If a Martian came to Earth, what would they conclude about Earth's languages?

So in today's lecture, Robin Queen mentioned something about a famous linguist (who's name slips my mind) who was famous for asking the question. "if a martian came to earth, what would they conclude about Earth's languages".

That made me think about the book "Ender's Shadow", which I read for my book quest. While this is not my book quest and I don't want to give the whole background of the book, the important point for this post is that 70 years before the book takes place, the Earth was almost destroyed by an alien race known as the Buggers. A key difference between the Buggers and humans, besides the insect resemblance of the buggers' bodies, are the styles of communication. Unlike humans, the buggers don't speak, they rather have a direct connection to what all the others are thinking, the thinking is controlled by the queen.

                                                   (anti-bugger propaganda)



Before reading this book (well the prequel "Ender's Game"), I was always caught up simply on whether or not there was other life out there, not even considering the fact that if there in fact was, that their style of communication would be something completely different than ours. Now, the point of this post isn't to start up some debate over possibilities of alien life. I rather want to focus on asking the question, could they conclude anything from our language? They may not even the physical abilities to be capable of understanding our language, just like we may have no way of understanding them. Any thoughts?

The Olympics: What Have They Become?

After Professor Babiak came to talk to us about the Olympics, I began to think about what role these bi-annual games play in the lives of people across the globe. For years, both the summer and winter versions of the Olympics were outlets for the best athletes from hundreds of countries to display their skills on a world stage. There was a certain romance that existed within the games, and it was infrequent to hear people question the legality of certain events. However, in the last ten to fifteen years, it seems as though scandals have flood the Olympics to a point where the entire spectacle feels impure.

In recent Olympics, no sport has been free of scandal. In 2002, a French figure skating judge admitted to being pressured to pick a Russian couple to win the pairs event regardless of the results, when many felt that the Canadian team of Jamie Sale and David Pelletier deserved to win. The scandal took on an even greater presence when the judge attempted to retract these statements, causing further controversy and chaos. More recently, in the summer games in Beijing in 2008, serious questions were raised about the ages of some of the Chinese women gymnasts, who appeared to be much younger than their reported age. Regardless of the truth in either of these cases, the public attention brought to these scandals severely tainted the result of the respective competitions. Gymnastics and figure skating, long two of the Olympics purest and most graceful sports, have been tainted by recent controversies, raising the question: what has happened to the Olympics?

I grew up a huge fan of the Olympics. I have distinct memories of watching every Olympics starting at just six years old, with the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. Therefore, when faced with the question of how relevant or “believable” the Olympics are now, I will admit I am the first to come to their defense. Sure, there is no shortage of scandal in every sport across both kinds of games, but I am hesitant to think that these take away the legitimacy of winning a gold medal. After all, I find it hard to believe that there has been a true increase in scandals in Olympics of recent years, and instead believe it can be better attributed to the increase in media and the speed of news travel over the last thirty years. In our class discussion of the Olympics, we came up with at least ten downsides of the modern games, also known as reasons one might not want to watch. Many of these reasons had to do with scandal, yet viewership for both the Winter and Summer Games has continued to increase. So, while we may be more skeptical of the results we see, my opinion is that the Olympics are no worse than they were decades ago, when scandals were more rare and less reported.

What does everyone else think?

- Alex Jacobs

Is Taking Adderall Considered Cheating?

As second semester exams and papers are beginning to reach the top of our “To-Do” lists, an interesting topic came up as a group of my friends and I were talking today. While I already know my “competition” against the people who start studying or drafting a paper weeks in advance, and those who like the adrenaline and pressure of cramming the night before, there is one type of student who I have never considered before; the Adderall-taker. While there are many people who have been prescribed to this self- enhancing drug for legitimate medical reasons, there are also the many who take it without the medical need to. I cannot help but ask myself; Is this a form of cheating? Is it fair that I, who puts all my time and energy in reviewing and studying for my tests well in advanced, am going up against people who don't even try and pop the pill the night before a test? Is it fair that I, who studied for months in advance in order to get the right timing down to successfully complete each section of the SAT in time, ended up with the same or maybe even a lower score as people who were able to focus for the entire 4 hour test straight as a result of this self-enhancing drug? As these questions began to circulate my mind, I thought of how this scenario may be very similar to “doping” before playing in a sporting event. What makes this different from Barry Bonds taking the national home run record as a result of “doping”? And what kind of message is this sending to college students today? It is clear that taking these types of medications help make students focus as well as enhance their cognitive performance, so the question still remains, is taking Adderall considered cheating in the overall game of school? I will leave that up for discussion, just something to think about…  

- Brigitte

Skyrim Struggles

Hey guys,
So one of my roommates had gotten the game Skyrim for Christmas. Unfortunately for him, his Playstation crapped out on him early in January losing all of his gameplay up to that point. He recently received another console and has since started to replay what he has already played in order to get back to where he was. So when Sheila Murphy was talking in lecture today about how gaming isn't always fun, I immediately thought of my roommate and his complaining on how he has had to retrace his steps. While things right now may be tedious for him and not so much fun, I'm sure once he gets back to where he was, his fun will pick back up!

                                                   http://gadafiny.blogspot.com/2011/11/elder-scrolls-skyrim-walkthrough-part-1.html

-Kevin

A few images from a World... a World of Warcraft. This is my avatar from long ago. His name is Enocap.

Freedom and Creativity: Friends or Enemies?

Hey gang,

I finished watching the Second Life TED video and it left me feeling strange. For the extent of my video gaming life, which began with my father's old Atari at a very young age, I have admired creativity in video games. Story and cinematic quality are huge selling points for me, so I end up enjoying fantasy and action games more than sports games. I actually really hate sports games. Great. These guys can shoot a basketball. Who cares? There are games where I can battle dragons in the land of Skyrim with enchanted weapons while being willed onward by a Nordic choir. Yeah. Nuff said.

But this Second Life game doesn't have a story. You make the story yourself. My first thought is, "Awesome! I get to make the game whatever I want!" And that is another appealing part of games like Skyrim. It's open. I can choose to do a quest at my leisure, or I can craft weapons, or take out my frustration on unsuspecting mud crabs because I didn't mean she was fat, I meant she looked fat that day and IT'S THE CRABS' FAULT SHE'S MAD AT ME!

http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Mud_Crab

This blog is slowly revealing some of my deeper issues.

To the real point. If the freedom of a game begins to overwhelm the story of a game, the story becomes unnecessary. As a person who hopes to do creative work of some sort someday, maybe even writing a video game, this is a bit frightening. I hope that story structure will always be important in video games, but Second Life doesn't need a story. It's isolating the fact that people use video games to escape from real world limitations, even the limitation of a story in other video games they may play, and giving them pure freedom. Hopefully there will always be people like me who have a soft spot for quality creative work, but perhaps this is the future.

Thanks for reading.

XOXO

Chad Rhiness

Spinning Down the Competition

This morning I decided to try out a spinning class in Ann Arbor with three of my friends. Starting off slowly, we all began to get adjusted to the pace of the class and the logistics of how the class worked. As the intensity began to rise in the room, I began to realize how much I was socially comparing myself to the other riders. Not only did I keep boosting up my resistance on the bike in order to get a bigger workout, but I also kept pushing faster and harder in order to in a sense “beat” the other riders in my speed. I began to think about what it was that was motivating me to push harder. Although my “competition” included my friends who are all female, this did not matter as I was trying to outdo them on a competitive level. Next, I noticed the class size. There were about 9-10 people and the instructor. This factor could have been a reason that I felt like I had “a chance” to beat the other riders. This was the first time I was consciously aware of the “N- Effect” taking place in a personal situation.  As I socially compared myself with everyone else, I thought of the three factors that influence social- comparison-based competitive behavior: (a) importance of the performance dimension (Festinger, 1954; Tesser, 1988), (b) commensurability of the target with the actor (Goethals & Darley, 1977), and (c) the closeness of the relationship between the target and actor (Tesser, 1988).  The goal was obviously to get a good workout and spin fast and hard, and I was able to measure and compare my speed with that of others as I constantly looked in the mirror in order to compare myself to the rest of the riders. Although I felt like I was competing with the entire class, my main focus was to beat my three other friends. This is an interesting thing to note, as my closeness with them in comparison to with the other riders in the class played a significant role in my motivation to succeed. Although not even considered a “game,” the spnning class definitely made me socially compare myself by creating my own mind game of winning a “race” against the rest of the class. Not only did I win this race, but I guess you could also say I burned some extra calories while doing it!