along. I walked some more. After about a half hour, I came to a ring road, and like a mirage in the desert, a McDonalds was positioned right in the middle of it all. A man was sweeping up outside.
"Excuse me," I said. "Can you tell me the way to the University of East London?" The man pointe down the road I had just come. "No way," I said. "I just came from that direction. The sign was pointing this way."
"The university is in that direction," he said. "I am 100% sure." That was when I realized the sign I had passed must have been indicating the small branch of the university, and the rest of it was somewhere else. So, dejected, I started the long journey back towards the train station, while a couple of ambulances whizzed by (foreshadowing what was to come-- but don't worry now, it had nothing to do with me -- but I will tell all in a bit).
So I made my way back to the train station, wound my way down confusing roads, and started to see more and more students with backpacks (I knew I had to be getting close). Finally, after a few more wrong turns, and about an hour and a half later than I expected, I found the main campus of the University of East London. OK, one place down... now for the hotel.
I knew the hotel would be further down the same road, so I kept walking. But as I reached the next block, I could see a crowd of people stuck on my side of a police barrier that stretched from one end of the street to the other, and about 10 blocks or so were completely empty save for the odd police car. I approached the barrier and flagged down the nearest officer.
"What's going on?" I asked.
"There's been a serious incident here," the policeman informed me. "Nobody's getting through here."
"I need to get to my hotel," I said. "It's right down this road."
"You'll have to go around, I'm afraid," the officer said, indicating a residential road off to the left. So I started to walk, and soon found myself weaving through slums and back alleys, trying to stay parallel with the road I had to get to. Every now and then I looked down a rightward facing road only to see my road was still blocked off, and people were gossiping all around me.
"They won't let anyone through."
"What happened?"
"I don't know."
I walked for about 10 blocks and suddenly found that stretched across the entire neighborhood, was more police tape. I followed it until I reached my destination road again, which was still blocked off. I turned around and headed one more block down, but it turned into a dead end. There was a guy walking his dog.
"Is the road still blocked?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said. "Do you know what happened?"
"Someone was shot," he said. He walked with me toward the road I needed to get to, and was stopped by a neighbor.
"Man, did you hear someone was murdered?" the neighbor said. I gawked.
"Nuh uh," I interrupted. The guy turned to me.
"Yeah, the whole neighborhood is waiting to get out but the road is blocked from here to Sainsbury's."
I walked back to the police tape and flagged a female officer. I could see my hotel from where I stood.
"Excuse me," I said. "My hotel is right there. Can't I get through?"
"Yeah, let us through!" someone in the crowd piped up.
"Unfortunately no," she said. "The incident happened right across the street from that hotel. It's still a crime scene, so until we get it cleared up, nobody's allowed on this road, not even the buses are running here right now." (The English and their dependable bus system.)
I saw a couple of policemen hop the tape with a k9 unit and my imagination suddenly decided to tell me perhaps the killer had escaped and they were now searching for him through the back alleys I'd just traversed.
"Are we in danger here?" I asked.
"You're safe on that side of the tape," the female officer informed me.
I had been fervently texting Jana and Hannah this whole time, updating them on the situation, texting things like: i saw the ambulances shoot past as i was walking in the wrong direction... what if i had gone in the right direction!?!
Jana texted back: ya, u woulda been a witness, u would b stuck w the police for hours
Hannah, ever the scientist, texted things like: it was probably a directed murder. dont worry. also our hotel should b the safest place in the world tonight. the chances of a murder happening twice in the same place are astronomically low.
I backtracked through the alleys toward the university. Hannah called me then.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
"Yeah," I said. "I'm trying to find the university. I think I can still make the keynote lecture before the show."
"I called my brother," she said. "He's looking up different hotels for us now."
"The police said the road should be OK again by this evening," I told her.
"Oh," she said. "I thought you might not want to stay there anymore after what happened."
"No, that would be a big hassle. Besides, I'm brave."
"Why don't you just come meet me at St Pancras?" she said.
"OK sounds good. I've been wandering around enough as it is without having to find the building where the lecture is being held." It was also getting dark at this point.
"All right, see you soon."
"See you."
As I walked back toward the train station, I came to a crossroads and didn't know which way to turn.
"Excuse me," I said for the third time that day, this time to a young, well-dressed black dude. "Is the train station that way or that way?" I asked, indicated each road in turn.
"It's that way," he said, pointing left. "I'm heading that way if you want to follow me!"
As it turns out, this guy was really chatty.
"I'm a maths teacher at one of the schools here," he said. "I'm originally from Guyana."
"Cool, I have a friend from Guyana!" I said, thinking of Chantal, a girl who was part of my friend group the time I'd studied abroad. Guyana, if you don't know, is the only native English speaking country in South America, a tiny country up on the northeastern coast.
"Maybe we could go out sometime," the man said.
"I don't live here," I told him. "I'm only in Stratford for a conference. I'm leaving in a few days."
"Oh, well... that's too bad," he said. "It was nice meeting you." By this time we were outside the train station. We shook hands and parted ways, never to see each other again.
Soon enough, I was at St. Pancras again. I changed into my nice clothes in one of the station bathrooms, only for Hannah to emerge from the crowd of women.
"You know, people don't dress up for shows here," she said as I powdered my nose.
"Oh well," I said, "I've been walking in bad shoes all day I needed an excuse to get into my Clarks anyway." Comfy Clarks.
We hauled our luggage through the underground and made our way to the West End. The show was great. The singing was good, and the dancing was excellent. The fake American accents were laughable, but easily overlooked. We had a generally good time the rest of the night, took a taxi from the Statford Station to our hotel around 12AM, and went to bed, eager for the next day's conference.
But the conference, I will save for another post-- now I must go practice my presentation a couple of times. Stay tuned for more in a bit!
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Hiking Hills in the Peak District
OK, this is going to be a short post (as usual-- ha ha ha). Yesterday, the hiking club went to the Peak District, our favorite hiking haunt, mostly because it's so huge, you can take 10 or more day-hikes and still not cover the whole area-- which is basically what we've been doing. Yesterday, we conquered Chrome Hill and Parkhouse Hill-- two jagged mossy crags that have to be scaled like the true hardcore hikers we are. Look at the picture if you don't believe me:
This picture was expertly taken yesterday by a member of our hiking club, as we stood atop the second hill of the day. The first hill is the more distant one in the shot-- you can click the image to make it bigger.
The Peak District is just beautiful. Descriptions can't do it justice. As we walked, I imagined medieval knights and poets having adventures in this land, laying on the hillside, watching over the quiet world. And I just love the small brick villages tucked in hill valleys, and their old pubs with names like "The Black Sheep" and "Coach and Horses", the high churches, and the farms that go for miles and miles all around with crumbling stone barriers around their land. Sheep dot the hills everywhere, and horses and cows can usually be spotted closer to the farmhouse. It's springtime now, and the countryside is only becoming more vibrantly green-- some of the sheep have lambs, and they hop playfully at their mother's side on long, awkward legs, and bleat with annoying regularity.
There's nothing like a good hike on a sunny day, followed by a stop at the pub before returning home. Siiighh-- I wish Leicester were in the country! But it's a good thing the country is never too far off, wherever you are in England!
This picture was expertly taken yesterday by a member of our hiking club, as we stood atop the second hill of the day. The first hill is the more distant one in the shot-- you can click the image to make it bigger.
The Peak District is just beautiful. Descriptions can't do it justice. As we walked, I imagined medieval knights and poets having adventures in this land, laying on the hillside, watching over the quiet world. And I just love the small brick villages tucked in hill valleys, and their old pubs with names like "The Black Sheep" and "Coach and Horses", the high churches, and the farms that go for miles and miles all around with crumbling stone barriers around their land. Sheep dot the hills everywhere, and horses and cows can usually be spotted closer to the farmhouse. It's springtime now, and the countryside is only becoming more vibrantly green-- some of the sheep have lambs, and they hop playfully at their mother's side on long, awkward legs, and bleat with annoying regularity.
There's nothing like a good hike on a sunny day, followed by a stop at the pub before returning home. Siiighh-- I wish Leicester were in the country! But it's a good thing the country is never too far off, wherever you are in England!
2 Weeks til End of Term Update
OK, so here's what I set out to accomplish at the beginning of term:
1) Write a 6-8000 word critical literature review
2) Write a nearly perfect PhD studentship proposal (Kevin assures us this will be the hardest thing we do on the course, and I believe him)
3) Create an experimental study different from the thesis and write a 3000 word article
4) Create a professional webpage, other goodies for a portfolio
On top of those things, I have to:
5) Conduct the pilot and final experiments for my thesis
6) Design a scientific poster for the BPS conference in May (since I foolishly signed up to do it)
As of right now, I have written 7,300 words of my critical literature review, which has turned into "The relationship between perception, imagery, and hallucinations: with a special focus on visual deprivation"-- it went from being a follow-up to an article on the relationship between imagery and perception, to a mostly hallucination-centred work that integrates the role of visual imagery into visual deprivation-induced hallucinations-- which I pride myself in thinking is a completey new angle on the topic. I have about one full day's worth of work to put into references (I have more than 100 now), and I need to flesh out a couple of paragraphs here and there, do some extensive revision, and then I'm done. Probably 5 full days worth of work left on that.
As for the studentship proposal? As you know, I met with someone about this, and have since created a detailed outline for "The role of visual imagery in AMD hallucinations", AMD being age-related macular degeneration. I am going to express the importance of discovering the role of imagery in hallucinations, and then create an imagery therapy for hallucinating patients with AMD. So I have a specific topic to cover, and I have outlined sessions of interviews/questionnaires and diaries for patients to fill out on my "program" before and after imagery therapy. I have decided to include at least one psychometric measure of imagery in AMD hallucinations, as well. I also found an article that actually describes a structure for imagery therapy for phantom limb pain, which is similar in nature to hallucinations, and I can use much of this structure for my imagery therapy for hallucinating patients.
The problem is, the people who conduct imagery therapy for phantom limb pain are clinical psychologists. This brings me back to the question... do I really want to be a clinical psychologist? If it's the only way to do this study, then yes. I will do what I have to do to run the experiments I want to run. But really, the people who are studying AMD hallucinations are mostly ophthalmologists, then clinicians, then finally experimentalists. Since ophthalmology is out (need a medical degree), I still have the couple of options I always had... but the chances of my becoming a clinician are almost nil, considering I have no relevant experience... I have only studied one patient in my time, and that was not for therapy purposes. But who knows, maybe it'll happen...
Anyway! So I have some ideas for the proposal but nothing in paragraph form yet. This has turned out to be the most difficult project so far. Moving on.
I have finished the "random experiment" I was to do for the course, which had to be different from my thesis experiment. I ended up comparing the difference in source monitoring errors (remembering words as pictures and vice versa) in fantasy-prone versus non-fantasy prone individuals. Prior literature has found that fantasy prone people do not confuse imaginings with reality. Confusing imaginings with reality, though, is more generally a clinical symptom-- it's more extreme than confusing words and pictures in memory. My experiment used the same design as an experiment conducted on hallucinating and non-hallucinating schizophrenics. Fantasy-prone people are both hallucination-prone and have more vivid imagery than normal (people who have more vivid imagery have also been found to make more source monitoring errors than normal), so I wanted to know if I would find a difference using fantasy-prone individuals and a more sensitive experimental design. Turns out, my fantasy prone group scored no differently than my non-fantasy prone group. Oh well!
Now I just need to show my results using statistics. I have the entire "Design and Methods" section finished, a couple paragraphs of intro, and an outline of the rest of the introduction, which I will hopefully write out today. All in all, I have about 1000 words written out of 3000 (without intro outline). Not too bad.
As for a webpage? Twitter? Press release? Other goodies? The only thing that seems to be panning out is the press release we are supposed to write on our research. We never did have to make a webpage or twitter... I wonder if we'll have to? At any rate, the press release, which we definitely DO have to write, only has to be a page or so long, and I probably won't think about it until the week before it's due.
My thesis: I am happy to report, the experimentation will be done on April 1st. I am cutting it so close, it's not even funny (April 1 is a Friday, there is no experimentation done on the weekends, and I go home on Monday)-- but I'll get it done! There's nothing that can stop me now. I have been analyzing the data as I go, and it looks REALLY good. I am so happy with it, after the "NULL SCARE" of a few weeks ago. Looks like I'm going to have an ACE thesis-- to be written over the summer months.
And the BPS poster, as you know, is finished-- my .pdf has been sent off to the conference admins for the contest, got it printed on Wednesday, and I have it sitting in my room right now. I am so proud of it!
So as you can see, even though I've been a complete lazybones this whole semester, I managed to get a lot done! I actually have no idea how I did it, considering I've been wasting whole weekends on things like a visual deprivation "study", watching ridiculous amounts of hours of TV with Jana on random days, re-reading Harry Potter for the millionth time, and all sorts of other things...
Nevertheless, I still have at least one entire paper to write (studentship proposal) as all I have now is the outline. "Random experiment" write-up should be a breeze, but I have to finish my powerpoint on it for a presentation in two weeks time. I HAVE written out the skeleton of the ppt, so at least there's that. I also have to prepare for a small group teaching session tomorrow, which I am mostly prepared for-- I just need to write out some questions to ask the class to get them engaged, etc. I DID have a 15-minute non-stop lecture prepared, but HOC said he did not want it done that way, so I had to completely restructure it, and now it's going to be dead easy.
So, for the next two weeks I will be running experiments, perfecting my powerpoint, and preparing for "mock interviews"-- we will have to role-play as interviewers and interviewees for a PhD position on the last day of class, which I hear is a pretty fun experience. Not too much else to do except read, write... and, oh yes-- go to conferences! I'm going to a Synaesthesia conference in London at the end of next week-- should be great fun! I will tell all upon my return.
OK, this has been a long enough post-- now-- on to post #2 of the day: HIKING hills in the Peak District!
1) Write a 6-8000 word critical literature review
2) Write a nearly perfect PhD studentship proposal (Kevin assures us this will be the hardest thing we do on the course, and I believe him)
3) Create an experimental study different from the thesis and write a 3000 word article
4) Create a professional webpage, other goodies for a portfolio
On top of those things, I have to:
5) Conduct the pilot and final experiments for my thesis
6) Design a scientific poster for the BPS conference in May (since I foolishly signed up to do it)
As of right now, I have written 7,300 words of my critical literature review, which has turned into "The relationship between perception, imagery, and hallucinations: with a special focus on visual deprivation"-- it went from being a follow-up to an article on the relationship between imagery and perception, to a mostly hallucination-centred work that integrates the role of visual imagery into visual deprivation-induced hallucinations-- which I pride myself in thinking is a completey new angle on the topic. I have about one full day's worth of work to put into references (I have more than 100 now), and I need to flesh out a couple of paragraphs here and there, do some extensive revision, and then I'm done. Probably 5 full days worth of work left on that.
As for the studentship proposal? As you know, I met with someone about this, and have since created a detailed outline for "The role of visual imagery in AMD hallucinations", AMD being age-related macular degeneration. I am going to express the importance of discovering the role of imagery in hallucinations, and then create an imagery therapy for hallucinating patients with AMD. So I have a specific topic to cover, and I have outlined sessions of interviews/questionnaires and diaries for patients to fill out on my "program" before and after imagery therapy. I have decided to include at least one psychometric measure of imagery in AMD hallucinations, as well. I also found an article that actually describes a structure for imagery therapy for phantom limb pain, which is similar in nature to hallucinations, and I can use much of this structure for my imagery therapy for hallucinating patients.
The problem is, the people who conduct imagery therapy for phantom limb pain are clinical psychologists. This brings me back to the question... do I really want to be a clinical psychologist? If it's the only way to do this study, then yes. I will do what I have to do to run the experiments I want to run. But really, the people who are studying AMD hallucinations are mostly ophthalmologists, then clinicians, then finally experimentalists. Since ophthalmology is out (need a medical degree), I still have the couple of options I always had... but the chances of my becoming a clinician are almost nil, considering I have no relevant experience... I have only studied one patient in my time, and that was not for therapy purposes. But who knows, maybe it'll happen...
Anyway! So I have some ideas for the proposal but nothing in paragraph form yet. This has turned out to be the most difficult project so far. Moving on.
I have finished the "random experiment" I was to do for the course, which had to be different from my thesis experiment. I ended up comparing the difference in source monitoring errors (remembering words as pictures and vice versa) in fantasy-prone versus non-fantasy prone individuals. Prior literature has found that fantasy prone people do not confuse imaginings with reality. Confusing imaginings with reality, though, is more generally a clinical symptom-- it's more extreme than confusing words and pictures in memory. My experiment used the same design as an experiment conducted on hallucinating and non-hallucinating schizophrenics. Fantasy-prone people are both hallucination-prone and have more vivid imagery than normal (people who have more vivid imagery have also been found to make more source monitoring errors than normal), so I wanted to know if I would find a difference using fantasy-prone individuals and a more sensitive experimental design. Turns out, my fantasy prone group scored no differently than my non-fantasy prone group. Oh well!
Now I just need to show my results using statistics. I have the entire "Design and Methods" section finished, a couple paragraphs of intro, and an outline of the rest of the introduction, which I will hopefully write out today. All in all, I have about 1000 words written out of 3000 (without intro outline). Not too bad.
As for a webpage? Twitter? Press release? Other goodies? The only thing that seems to be panning out is the press release we are supposed to write on our research. We never did have to make a webpage or twitter... I wonder if we'll have to? At any rate, the press release, which we definitely DO have to write, only has to be a page or so long, and I probably won't think about it until the week before it's due.
My thesis: I am happy to report, the experimentation will be done on April 1st. I am cutting it so close, it's not even funny (April 1 is a Friday, there is no experimentation done on the weekends, and I go home on Monday)-- but I'll get it done! There's nothing that can stop me now. I have been analyzing the data as I go, and it looks REALLY good. I am so happy with it, after the "NULL SCARE" of a few weeks ago. Looks like I'm going to have an ACE thesis-- to be written over the summer months.
And the BPS poster, as you know, is finished-- my .pdf has been sent off to the conference admins for the contest, got it printed on Wednesday, and I have it sitting in my room right now. I am so proud of it!
So as you can see, even though I've been a complete lazybones this whole semester, I managed to get a lot done! I actually have no idea how I did it, considering I've been wasting whole weekends on things like a visual deprivation "study", watching ridiculous amounts of hours of TV with Jana on random days, re-reading Harry Potter for the millionth time, and all sorts of other things...
Nevertheless, I still have at least one entire paper to write (studentship proposal) as all I have now is the outline. "Random experiment" write-up should be a breeze, but I have to finish my powerpoint on it for a presentation in two weeks time. I HAVE written out the skeleton of the ppt, so at least there's that. I also have to prepare for a small group teaching session tomorrow, which I am mostly prepared for-- I just need to write out some questions to ask the class to get them engaged, etc. I DID have a 15-minute non-stop lecture prepared, but HOC said he did not want it done that way, so I had to completely restructure it, and now it's going to be dead easy.
So, for the next two weeks I will be running experiments, perfecting my powerpoint, and preparing for "mock interviews"-- we will have to role-play as interviewers and interviewees for a PhD position on the last day of class, which I hear is a pretty fun experience. Not too much else to do except read, write... and, oh yes-- go to conferences! I'm going to a Synaesthesia conference in London at the end of next week-- should be great fun! I will tell all upon my return.
OK, this has been a long enough post-- now-- on to post #2 of the day: HIKING hills in the Peak District!
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
The Day After the Day After the End of Blindfolding
Yeah, I know it's been a few days... but I've been busy! Some of you already know what went down but for those of you who don't, I will now post my weekend experience in great detail.
My Blindfolding Chronicles
Thursday night: Initiated the blindfolding! I had my welding mask covered with three layers of black paint to make them opaque, a sleep mask fitted securely over those, and an ace bandage wrapped around all of this to hold everything in place. I was a little concerned that the goggled would dig into my face, cut off my circulation and then make my eyes fall off. Really, they just gave me a headache, so I adjusted the goggles to be a little looser and didn't take them off for the rest of the weekend.
So Thursday night I basically just staggered around, bumped into things, and drank tea (I could drink tea blindfolded!), wondering how I was ever going to survive the next day.
Friday: I woke up early, around 6:45 because the goggles are kind of uncomfortable to sleep in. Jana didn't budge until 9, so I spent the morning exercising, making myself a bowl of cereal AND a cup of tea (neither of which I spilled). The pouring of the boiling tea water was heart-stopping, but did not end badly. After that, I went back upstairs to find Jana still asleep, so I listened to my iPod, hoping the hallucinations would come.
When Jana finally awoke, we watched a movie or two, then she had to go meet her museum group for a couple of hours. She plunked her piano in front of me and told me to stim on it, and I plinked a few keys for about 20 minutes before giving up (I can't play piano even with the use of my eyes). So I went back to listening to the iPod. At this point, I started to see lava lamp-esque swirls of light, some revolving light like a lighthouse beacon, and some small flashes of light in my peripheral vision. These were not as luminous as real light, but I have equated these visions to the after image you see when you turn off a bright light you've been staring at in a dark room. It was a greenish sort of glow that was neither bright nor bothersome.
Saturday: Jana and I ventured outside to the city centre! As I walked, I felt like I wasn't going anywhere, as if I were on a treadmill. I felt like I was going places very quickly because Jana would suddenly tell me "We're in Victoria Park" or some such thing and I'd be like "Wha, I thought we were still on Queens Road". Which made me somewhat disoriented. As we walked, Jana had to do her Amelie impression, but as there was nothing all that interesting to see, she decided to ramble off all the mundane things she could see in the park.
"There's a litter box attached to a tree, there's poop on the sidewalk, there's a huge rat right in front of you, there are kids playing soccer," she said, grasping me firmly by the arm and parading me down the park walk. "So far people aren't staring at you, they're so polite. Nope, there's a rude one, a starer, he just squinted and kept staring as he walked past." And of course, the ever helpful, "Oh, there's a big stick, but we're going around it" after which she promptly steered me strategically into the big stick. This experience followed by cries of: "Oooo puppies! Eeeee they're so cuuuute!" Etc etc.
Once we made it to New Walk, Jana whispered fervently in my ear, "I think that's your friend William, but I'm not sure. He's walking past right now!"
"William!" I shouted, turning around to face him, or at least I thought I did, because I couldn't see him and didn’t hear him. Believe it or not, it really was my friend William, and we all went down to the New Walk Museum to play in the bouncy castle. That was a lot of fun, but I did not hallucinate. I did, however, experience some uncontrolled mental images that just popped into my head, like what happens when you're about to fall asleep and quick mental images start to jump out before you actually dream. I "saw" the Arabic cafe Jana described to me, and I imagined the place where the bouncy castle was, as if it was set up like a science museum. These images, however, did not move into my visual field, so they were not hallucinations.
After New Walk, we went to Waterstone's bookstore. By this time, I was feeling slightly queasy, either from the elevator ride to the second floor of New Walk, or just from walking around with no real perspective of things. When we got back to Jana's house, as soon as I got inside, I saw a grid of the same greenish-colored lights in front of my eyes. The pattern was kind of like the grid in the game Battleship, and it persisted for only a few seconds.
Saturday night, Jana made pancakes and we watched movies and had a great time.
Sunday: I was getting antsy. I hadn't seen any complex hallucination and doubted I would. And it's true, I didn't. I kept the blindfold on anyway until 6PM. The strangest part was the half hour/ hour after I took the blindfold off. My eyes had gotten used to light deprivation, so when I was able to see again, everything looked really strange.
Everything was in weird contrast, and when I put my hand in front of my face, it was really sharp with a black glow around it, while everything else in the background seemed washed out. The room spun, and Jana said my eyes were dilating in and out. When we went downstairs, I was pouring water into the tea kettle, and the water seemed to jump haltingly up the side of the kettle instead of fluidly filling it. And for the same length of time, I saw black spots in my periphery. All of these things went away within the hour, and my vision returned to normal. The lines around my face from the goggles were not as bad as I'd suspected, and they went away pretty quickly, as well.
So I didn't experience the hallucinations I'd hoped for, but I did think the invasive imagery was a little strange. I think maybe some people get that strong imagery and perhaps mistake it for hallucinations. Then again, maybe some people really do actually see things like faces and animals and buildings, and I'm just unfortunate.
My Blindfolding Chronicles
Thursday night: Initiated the blindfolding! I had my welding mask covered with three layers of black paint to make them opaque, a sleep mask fitted securely over those, and an ace bandage wrapped around all of this to hold everything in place. I was a little concerned that the goggled would dig into my face, cut off my circulation and then make my eyes fall off. Really, they just gave me a headache, so I adjusted the goggles to be a little looser and didn't take them off for the rest of the weekend.
So Thursday night I basically just staggered around, bumped into things, and drank tea (I could drink tea blindfolded!), wondering how I was ever going to survive the next day.
Friday: I woke up early, around 6:45 because the goggles are kind of uncomfortable to sleep in. Jana didn't budge until 9, so I spent the morning exercising, making myself a bowl of cereal AND a cup of tea (neither of which I spilled). The pouring of the boiling tea water was heart-stopping, but did not end badly. After that, I went back upstairs to find Jana still asleep, so I listened to my iPod, hoping the hallucinations would come.
When Jana finally awoke, we watched a movie or two, then she had to go meet her museum group for a couple of hours. She plunked her piano in front of me and told me to stim on it, and I plinked a few keys for about 20 minutes before giving up (I can't play piano even with the use of my eyes). So I went back to listening to the iPod. At this point, I started to see lava lamp-esque swirls of light, some revolving light like a lighthouse beacon, and some small flashes of light in my peripheral vision. These were not as luminous as real light, but I have equated these visions to the after image you see when you turn off a bright light you've been staring at in a dark room. It was a greenish sort of glow that was neither bright nor bothersome.
Saturday: Jana and I ventured outside to the city centre! As I walked, I felt like I wasn't going anywhere, as if I were on a treadmill. I felt like I was going places very quickly because Jana would suddenly tell me "We're in Victoria Park" or some such thing and I'd be like "Wha, I thought we were still on Queens Road". Which made me somewhat disoriented. As we walked, Jana had to do her Amelie impression, but as there was nothing all that interesting to see, she decided to ramble off all the mundane things she could see in the park.
"There's a litter box attached to a tree, there's poop on the sidewalk, there's a huge rat right in front of you, there are kids playing soccer," she said, grasping me firmly by the arm and parading me down the park walk. "So far people aren't staring at you, they're so polite. Nope, there's a rude one, a starer, he just squinted and kept staring as he walked past." And of course, the ever helpful, "Oh, there's a big stick, but we're going around it" after which she promptly steered me strategically into the big stick. This experience followed by cries of: "Oooo puppies! Eeeee they're so cuuuute!" Etc etc.
Once we made it to New Walk, Jana whispered fervently in my ear, "I think that's your friend William, but I'm not sure. He's walking past right now!"
"William!" I shouted, turning around to face him, or at least I thought I did, because I couldn't see him and didn’t hear him. Believe it or not, it really was my friend William, and we all went down to the New Walk Museum to play in the bouncy castle. That was a lot of fun, but I did not hallucinate. I did, however, experience some uncontrolled mental images that just popped into my head, like what happens when you're about to fall asleep and quick mental images start to jump out before you actually dream. I "saw" the Arabic cafe Jana described to me, and I imagined the place where the bouncy castle was, as if it was set up like a science museum. These images, however, did not move into my visual field, so they were not hallucinations.
After New Walk, we went to Waterstone's bookstore. By this time, I was feeling slightly queasy, either from the elevator ride to the second floor of New Walk, or just from walking around with no real perspective of things. When we got back to Jana's house, as soon as I got inside, I saw a grid of the same greenish-colored lights in front of my eyes. The pattern was kind of like the grid in the game Battleship, and it persisted for only a few seconds.
Saturday night, Jana made pancakes and we watched movies and had a great time.
Sunday: I was getting antsy. I hadn't seen any complex hallucination and doubted I would. And it's true, I didn't. I kept the blindfold on anyway until 6PM. The strangest part was the half hour/ hour after I took the blindfold off. My eyes had gotten used to light deprivation, so when I was able to see again, everything looked really strange.
Everything was in weird contrast, and when I put my hand in front of my face, it was really sharp with a black glow around it, while everything else in the background seemed washed out. The room spun, and Jana said my eyes were dilating in and out. When we went downstairs, I was pouring water into the tea kettle, and the water seemed to jump haltingly up the side of the kettle instead of fluidly filling it. And for the same length of time, I saw black spots in my periphery. All of these things went away within the hour, and my vision returned to normal. The lines around my face from the goggles were not as bad as I'd suspected, and they went away pretty quickly, as well.
So I didn't experience the hallucinations I'd hoped for, but I did think the invasive imagery was a little strange. I think maybe some people get that strong imagery and perhaps mistake it for hallucinations. Then again, maybe some people really do actually see things like faces and animals and buildings, and I'm just unfortunate.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Blindfolding Myself into Hallucinations
This weekend, I am going to do it! Today I will write my 1000 words. Today and tomorrow I will go for a run. The next couple of days will be spent doing my weekend chores. And if I get everything done in time, in correct Cinderella fashion, I will reward myself by engulfing myself in darkness for 3 days. Thursday night, I will bring my things over to Jana's place. And then, starting Friday morning, I am going to go under the blindfold for the entire weekend.
What's gonna happen? Who knows? But I have to do a group teaching session next week and I want something really interesting to talk about. I already had the idea about hallucinations in visual deprivation. But now, I will be able to talk about my OWN hallucinations during visual deprivation!
I could see anything from simple hallucinations (such as flashes of light, patterns of shapes, or moving spots), to complex, full-blown, colored, intense people, faces, scenes, buildings, animals, trees, etc. It's all been done before.
Just not by me!
What's gonna happen? Who knows? But I have to do a group teaching session next week and I want something really interesting to talk about. I already had the idea about hallucinations in visual deprivation. But now, I will be able to talk about my OWN hallucinations during visual deprivation!
I could see anything from simple hallucinations (such as flashes of light, patterns of shapes, or moving spots), to complex, full-blown, colored, intense people, faces, scenes, buildings, animals, trees, etc. It's all been done before.
Just not by me!
Monday, March 7, 2011
Dissecting Low Pain Tolerance
On another note, I was able to keep from passing out from low-pain-tolerance shock when I hit my knee today, by sitting down and inhaling a banana before the "pain" could deplete my blood sugar.
I always know when this is about to happen because the "pain" has a distinct feel to it. I keep putting pain in quotations because my brain never EVER thinks it's as bad as my nervous system says it is (and the lack of physical evidence supports my brain, as I think the most I ever got from one of these episodes was a tiny cut). Anyway, the feeling is a kind of sickness/coldness combined with almost a feeling of having the wind knocked out of you but not quite... shallow/difficult breathing. Following this is a short wave of normality, and I've found it is in this period that I must sit and scarf some food, or I move on to phase three (which has happened 3 times before, the last time being nearly a year ago). Symptoms include:
Extreme sickness/nausea, feeling weak, unable to walk, effortful speech, shaking, paleness/claminess, loss of vision, and disorientation (the last time it happened I forgot where I was for a minute).
But this time, I beat my system!
If I were a real devoted scientist, I would hit myself a few more times to test my theory, and of course, provide one or two more control episodes. But I guess I'm not that hardcore. That, and I hate feeling sick. The rest I can deal with OK as long as I'm not in some awkward public situation (which has been 2/3 previous times). This time I was in my own house.
I've also found that this tends to happen when I haven't eaten in a while. In fact, the past 2 episodes I can remember, it had been 5 hours since I'd had something to eat (once right before my lunch break, and once right before I was to get off work). The first time it happened I was closing up shop, but I can't remember how long it'd been since I'd munched. I consider the first time to be my trigger experience, a cut from a deli slicer, which made every smaller injury seem to my CNS like a life-or-death situation. This time, it happened coming back from my morning run, and I don't eat breakfast until after I run, so I'd been going off nothing but water for more than 8 hours at that point.
But as I said before, I beat it this time! I didn't progress past phase 2, so go me.
I will just have to carry a banana with me wherever I go.
I always know when this is about to happen because the "pain" has a distinct feel to it. I keep putting pain in quotations because my brain never EVER thinks it's as bad as my nervous system says it is (and the lack of physical evidence supports my brain, as I think the most I ever got from one of these episodes was a tiny cut). Anyway, the feeling is a kind of sickness/coldness combined with almost a feeling of having the wind knocked out of you but not quite... shallow/difficult breathing. Following this is a short wave of normality, and I've found it is in this period that I must sit and scarf some food, or I move on to phase three (which has happened 3 times before, the last time being nearly a year ago). Symptoms include:
Extreme sickness/nausea, feeling weak, unable to walk, effortful speech, shaking, paleness/claminess, loss of vision, and disorientation (the last time it happened I forgot where I was for a minute).
But this time, I beat my system!
If I were a real devoted scientist, I would hit myself a few more times to test my theory, and of course, provide one or two more control episodes. But I guess I'm not that hardcore. That, and I hate feeling sick. The rest I can deal with OK as long as I'm not in some awkward public situation (which has been 2/3 previous times). This time I was in my own house.
I've also found that this tends to happen when I haven't eaten in a while. In fact, the past 2 episodes I can remember, it had been 5 hours since I'd had something to eat (once right before my lunch break, and once right before I was to get off work). The first time it happened I was closing up shop, but I can't remember how long it'd been since I'd munched. I consider the first time to be my trigger experience, a cut from a deli slicer, which made every smaller injury seem to my CNS like a life-or-death situation. This time, it happened coming back from my morning run, and I don't eat breakfast until after I run, so I'd been going off nothing but water for more than 8 hours at that point.
But as I said before, I beat it this time! I didn't progress past phase 2, so go me.
I will just have to carry a banana with me wherever I go.
It's almost like I'm home again!
And soon I will be! In 29 days!
I just got a call from Matt, my good friend who I never call. He calls me though, usually when he's being a danger to others such as while he's careening down the freeway at 70mph. It's always great to hear from him since he doesn't seem to use the internet much, so I can forget my fear of phones for a few minutes while we give express updates of our lives.
I also heard Laura today for the first time in 6 months! Not that I haven't heard from her because she is sometimes found on google talk, but Matt apparently thrust the phone at her for a precious few seconds while he was walking into work, long enough for her to say "Hi" and "I totally can't talk right now" before he snagged it up again and muttered something about the General Nutrition section.
"Are you helping a customer?" I said blandly.
"Yep," he said, still talking to me. Oh, boy.
I'm so happy my Borders isn't closing. I can't wait to go back there and see all the people again, maybe buy some nasty Seattle's Best coffee and roam the Bestsellers tables.
I started a new book the other day, called A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry (the author's name is totally real). My roommate gave me a copy for World Book Night, since she's going to be distributing 50 or so copies around the city for the event. So far the book is really good-- I am actually pleasantly involved in the characters and their stories. So far as I can tell, the book will focus on a few people's lives in India right after it gained its independence from England. As of yet, I haven't heard much other than passing comments about politics, as the current chapter focuses on the social life of a woman in 1940s India.
I would suggest it as the YT gang's first International Book Club book, but it is very long and I have no idea how long it could take me/us to finish. Besides, I need those awesome YT pancakes as fuel.
I think I'll start a list of things I have to do when I'm back in Ohio:
1) Go to Borders, mess with people
2) Have a sleepover at Cthulhu's place
3) visit Matt and Marty's apartment where Marty does not live
4) Eat pancakes and sweet potato fries with.. the sauce... what's the sauce called? WHAT IS IT CALLED? OH JEEZ how could I forget?
TANGO!!! Oh dear, I almost forgot about the tango! Never again.
Last night, Jana and I watched the documentary Jesus Camp. And you just know there's filmmaking trouble going down when you see a messily-edited clip of someone shouting "You cannot read Harry Potter! Harry Potter is the devil's warlock!" Really, liberals? I know the conservatives are just as bad, but really? I thought I was going to get an accurate portrayal of Evangelistic Christianity, but instead I get a kind of mishmash of scenes that are bound to have Typical America gasping, "They actually teach their kids that stuff?"
To be fair, some of the interviews are very cute, such as those with the fiercely devout little nine year old, who nervously asks strangers if they have accepted Jesus into their lives, or once said something along the lines of, "When kids at school tease me about my religion, I tell them, 'You can judge me all you want, but the only judgment that matters is God's'" as she clutches her stuffed panda. There's also a 12-year old boy who seems a pretty average character until he opens his mouth and then you can see clearly the shadow of a future orator in him.
In contrast, those same kids are shown in worshipping-mode, overseen by an intense Bible Camp leader in scenes that are seemingly supposed to make you exclaim, "Look how brainwashed they are!" and "This is borderline abuse!" In this regard, I get the impression the kids are being used as the filmmakers props to make you feel sorry for them rather than astounded by their faith and discipline. And the addition of the radio host/evangelical critic who laughs at the faith with oozing 'intellectual' scepticism doesn't help. Of course, I put intellectual in quotations because I don't know how it can be considered smart to candidly judge someone by what they believe, being perpetually deaf to the other side of the story, and taking words and phrases out of context to strengthen your point.
Then again, that could be the brilliance of the movie-- perhaps it is, as they claim, objective, and I only see a negativity in the film because of my fear for the evangelists; that I imagine after watching this movie, more and more people will only hate them and misunderstand them because we tend to remember the bits that are strange to us and forget about how happy the kids are, how confident and well-spoken they are, and how they are living completely healthy and wholesome lives. It is a different culture within our culture. That may be what throws people for a loop. Evangelists are happy. Let them be!
So it may be completely weird, but...
I am an atheist and I <3 evangelists!
So there.
I just got a call from Matt, my good friend who I never call. He calls me though, usually when he's being a danger to others such as while he's careening down the freeway at 70mph. It's always great to hear from him since he doesn't seem to use the internet much, so I can forget my fear of phones for a few minutes while we give express updates of our lives.
I also heard Laura today for the first time in 6 months! Not that I haven't heard from her because she is sometimes found on google talk, but Matt apparently thrust the phone at her for a precious few seconds while he was walking into work, long enough for her to say "Hi" and "I totally can't talk right now" before he snagged it up again and muttered something about the General Nutrition section.
"Are you helping a customer?" I said blandly.
"Yep," he said, still talking to me. Oh, boy.
I'm so happy my Borders isn't closing. I can't wait to go back there and see all the people again, maybe buy some nasty Seattle's Best coffee and roam the Bestsellers tables.
I started a new book the other day, called A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry (the author's name is totally real). My roommate gave me a copy for World Book Night, since she's going to be distributing 50 or so copies around the city for the event. So far the book is really good-- I am actually pleasantly involved in the characters and their stories. So far as I can tell, the book will focus on a few people's lives in India right after it gained its independence from England. As of yet, I haven't heard much other than passing comments about politics, as the current chapter focuses on the social life of a woman in 1940s India.
I would suggest it as the YT gang's first International Book Club book, but it is very long and I have no idea how long it could take me/us to finish. Besides, I need those awesome YT pancakes as fuel.
I think I'll start a list of things I have to do when I'm back in Ohio:
1) Go to Borders, mess with people
2) Have a sleepover at Cthulhu's place
3) visit Matt and Marty's apartment where Marty does not live
4) Eat pancakes and sweet potato fries with.. the sauce... what's the sauce called? WHAT IS IT CALLED? OH JEEZ how could I forget?
TANGO!!! Oh dear, I almost forgot about the tango! Never again.
Last night, Jana and I watched the documentary Jesus Camp. And you just know there's filmmaking trouble going down when you see a messily-edited clip of someone shouting "You cannot read Harry Potter! Harry Potter is the devil's warlock!" Really, liberals? I know the conservatives are just as bad, but really? I thought I was going to get an accurate portrayal of Evangelistic Christianity, but instead I get a kind of mishmash of scenes that are bound to have Typical America gasping, "They actually teach their kids that stuff?"
To be fair, some of the interviews are very cute, such as those with the fiercely devout little nine year old, who nervously asks strangers if they have accepted Jesus into their lives, or once said something along the lines of, "When kids at school tease me about my religion, I tell them, 'You can judge me all you want, but the only judgment that matters is God's'" as she clutches her stuffed panda. There's also a 12-year old boy who seems a pretty average character until he opens his mouth and then you can see clearly the shadow of a future orator in him.
In contrast, those same kids are shown in worshipping-mode, overseen by an intense Bible Camp leader in scenes that are seemingly supposed to make you exclaim, "Look how brainwashed they are!" and "This is borderline abuse!" In this regard, I get the impression the kids are being used as the filmmakers props to make you feel sorry for them rather than astounded by their faith and discipline. And the addition of the radio host/evangelical critic who laughs at the faith with oozing 'intellectual' scepticism doesn't help. Of course, I put intellectual in quotations because I don't know how it can be considered smart to candidly judge someone by what they believe, being perpetually deaf to the other side of the story, and taking words and phrases out of context to strengthen your point.
Then again, that could be the brilliance of the movie-- perhaps it is, as they claim, objective, and I only see a negativity in the film because of my fear for the evangelists; that I imagine after watching this movie, more and more people will only hate them and misunderstand them because we tend to remember the bits that are strange to us and forget about how happy the kids are, how confident and well-spoken they are, and how they are living completely healthy and wholesome lives. It is a different culture within our culture. That may be what throws people for a loop. Evangelists are happy. Let them be!
So it may be completely weird, but...
I am an atheist and I <3 evangelists!
So there.
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