Learning Blog #2

            Learning about humor this semester has completely changed how I look and perceive things that are funny. It makes me think about why I actually find certain things funny. I also find myself thinking about jokes before I say them. Questions like, is this appropriate for the situation? And, is this humor going to be harmful to anyone? The second of the two questions in particular has really tripped me up. My sense of humor is a little different than most. I like to give people a hard time and a lot of times that involves saying something mean in a joking manor (as to diffuse the situation and hopefully allowing the other person to notice I am in play mode). I have found that sometimes people don’t or can’t pick up my play signals and they take me seriously and therefore are, or can be, offended by my comment. Taking this course has really allowed me to realize when certain comments are funny and appropriate and when they aren’t. These comments tend to deal with the superiority theory, when in fact I don’t actually believe I am better, but I say something that hints at it merely to be funny. In theory, I’m trying to get them to be offended at first, but then hopefully they will pick up on my play signals and realize that it is simply a joke. In which case they get that false alarm sense of relief and hopefully laugh because of it. What I have learned form this class has allowed me to understand why others might not find something is funny, even though that it’s my intent.

            Learning about humor has also improved my own jokes and one-liners. Breaking down the theories of humor has actually allowed me to think things through for that extra second to make the witty comment or quip even funnier. Such as waiting until everyone is disengaged before saying something funny. Humor can be considered as disengaging, therefore if the people hearing the humor are already in a disengaged state, the joke will be generally more effective than if the audience is deeply engaged in something else. If this is the case, they may miss what you said or the intricacy of the comment and it is no longer funny. Studies have shown that the human brain can only focus on one major thing at a time, therefore if one is engaged in something other than looking for funny comments, the comment might easily be missed. I’ve also been able to read and realize when people are in this “play mode” or disengaged state. This means that my jokes are generally timed better, therefore usually well received and have a positive effect. As I stated before, sometimes jokes are more effective when people aren’t in the disengaged state, in which case they almost believe what you are saying before realizing that it is a joke. This false alarm causes the “fight or flight” or initial shock of the statement to be released as laughter.

            Before I started taking this class, I was trying to get better at biting my tongue and being more careful in certain situations so people wouldn’t take what I say the wrong way. I was having a really hard time with that, and I still am. However, what I’m learning from this class is allowing me to craft my (or what I think are my) humorous statements. The things I have learned in this class are allowing me to filter myself and actually think over what I’m about to say in an effort to avoid people taking what I’m about to say the wrong way. Sure, I still step on toes occasionally, but that is almost never my intention and this knowledge is at least guiding me in the right direction when it comes to filtering what and when I say things.

Conversation Partner Meeting #1

            My conversation partners name is Osama. Osama is from Saudi Arabia and recently moved to New York and then ended up down here in Texas. He is nineteen and once he finishes the intensive English program at the end of the year he plans on starting his degree in accounting. The reason he wants to be an accountant is because that is what his dad currently does in Saudi Arabia. Osama’s dad will be moving out here shortly because both Osama and his mother live in the DFW area. His mom is studying at the University of Dallas and he visits her frequently. We met up at the rec center and sat in the lobby. We spoke for around an hour and a half before we both realized how long it had been and had to part ways. Finding things to talk about was certainly not an issue, which I was worried about the entire time. I have met some people from the Middle East before and I was nervous that he would be like them. Very arrogant and this sort of Americans are dumb I’m better than you kind of attitude. I was very surprised to learn that he was not like this at all which helped me settle down and enjoy the conversation and his company. One of the first things we discussed were our hometowns. This of course led into a discussion of all the wild stereotypes of both our birthplaces. He said that most people ask him if they live in little huts or tents in the desert and ride camels. Obviously this isn’t true and he informed me that his city is much like Fort Worth with high rises downtown and suburban neighborhoods surrounding the area. Coming to Texas he thought there would be a lot less trees and it would be a desert landscape, much like you’d see in a western movie, and that people would be riding horses. He was also relieved/surprised that it was similar to where he is from. When I told him I was from Colorado I mentioned that everyone thinks it snows year round and that all we do is ski. I also mentioned how that isn’t true and it gets hot in the summer. Maybe not hot by Saudi standards but hot to people that don’t live in the desert of the Middle East.

            Osama and I then started to discuss sports we like or have played. He enjoys playing soccer and basketball and even used to play tennis. He still has no opinion on football and I plan to change that. Then things got a little more on the serious side and we discussed the certain culture and customs of our two nations and some of the stark contrasts. For instance men and women can’t show any affection towards one another in public whatsoever. In restaurants there are separate seating sections for women and their families and single men. The dress is indeed very conservative for women. Some people might take offense to this and say that they are stripping them of their freedom. After discussing with Osama, as well as some previous studies I have done on the Muslim religion, I came to the realization that they are trying to respect the women so they will not be looked upon in a lustful way or put a man and a women in a situation in which she could be disrespected. Sure this seems a little extreme but we just have to take a step back and realize we are two completely different cultures. When he asked me what I thought of Saudi Arabia I brought up sharia law and Islam but told him that I like his country and how they have been a valuable ally to the American’s for many years. When I asked him about his or the Saudi’s thoughts on America, to my surprise he actually said that they like Americans for the most part. I was somewhat taken back by this and told him that I was under the impression that a lot of the world, especially the Muslim countries didn’t care for Americans. After talking about all of this (including Israel and all of the baggage that comes along with that) we both agreed that the media portrays pictures of only a small group of extremists in either country or culture and we really just need to experience the culture for ourselves and meet the actual people that make it up. We also agreed that every one should get along (Christians, Jews and Muslims) because we all come from the same roots but branched off in different directions.

Uncontrollable Laughter

            About 2 weeks ago my roommate and I were watching TV and nothing good was on. I suggested we check out Netflix and see if there was something that would be somewhat entertaining. In the recently watched section we noticed that my brother had been watching a cartoon called Adventure Time. I vaguely recalled him talking to me about it one time so we started an episode to see if it was any good or not. The intro alone is enough to either make you laugh or extremely confused. Nick and I looked at each other confused and just started cracking up. The intro is so strange that the only thing we could do was laugh. There wasn’t any other reaction to the oddity of this cartoon. The episode preceded and with each passing minute the cartoon became more and more strange. The basic premise of the show is a human and his talking magical dog go on adventures through this different world/dimension. Along the way they encounter and defeat ridiculous monsters to save various princesses. Princess such as: Princess Bubblegum, lumpy Space Princess, Embryo princess and a few others. Anyway you get the point that this show is strange. If you don’t think their names are weird enough I encourage you to Google pictures of what they actually look like. To add to the oddity things just morph and come out of nowhere. I don’t really even know how to describe it. It is the trippiest show I have ever seen. Nothing makes sense and the creators of this show were and still are on what seems to be ungodly amounts of illegal substances. With all this being said it is one of the funniest shows I have ever seen. It is so ridiculous and out there you can’t help but laugh. We laughed cause we were confused, we laughed because nothing ever ended up happening like you would expect it to. We laughed at simply how absurd certain aspects of the show were. Below are some gifs of the show (if they are working) and you can see how weird this is and these are tame compared to the rest of the show! As you can imagine we laughed until we cried and almost peed ourselves so naturally we stayed up all night watching this awesome show that is supposedly supposed to be a kids show.

            Now that we have a little knowledge of the philosophy of humor (thanks to Comic Relief) I’ve been thinking about why this actually makes me laugh so hard. It might have had something to do with our slapstick nature due to the time of night at the end of a long week but I think it is a little deeper than that. I also believe that the uncontrollable laughter was the result of a couple key factors. First, because we were tired and looking to relax at the end of a long week we were already in “play mode” before we even started watching the show. This factor right here set the stage for what would soon be a large fit of laughter. The second crucial factor was the shows use of extreme cognitive shift. This cognitive shift wasn’t necessarily used explicitly to be funny but rather just to be absurd which the show is known for being. However, the state of play that we were already in allowed us to find enjoyment of the cognitive shift in the show, which was expressed through laughter. The laughter snowballed out of control because the cognitive shifts just keep coming. Nothing that one expects to happen actually happens and the use of crazy color and visuals makes watching this show a strange yet enjoyable experience. Even though these adventures that the characters embark on have a sense of “danger” and peril it isn’t viewed that way due to the fictitious nature of the show. One it is a cartoon so just as we saw with the Wile E. Coyote a playful attitude can be taken towards the “dangerous” situations due to the incredibly obvious fictionalization of the show.

            All of these factors added up to create the perfect storm of laughter. I also forgot to mention that the fact that I was watching it in a social situation added to the humor of the show. If I watched the show alone I don’t think it would’ve had the same effect. I might have chuckled every now and then but nothing close to the laughter I experienced with company. I believe that if any of the factors I described above were different this rare, but fun fit of laughter wouldn’t have occurred.

What I am Learning About Junior Year

            It is now junior year and even though it is only a few weeks in I can already tell something is different. I have finally gotten to a point in my studies where all of the classes for my major are a review or using knowledge I learned in the “weed out” classes I had to take over the last two years. Now this is exciting because now the classes are harder but easier all at the same time. They are harder you could say because of how deep we go into the subject and easy because this is material that we at least somewhat have covered in the last two years. All of the comprehension of the basics is over and we are diving into the meat of things. For example, the last two years of various chemistry classes have included the professor giving us equations and saying they are the way they are because I said so. In the last few weeks of physical chemistry we have been deriving these equations, that just existed before, from scratch and seeing where they come from. The puzzle pieces are finally being put together. We always knew that equation works but now we are learning how it works and where it comes from. Specifically we are learning about path dependent variables and how they pertain to ideal gases. This involves derivations and manipulations of the ideal gas law which of course is PV=nRT. Where the pressure times the volume equals the number of mols of gas times the ideal gas constant times the temperature in kelvin. With variations of this equation we can use the first law of thermodynamics (∆U=q+w) where the change in internal energy equals the total heat flow plus the total workflow to solve problems in which the path from the initial conditions to the final conditions vary. This can get complicated and lengthy but one example of a path would be a constant volume cooling of the gas to the final temperature then a constant-pressure isothermal compression to the final volume. There are multiple different ways of getting to the final volume and temperature but the point of all of this is that no matter what path you take the internal energy of the system will always be the same. The amount of workflow and heat flow in each path will vary but always add up to the same internal energy. This can be done with only one variable but can also be done with multiple variables. Of course the more variables there are the more complicated the problem becomes. Through these problems we have been able to derive some of the equations that were just there before which is not only interesting but also relevant to my filed of study.

            I am also currently taking Biochemistry, which is another class that is finally connecting the dots from some of the previous years. This class however spans the gap between molecular biology and organic chemistry. In this class we talk about things that wouldn’t be touched on in o chem because they are more biology subjects and the subjects in molecular bio that are too chemistry-y for a bio class. This class is the perfect harmony of the two. This semester we are dealing with structures and how those structures are key to the functions of the molecules. Seeing as we are looking at structures of molecules that make up living organisms, knowledge of organic chemistry is critical. The molecules we are looking at aren’t just there to demonstrate various aspects of organic chemistry but rather important biological molecules such as proteins, amino acids, nucleic acids etc. These molecules we have leaned about for years in biology and we learned what their functions are. The difference with this class is that now we are learning the structure of these molecules (using our organic chemistry knowledge) so we can understand why their function is what it is and how the molecules interact. I guess the exciting part is that we are no longer learning how stuff works but rather why it works. To most this might not seem that great but to me it’s incredibly exciting. Ever since I could speak I’ve been asking the question why. I have always just been naturally curious and have wanted to know why things are the way they are. All through the general education science classes (weed out classes) I have just had to bite my tongue and just take the professors word for why something is the way it is. Now I am finally learning why they are the way they are and that to me is ridiculously exciting and I have a feeling that this year is going to be the best yet. Plus all of the kids that have made it this far with me and that are in these classes are very smart and we can now learn together and help each other learn at a deeper level as opposed to competing for a higher position in the class ranking like we had to in the weed out classes.

            With all this being said my first blog about learning really is just me being excited about learning how I’m going to be learning in this up coming year.