MusicMusicMusic

"White Blank Page" - Mumford & Sons

Alright, everyone has to have some sort of love song on their life soundtrack, right? Not only is this song just my favorite song because it is a beautiful song, and Mumford & Sons is my favorite band (at the moment) but this song pretty much sums up my love life. I love wayy too easily and give all I have to people. Not only in relationships but with everyone I care about. This song could also be about God if you listen to it - "lead me to the truth and I, will follow you with my whole life." Actually I'm pretty damn positive that it is about God. Eh, I try not to think about it that way too much because I like what it stands for relating it to relationships more.

"Vienna" - Billy Joel
Ah this is the best song ever. This song just reminds me to not freak out so much all the time, and not to take things for granted. When I listen to it i remember to slow down and take things one day at a time. I've been listening to this song A LOT recently because I've just been so stressed out and it makes me happy and appreciate life more. This song tells me to slooooww down and even though I have to work for what I want, I can't waste my whole life away and sometimes I just have to take time to myself!

Track 10

I have absolutely now idea what song this is. One of my best friends made a mix CD for me this year and put it on the CD. Since then it has become my favorite song. It is just soooo happy. Well the melody and the music is really happy but the message is more about getting back the one you love, but not in a sappy way, in a random, confusing, happy, upbeat way. Even though it's saying that they want the person back the song is more about reminiscing on the good times they've had together. I listen to it every morning. well every morning my roommate is awake.
p.s. i googled it it's called "Airplanes" - Local Natives

"Defying Gravity" - Kristine Chenoweth and Idina Mendzel

Oh my, this list would not be complete without a song from Wicked! Not only does this song bring back some of the best memories that I've had with one of my childhood best friends I also am in LOVE with this musical. Plus, this song stands for something I am going through right now in my life. It's all about going off on your own, accomplishing great things that people didn't think you could do. It's about accomplishing your dreams and not allowing anyone to get in your way. You have to work hard and go over hurdles in life to get to where you want to be, and when you're where you want to be it will all be worth it. Even if you have to leave some of the closest people behind, if you think it is worth it and it will truly make you happy, then you have to do what you think is right. It's also a great song to sign to:)

"Escape (Pina Coladas)" - Rupert Holmes

This song brings back the best memories I have of when I was little. My mom, sister and I all lived in this little house, just the 3 of us. Almost every morning she would play this while she would get ready for work, and get us ready for the day. It would also play while my sister and I were taking baths. It was just a happy upbeat song to me then. I never truly knew any of the words except for "if you like pina coladas" that's it. Just those 5 words, but back then it was the greatest song ever made just because my mom loved it and it was almost like a ritual. It always got me ready for a happy day!

eh that's all I got. ENJOY!:)

Research Paper

Simor, P., Ko Koteles, F., Sa ́ndor, P., Petke, Z. & Bo ́dizs, R. (2011). Mindfulness and dream quality: The inverse relationship between mindfulness and negative dream affect. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 52, 369–375.

“Their results indicated that mindfulness was related to positive sleep quality, and these benign effects on sleep mediated higher levels of well-being.” (2011)

            This quote could possibly correlate to dreams but may not help much because I am now thinking about researching the differences between male and female’s dreams and interpretation. This article/quote could possibly help me in the conclusion of my paper, but it would not have a major part or effect on my paper overall. When I make a final decision on my actual research question then I can decipher if this quote will be useful to me. If I decide to do my paper on a broader aspect of dreams then this article to turn out to be extremely useful.

Blume-Marcovici, A. (2010). Gender differences in dreams: Applications to dream work with male clients. Dreaming Vol. 20, Issue 3. 199-210

“One hypothesis is that having an interest in dreams affects one’s ability to recall dreams…[Do] men express less interest in dreams because they recall fewer dreams or [do] they recall fewer dreams because of a lack of interest?” (2010)

            I knew I wanted to write my research paper about dreams, but I just didn’t know exactly what I wanted to write about them. Now after a broad search on dreams on line at the UW-Madison library website I’ve decided that I am going to do the differences between male and female’s dreams. This article is perfect for this because it addresses dream work, specifically with males. This question it is asking could possibly even become a thesis for me. This article really made me more interested in the topic and seems like a better research question because it is less broad. 

JR - Chapter 10 Summary(with respond to 10 and 11)

Chapter 10 is about the DSM-III, which was made by Robert Spitzer, and how,much like Hare's checklist, was being used to diagnose people incorrectly of diseases -- mainly children who were thought to have bipolar disorder. Ronson looks at a much larger checklist, the DSM's, and realizes the awful consequences that can come from misdiagnosing a person. He expresses to us the HUGE variety of mental disorders and gives instances of real life people when their misdiagnosing has gone terribly wrong. In trying to prove that the world of psychoanalysts were useless, David Rosenhan sent a group of men each to a different mental hospital where they all said they heard voices that only said 3 words, the men then acted completely normal. The men were kept there for some as long as 2 months, all diagnosed with different diseases. This exposed the negatives of psychiatric work to the world. Also Ronson wrote about how children all over are being misdiagnosed with bipolar disease and it has resulted in children becoming overmedicated and in some cases dieing.

Overall I think the book was pretty good; it kept my attention but I felt somethings just didn't really fit together. Bob Hare is probably psychopathic but I think everyone is slightly psychopathic. Well maybe not psychopathic but I am 100% positive that if I looked at the DSM something would be wrong with me. Well something would probably be wrong with everyone, but that's what makes life interesting. I like strange people, they keep the world entertaining. If everyone was normal the world would be a ridiculously boring place to live, and I would rather live with aliens. I am not surprised to learn about the misdiagnostics that come from the DSM. But really you can't blame the psychiatrists, I think the DSM and the people who taught them how to do their jobs and how to diagnose should be to blame.

Chapter 8 Summary with chapter 9 and 8 response

Chapter 8 is about Jon Ronson trying to understand and come to a conclusion of what the perfect type of madness is for the media. He talks to two main people in this chapter: Rachel North and David Shayler. Rachel North was a victim of a car bombing in which David Shayler believed was a government conspiracy. David Shayler was all sorts of crazy and believed in multiple government conspiracies as well as he being the Messiah. From Ronson's encounters with Shayler, Ronson came to the conclusion almost everyone is worried about becoming mad and that the perfect type of media crazy are people who are just just enough crazier than the normal person. Also from this conclusion he came to the decision that everyone was trying so hard to be normal that it was making them crazy, and by "serving up the crazy" journalists and media people were showing normal people how not to act.

Finally! Ronson understands that he should not have access to the Hare Checklist! Who looks themselves up on google? I Love the paragraph on page 192. You really get a sense of how paranoid and slightly crazy he is. He's trying to convince us he's not crazy, but at the same time making himself sound crazier. I wonder how people become as crazy as Shayler, and how they can truly think that they are the Messiah. I don't really like how Ronson just sort of throws stories at you and then ties them together at the end of the chapter, it's kind of frustrating and also makes it somewhat difficult to understand what his point is and where he is going with it.

Something Borrowed-Gladwell

In his article "Something Borrowed" Gladwell addresses the topic of plagiarism by talking about the how and why aspects of plagiarism. Gladwell's examples of plagiarism and how it is used consist of a variety of songs and artist and a play-writer,  Bryony Lavery. Lavery wrote a play mainly about the life of Dorothy Lewis, a researcher of serial killers using exact moments of her life as well as copying quotes from Gladwell himself when he interviewed Lewis. Gladwell talks to Lavery and finds out that she truly thought it was not plagiarism because she thought it came from the news. Gladwell also explains how musical artist draw inspiration from other artists but tweak it just a bit, so it sounds similar but is now their own original music. He asks the question is this still plagiarism? Gladwell brings to light how people can interpret plagiarism in many different ways, and how it is hard, and almost impossible to draw the line of what is and isn't plagiarism. Every case of plagiarism is unique and different.

The article itself was slightly confusing but I'm pretty sure I understood the main point. The only thing is then, how are WE supposed to interpret plagiarism, and how do we know when to draw the line. Is paraphrasing a form of plagiarism? In high school I was taught to paraphrase in order to avoid plagiarism, but now I am not so sure if that is correct.

the next blog assignment due

In Chapter 7 Jon Ronson realizes that him possessing the power to identify psychopaths may actually be making him conjure up psychopaths in his mind. He wants the people he is interviewing to fit the profile of a psychopath so he makes them fit the checklist specifications. Ronson seeks out a women who is doing something similar to Ronson--she is deducing how crazy someone is by the types of medication they are on. Her names Charlotte and she is doing it for the television show she works on. It results in a man killing himself from being on the show, where she has cast him, because he was "just crazy enough."

Chapter 6 just confirms my previous thoughts on how Charlie Sheen is a psychopath. I am really happy that the whole "diagnosing people as psychopaths" thing almost back-fired in Ronson's face -- unfortunately almost. It would have been amusing if Al Dunlap freaked out about Bob Hare's checklist, but instead it seemed to me that Al Dunlap was almost proud of being named a psychopath. He knew those qualities were part of the checklist yet he still went on to make them sound like good traits in his personality, which I found strange.
This stupid psychopathic checklist has everyone going mad. In chapter 7 he taught his wife how to use the checklist and now she too is deciding whether people are psychopaths or not! But finally!, he has realized that the psychopath checklist is making him MAKE people be psychopaths (as in the way Ronson views them, not actually making people kill each other). The last sentence of chapter 7 says "at least I haven't done anything as bad as Charlotte has done." I think that is probably foreshadowing.

Research Question:Blog Assignment 4

Is alcoholism genetic environmental, or based on something else?

I stole this idea from you, sorry, but when I heard you mention the question in class I became extremely interested. My father is an alcoholic as well as a few of my relatives from my mother's side; but they don't admit it. So, when you came up with the question in class I started thinking more and more about it because if in fact alcoholism IS genetic, well i have a pretty darn high risk of becoming one. Now if it is environmental my risk is greatly lowered. Otherwise I was also thinking about the research question 'Is homosexuality genetic or environmental?' Once again I have family history with this topic. My uncle, great uncle, and a few cousins are gay so researching this topic would be fun and explain why I have so many gay people in my family--assuming that it is genetic. I'm not quite sure that either of these topics actually have answers, more like theories or assumptions so my question might never actually be answered. I have never written a research paper so I don't exactly know how you go about acquiring sources. The internet would be the easiest, but also the most unreliable I would think. For these topics I think books and other people's research papers would be the best place to start looking for information on these topics.