Split Brain???

Classes here at good ol' U of A have been okay so far this semester... pretty simple and self-explanitory. However, my favorite class I have this semester is Introduction to Psychology. I just find it really interesting, thinking about... well, thinking. So far, we've mostly just talked about the physical aspects, parts of the brain, and what they do and such. Well, today, we talked about the weirdest thing I've heard of for a while. Y'see, there's this condition that people can get called "split brain", where the corpus collosum (the series of nerves connecting your left and right brain) gets cut, so the hemispheres of your brain can't communicate with eachother. Apparently they used to do it back in the 60s to people who had serious epilepsy problems, and they still do a revised version of it nowadays.

These people with a "split brain" act pretty normal... untill you test them. They have this test where they have the subject focus on a point in the middle of a screen, and show them slides of different words and objects. If the word "Science" is flashed where the vision field of the right eye is, the subject can repeat back the word no problem, because the right eye sends information to the left brain, where speech and verbal communication is generally handled. If the same word is flashed in the vision field of the left eye, the subject will not be able to repeat back what he or she saw, because the right brain generally cannot control speech. Crazy, huh?

HOWEVER, if a picture of a cow is flashed to the left eye, the subject IS able to pick up a stuffed cow out of a selection of objects, or draw a cow on paper. The body just won't be able to verbalize it. Which just freaks me out, it's like your mind having a mind of it's own... or something. Another really interesting test had two different words showed on each side of the screen: The left side showed the word "TOAD", and the left showed the word "STOOL". The man was able to say the word stool, obviously, but when given a piece of paper, he had to actually guess what his hand was drawing, in this case, a toad, to figure out the whole word TOADSTOOL. Isn't that just crazy??? It weirds me out.

As freaky as I find all of this stuff, it really fascinates me for one reason or another. I'm thinking about maybe exploring what sort of careers you can get into. Getting a career in psychology DOES sound a little fishy to me... like I'd feel weird getting a career in something that seems so... guessy, but at this point, it's all just spectulative, anyway. I'm WAY too indecisive to decide yet... But, hey, maybe I'll learn about what part of my brain makes me so indecicive soon?

-Jimmy

Watching the Simpsons (Illegally, I suppose)

Hello to all of you nonexistant readers! I'm glad to know that at the rate I update my blog, the number of regulars I have is quite appropriate. This is a good thing, I'd be confused if I had hundreds of disappointed readers hanging on my every word... good justification, right?

Anyway, I can't help it that amazing writing moods only strike me every few months. But I was motivated in English today by an in-class assignment to write about a childhood memory that was supposed to have tought us a lesson or something... and I could absolutely not think of anything. I have such a terrible memory, it's ridiculous. I started to write about the time I ran away from my grandparents' house to go home, but I realized that that isn't actually a memory I have, just a story I've been told since. By the time I got around to finally PICKING a "memory" to write about, it was time to stop, and all I had written was an explaination of how bad of a memory I had. Go figure.

ANYWAY, to get to the actual TOPIC of this post... I have lost a dear source of entertainment. Y'see, about half a year ago, I got bored, so I went to yourtvlinks.com, a site with links to random sites that have entire episodes of TV shows, old and new, all organized by season and such. The quality is often very questionable, but where else am I ever going to get to see classics such as Reboot or... Samurai Pizza Cats? Hm. Maybe I'll have to check that out...

Of course, I was pretty disappointed that most of the shows I was actually interested in were "unavailable" or had "been removed by the host" or "violated our terms". I mean, go figure. The site itself isn't actually illegal, because all they're doing is providing links to the websites that actually host the videos. Which I find funny, because I'm pretty sure you CAN get in trouble for "real" crimes that are that kind of idea. Like, a Dr. Kevorkian for finding illegal videos, instead of killing yourself.

That thought sorta frustrates me. All of the copyright protection and whatnot. Y'know, going back to Napster. I mean, honestly, I consider music, video games, and movies all artforms. They really are. Someone is putting their vision into a medium for enjoyment on all levels, including technical, pure enjoyment, and symbolic interpetation, amongst others. Now, I can understand that for a lot of these examples, a great deal of money goes into the productions, and that SOME compensation is needed. It's just sad that artforms can't be freely exchanged. I digress a bit, but consider the following example in point.

Anyway, I started watching The Simpsons online about half a year ago from links I found at the site. I started, naturally, at the beginning, and what should happen after about 1 season and one week? The videos were removed. Go figure. I knew it was too good to be true. Now, I've never been a real hard-core Simpsons fan, I watch it on occasion 'cause it can be funny, and y'know, it's so ledgendary and whatnot, but starting to watch it from the beginning, episodes that are nearly 20 years old, I got sorta fascinated at just thinking about the creation of the episodes, and seeing the character development from the beginning. A lot of Simpsons media and jokes depend on already knowing and understanding these characters' backgrounds, which makes things substantially less enjoyable for someone just randomly joining the series nowadays.

So, I'm hooked, I find out that they caught whatever site was hosting the show, I'm desperately clicking random episodes from random seasons, hoping that maybe, just maybe, they missed one episode or something. THEN, I happen to click on an episode from season 8. And it works! Turns out season 8 and beyond are being hosted by some other site called robotolabs, or something like that, which is the strangest fan site I've ever seen. It's a fan site for the simpsons, but you have to try really hard to actually realize that. But I digress. Always.

Well, eventually, they removed the link from the front page of yourtvlinks, so you had to click on "more TV shows" and then they even removed that link, so I had to track through my history and make the list of episodes a "favorite". And I continued like this for a few months, during which I made it through roughly 4 1/2 seasons, 100-some episodes. Then yesterday night, I got the message I had been dreading ever since seasons 1-7 had been cut off.

"Our apologizes, this content is not longer available because its owner removed it"

(No, that's NOT a typo, that's actually what it says)

So here I am, Simpsonless. You won, Fox. You can continue to make a little more money from DVD sales that I was in theory sapping away from you. That is, of course, assuming that I ever decide to buy any of the DVDs. They DO have them at the Akron Public Library, however. The difference, I do NOT know. But it's there somewhere, I suppose. An interesting point, I suppose though, is that I'm sure I never would have bought any Simpsons DVDs had I not gotten to watch those episodes to get hooked on it. Now, I'm slightly more inclined, but I'm still hesitant (TV shows are expensive to buy on DVD! Not relative to how much material you're actually getting, but still expensive regardless).

So the question is, is it better to have watched for free and lost than to never have watched for free at all?

Yeah, I'd say so.

-Jimmy