In my presentation, I listed the effects of stimulants, depression, and hallucinogens. Stimulants increase alertness, promote weight loss, and counteract fatigue. Depression can be associated with sadness, anger, and fear, and may encourage others to bring about their help. Hallucinogens, while they don’t actually cause hallucinations, they do induce dream and trance-like states.

You can find the full PowerPoint here.

I used Wikipedia to find information about stimulants, depression, and hallucinogens.

This article, written by Ethan Gilsdorf, explains the need for fantasy in everyone. For children, fantasy acts to explore themselves, while for adults, it acts as a stress reliever. Sources of fantasy can range from books, to movies, to video games.
I think that the article is very accurate, in relation to everyone’s need for fantasy. There may be some exceptions to this, though I doubt that there are many. It is important, however, that the boundary between reality and fantasy is kept in check. For example, one man, after practicing violent acts in a video game, committed similar acts in real life, and was arrested. The said game was part of the Grand Theft Auto series, which encourages violent acts such as car theft and murder, both of which the man had committed. His home life, as this article mentions, was horrible, causing him to turn to video games as, I assume, a stress reliever. The game he chose, however, was a poor choice.

Here is a satirical video about violence in video games:

There are eight specific types of intelligences; nature, people, number, picture, self, body, music, and word. Everyone excels to some extent in at least one of the intelligences. There are tests on the internet that allow people to see what intelligences they excel at. The test that I’ve taken can be found here.

My results were kind of surprising. This was mainly due to the scale of the chart. This probably occurred because I mainly chose low-scoring options in the test. My results do, however, seem to accurately reflect which intelligences I excel at. I agree that my highest is logical and spatial, and the second lowest being interpersonal. However, I don’t agree that one of my second highest is nature smart, and that my lowest is musical.

Here are my results:

Also, here is a video that explains multiple intelligences:

In one video, titled “Shopping While Black”, an experiment in shown where a black woman is discriminated against by a female employee and a male security guard in a store. It is all an act, of course, to see how the other customers react to this situation. During the experiment, it seemed that mostly black people stood up for the black woman. I think that most people didn’t stand up for the black woman because both the employee and security guard were in positions of authority, the latter possibly having more authority. In this situation, I would be more likely to oppose the employee alone, if at all.
In another video, “Will You Help a Stranger”, a scenario is shown where a woman’s iPod is stolen on the beach. This is an act to see if bystanders would be willing to help a complete stranger. During the experiment, it seemed that the bystanders helped mainly when they liked the stranger, or when the person made a non-personal bad impression. In other words, the people didn’t help when the stranger was a threat to personal things (such as marriage, family, etc.), and when the stranger didn’t make any impact on the bystanders. In this situation, I’m not sure what I’d do.
The last video I watched, “Moral Pharmacist”, shows a scene where a pharmacist denies a sixteen year old of birth control pills, even though she has a prescription. Again, this act is used to see how by-standers react to the situation. All but one person who witnessed this scene stood up for the girl and her right to the prescription. Almost every one else either agreed or disagreed with what the pharmacist was doing and continued on with their lives. I think that the reason most of the people didn’t stand up to the pharmacist because he is in a position of authority. In this situation, I would disagree with the pharmacist, but I probably wouldn’t oppose the pharmacist.

It this episode of the psych files, Michael Britt explains educational video games. In the video, he explains what good games are and how they help to educate people. He first lists various things that make a game “good”, and then compares it to how teachers teach. Following that, he gives examples of educational games, such as Jeopardy and hangman. Afterwards, he responds to a couple of criticisms against educational games, being “The situation/context/story the game takes place in is unrealistic,” and “Using games is giving in. Why can’t students just learn the old fashioned way?”

After re-watching the video, it made me think about how the properties of a “good game” can apply to games I’ve seen/played. One freeware game called “I wanna be the guy” came to mind. Although I’ve never played it, the videos I’ve seen of it gave me more than enough information about the game. The game itself is very difficult from the get-go and doesn‘t have a good flow, as the difficulty may vary intensely from hard to very hard. The story is that a young boy (your character) has reached the age of 15, and sets out on a quest to become “The Guy”. The only character speech and interaction throughout the game is before one of the first 6 boss fights, and before the final boss fight. The game can be unpredictable at times, such as a generic picture in the background falling and crushing your character. The game pretty much requires a lot of trial-and-error in order to advance to the next save point.

Here is a video of the game in question:

(The video’s title may be misleading, it’s someone elses best run)

The prisoner abuse that has been reported happening in U.S. owned prisons in Iraq is a perfect example of how cruel people can be. I think that, because many soldiers charged with guarding the prisoners were rookies in this field, they may not know what the ethical limits of their power are. Also, since these soldiers were trained to fight in wars, they might apply some of what they learned to guarding prisoners. The fact that over half the prisoners taken into custody were innocent leads me to believe that the soldiers who arrested the prisoners weren‘t trained to do so. The fear instilled into the soldiers doesn’t help anything either.

In my opinion, such things shouldn’t have happened in the first place. The U.S. government gave false reasons to go to war, which could cause anger and frustration to soldiers who later heard the truth. Soldiers that suddenly had to travel halfway around the world might harness anger from the sudden move. Also, select soldiers may have been mean and cruel from the get-go. Anyways, what’s past is past, the only thing that matters now in this case is to attempt to correct the wrongs that have occurred.

Here is a video about the unreleased pictures from the prison:

The fundamental attribution theory is a person’s need to know the reason for another person’s behavior. Because of this need, people may make up their own reasons for another’s behavior, causing an attribution error. This is where a person attaches a certain look or behavior to inner qualities such as emotions. This usually leads to incorrect assumptions and a particular behavior to certain people. For example, in the past, black people were thought poorly of by most people, just because of their skin color.
Part of the attribution theory also involves first impressions. Usually, your first meeting with someone makes the most influence on you. That means, if someone makes a bad first impression on you, that bad impression will skew your perception of the person. For example, if the first time you meet someone, he/she angry and hostile, you may come to the conclusion that the person is an angry person. You may even act in a way to get an angry reaction, as to reaffirm your belief.
Another part of the theory is self-serving bias. This is where one blames failures on factors out of his/her control, while rewarding successes to themselves. For example, in a baseball game, you swing and miss the ball once, then hit the ball the second time. When you miss the ball, most likely you blame how the ball was thrown, the wind, the crowd, and other such things. But when you hit the ball, you are more likely to reward yourself for your skills and abilities.

Here is a video that further explains the fundamental attribution error:

As well, here is a lengthy example from the book, “To kill a Mockingbird”:
One character is an outcast in the town of Maycomb due to the fact that he has mixed children, and had married a black woman. Because of this, he pretends that he drinks and is drunk all the time, to give the other citizens a reason for his behavior, instead of coming up with their own. If this character didn’t act the way he did, the townspeople would probably start gossip and rumors about him, which might lead to harsh treatment and ridicule.

This sub-unit is about the roles and responsibilities people have. The poem, “St. George”, relates to this sub-unit. In this poem, a maiden describes her well-trained pet dragon. The narrator goes on to tell how her dragon was killed by a knight, who knew nothing about her and her dragon.
This is relevant to the sub-unit because knights, maidens, and dragons have stereotypical roles, the maiden should be helpless, the dragon ferocious, and the knight brave and willing to save the maiden. However, both the dragon and the maiden went against its set roles. The maiden was not helpless, because of her tame dragon.
In the poem, “Paper Matches”, the women end up cleaning up after the men, while the men play. This shows the responsibilities that have been set for stereotypical females.

Here is a video relating to the sub-unit:

Also, here is an article relating to the sub-unit.

This sub-unit is about people’s perspectives and how they live. The story, “The Broken Globe”, relates to this sub-unit. A major moment in this story is when the narrator meets Nick’s father, who does not believe what science has discovered. In Nick’s father’s home, the narrator finds a miniature, broken globe of the world. Nick’s father talks about the events leading up to the broken globe, which was an argument between Nick and his father about the world being round. The father refused to believe science because of his spiritual beliefs.
This story is relevant to this sub-unit because it shows how different people’s perspectives can be, and how people grow up differently. When teenagers are growing up, they usually have a different perspective than their parents. This is because their parents are at a further passage than the teenagers are. Passages are stages of life where we grow, change, and learn.

Here is a video relating to the sub-unit:

Also, here is an article relating to the sub-unit.