Troper Updates II, Part II

I got a calendar about cows in yoga poses from my older sister.

...that exists?

Are they actual cows in yoga poses or are you just being really rude towards the models?

I'm just asking because the former seems far more unlikely to happen.

edited 21st Jul '15 12:18:20 AM by Xeroop

Everything exists. We should all know that by now!

edited 21st Jul '15 6:04:07 AM by BonsaiForest

Even Russell's teapot?

Ugh, the teapot.

I hate it for my own reasons.

Why's that?

Because it's usually used in reference to religion, but the idea of God existing for most who are religious comes from a personal method, rather than being able to lay out evidence to say that such a being exists.

The teapot in question can be easily proved or disproved by observation, and for many who are religious it isn't quite the case.

It would be easy to prove or disprove the teapot, where as God would be much harder to prove or dismiss based on evidence.

They're actual cows in yoga poses.

Actual cows in yoga poses, eh? Those are some flexible bovines.

I'm not sure of how I feel about that.

I don't know quite what's going on, but without going in for an official diagnosis, I think I might be developing both insomnia and a mild case of narcolepsy... as much of an oxymoron as that might sound...

edited 22nd Jul '15 3:33:42 AM by GhostElm

How do you know it's narcolepsy rather than the logical result of not getting the right sleep because of the insomnia?

I don't necessarily... it's just that what sleep I do get during the day comes during random, short intervals during the day versus passing out all together. I know what you're suggesting is probably more likely though.

edited 22nd Jul '15 6:20:05 AM by GhostElm

I've recently found some materials relating to learning Russian, so I think I will take that goal up again.

Finished At Night She Cries While He Rides His Steed.

At the base of it, it's a parody of a a revenge western with an audacious amount of machismo. Things like having sex with a whole house full of Asian prostitutes and throwing a stick of dynamite at a moose.

Though the ending was rather disappointing. Not much of a denoument. But at least there was vengeance. Obscene, unnecessary disgusting vengeance.

edited 23rd Jul '15 10:01:52 PM by Keybreak

Now I'm reading The Isle of the Lost, the prequel novel to Disney Channel's Descendents. I plan to finish it before the movie airs on the 31st.

Just because I'm 23 it doesn't mean I've outgrown the kids' stuff. Now that i work at the library I can read all those books I missed out on in school.

Better than working at Hastings where I'd still have to pay to entertain myself.

edited 23rd Jul '15 10:05:16 PM by Keybreak

Who hasn't detonated the odd ungulate now and again?

Well, I woke up at 5:45am yesterday to have breakfast early, then left just after 7am to travel to a university to participate in a study I'd signed up for regarding adults with autism. It was a 2-hour drive.

I had to wear an EKG for most of the tests. The first one involved reading a text description of Charlie Brown comics, where I'd see a sentence describing a panel, on the screen by itself. Then I'd see the next sentence describing the next panel, again isolated. Then I'd read the final sentence, one word onscreen at a time. I had about a 20% chance of having a world in ALL CAPS show up afterward that may or may not relate to the theme of the comic that was described. My job was to click one button if the word fit, or the other button if it didn't.

The catch, as many psychological tests have one, is that the description would often end on a word that made no sense. To use an actual example, "Snoopy sat on a branch, pretending to be a vulture. An actual vulture sat down next to him. Snoopy got scared and ran away from the ball." I noticed these odd words and remarked on them later to the researchers, asking if the true intent of the test was to measure how my brain reacted to these Mind Screws. They admitted that was the case. I kept doing the study as required - still making a genuine effort to pay attention and answer questions correctly, since I realized my brain needed to be in "full attention mode" in order for the study to work, since after all, when my brain was paying attention, it would be more likely to notice the weird screw-ups in the sentences.

The next test involved basically the same thing except with comic panels. I'd see one panel at a time, and the last panel had almost a 50% chance of making no sense. Again, I had to respond to if an unrelated panel from a different comic fit the theme or not, and that had a 20% chance of showing up.

Then it was past noon, so I took a lunch, but asked to go back to the studies quickly. It wasn't an hour-long lunch break we're talking here!

They did a test with sentences similar to my previous tests, that were shown one word at a time, with bizarre wordplay and insanity in well over half of them. Like, "John hated this political party, because it kept coming just after his birthday." Get it? "Party" has two meanings? There were a lot of that. I assume (I didn't ask about this one) that it was measuring my brain's reaction to the wordplay. Indeed, it actually made answering the questions more difficult!

Another test involved looking at photos. They were of people, upside-down people, buildings, or furniture. Click a button when I see furniture. It was really measuring my brain's reaction to upside-down people.

One that felt more like a genuine intelligence test was to click a button if two words were related, and a different one if they weren't. Some of the word pairings amusingly sounded like A Good Name for a Rock Band.

After that, the non-EKG tests. Some of these really did seem like they were actual intelligence tests, since there was no EKG involved reading my brainwaves. First test was a vocabulary test. Choose the picture that best fits the word. Words started out simple, got more and more complex, and got to SAT-level stuff. Then it was time to complete patterns. Same: patterns started out elementary school-level simple, then more complex and finally mindbending. I was vocalizing out loud how I was trying to solve the pattern, showing my process for doing so, and my tester said "Wow" under her breath. I was told I did excellent.

A much more challenging test involved matching photos of people to other photos of the same person. I'd see a regular head-on photo of a person taken in stark lighting conditions. Then, from a pool of 6 photos of people looking in all directions and under different lighting conditions, I had to choose the 3 that were of the same person above. It was HARD. Some of these people really looked like each other, and the lighting could really mess with how some people looked.

Finally, the rest was questions. Just questions about what my life was like, did I have friends, have I felt happy, sad, scared, etc., and how would I describe those feelings? Do I have plans or dreams for the future, etc.

I got paid $105 for my time. A few times I did ask them questions of my own, and I found out that they were measuring only adults, no kids there. They said that there's been very little discussion of adults with autism, and now it's finally being looked at. One of the researchers has direct experience with autism in her family and/or social circle, but didn't elaborate. Another is doing the research because she finds research interesting. She told me that functioning levels are a bit of a misnomer, though she did say they tested what might be considered "low functioning" adults who were capable of taking some of the tests. I wonder if the brain wave readings will be different in them? It feels as if they were testing many different things there. I was also told that autism is being decoupled from intelligence, as there are arguments that intelligence has nothing to do with autism. I disagree, because haven't autism genes been linked to intelligence genes? Haven't autism cases risen rapidly in Silicon Valley? Haven't there been studies that show that autistics are more likely to come from two intelligent parents? Still, at the same time, I see the argument in favor of separating autism from intelligence.

I arrived home around 7pm. It was a 12-hour time all put together. I got to contribute to scientific understanding of autism, have an interesting trip, make some money (on top of my paid vacation time from work), and have my mind stimulated all in one day. Time well spent.

Heh. All Peanuts comics are a mindscrew to me; they always leave me sitting there thinking 'Who finds these funny???'.

Yeah. The only funny ones were the ones with the non-sequitor endings designed to test my brain's reaction to them.

Welp. I got a migraine last night (well I woke up with one) but I napped since then and took a painkiller, so hopefully I'll be fine when I go to the zoo with my younger cousins (I forgot how old they are, I haven't seen them in a while).

Do you often wake up with headaches? I've found that sleeping usually makes headaches go away, except for the ones I get from sleep apnea when I don't use my gear.

It's happened before but it's fairly rare. When I do, I wake up before the migraine sets in, which is weird.

Cookout with neighbors FTW!