Smile! I mean it. Smile while you read this paragraph! Even though those forced smiles are able to be discriminated from natural, spontaneous smiles - and yes, both will influence others' perceptions of you - evidence suggests that you can act your way into a new way of feeling. Research participants demonstrated more positive experiences while holding a pencil between their teeth without touching their lips, such that they approximated smiling without awareness of the facial expression or the facial muscles being used (Soussignan, 2002).
Smiling feels good. Smiling is associated with helpful thoughts and positive feelings, but smiling has also been found to induce emotional contagion; those observing a smile will spontaneously mimic some of the emotional expression (Blairy, Herrera and Hess, 1999; Vrugt and Vet, 2009). Smiling increases cooperation, builds rapport, communicates altruism, and contributes to trust (Scharlemann, Eckel, Kaclnik and Wilson, 2001; Mehua, Grammerb and Dunbara, 2007). When you're smiling, the whole world smiles with you!
Now, try a little smiling game as you reread this article: Smile every time you read the very word, "smile." Find out just how quickly it might affect your mood, then go out and share it with the whole world! Smile!
Post Script - Mona Lisa seems to be smiling when in your periphery vision, but her lips appear to flatten out when you look at them directly.
Post Post Script - "Smile" is one of those words that sounds funnier and funnier the more you say it. Smile. Smiles. Smilessss. Smile. SmILE. SMile. Smile. sMILE. sMILEY. smilE. smile. Smile. SMILE.
Blairy, S., Herrera, P., & Hess, U. (1999). Mimicry and the judgement of emotional facial expressions. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 23, 5-35.
Mehua, M., Grammerb K. and Dunbara, R.I.M. (2007). Smiles when sharing. Evolution and Human Behavior, 28, 415-422.
Scharlemann, J. P., Eckel, G. G., Kacelnik, A., & Wilson, R. K. (2001). The value of a smile: Game theory with a human face. Journal of Economic Psychology, 22, 617-640.
Soussignan, Robert. (2002). Duchenne smile, emotional experience, and autonomic reactivity: A test of the facial feedback hypothesis. Emotion, 2(1), 52-74.
Vrugt, Anneke and Vet, Carolijn. (2009). Effects of a Smile on Mood and Helping Behavior. Social Behavior and Personality; an international journal, 37(9), 1251-1257.
Showing posts with label Interesting Facts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Interesting Facts. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Friday, September 7, 2012
24/7: Twenty 20 Things You Didn't Know About... You Didn't Know About
Discover Magazine concludes their 10 publications annually with a fun page filled with 20 interesting facts on a common subject. Geeks fin' to get titillated! Honoring the seventh of this month with another twenty-for seven post are twenty 20 Things You Didn't Know About... that you didn't know about. Each subject links to Discover's twenty facts, and here I follow them with some of my favorites.
Time: "According to quantum theory, the shortest moment of time that can exist is known as Planck time, or 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 second."
Sleep: "A six-year study of a million adults showed that people who get only six to seven hours of sleep a night have a lower death rate than those who get eight hours. Maybe it's those late nights watching QVC."
Sex: "Marvin Gaye breaks it down in “Let’s Get It On”—what could be simpler? Psychologists at the University of Texas at Austin take a different view. They surveyed 444 people [pdf] and found 237 reasons why people have sex... Believe it or not, biologists cannot agree on the reason for sex either."
Fire: "Fire is an event, not a thing. Heating wood or other fuel releases volatile vapors that can rapidly combust with oxygen in the air. Most of the fuels we use derive their energy from trapped solar rays. In photosynthesis, sunlight and heat make chemical energy (in the form of wood or fossil fuel); So a bonfire is basically a tree running in reverse."
Alcohol: "According to the Drunken Monkey Hypothesis, our zest for alcoholic beverages derives from our distant ancestors’ impulse to seek the ripest, most energy-intensive fruits."
Water: "Before 2009, federal regulators did not require water bottlers to remove E. coli... Actually, E. coli doesn’t sound so bad. In 1999 the Natural Resources Defense Council found that one brand of spring water came from a well in an industrial parking lot near a hazardous waste dump."
Light: "In the confined space of an Easy-Bake oven, a 100-watt bulb can create a temperature of 325 degrees Fahrenheit."
Nothing: "In space, no one can hear you scream: Sound, a mechanical wave, cannot travel through a vacuum. Without matter to vibrate through, there is only silence... So what if Kramer falls in a forest? Luckily, electromagnetic waves, including light and radio waves, need no medium to travel through, letting TV stations broadcast endless reruns of Seinfeld, the show about nothing."
Skin: "Fingerprints increase friction and help grip objects. New World monkeys have similar prints on the undersides of their tails, the better to grasp as they swing from branch to branch." (Also, see "HANDS!")
Digestion: "Your stomach’s primary digestive juice, hydrochloric acid, can dissolve metal, but plastic toys that go down the hatch will come out the other end as good as new. (A choking hazard is still a choking hazard, though.)... Same with crayons, hair, and chewing gum—all of which will pass through within a few days, no matter what you’ve heard."
Clouds: "When moist, warm air rises to a cooler elevation, water condenses onto microscopic “seeds” like dust, ash, or bacteria. Water + seeds + updraft = clouds."
Magnetism: "Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines generate a field 60,000 times as intense as the earth’s to vibrate the hydrogen atoms in your body; in response, the atoms emit radio waves that are analyzed to produce a map of your insides."
Stress: "Stressed rats’ brains showed shrunken neurons in the dorsomedial striatum (an area associated with goal-directed behavior) and growth in the dorsolateral striatum (related to habitual behavior)."
Lab Accidents: "The world has scores of superpowerful particle accelerators. Last year, a fireball created at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in Upton, New York, had the characteristics of a black hole. Physicists are reasonably sure that no such black holes could escape and consume Earth."
Money: "Filthy lucre: In a study last year, researchers found more cocaine residue on U.S. bills than on any other currency. Also found on money: staphylococcus bacteria and fecal matter."
Language: "Grüss dich, Dunkelheit, mein alter Freund. Three- to five-day-olds born into French-speaking families tend to cry with the rising intonation characteristic of French; babies with German-speaking parents cry with falling tones, much like spoken German. Infants may start learning language in the womb, it seems."
Genius: "In the 1990s Bell Labs found that its most valued and productive electrical engineers were not those endowed with genius but those who excelled in rapport, empathy, cooperation, persuasion, and the ability to build consensus."
Future: "In 2205 humans reconquer Earth and hire polymer engineers to replace melting glaciers with plastic substitutes that are identical to the originals in every way, except that they aren’t wet or cold."
Time: "According to quantum theory, the shortest moment of time that can exist is known as Planck time, or 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 second."
Sleep: "A six-year study of a million adults showed that people who get only six to seven hours of sleep a night have a lower death rate than those who get eight hours. Maybe it's those late nights watching QVC."
Sex: "Marvin Gaye breaks it down in “Let’s Get It On”—what could be simpler? Psychologists at the University of Texas at Austin take a different view. They surveyed 444 people [pdf] and found 237 reasons why people have sex... Believe it or not, biologists cannot agree on the reason for sex either."
Fire: "Fire is an event, not a thing. Heating wood or other fuel releases volatile vapors that can rapidly combust with oxygen in the air. Most of the fuels we use derive their energy from trapped solar rays. In photosynthesis, sunlight and heat make chemical energy (in the form of wood or fossil fuel); So a bonfire is basically a tree running in reverse."
Alcohol: "According to the Drunken Monkey Hypothesis, our zest for alcoholic beverages derives from our distant ancestors’ impulse to seek the ripest, most energy-intensive fruits."
Water: "Before 2009, federal regulators did not require water bottlers to remove E. coli... Actually, E. coli doesn’t sound so bad. In 1999 the Natural Resources Defense Council found that one brand of spring water came from a well in an industrial parking lot near a hazardous waste dump."
Light: "In the confined space of an Easy-Bake oven, a 100-watt bulb can create a temperature of 325 degrees Fahrenheit."
Nothing: "In space, no one can hear you scream: Sound, a mechanical wave, cannot travel through a vacuum. Without matter to vibrate through, there is only silence... So what if Kramer falls in a forest? Luckily, electromagnetic waves, including light and radio waves, need no medium to travel through, letting TV stations broadcast endless reruns of Seinfeld, the show about nothing."
Skin: "Fingerprints increase friction and help grip objects. New World monkeys have similar prints on the undersides of their tails, the better to grasp as they swing from branch to branch." (Also, see "HANDS!")
Digestion: "Your stomach’s primary digestive juice, hydrochloric acid, can dissolve metal, but plastic toys that go down the hatch will come out the other end as good as new. (A choking hazard is still a choking hazard, though.)... Same with crayons, hair, and chewing gum—all of which will pass through within a few days, no matter what you’ve heard."
Obesity: "Stand by your man: More than a decade ago, Manuel Uribe, now weighing 1,200 pounds (the equivalent of five baby elephants) and bedridden for the past five years, was abandoned by his wife because she was frightened by his increasing size."
Death: "The trigger of death, in all cases, is lack of oxygen. Its decline may prompt muscle spasms, or the "agonal phase," from the Greek word agon, or contest."
Clouds: "When moist, warm air rises to a cooler elevation, water condenses onto microscopic “seeds” like dust, ash, or bacteria. Water + seeds + updraft = clouds."
Magnetism: "Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines generate a field 60,000 times as intense as the earth’s to vibrate the hydrogen atoms in your body; in response, the atoms emit radio waves that are analyzed to produce a map of your insides."
Stress: "Stressed rats’ brains showed shrunken neurons in the dorsomedial striatum (an area associated with goal-directed behavior) and growth in the dorsolateral striatum (related to habitual behavior)."
Lab Accidents: "The world has scores of superpowerful particle accelerators. Last year, a fireball created at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in Upton, New York, had the characteristics of a black hole. Physicists are reasonably sure that no such black holes could escape and consume Earth."
Money: "Filthy lucre: In a study last year, researchers found more cocaine residue on U.S. bills than on any other currency. Also found on money: staphylococcus bacteria and fecal matter."
Language: "Grüss dich, Dunkelheit, mein alter Freund. Three- to five-day-olds born into French-speaking families tend to cry with the rising intonation characteristic of French; babies with German-speaking parents cry with falling tones, much like spoken German. Infants may start learning language in the womb, it seems."
Genius: "In the 1990s Bell Labs found that its most valued and productive electrical engineers were not those endowed with genius but those who excelled in rapport, empathy, cooperation, persuasion, and the ability to build consensus."
Future: "In 2205 humans reconquer Earth and hire polymer engineers to replace melting glaciers with plastic substitutes that are identical to the originals in every way, except that they aren’t wet or cold."
Friday, August 3, 2012
Transfer, Transfer, Transfer
"Bear in mind that we all are teachers,
we all are students,
and that to “Transfer”
is the process of moving an object, symbol, or idea
from one closed system to another,
when the two systems contain similar aspects or some similar relationship,
yet retaining a similar meaning (Madsen and Madsen, 1998)."
If you move an object such as a cheese grater from the kitchen into the bedroom, you can paint it and create an affordable earring holder. A symbol of the crucifixion has been generalized to represent Christianity. Because you remember memorizing the names of bones by chaining the information, you might transfer that same procedural idea to teach a new song to people and find success by presenting one line at a time and linking the lines together.
The theory concerning transfers of learning originated in behavioralism. A "transfer of practice" occurs whenever past experience informs and influences learning and performance in new and different situations. Slouching over your new guitar at home will later teach your body to sit with poor posture in a guitar class. You might transfer a learned confidence while playing guitar in front of your classmates when later performing publicly at a local coffee shop. Perhaps you observe how performing those different songs affected the audience, and so later choose to sing "What a Wonderful World" rather than "Yesterday" to elevate a patient's mood.
What is learned in one classroom should apply to another. And your life. And your future. Dressed in a suit and tie, Dr. Cliff Madsen grins while stepping through his classroom doorway and says everyday, "Ladies, gentlemen; take out pen and paper. Write a transfer!" Teaching yourself to think critically both in depth and creatively implies the ability to thoroughly understand a single topic and to also adaptively apply that understanding in endless functional purposes and intellectual pursuits. Rather then seeing the world as several distinct textbooks, practice seeing the world as the internet, rich with encyclopedias, video resources, social media and - downloadable textbook PDFs - that inform "vertical" depth with all possible "horizontal" breadth: connections, references, combinations, metaphors, theories, opinions, song lyrics, and so on. Barry Commoner contributes, "Everything is related to everything else."
If you move an object such as a cheese grater from the kitchen into the bedroom, you can paint it and create an affordable earring holder. A symbol of the crucifixion has been generalized to represent Christianity. Because you remember memorizing the names of bones by chaining the information, you might transfer that same procedural idea to teach a new song to people and find success by presenting one line at a time and linking the lines together.
The theory concerning transfers of learning originated in behavioralism. A "transfer of practice" occurs whenever past experience informs and influences learning and performance in new and different situations. Slouching over your new guitar at home will later teach your body to sit with poor posture in a guitar class. You might transfer a learned confidence while playing guitar in front of your classmates when later performing publicly at a local coffee shop. Perhaps you observe how performing those different songs affected the audience, and so later choose to sing "What a Wonderful World" rather than "Yesterday" to elevate a patient's mood.
What is learned in one classroom should apply to another. And your life. And your future. Dressed in a suit and tie, Dr. Cliff Madsen grins while stepping through his classroom doorway and says everyday, "Ladies, gentlemen; take out pen and paper. Write a transfer!" Teaching yourself to think critically both in depth and creatively implies the ability to thoroughly understand a single topic and to also adaptively apply that understanding in endless functional purposes and intellectual pursuits. Rather then seeing the world as several distinct textbooks, practice seeing the world as the internet, rich with encyclopedias, video resources, social media and - downloadable textbook PDFs - that inform "vertical" depth with all possible "horizontal" breadth: connections, references, combinations, metaphors, theories, opinions, song lyrics, and so on. Barry Commoner contributes, "Everything is related to everything else."
Madsen, Charles H. and Madsen, Clifford K. (1998). Teaching / Discipline: A Positive Approach for Educational Development. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, Inc.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Fivology?
A series of three works is well known as a trilogy. Sometimes life seems to come in threes (or not), and we certainly have given symbolic significance to sets of three, interior design, storytelling, and comedy. Trilogies are everywhere. Douglas Adams referred to the fifth work in his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe series, "Mostly Harmless," as, "the fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named trilogy." Well, we tend to label everything and there so happens to actually be a name for that. A series of five works is a pentalogy. To label a numbered series really is as easy as substituting the appropriate Greek numerical prefixes: duology, trilogy, quadology, pentalogy, hexalogy, heptalogy, octalogy, ennealogy, decalogy...
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Fuck! Just fucking fuck the fucking fucker!
Warning: This article features suggestive material and excessive use of offensive language to explore grammatical function. Admittedly, if this disclaimer is being read, it is probably too late to prevent "virgin minds" from being exposed to the explicit nature of this educational pursuit. So read on!
Also, acknowledge that this is a personal blog. I also write about Music Therapy or professional topics, but do so because I personally love the field or the topics.
Most people my age get very excited about a good "fuck," especially as they discover its incredible flexibility. Can you imagine why? I never thought I would be giving this talk so soon. Well... There are only eight parts of speech in the English language, and so, as a typical testosterone-driven male, I wondered which words might fit into every word class. Can you think of any? I suspected slang could broaden the possible grammatical uses of a root word and expletives might be applied in many creative ways.
Peevish Penman published an argument that "fuck" can qualify for nine parts of speech, including sub-category examples. (Articles are sometimes considered to be an independent category - who knew "a" and "the" were so special?) I dream I could agree, but scroll down through the comments and an anonymous reply more accurately negated "fuck" as a pronoun, conjunction, preposition, or article, and composed a perfect example of it being used as an interjection, adverb, verb, adjective, and noun: "Fuck! Just fucking fuck the fucking fucker!"
I think "fuckhead" exemplifies an appropriate use as a pronoun, thus personally concluding "fuck" to comprise 6 out of 8, or 75% of all English lexical categories. Fat bottom line: "fuck" is a grammar slut. Experiment for yourself with the safety root word in the Urban Dictionary, and be sure to educate your dirty talk by looking up "fuckspeak."
Also, acknowledge that this is a personal blog. I also write about Music Therapy or professional topics, but do so because I personally love the field or the topics.
Most people my age get very excited about a good "fuck," especially as they discover its incredible flexibility. Can you imagine why? I never thought I would be giving this talk so soon. Well... There are only eight parts of speech in the English language, and so, as a typical testosterone-driven male, I wondered which words might fit into every word class. Can you think of any? I suspected slang could broaden the possible grammatical uses of a root word and expletives might be applied in many creative ways.
Peevish Penman published an argument that "fuck" can qualify for nine parts of speech, including sub-category examples. (Articles are sometimes considered to be an independent category - who knew "a" and "the" were so special?) I dream I could agree, but scroll down through the comments and an anonymous reply more accurately negated "fuck" as a pronoun, conjunction, preposition, or article, and composed a perfect example of it being used as an interjection, adverb, verb, adjective, and noun: "Fuck! Just fucking fuck the fucking fucker!"
I think "fuckhead" exemplifies an appropriate use as a pronoun, thus personally concluding "fuck" to comprise 6 out of 8, or 75% of all English lexical categories. Fat bottom line: "fuck" is a grammar slut. Experiment for yourself with the safety root word in the Urban Dictionary, and be sure to educate your dirty talk by looking up "fuckspeak."
Friday, June 29, 2012
"A Day In The Life," by the Beatles
"[A Day In The Life] being the last song on the album, The Beatles found an interesting way to close it out. After the final note, Lennon had producer George Martin dub in a high pitched tone, which most humans can't hear, but drives dogs crazy. This was followed by a loop of incomprehensible studio noise, along with Paul McCartney saying "Never could see any other way," spliced together. It was put there so vinyl copies would play this continuously in the run-out groove, sounding like something went horribly wrong with the record. Kids, ask your parents about vinyl." -Annoymous comment on http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=129
The 15 kHz "dog whistle" is limited by sound recording and reproduction limitations. Humans can hear up to 20kHz, but lose that range with age and ear damage. Sounds above 10kHz normally must be cranked out at a high volume, or decibel level, for most humans to perceive the sound. Not only are dogs able to hear these frequencies at lesser volumes, they can actually hear up to 45kHz, well above our human threshold of hearing. (http://www.eeggs.com/items/38179.html)
Madsen, Charles H. & Madsen, Clifford K. (1997). experimental research in music. Raleigh, NC: Contemporary Publishing Company of Raleigh, Inc.
Madsen, Charles H. & Madsen, Clifford K. (1997). experimental research in music. Raleigh, NC: Contemporary Publishing Company of Raleigh, Inc.
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