Co-operate and we wont shoot your step-child.

This is another long one, but it's a brilliant way to revise what I've just learned in class and set it up for further study in the future. Hopefully the long-winded academic posts aren't too boring for you discerning types.

This part is a follow on from the talk of natural selection a couple of posts down (second lecture in the series) and it is filled with some pretty interesting stuff. I was really impressed with the amount of shocking information given to us about topics I hadn't ever thought might belong to diverse patterns. So here we go: Human Co-operation.

Richard Dawkins presented his 'gene eye view' ideas in his book 'The Selfish Gene'. The idea here is that we are all simply carriers of our genes, who are the ones really in control. Genes create us from nothing into a functioning body which has the ability to replicate and fire off the genes into another creation which will continue to survive once the original shell has worn out through age. It's a little bit haunting, and it puts forward the notion that everything we do is a by-product of the gene's desire to live forever. That is hard to grasp and I am far from convinced that it is a realistic viewpoint. There are too many things that humans - at the very least - do that would be too much of a stretch to attribute to this process.

That said, some animal behvaiour which would seem like perfect examples of 'working against evolution' actually slot in very nicely. One of the more important examples, and the focus of my stupidly early lecture today, is altruism. Altruism is the process by which a donor passes a benefit onto a recipient. If you have any knowledge of natural selection (or read my post on it) then you will understand why that is tricky to place. After all, why on earth would an individual give another a chance to do better than themself? It makes sense that the gene which codes for altruism should've been selected against long ago. Most other traits which freely give away advantage seem to be wiped out  after all.

There are millions of examples of altuism in even very simple organisms. Remember the "OMG EAGLE!" Vervet monkeys? They call to warn their group when they sense danger, but by doing so the caller puts itself in the most danger by giving away its position. Female lions tend to give birth around the same time as the rest of those in their group. They each suckle any cub that needs it, which makes little sense from an evolutionary perspective on first impression. If the gene is trying to replicate itself it doesn't want other genes taking its chances, so wouldn't want to help their cubs survive and compete against 'its' own.

Enter William Hamilton, who had major influence on the concept of genetic fitness in the 1960s. This guy saw sense, and even directed it into an equation! How rare for someone in my field. He knew classical fitness (chance of passing genes to next generation through direct mating + offspring + not dying) was too narrow a definition and could not explain the full extent of behaviour in relation to natural and sexual selection. He pointed out, possibly with an amused chuckle and a stroke of his beard, that although we share genes with our offspring, we also share DNA with our siblings, cousins, and other members of our family. If the gene inside of us wants to reach the next generation, it makes perfect sense to aid identical copies of it in our family members manage the same feat.

According to Hamilton, so long as we manage to pass on our genes, it doesn't matter if it is through direct fitness or not. As such; Hamilton's rule is: Direct fitness + Indirect fitness = Inclusive fitness. If this is true, the altruism shown towards different members of a group should be comparable to the genetic 'closeness' of the members. The formula is this: If rB > C then altruistic behaviour should be expected.

B is the benefit to the recipient, C is the cost to the donor and r is the coefficient of relatedness. The coefficient is worked out in a straight forward manner. Direct offspring have 50% of the genes of each parent, full siblings have 50%, grandparents - children have 25%, so do uncles/aunties/nephews/nieces and half siblings. Full cousins have 12.5% shared genes and second cousins are somewhere along the 0.1% mark. Identical twins share 100% of their genes and are the closest in terms of genetics that is possible.

If the condition of rB>C results in altruistic behaviour, then Hamilton suggested that a gene for altruism would be free to evolve. In individual cases, if r = 0 then the equation will always result in 0. If C is greater than rB then it is questionable whether helpful behaviour might occur. That seems like a nice theory, and the evidence for it is nice and abundant. Take praire dogs for example. Just like our friendly Vervets, they give an alarm call upon seeing predators, but not always. Indeed both males and females called much more often when the group contained within it members of close genetic relation (Hoodland, 1983). That's pretty cool, the little bastards will leave their chums to be devoured rather than call out themselves unless they feel they want to 'save their genes' by protecting family. (I have a level of conflict coming to the conclusion that it is about genetic fitness entirely. After all, the one organism you can be certain in all cases to share 100% of all your genes is YOU. Would you really put yourself at risk to save, say, a brother with 50% of your genes. It makes some sense, but....hmmm.)

You've gone and done it now.

So Vervets and Prairie dogs put themselves at risk to help family, and female lions help the young of family members to survive. Are humans helpful to each other in the same way? A large amount of observational studies have been carried out across the world. One thing that social scientists often fail to do is travel very far to come up with theories they claim can explain the world, so it is a delight to see Ivey (2000), Stack (1975) and Burton (1990) checking out smaller, less technologically developed societies. Lots of Central Africa, South America and New Guinea contain small self contained tribes that have been untouched by society but for a couple of dedicated anthropologists. The advantage of these guys is that they are much closer to living the hunter-gatherer lifestyle we are all physically adapted for. Evolutionists will tell you that we are designed to work best in a world 10,000 years before now, this tardiness of evolution causes many of the problems we individually face every day.

All over the world, members of different cultures show a much greater willingness to help family members than non-relatives. Essock-Vitale & McGuire (1985) found that Los Angeles women went to family for comfort more often than any other source, but they also noted the important finding that help given to a friend was more likely to be reciprocated than that given to a family member. The lecture didn't put heavy emphasis on the importance of friends, so this little tid-bit is all I have to offer for now.

Smith et al. (1987) observed the amount of money bequeathed to different family members upon death. Spouses were given an amount akin to direct offspring of about 40%. Beyond that, the amount was related strongly to genetic relatedness. (Again though, friends were left more than Grandchildren and Cousins, and the explanation does not take into account familiarity, emotional closeness, sentimental value. I can't simply agree that it is the process of genes trying to improve their chances.)

Plus you know, love and all that. Probably best not to forget that whole affair.

Here's where experimental data comes in. Observation is all well and good but there's nothing like a cool lab (Oh yes that's right, come do my lab project for my honours.....*cough*). Kind of weirdly, this area has yet to be looked into at all. There is one empirical study conducted by Madsen et al. (2007) and nothing more, If you're looking to nudge into the evolutionary world then conduct something on this topic and reap the rewards. Madsen asked individuals to sit/stand in what's called the isometric skiing pattern. This is when you place your back and ass flat against a straight wall, then bend your knees so that they are at a right angle and your upper legs are parallel to the floor. It's a total and utter bugger to maintain for too long, but at first it's fairly easy so as to let you feel like you could go on forever. The participants were given money in proportion to the length of time they held the position for. In one condition the money went to them, in others the money went to family members of varying relatedness.

Note the happy expression? That's because she's doing it wrong!

The results were perfect. Individuals worked significantly harder the closer the family member was that they were earning for. Although they put themselves first in the challenge, especially males. I suspect at least part of the results were due to individuals trying hard not to look like weaklings in front of their family though.

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Oh but wait!

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Not every individual that you share a certain number of genes with is worth the same in terms of reproductive value. Something especially important to females, and makes a good example, is age. There is a large chance for a younger female to eventually contribute to your gene transmission, but a woman of 45 has almost no chance. Up to about 30 years of age female humans have a relatively constant chance, but any older it becomes less worth it from the perspective of family. By which I mean, there is less likely to be altruism shown towards a female past her fertile period than one beforehand. Individuals are more hurt to lose a child than a grandparents, which is unsympathetic but gives an idea of comparative grief based on reproductive fitness.

This isn’t an issue in most animals, as they tend to die upon reaching non-reproductive age! It is unnatural to be post-reproductive. How interesting is that? It seriously affects the decisions of others to help you. Wang (1996) performed an experiment in which he gave different groups of participants a theoretical choice to make about family members dying. They could either choose the deterministic option in which they could definitely save 2 relatives. Either 2 older, or 2 younger. Or they could choice the probabilistic option where there was a 1 in 3 chance that all would live and various probabilities that different amounts would live or die.

In the deterministic condition, older participants were much more likely to save 2 younger relatives, whilst young participants made a roughly equal proportion of each choice. Younger participants tended to choose the probabilistic treatment. Presumably older individuals would see less benefit in going by chance and having their much older grandmother survive but not the budding young. The importance behind the results is that in all cases, the choices made are the best possible to save as many fertile individuals as possible. (To what extent is it just social extreme manners though? Think of the Titanic; women and children first. It was a matter of honour and final respect on a very deep level. Can that be reduced to 'keeping the population going' ?)

Cheer up. I'm almost done.

There are other factors important in displays of altruism. Euler and Weitzel (1996) suggested that Grandparents do not invest in all their grandchildren equally, and that they vary their investment depending on the sex of the child. This is based off of the principal of paternal uncertainty (males cannot be sure a child is their’s in the same way a female can). The grandparents on the mother’s side (who can be sure of the shared genes) help a lot more than those on the father’s side who will never be truly certain without a paternity test.

Additionally, grandmothers give more help than grandfathers. Indicating that the old guys still have a degree of paternal uncertainty about their own offspring; and so cannot be certain about the grandchild, even if on the mother’s side. Oooh, it's a suspicious world for men. This is why Jeremy Kyle is so popular.

I'm sitting on a couch in the union writing this, waiting on some lunch once it's complete. I'm amazed I took so many notes in the lecture, but at this point I wish I was stupid but sated.

We've thought about altruism plenty, but what about the opposite; non-helpful behaviour. Murder is pretty much the least helpful behaviour there is, and by all rights it shouldn't occur within a family unit according to all the stuff I just splaffed onto my blog. Why kill people who share your genes if your life aim is to transfer them? Daly and Wilson examined the data, and found that murder of blood relatives was very very low, and that the statistics saying that the family unit was very violent, were based almost entirely on the murder of a spouse. The levels of non-relative murder were comparable to murder of a husband or wife, but the important issue here is that they do not share your genes. Evolution can still explain the weird murdering craziness.

D & W have carried out some fascinating little data-mining operations. In 1988 they discovered that step-fathers are 65 times more likely to murder their child than biological fathers. Yeesh. Although it makes sense to get rid of the original child (in order to use resources to look after a child with your genes; this happens in almost every other animal species) we don't do it all that often. Probably as part of a moral obligation and to a lesser extent to secure mating opportunities with the mother. God it feels cold to write this! I do not condone wiping out step-children.

As a final point, when things are simply not equal, moving against relatives still occurs when stakes are high. It can often be the case that your own family is a direct source of competition for your attempts to find a mate. If killing a brother was beneficial in some way (money, land, etc) then murder rates sky-rocketed above the expected murder rate in that society. The Kipsigis society is patrilineal, and wealth is passed down the male land. Reproductive success is based on the males’ wealth. When there is more wealth, there are more brothers, and therefore more competition between brothers of the next generation. With limited resources the brothers are violent enemies. Altruism is only seen when money and land is far too plentiful to battle for expansion.

If you get to this stage, congratulation, that's one lecture's worth of what I need to know for one module of one semester of my final year. My brain is going to be ripped by the end of this.

Mind your language.

Communication is a deceptively simple concept. Google-Define will tell you it means "the activity of communicating; the activity of conveying information", but to what extent is this actually true? Are we communicating when we sneeze? We still convey information to those around us (that we are perhaps in a state of ill health) but it is unintentional. Similarly, when we 'leak' information through emotion, are we really communicating? This question sparked a debate in my class last week, with one side arguing that communication necessitates intention; and the other arguing that if information is passed from one to another in any way it still counts.

Communication occurs amongst animals in pretty hefty amounts. Bees dance to show the direction and distance of a food source. Whale songs are filled with rhythmic complexity used for echolocation and sexual selection. Vervet monkeys have different cries to convey "AAAAAAGH EAGLE!" - "OMG LEOPARD!" and "THERE'S A BASTARD SNAKE!"  The functions of animal signals as a whole tend to work on roughly the same situations. They are used to advertise the worth of their genes during sexual selection, they warn from predators, they convey locations of food sources and express the condition of the animal. Stand on a cat's face and you're going to get a pretty loud (but very communicative) screech.

That's all dandy, but here we move onto the definition of language. It is commonly argued that humans are the only species which have actually developed their own language, although there has been limited success in teaching a few special great apes to hook onto it at an infantile level.The dictionary definition is that is is a human ability to communicate ideas, feelings and intentions using sounds or sound symbols. Hmmm, not entirely convinced.

Chomsky (1980 - and I'll say again, if you're interested in looking up these references send me a mail and I'll send them over. Tidier than sticking an APA style list at the bottom of each post), believed that human language must have grammatical rules, be used in the style I wrote a paragraph above, and that it must have a selective evolutionary advantage as is evolved after humans had separated from other primates. A very good point. As you'll see below, even our closest great ape cousins have much, much poorer language abilities. That strongly suggests that the group of ancestors that became us found some reason to develop it, whilst the ancestors that became, say, chimps, did not. What was the reason?

Charles Hocket (1960) believed there were 13 features which characterised human-like language as distinct from basic animal communication. I'll ponder the relevant features out loud in the context of language experiments on apes. Most of the features have become outdated with the introduction of the internet and mobile phone technology, allowing for advanced channels of text or symbol based interactions.

First off, Humans can talk. They don't just have a limited repertoire of sounds they can associate with important stimuli. 

Bugger knows how this works. Suffice to say our ape friend here can't blast out the lyrics to Journey songs.

Chimps physically cannot make as many different phonemes as humans can. Their oral cavity is shaped differently and their tongues cannot reach the positions necessary to make the sounds that constitute human language. The production of speech if very particular to the structures of the vocal tract. Duchin (1990) believed the sounds of 'a' and 'u' are impossible for a chimpanzee to make. Various attempts were made in the early 1900s to teach chimps to speak. The projects lasted years, and the peak of any attempt was teaching 'Vicki' to utter 'mama', 'papa', 'cup' and 'up'. I couldn't find any recording of Vicki, but here's a chimp who can say 'Mama'; not a lot of accomplishment over years of work. Chimpanzees simply cannot talk in the way we can.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4Z0xn4pYSY

So your kid can't talk? You teach him sign language. Tarrace, Petitto, Sanders and Bever (1979) taught a young Cimp called Nim 125 words in American Sign Language. Much more progress! However after studying 19,000 utterances they failed to find any consistent patterns of syntax or semantics. Video tape evidence showed that the wee Chimp simply repeated certain words in response to an initial utterance by a researcher. He'd basically just sign 'more' like crazy after being given a treat. Greedy bugger.

A more famous example was that of Washoe. Gardner and Gardner (1969) trained the chimp to learn ASL from the age of 1 year, when she should be relatively dependent on her mother. The training and living environment were structured to be as similar to that of a deaf human child as possible; whilst very strict rules determined what would be considered a proper 'sign'. Washoe was soon willing and able to use signs spontaneously for no other reason but to communicate (this is important, as many sign language attempts ended up dominated by the hunt for treats like Nim.) After 2 years Washoe could reliably use 34 signs and could transfer labels to same-category objects; by which I mean she could understand that a fedora and a top hat were both hats. She was able to meaningfully combine signs together to convey her desires more clearly "open food drink" worked for "open the fridge, wench." At the end of her training she was proficient in 132 signs and arguably had a grasp of very basic grammar.

Referring back to Hocket, Washoe had met the conditions of her communication being referential (word = object, action etc), non-iconic (the word doesn't need to resemble the object) and learned (she didn't have the ability from birth.) Beyond that, she only missed clear grammatical structure. Most scientists in this field don't consider this language, I am as of yet unsure. Her researchers wanted to see if she could pass her abilities down onto her son, but sadly he died at a very young age (there is talk that Washoe showed signs of intense mourning after signing to ask why her son had been taken away. It rips my heart out to consider.) She eventually adopted a young chap called Loulis who did begin to copy her signs with no help from the researchers. He eventually learned 22 signs from her; that's pretty special, but it has to be remembered that she only taught him the signs because they were useful around humans who knew the language. They would be of no use around other chimps, or presumably a sign language would have been adapted much earlier.

Just saw his first LolCat.

The initial attempt to crack the syntax problem was conducted by a guy called Premack in 1971 and again in 1976. His name always gives me the impression that he has come just before Mack; but the next people in this line of research are called Rumbaugh and Savage-Rumbaugh. To be fair, that combination of names makes me chuckle too. Premack used plastic tokens that varied in size, colour, shape and texture. He associated them with different words and different word-types. Sarah, his prodigy, learned nouns, verbs, quantifiers (many, few) and conditionals (if, then), resulting in a total of 130 words. She was only rewarded upon the formation of a grammatical sentence and she was bloody well capable of doing so. She even began to ask hew own questions using the tokens.

Taking the whole process a step further was Rumbaugh (1977) who buggered around with something called a lexigram. It was a much more advanced version of the same idea in which a keyboard is filled with visually distinct symbols which represented different words. The chimp Lana was able to learn the syntactical rules of 'Yerkish' which was a simplified version of English. In 1994 Rumbaugh and Bigmental-Rumbaugh (1994) tried to teach a bonobo (a species resembling chimpanzees but with typically better abilities at this sort of experiment, and are smaller.) Matata failed completely, but was responsible for the birth of the most famous language-learning chimp: Kanzi. Without any effort being made to teach him the use of the lexigram board, Kanzi picked it up easily.

Kanzi was soon proficient at every symbol on the board. In an attempt to allow him to develop his potential, the researchers let him wander amongst them as much as he wanted. He had a portable board he could use to ask questions or express desires; and eventually his training shifted to learning the correct human sounds to the meanings of those symbols. He could never produce the sounds, but he was quickly able to recognise them. He seemed not only to be good at use of...what really must now be considered language, but at understanding the intentions and semantics behind it. When asked to get 'item X' from 'location Y' he would go and do so, even if an item identical to 'item X' was right in front of him.

On the basis of Hocket's key features of human language; Kanzi, Sarah and Lana each showed the main four features of human-like language. Remember that they were very special cases. Not every chimp/bonobo/greater ape has the ability to pick up that level of skill. they aren't physically designed to use it, ad a language of such complexity has no use for them in their natural environment. Even if every ape learned the same language, the realistic uses for the skill would be questionable.

My incomplete theory is this: As the complexity of social groups increase, so does the complexity of their style of communication. Vervet monkeys call in three different ways about the here-and-now, Whales echolocate and define a strict heirarchy across the oceans using music heard only deep below sea or in massage studios. Chimpanzees and other great apes can references the past and the future in their natural interactions in a very limited way; and then there is us. We, with a full on complex syntactic system in each of our societies allowing us all to build our vocabularies to include new words, old words and made up words. We can reference the past and future, we can.... ah bollock it, you get the idea. We are born with the in-build capacity to quickly learn language(s) which leads me to believe there was some selective pressure on the ability. What was that pressure? How I wish I knew.

In the end, language is on the same scale as communication, just much higher up it. That's what I reckon and stuff the transcendentalists.

Darwin gives us the low down.

I really wanted to use this blog as a way to explain concepts that I've learned in uni. After the first class (Evolutionary Psychology taught by the brilliant Dr Clare Cunningham) I quite fancy trying out this idea by explaining the very basics of natural and sexual selection. This will be a great set-up for more specific and advances ponderings later on in the year.

Let's begin.

Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882) was an interesting man. He's a testament to how successful unsure individuals can be once they find their calling; even by accident. Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" is perfect for explaining the men behind the theories. I recommend it to anyone wanting to know how a man starting off studying medicine, moved to theology, and ended up on a voyage around the world accidentally uncovering the mechanic underlying the variation in all species.

The popular story of Darwin's voyage is that, whilst surveying the Galapagos islands, he noticed the vast range of physical appearances in the finches on the different islands. This isn't quite true but I haven't got Bill Bryson on hand to remind myself of the specifics. I'll edit later when I do. What became known as Darwin's finches, were descendants of a single species of finch that lived on the mainland. The different islands were far enough apart to be considered their own ecosystems, and had different food sources and environmental challenges to overcome. Presumeably, the ancestor finch species had made it to the islands somehow, and different groups settled down on different islands. How did these groups end up as completely different (unable to interbreed and produce fertile children) species?

This is where the theory of natural selection comes in. Natural selection tells us that over generations, species will change to better fit into their ecological niche. This works in two ways; the first is what is known commonly as survival of the fittest. For an example, imagine a species of rabbit which have two different colours of fur. 3/4 of the population have white fur, 1/4 of the population are black. In the countryside where these rabbits live is a species of massive big bastard birds.

These birds really like the look of the white rabbits, but are disgusted by the black. So when they swoop in to feed, they almost always eat the white ones (Flutter flutter GRAB *Squeeak*). Over time there are less and less of the white rabbits around to bump uglies with the others, so the next generations consist of more and more black rabbits. Black fur is evolutionary advantageous to the survival of the species as whole. It is naturally selected.

Sorry Milky

In order for this to work, the organisms within a species must vary, and the variations must be heritable (which definitely limits human evolution, if you think about it). Think back to Darwin's finches. On island A there were millions of insects to eat but not many seeds, so the birds with narrow beaks (good for fitting into insect holes) are selected for by their ability to eat. Narrow beaks are selected for. On island B, thick and strong beaks are selected for to crunch through the myriads nuts lying around. Over time these physical changes seperate the two groups and turn them into different species. That's natural selection.

So animals evolve through survival rates as a species, but there's another very important ingredient: Sexual selection.

Sexual selection comes in two forms, according to Darwin. Intra-sexual competition is competition between same sex individuals in the bid for happy fun time with the opposite sex. There are a number of examples of how this evolves animals. Stags evolve bigger, finer horns because those with the better antlers tend to win the fights for mates. Baboons have evolved tusk-like canines for fending off challenging males, so on, so forth. Inter-sexual competition takes place between the sexes.

The sex that uses up more resources in the reproduction process tends to become picky about mate choice. In the case of humans, females are choosier about their reproductive partners because they must spend 9 long months pregnant, go through labour, and then spend at least a couple of years weaning and looking after the kid. In evolutionary terms, they're out of the game. It makes sense that they want to choose the fellow with the best genes (ignoring the huge issue of parental investment), and so males of the species must show themselves off to be attractive choices. In such a way, traits that aren't necessarily good for survival (e.g. the typical male trait of risk-taking) are still evolved as females dig that shit. Generally speaking.

Birds of paradise are the best example of inter-sexual competition. Look at this poor fellow.

Easy target for a hawk, but gets jiggy-with-it often.

Tim, our BoP friend here, slaps open his massive colourful hood and dances about look a fool to impress the plain females of his species. This has no other use at all. None. It exists soully to impress the girls so he can have sex and reproduce. Males of most species have traits that exist for the same reason; to take advantage of the desire of females for certain traits. It sounds weird but there are little things like the square-jawed masculine look in our species that females really love in general, that have no other use but lookin' good.

In summary, females have a low reproductive potential (they can only have a child every 3 yearsish at most), but low reproductive variability (all other things equal, they are in demand and so will become mothers in their life time, all things equal.) Males have high reproductive potential (Wham bam) but high reproductive variability (they must be of a certain quality to be certain of a chance to reproduce.)

So there we go. Evolution occurs not as a conscious decision of nature, but as a result of the death or life-long dry-streak of members of a species with weaker traits. Evolution can't create anything new, it just messes with the design a bit. The details of exactly what traits are passed on are still being argued. Interesting subject though. I could've gone into the mechanic of heritability - genetic transmission - but I think I'll leave the working of Gregor Mendel for another day!

I hope this worked out well for anyone reading. I really enjoyed writing it out, It's very simple stuff right now, higher biology would give you more than you need, but as I get more advanced I'll refer back to this and you can follow with me.

Naturally.

Abertits.

Just a quick one here to express my resignation that my university is directly responsible for everything useless in the world.

First class of the new semester; final year! Oooh exciting. Oh no, no. That was silly. Of course the lecturer has written a last minute note of absense and stuck it on the classroom door. Of course she wouldn't send an email as soon as she woke up and knew she was too ill to come in. Of course.

So off we toddle as a class to sit mulling it over in the union. Which, I feel it is important to add, made the best winter broth I've ever had.

Tch.

Hole Punches Don't Count.

My last post ended up sounding more serious than I wanted it to, so I'll lighten the tone by introducing my 'Ten Punch' rule.

Society would be a much better place if everyone, from birth, was allowed 10 punches. Full on, in-the-face, punches. This would be regulated by law, but would gradually become a social convention as people realised the benefits of a form of limited violent freedom. Everyone would have some sort of 'counter' on their person or public record which would be reduced by one for each punch expended. It is difficult to accurately describe this counter without a pilot of the action, but suffice to say that social rules would demand honesty as strongly as criminal law. People could use these punches at any time, for any reason, so long as it did not break other crucial laws. E.g. an angry husband could not punch their wife ten times really hard and get away with it; a punch could not be delivered to someone who would clearly die from it or be permenently injured.


Why would this make the world a better place? Take one example: Have you ever heard the elderly lamenting the days of corporal punishment; telling us how children were much better behaved due to the threat of physical pain? That was a horrible system, as people in positions of trust and authority were allowed to beat children for testing their boundries and generally acting as children do. That said, any adult among those reading this will almost certainly have experienced suppressed rage at the cheek of some git teenager who has learned that s/he can fuck with everyone with absolutely no fear of serious repercussion. Back to the teenagers on a bus listening to their music on speakers, swearing, ripping the bus driver, beeping the 'stop' button over and over and lauging that no one is even acknowledging them. Imagine the Ten Punch rule is in place, a man gets up from his seat. He walks to the back of the bus and expends one of his punches TO THE FACE of the most annoying offender. By law and most importantly social custom, the rest of the bus nods and accepts this as 'fair enough'.

 

There is no explosive fight back, everyone knows they have only ten punches for life. That's pretty much 1 per decade. If you got into a massive fight over one punch you'd be commiting an offense every time you punched someone in the future. So gradually teenagers stop fucking around on buses because of the fear of physical violence, but not in a 'oh god i'll get whipped' way. For the same reason that fights would become rarer, actual events of punching a teenage would be damn, DAMN rare. There would be no terror that it was likely to happen, just an accepted fact that if you mess with someone enough, they have that option.


Now of course the rule would be abused. People would go over their limit. People would use the rule to embarrass, to take advantage and to take unfair revenge on an undeserved receipient. Just in the same way that driving is abused, the ability to create fire, open access to shops. Exceeding the speed limit, setting fire to a park bench and shoplifting are all socially unacceptable, and therefore relatively rare. Most members of society realise that if people break convention, things generally become a lot shitter when the rules tighten and freedom is reduced. That's why the Ten Punch rule would get off the ground. It allows greater freedom than we currently have, and would be more advantageous than detrimental.

I was explaining this to a friend yesterday evening and she pointed out that ten punches would be a lot more valuable to some people than others. Wolverine, for example, would be a lot more satisfied with a punch than a 10 year old girl with no hands.


In general I think it's one of my best ideas. What do you reckon? Could there be a sub-rule that gives certain individuals another option than punches, if their punches wouldn't have much effect?

Where's the damn controller?

I reckon people's lives can be summed up by a few over-arching concepts that hide under the surface. So intricately entwined with all of our moods, decisions, problems, perceptions that it's difficult to directly access them. One of these concepts is control; the extent to which we feel in control of our path through life.

Control has a value in a very real sense. The more you have of it, the more you can barter and trade. An example of the trade idea is experienced commonly across the world and history in subservience. Servants will trade their control (in the form of freedom of time and action) in order to receive the pay and often-times protection of an employer. Come to think of it, that's sort of the idea of any job. A more extreme example comes under sexual dominance and submission. A person may trade their control in exchange for an exciting feeling of helplessness and a show of trust to their partner.

I've spend a little while unsuccessfully trying to type out the scope of the control economy. Parents have control over children, employers over employees, teachers over students; but it can equally be reversed in each example. Children on a bus playing music loudly have control over the annoyed adults sitting nearby who are tightly bound by law and convention not to say anything let alone physically intervene. Law and bureaucracy itself has control over everyone, even though it is but a system of rules. With such a complex issue, examples are everywhere.

Think about occasions where you have acquired or lost control. You've been flirting with someone the previous evening and you gave them your phone number. Now you're feeling a little nervous. You reached out and took a chance, you've got no control over whether that person phones you the next day. Ah! But s/he does. S/he was interested and gives you a call. Now the ball is back in your court and you feel great. The person asks you out; now you have the control in the form of a hasty 'Yes!' or a solemn 'Oh...no." (Anyone who has ever said no to a person probably knows it doesn't feel that good. Control does not equal happiness all the time.)

You've been feeling down about something. You've kept it well hidden and managed to keep a convincing smile, but now you're out with a friend, and s/he has given you a natural segway in conversation to open up. Do you retain control by keeping the information limited to yourself, or do you tell him/her and experience that moment of anxiety as you wait to see how they react to your secret?

You've been sitting in your house for weeks bored out of your mind and wishing someone would come along and invite you to something exciting. You've got no control over this situation. Conversely, you're very popular and are feeling a little bored, so you look at your phone book and decide who to ask out. Control control control.

Control is like money: It's useless but for its applications or its exchange value; those with less of it value it more; and the more control you have, the faster you acquire more.


I figure it might help to think about things in that context from time to time. It certainly simplifies things.

Sleaze or Success?

I'm typing this on my laptop back home with my folks. I'm down visiting them one last time before the beginning of 4th year, and it fit in nicely with the mother of my brother's girlfriend visiting from Finnland. We zoomed off for lunch at a big shed of echoes called Loch Leven's Larder. 50 conversations reflected off of the metal roof to create an endless hiss of background noise which rained havoc on everybody's ability to hear. Other than that weird feature it was a nice place. Belly of Lamb isn't something I'd have again though. It tasted pretty...floppy, and the name gave me a vivid picture of a belly-less pig looking dead unhappy.

EDIT: A comment pointed out that a pig probably wouldn't be all that bothered about a lamb losing its belly. I meant Belly of Pork :P

I was sitting facing the shop-counter, so saw most of the staff moving around doing whatever they needed to be doing. In the entire shop I saw one male member of staff. The other 30 were young, pretty, girls.

And I mean pretty. They weren't all astoundingly beautiful, but they all had this very direct attractiveness about them. They were the sort of girls that might dissolve the vocabularies of young men, who would be smiled upon approvingly by mothers and grandmothers, and envied in a polite way by other girls of their age. All of them. It was very clearly by design.

The whole thing reminded me of my time working at HomeBase years ago. The way the staff were arranged there was a direct split between 'stock' guys in the back, and 'shop' girls in the front. There was a story going around that a manager of one of the stores had had a TV interview on a show about that very topic. When asked by the interviewer why his store had so many pretty girls on his staff he replied, "They cost the same as ugly ones." and caused quite a damn stir. It remained the same, though, that there were no girls doing stock  and only a couple of guys on the counters.

There are few retail operations which use any demographic other than pretty women. Watch any DFS (or any other furniture) advert, and tell me if you ever see a 'sitting down on couch and looking happy' scene without a pretty woman in it. Toothpaste adverts, shaving adverts (shave with 100 blades and get even more sex!) It all comes down to what consumers associate with success and happiness in having bought the product. This tactic seems ridiculously, ridiculously naive; but as it hasn't gone away in decades it must actually work. According to the salesman: Men want to buy things to impress attractive women; women want to buy things to help them look like those attractive women.

This is a perfect example of a gripe I have about a lot of psychological assumptions. We know what advertisers are trying to do. It's very difficult to give a true impression of a product through a commercial, so they associate an image with it and try and sell that instead. "Real women are sexy. You're a real woman. Buy Dove stuff to show off your pride." In theory this all makes sense, we like thinking better about ourselves and believeing we're unique from the crowd in our style, but because we know this is what they're trying to do, it affects us differently. If we are aware of the motivation behind psychology experiments they fail to work correctly as we either try to please the experimenter or work in opposition. That's why we use single blinds, where we keep the true purpose silent until after the results have come in and debrief the participant after.

So does the "You went her, she wants to be her" approach really work? I'm not convinced about advertisements on television, but in real life if lots of attractive people are doing something, by definition that thing is now cool. If lots of ugly guys were staffing that kitchen, would so many people attend? If Nintendo hadn't put such an effort into showing pretty women playing the Wii, would so many girls feel comfortable playing it?

I really don't think so. I reckon people appreciate honesty in presentation more than physical attractiveness. A restaurant filled with pretty women will still be shunned if they were all crap at their job. The Wii would be ignored if it wasn't sincerely fun. I buy Aussie Shampoo because they openly mock themselvesfor suggesting it works best with their conditioner ("But we would say that, wouldn't we?") A HomeBase shop filled with fat guys would be just as popular if those guys were as friendly and polite as the girls at the counter were.

Theeeeen again. There's a reason women's magazines are filled with hot women styling all the stuff. I'm not sure what my conclusion is here. I guess there are times when it makes sense, and other times when it's just a stupid assumption.

A Certain Shade of Green

Right now I have two or three songs caught in my head with lyrics that really make me grin. Something I try my hardest to do in conversation is to speak in ways people don't expect. I know how boring I find the "Hi" - "How are you?" - "What've you been up to?" king of routine and I reckon most everyone else has long since found it wearing on them too.

It's not just that though. If you stay in the same general area for long enough you really get used to the same old patterns of speech. It's a mix of the words people begin to routinely use, the phrases they bring up and the emphasis they put on things. It can become awfully samey. It's perfectly understandable, and I'm fairly glad it happens in general. People get comfortable in what they expect to hear and these little nuances convey the character of the local culture. I just believe there should be exceptions to the rule.

I want to be one of those exceptions. The main reason is that when I realise I've gotten into a routine with the words I use, I feel uncomfortably boring and predictable. That's why I draw ideas from what I read and listen to and use them in conversations. If you catch me just after reading Lord of The Rings you'd be forgiven for thinking I plan to whip out my lute and press upon you the pleasure of an ode. Just after getting up to date with The Wheel of Time saga I keep speaking with strategic accuracy and then adding a 'bloody' here and there. (If I was female I'd cross my arms beneath my breasts and tug forcefully on my braid. I might even smooth my skirts though they clearly don't need it. There's a reference for fellow readers if ever there was one.)

So back to those songs. The first one; Facinating Rhythm by Jamie Cullum, can be taken in a couple of ways, but I like to think It is a really complex way of describing the feeling love gives him.

"Got a little rhythm, a rhythm a rhythm, that pitter pats through my brain.
So darn persistant, the day isn't distant when it'll drive me insane.
It comes in the morning, without any warning, and hangs around all day.
I have to sneak up to it, but someday I'll speak up to it
and hope it listens when I say..."

I'm fairly sure that could describe a man battling with an unstoppable erection, but let's skip past that. The next song is A Certain Shade of Green by Incubus. It seems to be a message to a lady who is hesistant about getting into a relationship even though there is no longer anything stopping her. The song title refers to traffic lights, I think.

"A certain shade of green. Tell me is that what you need?
All signs around, they say move ahead.
Could someone please explain to me your ever-present lack of speed?
Are your muscles bound by ropes? Or do crutches cloud your day?
My sources say the road is clear, and street signs point the way.
You gonna stand around til 2012 a.d.? What are you waiting for, a certain shade of green?
I think I grew a grey watching you procrastinate, what are you waiting for, a certain shade of green?"

Finally there's Throw me a rope by KT Tunstall. This song makes me imagine sitting outside a log cabin somewhere isolated in a warm country. Surrounded on two sides by pine forests but with golden fields in view everywhere else, warmed by a sun just above the horizon. The song isn't even remotely about that.

"I want you between me and the feeling I get when I miss you.
Everything here is telling me I should be fine.
So why is it so, above as below, that I'm missing you every time?
I got used to you whispering things to me into the evening.
I followed the sun and it's colours and left this world.
It seems to me that I'm definitely hearing the best that I've heard.
So throw me a rope to hold me in place. Show me a clock for counting my days... down.
Everything's easier when you're beside me, come back and find me 'cause I feel alone."

If a woman ever says the first line of that to me, I'll travel the world to get back to her. I hope you're getting an idea of what I see in the notion of our world getting more lyrical :).

Call it the road less travelled.

(I really wanted to add in a bit about a friend of mine who can convert traditional insults into the most epic of crude wordplay; but I can't think of a way to do it without revealling his identity and crippling his chances with any future employers who might somehow read this blog... Suffice it to be a silent tribute to originality!)

A flurry of flavour and a pimpin' jive.

If you do nothing else by the end of this week, go to asda and buy a box of frozen summer fruits. When they are thawed on the outside but still frozen in the center, take a handful and hold them in your mouth. Gradually work your way through the utterly mouth-watering fleshy parts until you are left with little rolls of flavoured ice. Even if you're allergic to all berries, do this. There are few better ways to die.

I'm in a very cheerful mood this afternoon. All my ranting about psychology sort of fell apart when my friend (who has been given an offer of PhD from everywhere, ever) asked me to help him with statistics. My process for going through these problems seems pretty nonsensical to anyone incapable of mind-reading, but I adore working out how to do it right, and then understanding why what I did was correct. I took some mad problem about normal and mutated strains of a certain string of DNA, and got a lovely precise answer. I'm sure the results might mean something to crazy scientists who understand the myriad acronyms involved.

So I have a passion for statistics. That's actually enough for me. That's a damn good skill in many areas of life. Not only because I can, you know... statisc things; but because the whole process of complex problem solving has ingrained itself into me. With that said, someone needs to explain to me the concept of statistical effect size.

I understand that effect size is a measure of the magnitude of the effect of the independent variable (e.g. caffeine) on the dependent variable (e.g. pimpin' jive). A large effect size means that caffeine really makes pimpin' jive better or worse. A small effect size means it only effects it a little bit. Fine. Good. But what constitutes a 'large' effect size. When I asked my tutors this, the question seemed entirely foreign in nature. They tried to explain it, but I was convinced they were answering "what is effect size" rather than "What is the numerical limit of effect size?"

Say that the effect size of a statistical test comes out as 0.8. That's a large effect size, and any researcher would be delighted to achieve that if it was also significant at the o.o5 level. It is rare but possible to achieve an effect size much larger than that. In various made-up tests we've examined in class, the effect size has been in excess of 10. As far as I'm aware, the size is theoretically limitless. How then, can you distinguish between a large and a small effect? If small - medium is 0< - 0.6 and large is everything above that, doesn't that seem a fairly inaccurate measure. Logically, can one independent variable not only account for 100% of variance in a dependent variable; so by making effect size 1 the maximum possible?

If anyone has an explanation I'm missing, please let me know :).

In other news - Super trendy beach shorts should have pockets, and one of the best nights I've had in a while came from a simple walk home with tremendous company.

In 300 words or slightly more...

I'm not sure if this is something personal to me. The way I judge if a negative emotion is normal is whether or not comedians made skits about it, and this one I've never seen.

If I am speaking to someone, whether new face or old friend, if in response to 'How are you?' they reply with 'Perfect :D' I instantly lose any interest in chatting to them. I opened the conversation, I am the one requesting the pleasure of their company, and now they have made it swiftly clear that their lives are simply as good as they can get.

What do you say to that? My first reaction is to be fairly bitter. "Oh good, i'm glad" I will reply, seething with the knowledge that my life is actually fairly shoddy at the moment in comparison. It's made 100 times worse if you know the person has achieved things in their life you cannot qualitatively add to; like having a 5 year long happy relationship or travelling the world. Of course  they are happy with their life having not spoken to you in weeks. They have no need to, and so they don't.

While there's nothing wrong with people having happy lives, becoming aware that a person does not require you for them to be fulfilled is like being told by a girl "Hi. I cannot begin to explain the magnitude of the fuck I don't give about you.' It's a precursor to the class reunion. "What have you done with your life since high school?"

"Well, er.. I.. um. Oh bollocks to it. I'm very single and I very live about 50 miles from where I grew up. I need something or someone to come along and make me feel perfect enough to not have to chat to half my friends without them starting it."

Head-bobbin'

I like Pigeons. I always have. I love wandering around an area of land drenched with humans and their buildings (otherwise known as a city, in some circles) and seeing things that aren't of our species. For the same reason I like seeing dogs, cats, seagulls; even your occasional urban fox.

If I have food on me I'll almost always spare a chunk for a pigeon. Their shiny colourful necks and clueless (yet eerily purposeful) wanderings just make me want to give them a hand. Some day I hope they might repay the favour if i'm ever struggling for food.

The reason I'm talking about this was the little white and grey-smudged mother pigeon I just saw make nest in a gutter outside my kitchen. I was washing the mountain of dishes I'd let accumulate, and this little thing was grooming itself and basking in the late summer breeze. The nest was just a wee thing, so I decided to leave out some tissue paper and food on my windowsill. My parents have a host of bird-life thanks to their efforts in the back garden at home; maybe I'm about to make my first birdie friend.

Thoughts on Psychology

Hah, brief.

One potential benefit of having a blog up and running at the start of my final year of study is that it gives me a forum to voice my thoughts. My years here, although intensely enjoyable, have been marred by regular frustration drawing from my regret at having chosen such a soft science. Almost everything I have real curiosity about stems from the big three (Bio, Chem and Phys) or from the applied frontier of computing studies. Ask me if Wifi signals transmit successfully through gel or water. I've got no bollocking idea. I'm not even sure how Wifi works let alone the tenacity of its transmissions. Despite this, I damn well want to know. On that subject alone I'd happily go much further than Wikipedia can take me.

I have friends who study detailed subjects such as anatomy. I've been told of fascinating (albeit incredibly freaky) explorations inside the human body, aided by a sharp bugger of a knife and a direct passion to see for real how it all works. Similarly, I'd like to know how to fix bust hardware using a technique more measured than whapping out the BIOS battery and hoping that makes all the problems go away.

Sometimes I think, 'I have come to uni to study how to be a student.' I've woken up, more than once, to the terrible fear that I might never have any skills to offer. I know a bit about various areas of psychology, but I've been taught by academics, not practical demonstrators. They chose the honourable and infinitely useful path to teach and to research, but I'm not studying to become a teacher. If I want to learn how to investigate a witness, aid an individual with mental problems, give dietary advice or uncover a repressed memory; I am on the wrong course. I know the theory - but I can't do it. Yet.

And I suppose that's the real issue about an undergraduate degree in psychology. It's a stepping stone. Further qualifications are required in order to know enough about anything to be effective in the real world. Indeed the British Psychology Society require psychologists to take it up a notch before they can call themselves chartered psychologists. Fair enough! I wouldn't want to be attended by me in a mental health ward. With other undergrad courses offering students all they need to succeed, I sometimes feel like I'm running a race but my lane is a treadmill.

-----------

After all that, I definately have to start from day 21 again. My course isn't all bad. If we're speaking purely of the educational aspect, I've have some tremendous tutors and some subjects that have really stuck with me. More than anything else, I feel perfectly prepared to undertake a serious research study and deal with very difficult statistical problems. I'd like to give a basic overview of one area which made me feel like I could contribute something to a dinner conversation and feel proud for having done so.

This January I had the pleasure of writing an essay on the benefits / detriments of bilingualism in children. At the time I was dating a woman from Germany and had been making an effort to learn some of the language. Anyone who has tried starting a second language at 20 will know about that ordeal! I compared case studies of single language and bilingual children and examined the differences in their language development in five different areas: Phonology (sounds), semantics (meanings), syntax (grammar), pragmatics (social rules) and vocabulary. At the beginning I stressed the massive benefit of starting life with a free language, and that only severe detriments could counter-balance that advantage.

Oller et al. (1997) studied both dual and single language learners from age 4 to 18 months, examining their sound development. Correct syllable formation occured at the same rate and the proportion of syllables to vowels were the same. So far so good. Fennel et al. (2002) found that bilingual children had difficulty applying new labels to an old object if the labels only differed by one consonant. Where single learners became proficient in this at around 17 months, dual learners were delayed by about 3 more. Bell et al. (2001) believed the problem to be a matter of exposure. In their study they noticed that English-Welsh learners were quicker in establishing correct usage of the Welsh 'Trill-r' the more exposure to the language they had. (More exposure = better understanding? Brilliant piece of detective work there guys.)

Dopke (1998) and a horde of other researchers found that dual learners had difficulty in using different word orders or grammatical rules (like french irregular verbs). Again this was dependent at least partially on exposure levels, but Paradis and Genesee (1996) were unsure whether low exposure limited actual development of complex syntax, or just the confidence to use it. Pearson et al. believed first words were learned at approximately the same age (1997), and that the rate and pattern of vocabulary development was similar in both groups (1994). With both languages combined, dual-learners had a much larger vocabulary than singles. (I initially would have believed that capacity would be limited by having to learn two words for each meaning, but apparantly not.)

Bilingual code-mixing is the act of combining the rules of two different languages in the same utterance or conversation. It's practically always grammatically inconsistent and is usually used intentionally as a form of slang amongst experienced bilinguals. In earlier development it can be used to fill gaps in one language (e.g. "a schon rabbit" could be used if the child forgot the english word for beautiful.) You can work out the many uses for the skill without too much thought. Mixing occurs in a particularly rough way if dual learners learned one of both languages in a sloppy fashion; but more often children know which language to use when, and when to mix. Deuchar and Quay (2000) noted that children found mixing each language system both natural and easy.

The plus sides are huge, and there were only a few down sides that happened in only some situations.The main one was called subtractive bilingualism. This occurs when the second language replaces the first due to a much larger cultural impression. This can happened through sudden exposure through trade, immigration or conquest (e.g. Wright et al. (2000) found Canadian Inuits taught only in English and French at school soon forgot how to speak their native tongue despite the actions of their parents.) Moving to an english-centered country like the USA can general overwhelm languages only used by two parents of the young child.

The summary? Dual language learning is just as natural and achieveable as learning a single language, but results in a pretty incredible social advantage. Cases of subtractive bilingualism are arguably more a concern for social scientists attempting to slow the decline of languages used only by smaller populations. They are unfortunate, but as the children learn the language most used in their current society, they are not exactly at a developmental disadvantage. So parents considering teaching their children two languages: So long as you expose them to both, you've got nothing to fear and plenty to gain.

Phew. That's enough for tonight I reckon. Bring on more subject material like this in fourth year and I may get back to you with a more positive outlook :). If you're keen to read any of the sources mentioned above, please send an email and I'll send you the full reference.

Saturday afternoon in Dundee

I've lived in Dundee for three years now, progressing gradually through my honours degree at Abertay Uni. Unlike the majority of the students at either of the two universities here, I spend a lot of my time in the outskirts in my job as a library assistant.

There are around 15 little villages in the city proper, each of them has a little streak of charm that I appreciate every time I stumble off a bus to work. Kirkton has very wide streets that are lined with lots of grass and trees; this is particularly refreshing as the village sits right on the green belt. Combined it feels like the houses just tail off into the lush green hills and glens. Douglas has two giant wind turbines spinning sedately over the houses. Right beside them is a chimney that lets off clean-looking white smoke. On blue-sky days, it's like a postcard to everyone who isn't fool enough to think windfarms ugly.

Charleston has a cherry-blossom tree right outside the library which blooms more dramatically than any other tree of that variety I've encountered. Broughty Ferry has the most delightful little stone harbour which elderly couples stroll past even on the coldest of days, so long as there's a little sun. There's also a little garden for the library which has a statue of a man reading on the bench. Every time someone goes to sit out there, they always have company. Ardler has a big sign next to the centre of the area which shows an artistic map from (very tall) crane perspective. Lochee is in a constant state of being ripped up, so everytime I go there is a new clean pavement or some trees planted. Fintry has a little back-path between streets that opens into a tiny grassy court that reminds me of a place I used to play in back home in Dunfermline.

Below the Blossom

It's got its fair share of pleasant scenes has Dundee, but like any sight seen every day for three years, the little things need to work harder to make the large seem pleasant. The libraries are the community outlets for the council as well as being the focal point of most of these communities. As such you get to see a good range of the people who live there, and often these people reflect the sad stereotypes made about Dundee by Scottish outsiders. Teenage single mothers who have no patience for their children, individuals clearly on hard drugs asking you to help them scam benefits on the library computers. Children who are apprehensive to go home straight from school because their parents are big drinkers. Luckily, the large number of tremendous characters that live in these areas give me confidence all is not lost.

On Saturday, the city centre fills with shoppers and little stalls selling farm produce and hosting jazz bands. It really brightens up the whole town. Students are flowing back in for the coming academic year, the town becomes more youthful, more lively, more attractive. I really enjoy this time of year, and to be fair I really like this town. The only thing is, I'm very, very ready to leave.

I'm not sure if that turned out to be a positive or negative post! Perhaps I should end with a tale from Whitfield Library. Last week I was working there during one of the meetings of the local history club. The elderly members frequently printed off old sheets of text they'd discovered online, written in that archaic script that young fools like me compare to the script on the one ring. One of the gentlemen there was an old army officer looking man. He wore a purple-coloured dinner jacket and held his back straight and his chin high, though he had a very friendly face. He took a print from my hand and began to chuckle as he read down the page. I asked him what was so funny, and he turned the page around to let me see. It was a list of births written back in the early 1900s where they were pretty blunt in their labels. The list was of children who were not acknowledged by one of their parents, so next to many of the names was BASTARD in block capitals. "Jim Hodgins - BASTARD". The old guy couldn't stop laughing and I unashamedly joined him.

Hah :).

(Mid-way through writing that, my new neighbour knocked on my door and introduced herself to me. She lives there with her EDIT - friend and studies at the same uni as me. We chatted away and washed the floor of our mutual corridor which had been reeking of garbage form a source we couldn't quite discern. It's really sweet to have a friendly face next door :).)

Happiness is a sunset template.

I was going to talk about how long it had been since I had had a proper conversation with a friend online, and use that as a nifty segway to complain about the deeper nature of facebook's rendering of all things shallow. (Un)fortunately my friend Michelle signed on and began a really cozy conversation. This totally ruined my motivation for complaining by giving me exactly what I wanted and making me feel all happy.

So instead I'll say a couple of things about Alex Day. This guy is one of the Vloggers I've stumbled into via the funniest Australian in the world, Frezned, on Youtube. Alex is a 20ish Londoner who is a veteran of the whole creating and editing of video in an entertaining manner. I've found myself feeling very envious of the lifestyle and popularity he's obtained by being a naturally friendly, funny person and broadcasting it online. What a damn good idea.

In his videos he occasionally points out humble little ideas which I really want to try. One example is the 21-day bracelet. It's a simple beaded and elasticated armlet which, perhaps obviously, you keep on one of your arms. The idea is to keep it on for 21 days and then remove it; but if you complain about anything, then you have to switch the arm it is on and restart the count at zero. 21 days is the length of time the creators of this notion believed that a character trait took to be conditioned out of an individual, I guess. It makes sense. If a person is able to go three weeks without complaining once, then it seems likely they'll be much more positive afterwards.

I'm on the look out for little self-disciplining lifestyle changes like this, and it's something I might try. First though, I'm going to follow one of his other suggestions and write a list of 5(ish) things I want to tomorrow. Then I'll wake up and bloody well do them. (The whole thing brings to mind one of my regular day dreams: The imaginery situation where I could make myself forget certain things, so i'd bump into notes left by my past self urging me to better myself in ways he was too lazy to do at the time.)

What a pleasant start :).

(I realise that my description of facebook making things shallow as part of a deep plan might sound odd, but I'm pretty sure it makes sense...)