Some of my more anxious and astute readers may notice that this wasn't actually posted until Thursday. I had an extremely busy day yesterday and didn't get finished writing this until the next morning. Anyway, I assure you that the bulk of this article was written last night.
The idea for this post came a good friend of mine. It immediately struck a chord with me, though I still don't know how I really feel about it. Without further ado, the triumphant return of Wikipedia Wednesday with...
Placebo Button
As the article says this is "a push-button that appears to do something, but actually has no effect, like a placebo." A good example of this is a cross-walk button which actually does nothing because the lights always change regularly and pedestrians are allowed to cross during every cycle.
I think I had an experience with what I assume was a placebo button this summer. It was an elevator which was already pretty slow and so I was usually compelled to press the "Door Close" button. However, it seemed to have no bearing on how quickly the door closed, which was painfully slow. This, of course, did not actually function as a placebo because it was even more infuriating than the elevator would've been without the button at all, as you can imagine. Feel free to post any personal experiences you have with placebo buttons in the comments.
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Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Back from a Long Break
Greetings, courteous reader! This summer was longer and busier than I had anticipated, and I seem to have fallen off the blog wagon (or perhaps gotten back on the laziness wagon). In any case, since school being back in session forces me to schedule my life more rigidly, I'll be doing my best to keep up with this whole endeavor. So that I don't spend this entire post apologizing for being lame, here are some things going on in my life that will probably find their way into a blog post or two:
School
In the fall semester of my final year in the UMBC American Studies department, I'm doing a lot of heavy stuff. Most of that will be my Senior Seminar, wherein I'll be learning about research methods and academic writing for the purpose of eventually writing a 20-25 page final research paper. The topic of the course this semester is political culture, but I have yet to nail down my specific focus for the paper. Additionally, I'm signed up to take my required Internship Seminar this semester. Again, I'm still tracking down an internship, but once I get started I'll probably start cross-posting items from the blog which I have to keep for the class portion. Finally, I'm taking TV in American Culture. So far, it's a fairly interesting class, and I'll probably be posting my thoughts on some TV Culture-related topics throughout the semester.
My other two classes are in Phys. Ed. (jogging and weight training), so I may bring that up at some point.
Not School
As I said above, I'll be going to an internship, so I might post about this in some sort of non-school context. Also, I may (hopefully) have some sort of job and, depending on what that ends up being, I may talk about that. I'll also be returning to the UMBC Ultimate Team (Booya Ultimate) for my third and final year and probably playing in some other venues as well. I can't say that I foresee a lot of Ultimate-related posts, but I'll keep my ear to the proverbial ground.
Finally, for those of you brave enough to have read all this boring filler, I'm interested in featuring some guest-posts. By now, I think the focus of this blog is pretty well-defined so I think you know the kind of topics I'd be looking for. Of course, I'm also open to new ideas. If you think you might like to contribute, shoot me an e-mail at daniel.paoletti@gmail.com letting me know what you'd like to write about.
School
In the fall semester of my final year in the UMBC American Studies department, I'm doing a lot of heavy stuff. Most of that will be my Senior Seminar, wherein I'll be learning about research methods and academic writing for the purpose of eventually writing a 20-25 page final research paper. The topic of the course this semester is political culture, but I have yet to nail down my specific focus for the paper. Additionally, I'm signed up to take my required Internship Seminar this semester. Again, I'm still tracking down an internship, but once I get started I'll probably start cross-posting items from the blog which I have to keep for the class portion. Finally, I'm taking TV in American Culture. So far, it's a fairly interesting class, and I'll probably be posting my thoughts on some TV Culture-related topics throughout the semester.
My other two classes are in Phys. Ed. (jogging and weight training), so I may bring that up at some point.
Not School
As I said above, I'll be going to an internship, so I might post about this in some sort of non-school context. Also, I may (hopefully) have some sort of job and, depending on what that ends up being, I may talk about that. I'll also be returning to the UMBC Ultimate Team (Booya Ultimate) for my third and final year and probably playing in some other venues as well. I can't say that I foresee a lot of Ultimate-related posts, but I'll keep my ear to the proverbial ground.
Finally, for those of you brave enough to have read all this boring filler, I'm interested in featuring some guest-posts. By now, I think the focus of this blog is pretty well-defined so I think you know the kind of topics I'd be looking for. Of course, I'm also open to new ideas. If you think you might like to contribute, shoot me an e-mail at daniel.paoletti@gmail.com letting me know what you'd like to write about.
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