Your Personal Information in 2011

At my latest job I do surveys over the phone, which is not a difficult or even interesting job but is in line with what I want to be doing, which is research. Aside from the horrible drone of dialing phone numbers over and over and filling answering machines all over the country with a pre scripted message, the hardest part of the job is dealing with the constant rejection of people who do not want to do surveys.

I can't say I blame them, I've got plenty of phone solicitations and have turned down "surveyors" that seem like thinly veiled sales pitches. But these are legitimate surveys being run by branches of the BC government with the intention of improving the programs and infrastructure, something you would think most people would want to do to make the society we live in better. I usually try to find out why people aren't interested in doing surveys, usually people say "I'm busy" which isn't true since anyone can accommodate 10 minutes in to their schedule one time no matter how busy they may actually be. But it is difficult to argue it and that is why they use it. And even though I appreciate on some level when someone actually tells you they don't want to do the survey, as opposed to never answering the phone, hanging up on you, or just getting angry and then hanging up on you, the rejection itself is very difficult to get over, the problem being that both the surveyor and the person answering the phone have the tendency to take the interaction personally, sometimes extremely so.

For the last survey I was working on, just before the "break" for Christmas (people don't like doing surveys on their holidays for some strange reason) I was working on what seemed like a very useful survey for an aspect of infrastructure for the local municipality (I won't get in to any more detail about it just because I don't want to violate any confidentiality). What I found particularly surprising about this study was that when I mentioned the organization I was calling on behalf of, a lot of people got really really upset when I mentioned the name...apparently they have a bad reputation with some of the population, whereas other people were absolutely fine or even eager to help us out with their information.

Still other people stated that they didn't feel comfortable giving personal information over the phone. This is definitely understandable if they are unsure of who is contacting them, but this particular study is done every 5 years and sent out brochures to everyone that would be contacted to let them know the survey was legit. Still, even with this information people didn't want to give out private, personal information about themselves.

This would make sense to me, except on later reflection I realized that they are probably giving up much much more information to other places and are so naive as to not even realize it is happening. The biggest example of this is debit cards and credit cards. Almost everyone I know uses them because it is "easier" than cash...and these are people who are very concerned with their own privacy, and probably wouldn't have done the survey I was doing over the phone either for the same reasons. Just a heads up, THE BANKS ARE COLLECTING ALL YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION EVERY TIME YOU MAKE A PURCHASE, WHERE and WHEN you do it. Your spending information is much more valuable than most of the questions I ask on a typical survey, and unlike a snapshot they are accumulating your spending patterns over your entire lifetime. And unlike us, who are bound by the ethics surrounding legitimate research surveys to keep your data confidential and only use it for the purpose related to the survey, the banks have no regulations as to who they can sell that information to.

Much more blatant examples of this are "club" cards such as Shoppers Optimum, Air Miles and Safeway cards. Every transaction where you input the card tells them what you bought, where and when you bought it, and it goes in to a database along side all your purchases from every other day. And while that information may be horded by them, there is nothing stopping them from selling that information to any marketing company willing to buy that data. They are doing this constantly, and YOU ARE GIVING THEM THAT INFORMATION FOR FREE.

Of course we tend to have a head-in-the-sand society who can't see long term consequences of what is going on and if they can avoid thinking about something that isn't right in front of their faces they will do it. It's like participating in the Stanley Cup riot smashing property while 100 people point their cameras at you taking pictures and video. Hmm no that will never be used against you in the future.

If you are against giving out personal information, that's fine, I totally understand where you're coming from, but just 1) think about all aspects of your life and see if you are really practicing what you preach, or are you just doing whatever happens to be easiest at the time; and 2) if you don't want to participate in what people may be asking of you (in person or over the phone) just remember the person you are dealing with is just that, a real person with feelings and other human traits, and treating them that way only takes about 10 extra seconds of effort.

Prosopagnosia in Children

Although prosopagnosia has been frequently documented in adults, recent research has given added attention to deficits in facial recognition in children. One such patient, identified as K.D., sustained cerebral damage in infancy and since had been unable to recognize people’s faces (Young & Ellis, 1989). However, when tested at ages 8-11 her visual abilities were found to be somewhat impaired, but were no poorer than other children who could recognize faces with no difficulty. She was diagnosed with prosopagnosia, where she could identify a face for what it was, can perceive and imitate facial expressions, but she does not have a recognition of faces that should be familiar to her due to previous experiences with them. It is believed that 2-2.9% of the general population is affected by face recognition difficulties (Bowles et al., 2009). Prosopagnosics use other cues such as voice, clothes, context and nonverbal cues to identify familiar people. This cognitive impairment is similar in both children and adults; with the exception that a child whose functional ability has been impaired at infancy has no memory of what it used to be like to recognize faces.

More recently theoretical models to explain face processing have been assembled using data from case studies of prosopagnosics. Initially face processing is analyzed in a way common to all objects, perceiving the size, orientation and figure-ground relationships (Brunsdon et al., 2006). Next the face is structurally encoded, including an abstract representation that integrates a global general configuration along with its individual unique features. Each feature, such as nose, mouth, ears are given a ‘feature value’ recognized as an individual nose, for example, associated with that person. Recognition occurs when a known individual feature value for each feature group is recalled that is associated with that person. This recall also brings to mind associated personality characteristics and facts about that person. Of course the same information can be recalled from nonfacial cues such as those already mentioned above. Face recognition can give other information about a person, such as facial expression and mood since some cues will be specific to the person and vary from the last time the facial information was processed. However, this model is likely oversimplified, as studies with inherited prosopagnosia have shown. Subjects belonging to the same family expressed a variety of impairments, indicating that prosopagnosia may not be a single trait but a cluster of related subtypes, with individuals having some variety of impairments to the face-processing system (Schmalzl et al., 2008). Another interesting point is that studies employing MRI scanning of the brain have shown that the brain does indicate a recognition of faces, but this is a covert recognition not consciously known by the subject (Jones & Tranel, 2001).

Research into treatment for prosopagnosia have indicated successes in training to teach face recognition (Francis et al., 2002). One study focused on training using a complex mnemonic, incorporating remembering a prominent facial feature, the person’s name and occupation in order to remember photographs of particular people. To relearn a familiar face, they rehearsed semantic information about the person while viewing their photograph. However the improvements in facial memory was person specific and not particular to the stimulus used. Brunsdon et al. were able to successfully treat an 8 year old child with prosopagnosia through studying photos and observing and discussing the major facial features, such as those associated with the eyes, nose, mouth and hair (2006). After an established baseline the child showed significant improvement continuing post treatment, as well as anecdotal evidence that his ability to identify family members had improved. The study identified recognition of eyes and mouth as being most important for face processing. In another study, a 4-year-old girl diagnosed with congenital prosopagnosia was tested by monitoring eye movement recordings when studying faces (Schmalzl et al., 2008). Results of the scans revealed that the child’s scan paths lay outside the internal core features, particularly away from the eye region. Previously the girl had tended to use hair and voice to for recognition cues. The study then turned to focusing the child’s training on directing visual attention to characteristics of the internal features of faces. This precise training was rapidly integrated by the child and showed improvements similar to the study by Brunsdon et al.

Although prosopagnosia affects both children and adults alike, there seems to be more we can learn from studying these cognitive deficits in children. It appears that the underlying problem tends to be with abnormal scan pathing in the prosopagnosic subjects, at least with regards to faces. The treatment seems to be clear, but there are still some questions that merit further study. Why do some children have this abnormal scan pathing? Is there some common reason for why this may be happening in some children but not others? Although in some cases there may be a genetic component, in developmental prosopagnosia environmental factors may contribute the most. Further studies should consider potential environmental effects or particular childhood experiences that could contribute to inducing developmental prosopagnosia. In congenital prosopagnosia, brain-imaging studies can reveal more detailed information about how visual components of the brain develop, and how the brain can correct these physical problems over time.

References

Bowles, D. C., McKone, E., Dawel, A., Duchaine, B., Palermo, R., Schmalzl, L., et al. 2009. Diagnosing prosopagnosia: Effects of ageing, sex and participant-stimulus ethnic match on the Cambridge Face Memory Test and Cambridge Face Perception Test. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 26, 423-455.

Brunsdon, R., Coltheart, M., Nickels, L. & Joy, P. 2006. Developmental prosopagnosia: A case analysis and treatment study. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 23, 822-840.

Francis, D., Riddoch, M. J., & Humphreys, G. W. 2002. “Who’s that girl?” Prosopagnosia, person-based semantic disorder, and the reacquisition of face identification ability. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 12, 1-26.

Jones, R. D. & Tranel, D. 2001. Severe developmental prosopagnosia in a child with superior intellect.

Schmalzl, L., Palermo, R. & Coltheart, M. 2008. Cognitive heterogeneity in genetically based prosopagnosia: A family study. Journal of Neuropsychology, 2, 99-117.

Schmalzl, L., Palermo, R., Green, M., Brundson, R. & Coltheart, M. 2008. Training of familiar face recognition and visual scan paths for faces in a child with congenital prosopagnosia. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 25, 704-729.

Young, A. W. & Ellis, H. D. 1989. Childhood prosopagnosia. Brain and Cognition, 9, 16-47.

Some Effects of Punishment

My next big paper/presentation is on Humanism, so in doing some research I came across a really interesting paper written by the Psychologist Dr. Hans Eysenck. He describes two interesting experiments done with rats and dogs:
In the first one, a rat is put at the bottom of a t-maze, and so reaching the end can turn right or left. In all 3 conditions food is placed on the right end and want to teach him to turn right. One group is rewarded with food when they turn right, a second group is punished by shock when they turn left and rewarded when turn right. A third group is punished when they turn right in addition to getting the food.

You would think that if punishment deters learning, the third group should learn less quickly and 2nd group most quickly, but as it turns out the the 2nd and 3rd group both learn equally more quickly than group 1. It seems strange, but it doesn't matter if the reward and punishment are paired or paired as right or wrong. The point made against traditional forms of punishment like serving jail time for stealing is that it doesn't matter if they were successful at stealing or not, but if the thieves are punished it is reinforcing the behavior regardless.

In the next experiment dogs are put in compartment A, divided by a low fence from compartment B which the dogs can jump over. They are given a signal, and a few seconds later compartment A is electrified, making the dog jump to B, which they quicklylearn. Now to teach them not to jump to the signal. In group 1 the researchers give the signal but do not shock so if the dog hesitates it learns not to jump. Group 2 has no shock in compartment A but electrocutes B instead. If punishment for jumping into B is effective in making them learn not to jump, they should stop the habit more quickly than group 1, but the dogs punished for jumping continue to jump into compartment B and never learn it is safe to remain in A. They behave like recidivists who return to criminal activity each time they are punished for criminal behaviour.

The idea from both of these is that punishment can stamp in behaviour we are punishing rather than stamp it out. This in itself is pretty profound (and this research was done decades ago), however it seems that in the case of education, this could be used as an argument to punish children in school. Since memory works better when you punish the subject regardless of whether they were right or wrong, wouldn't regular random punishment make students smarter? There must be some reason they don't do this because they haven't allowed hitting in school for quite a long time now.

Child Development in an Accelerating Culture: Mindfulness Training

Western society is in an era characterized by an increased speed of the general pace of life, with technological, economic, social and cultural processes influencing our daily behavior and habits (Rosa, 2003). The world today has significantly changed from the times of our own childhood, creating new ways of thinking, interacting with the world and interacting with each other. With this in mind, it is not surprising that this can have unforeseeable effects on the stress levels of children as they grow and learn in this unique environment. Mental difficulties in children that seem to be relatively recent in human history such as ADHD, autism, depression and traumatic stress disorders may be the result of these environmental conditions. One inexpensive and beneficial treatment receiving recent attention is mindfulness meditation.

Mindfulness meditation has been practiced for years and has been found beneficial for coping in adults. There are several components of exercises, and some or all can be beneficially performed. The main idea is based around the focusing of non-judgmental attention on present experiences of any of your senses, with the end goal being that a person will be more aware and responsive to what is happening in the present (Thompson & Gauntlett-Gilbert, 2008). More specifically, mindfulness practice can be broken down to:

• Mindfulness of breathing, paying attention to all the physical sensations associated with inhaling and exhaling
• Body scanning, where one pays attention to any tactile sensations associated with their body and focuses on relaxation of muscle groups
• Walking mindfulness, when taking a leisurely walk paying attention to every minute aspect of the process, focusing on sensations associated with it while ignoring external distracters or feelings about what may be going on around you, actively suppressing negative thoughts that may arise by paying attention to them and dismissing them
• Mindfulness of one sense, paying attention to just one of your senses such as sound, concentrating on each different one in a non-judgmental way as it arrives and letting it go past

This is most often taught in a group setting and can be beneficial since participants can help and support each other as well as share experiences. The group can discuss the session afterwards to provide feedback and clarify what is going on. This has been taught to children as young as 5 years old, although it is generally believed that beneficial clinical work is possible as young as Piaget’s ‘clinical operations’ stage of around 7-12 years of age (Thompson & Gauntlett-Gilbert, 2008).

Results of mindfulness meditation have been quite profound; including increased signals in brain regions related to affect regulation and attentional control and increased dopamine production (Young, 2011). The brain seems to respond morphologically to repeated meditation exercises as well, with increased cortical thickness, with particular increase in gray matter in the left hippocampus, posterior cingulated cortex, temporo-parietal junction and cerebellum. One theory postulates that reduced stress could decrease glucocorticoid levels and modulate the immune system, indirectly affecting brain change.

Burke (2009) performed a meta-analysis of measurable benefits of mindfulness meditation on different age groups of children. Students 4-5 years of age indicated significant improvement on teacher ratings, but not on parent ratings or other measures. In a study of two children ages 10 and 12 with ADHD parents reported increased child compliance during mindfulness training. A non clinical study of 228 children between first and third grade administered mindfulness training reported significant improvements of self rated anxiety, teacher rated attention, social skills and objective measures of selective attention. Another study of 31 children in grades four to six participated in mindfulness meditation along with their parents. Improvements in attention, emotional reactivity and other measures of cognition were noted. Finally, 25 children between nine and twelve years of age taught mindfulness, and reductions were reported in parent rated externalizing behaviors.

At this point there is not a lot of substantial study results, but generally children are reporting increased feelings of well-being and lowered stress. This alone is reason enough to continue researching benefits as well as introducing modifications to the procedure that may prove to be more beneficial if tailored for younger minds. Since we do not as yet fully identified the causes of stress increase, more accurate identification could assist in identifying the full possible benefits of mindfulness meditation.

References

Burke, C. A. 2010. Mindfulness-based approaches with children and adolescents: A preliminary review of current research in an emergent field. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 19, 133-144.

Rosa, H. 2003. Social acceleration: Ethical and political consequences of a desynchronized high-speed society. Constellations, 10, 3-32.

Thompson, M. & Gauntlett-Gilbert, J. 2008. Mindfulness with children and adolescents: Effective clinical application. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 13, 395-407.

Young, S. N. 2011. Biologic effects of mindfulness meditation: growing insights into neurobiologic aspects of the prevention of depression. Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, 36, 75-77.

Can Body Language Indicate Personality Traits?

In my previous discussion paper, “The Tarot as a Source of Ancient Personality Theory”, one of the more interesting findings was that some characteristics of the court cards, which are believed to represent people in your life, had to do with the way people move, such as ‘graceful’, ‘swift’, ‘acute’, ‘slow’ and ‘clumsy’. As a result this researcher was lead to question whether personality may actually be indicated in how a person moves and carries themselves. However, current personality theory does not associate traits with physical movement within any of the Five Factor Model of personality characteristics. Even though people tend to use their first impressions about a person to make quick judgments regarding personality, surprisingly little research is available to further our understanding of how exactly this might work. In this paper we will examine whether any current research on body language could lend itself to personality theory and expand present knowledge in this area.

An interesting tool recently used in assessment of personality and body language is Laban Movement Analysis. Created by Rudolf Laban to describe interpret and document human movement for dancers, actors, athletes and health professionals, LMA is also being incorporated by psychologists into these theories by correlating movements with emotional state and personality variables (Levy & Duke, 2003). LMA also takes a gender based approach, finding subtle differences in the expression of particular emotions between males and females. For example, in males anxiety may be expressed by increased use of shrinking movements while dominance, achievement and exhibitionism is expressed by decreased use of enclosing movements. Females, in contrast, expressed anxiety by a decreased tendency to change back and fourth between efforts and lack of emphasis in effort, as well as decreased sagittal movements. Dominance and exhibition is expressed by a decreased use of spreading movements. This indicates that there may be some subtle gender based difference in emotional expression in body language.

Another study examined whether body language could be linked to desire for control. In a study more than 700 participants were asked to sit and stand in a variety of positions (Rhoads, 2002). In addition, the same subjects completed need for control tests and the results were correlated. Results indicated that people who crossed their arms with the right arm in the dominant position, with the right shoulder elevated, as well as which side they favor when they stand or sit was positively correlated with desire for control. Highly controlling people are associated with characteristics in the low agreeableness trait.

A very informative study covers a much more holistic view of personality assessment based on body language. Politicians giving speeches were transformed into animated stick figures and shown to subjects, who rated the five personality factors of the figure based on gestures (Koppensteiner & Grammer, 2010). Overall subjects were found to be very adept at associating meaning to gestures and movements. Stick figures with more low arm gesture activity interrupted with smaller periods of high activity were regarded as more agreeable than stick figures with overall high activity. High extraversion was associated with high overall activity and only brief low activity periods. Stick figures with greater head movements were considered less conscientious, more neurotic and less open compared to stick figures with head movements with less amplitude. High openness was associated with pronounced changes in movement direction, and round movements were considered linked to less openness. Making smooth transitions in movement from one activity peak to the next was associated with low neuroticism, whereas high neuroticism was linked to sudden changes in gestures and making these changes more often. Although further study is required to confirm if these traits are consistent, it gives us considerable insight integrating particular movement patterns with trait theory.

Overall we can start to see connections between body language and personality. High extraversion seems to be connected to more movement, broader, sweeping movements and increased saggital movement. High neuroticism could be seen in shrinking, enclosing movements, decreased saggital movement, more head movement and more sudden, jerky movement. Openness may be linked with more profound changes in movement direction, and conscientiousness with less head movements. Agreeableness may be linked to low periods of activity with short periodic bursts of high activity, as well as displaying more submissive body language such as crossing arms with the left arm dominant as well as sitting and standing with the left shoulder favored relative to the right.

Going back to the original traits under consideration we could see swiftness as a trait of high extraversion and slowness associated with low extraversion. Graceful gestures could indicate a smoothness of movement linked to low neuroticism. Finally, acute movement could also indicate increased confidence, and hence low neuroticism, or it may indicate high neuroticism if gestures are sharp and change frequently. It is surprising this has not been an area of more intense research, since the research that has been done would seem to indicate that this method of personality assessment is constantly employed by nearly everyone, and deserves to be better understood.

References

Koppensteiner, M. & Grammer, K. 2010. Motion patterns in political speech and their influence on personality. Journal of Research in Personality, 44, 374-379.

Levy, J. A. & Duke, M. P. 2003. The use of Laban Movement Analysis in the study of personality, emotional state and movement style: An exploratory investigation of the veridicality of “body language”. Individual Differences Research, 1, 39-63.

Rhoads, S. A. 2002. Using body language as a measurement of the personality trait of desire for control. Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering, 63, 2996

The Tarot as Ancient Personality Theory

Sigmund Freud has been credited for establishing personality theory in the early 1900’s, the age of modernity where rationalism and a scientific approach was the prevailing mode of thought throughout the western world. Perhaps, though, there have been other times in history when educated minds have considered personality types, traits and origins. Although the middle ages had erased much of accumulated civilized knowledge, at least one source has survived: the tarot deck.

It is believed that tarot cards date beyond ancient Egypt (Sadhu, 1962). When the Egyptians were in danger of being conquered by the Persian Empire, they wanted to insure their accumulated wisdom would be preserved. Stories within the bible itself contain references directly identifiable to tarot cards, such as The Tower, Strength, and Judgement. This paper will focus on the sixteen court cards, the Knight, Queen, Prince and Princess (or in other decks the King, Queen, Knight and Page) of each of the four suits – Wands/Batons, Cups, Swords and Disks/Pentacles/Coins. In readings, the court cards usually represent people – spouses, relatives, friends and other important figures in our lives (Cavendish, 1975).

The suit of the court cards as well as the member role form the two dimensions of the calculated personality. Interestingly, both represent one of the four elemental forces manifesting the personality and so two elements are combined, identifiable by certain traits symbolized in the element. The suits actually represent the piece of human technology associated with mastery over the particular element; so the wand represents mastery over fire in the form of a torch, a cup can hold the element of water, and so on. Similarly with role, Knight represents fire, Queen water, Prince air and Princess earth (I will stick to the Aleister Crowley definitions for simplicity, but it is worthwhile knowing that the suits and court cards vary between deck types (Crowley, 1944)).

Each element symbolizes a particular theme, an umbrella under which rest many related traits, further refined by the crossing of it with another element. Fire brings with it masculine ideas of aggression, industriousness, persuit with passion. Water is associated with feminine qualities of emotion, sensitivity, love and pleasure. The idea of air is linked to conflict, intellect, instability and ethereality. Earth is solid and tangible, related to tangible practical matters, deliberate and present. With these general ideas in mind we can project 16 different personality categories containing unique characteristics, and compare them with traits in the five factor model of personality. Refer to Table 1 for each court card, it’s list of associated personality characteristics and which ‘Big 5’ trait each characteristic is associated with. Court card characteristics were compiled from tarot guides by Crowley (1944) and Cavendish (1975).

Not every characteristic translated over into a five factor trait, and all categorizations are not absolute. I did not attribute characteristics that were overly ambiguous such as ‘discrete’ or ‘thoughtful’ since they could equally belong to more than one category. Other characteristics, such as ‘subtle’ did not seem to fit in to any category. Still others do not seem to be characteristics in the psychological sense, but perhaps may be telling of a particular way that personality theory may be lacking: in terms of the physical, kinesthetic movements. Specifically, the Knight of Disks is described as ‘slow’ and ‘clumsy’, the Prince of Wands as ‘swift’, the Princess of Wands is ‘quick’, Princess of Cups ‘gentle’, the Princess of Swords ‘subtle’ and ‘acute’. The Knight of Cups and Princess of Swords are both described as ‘graceful’. It would be interesting for future research to examine the possibility of relationships between personality types and body language. If common body language characteristics could be found in people with particular personality traits, this could add to better understanding of personality as well as lead to more accurate trait assessments.

There was also an interesting deviation between Crowley and Cavendish’s description of the Princess of Disks. While Cavendish provided a list of characteristics in similar fashion to the other cards, Crowley went on to describe the personality of this card as “too various to enumerate. She contains all the characteristics of woman, and it would depend entirely upon the influences to which she is subjected whether one or another becomes manifest…In one sense, then, her general reputation will be one of bewildering inconsistency” (1944). Does this mean her personality is continuously changing? It would be interesting to pursue the potential meaning of this statement within the context of personality theory, since it is the common belief at this time that personalities are stable and only subject to small change over long periods of time.

Lastly, coding the characteristics was imperfect at best. Some seeming contradictions, such as having High and Low Conscientiousness traits present in the Knight of Disks could represent an error of interpretation, or perhaps just like in people taking personality traits today sometimes people have opposing characteristics. Perhaps though, it could also indicate a flaw in the current personality trait theory. Further examination could be done to comparing completed pictures of the 16 court personality types and compare them to current data. Is it possible that these 16 cards represent the most common combination of personality traits?

References

Cavendish, R. 1975. The Tarot. Westerham Press, Ltd.

Crowley, A. 1944. The Book of Thoth. U. S. Game Systems, Inc.

Sadhu, M. 1962. Tarot: A Contemporary Course of the Quintessence of Hermetic Occultism. Wilshire Book Co.

The Deep Web

Today I learned all about the DEEP WEB, which is pretty damn interesting. According to wikipedia, deep web just refers to any web pages that aren't indexed by search engines. Apparently, it is also several ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE bigger than the indexed internet.

While this doesn't seem all that surprising or even interesting, apparently the key websites on the deep web can only be accessed using a program called TOR, a system designed to allow you to surf with total anonymity - no way to track your internet activity. Standing for The Onion Routing project, it lets you access the top level domain .onion, which apparently has BBS or Craigslist like sites that feature things like child porn, snuff films, dealing in all sorts of illegal items and even assassins for hire. The anecdotal reports I've read tell me the snuff is the worst, most disturbing stuff they have ever seen. I'm not going to repeat anything specific but be assured it's much worse than what you can imagine. Here is some random person's description:

"Trust me as others have said, it makes /b/ seem like some kiddy pool. To put it into terms that you can come to terms with. The internet that you know including /b/ is sesame street or other toddler shows. The hidden wiki leads you to things that are so cruel and horrible they've caused some to go insane. There is nothing worse than the things that you shall see there. You don't know shit, and just because you've seen /b/'s bannable shit doesn't mean you know how far down the rabbit hole the hidden wiki will lead you.

Most of the shit lasts but a few minutes, and then it's taken down and reshifted. Stuff moves faster than you could ever imagine. Those who control the world live there, they are the ones who are doing everything. The internet that you know is almost nothing. It is as if i gave you the book 'everybody poops' and that's all you knew about literature. And then i took you to a local library, that's the entrance to the 'hidden wiki', from that library they lead you down a hall and then you see it's true entrance. All of humanities secrets, the darkest and most depraved things that we've ever done all there.

None of you stupid fags can deal with it. I'm giong to go kill myself now since i cannot make the nightmares of what i've saw cease."

Sounds a little over the top, but pretty intriguing right?

The reference to 'onion' is the onion routing technology that encrypts and bounces your connection across relays provided by volunteers worldwide. The onions encrypt in a multi layered manner (like an onion) to prevent supposed total secrecy. There's lots more information on the TOR wikipedia article if you want to know more details. Regarding the black market websites that use TOR, here's a sample home page someone posted:

* graffiti.onion - A simple, editable page. No rules, total anarchy. (LUP 2010-12-06)
* Free Tradecraft Forum - Talk about pretty much anything, wide range of topics
* Freedom Security - Attacks, Defenses, The Underground, Security, Off-topic chat (LUP 2010-12-06)
* Hosted by: CircleServices
o Assassination Market - Anonymous assassination market using Tor Bank and TorPM
o TOR Free For All - Unmoderated area for political and other topics. Anything goes. (Guest account: user=public01 pass=public01)
o TorTSE - A continuation of the infamous TOTSE forum which has existed since the late 80s covering almost every topic.
o Democrat Watch - Right-wing board dedicated to criticizing Democrats (registration required)
o The Intel Exchange - Know or need to know something? Ask and share at this underground intelligence gathering network...
* talk.masked, clearnet version (read only) - Talks/Notes. A Janitor Joint.
* K5 Odd Forums - Forum with a different interface than the common ones. Poop's joint. (Requires HTTP referrers)
* OnionWarez - Uncensored warez/multimedia forum. Eng/Pol. Pedo/necro/bestia/murder talk only in allowed channels.
* anonymous bbs, gopher interface, telnet interface - Another variation of the talks style of board.
* Tajna Community - A WIP Underground forum & file dump. Caters for most tastes. (LUP 2010-12-06)
* TextForest - Kinda like talk.masked, but personalized. A Janitor Joint.
* Hosted by: Freedom Hosting
o Warez and uncensored talk Forum - Forum for warez and uncensored talk
o HackBB - Forums for hacking, phreaking, cracking, programming, anti-forensics, and other topics centered around technology.
o Anarcho-Syndicalist Brigade - Forums for Collectivist Anarchists and leftists to discuss things, primarily revolution
* Muchan - Imageboard for discussing music and random stuff. Boards : /b/ (random)


The other interesting thing coming out of this is the currency that is apparently used by this shady underground. That is the "bitcoin" invented in 2009, it is a virtual currency and uses an encrypted, peer-to-peer technology to track how much money you have in your electronic wallet and how much you have spent. Bitcoins use a different transactional system opposite from other currencies: the transactions are kept public (because they are broadcast over the entire peer to peer network), but the ownership of the address is private.

Bitcoins have no issuing authority, and cannot be artificially inflated. There is a built in deflation protection as well: the more coins springing into existence increases the value of each coin. I don't really understand how currencies work but apparently it is useful for black market trading since bitcoins are difficult to trace and regulate. The official website for bitcoins is https://mtgox.com/

Does Lorne Michaels have a monopoly on sketch comedy?

Someday, in the far distant future when I become funny, I would like to write things like sketch comedy. I prefer the absurd and things like satire, and I've watched enough that, on some level I think I have somewhat of a grasp on it, although maybe I'll just end up being a real life Neil Hamburger of comedy writing. I grew up watching Kids in the Hall and Saturday Night Live, and I love stuff like Mr. Show and Tim and Eric. Although 30 Rock isn't technically sketch comedy, it has the absurd elements and jam packed with genuinely funny jokes wrapped up in a satire about working behind the scenes on comedy. Most recently, I just started watching Portlandia and it's funnier than I thought it would be. And it's produced by, guess who, LORNE MICHAELS.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorne_Michaels#Selected_television_credits here's a complete list of the tv shows he produces, not including the huge list of movies:
-Hart and Lorne Terrific Hour
-Saturday Night Live
-All You Need is Cash
-Mr. Mike's Mondo Video
-The New Show
-Sunday Night
-Kids in the Hall
-Late Night with Conan O'Brien
-The Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch
-The Colin Quinn Show
-Suns and Daughters
-30 Rock
-Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
-Portlandia

I suspected Mr. Michaels had a stranglehold on comedy towards the American East Coast, but apparently I was being naive. Why is this one guy so involved? Does he have all the right connections? Is he the only person with money that cares about making comedy?
Most people I know don't even classify Saturday Night Live, Lorne's franchise, as actual comedy. A clever New York article written back in 1995: "there's more ailing Saturday Night than any particular personnel defections: The show that once broke all the rules is now obsessed with maintaining its internal pecking order, from where people sit in meetings to how much airtime new cast members deserve...And when it's as bad as it can be, and people still act like there' snothing wrong, then it's sort of like a fuck-you to the audience --'We don't have to be good, because we're Saturday Night Live!' It's like the post office. 'What are you gonna do, deliver the mail yourself?'"
It may or may not be remarkable how little has changed since that article was written. I actually ended up watching Saturday Night Live recently as Tina Fey was the star, and with my current 30 Rock obsession I was hoping for some sort of weird parody sketches or maybe just some exceptional jokes like when certain big stars come on. Alas, you could watch any random SNL episode and get the same feel. Laugh about once for every hour of it you watch; definitely not time effective if you have anything better to do. But really, that seems to be the whole point of the show. Its a bunch of filler for people with crying babies to pay half attention to or any other depressing imagined scenario where a person would find themselves in front of their TV late on a Saturday night. Like David Letterman or any other talk show, they just barely provide enough entertainment to escape the problems of your own life or maybe just fill the room with the voices of other people.


One thing that does impress me about SNL was the costumes. One sketch had Tina Fey as the little mermaid as Osama's corpse fell down the sea on top of her crab friend. Kind of a funny idea, or maybe Disney has some sort of stake in the show??? A separate sketch also referred to Pirates of the Carribean - maybe Disney movies are just really safe pop culture references. ANYWAY what impressed me so much were the little mermaid costumes - something like 8 people had huge, brightly colorful exagerrated costumes that really looked great. The sketch didn't last 3 or 4 minutes, and that was the entire life of all those costumes! I guess they could reuse the costumes at some point, but making costumes sets for just a couple of minutes of airtime is really impressive, since it must cost a lot to have all of that made on short notice.
Considering the half ass appearances to the writing and acting in the show, it doesn't quite add up that props, costumes, sets, etc. would be so top notch. Although compared to celebrity salaries its probably still chicken scratch. The comedy industry seems like a complicated Byzantine political landscape, where success is defined less by a persons' raw ability to be funny in favor of a more holistic set of qualifications: how easy they are to work with, seniority, who their friends are. All I can conclude from what I've read is Lorne is on top of it because he is the best at this portfolio of skills, and he is always hungry to expand it at every opportunity. He eat sleep and breathes the industry. The man is dedicated.

I think we can all relax about SNL being as bad as it is with all of this in mind. In a recent interview with Tina Fey, she lists things she learned as head writer from Lorne Michaels. #1 on the list: Producing is about discouraging creativity.

Canada's Leader Debate 2011

Being as obsessed as I am about politics it is no surprise I tuned in to the Leader's Debate tonight, featuring the 4 major parties. Nothing too surprising or exciting happened, and I actually found myself tuning out towards the end with very little conflict or drama. Some of the one on one debates, particularly the ones with Duceppe were just some policy agreement. Except of course when he was vs. Harper at the beginning, immediately putting a shot across the bow challenging Harper on the most recent Conservative scandal, where the auditor general questioned 50 million dollars in spending on the G8 summit. As usual, Jack Layton seemed to perform the best out of anyone with some very good points made, challenges issued and shots taken on both Harper and Ignatieff. Gilles was sidelined pretty much most of the rest of the debate, and I've been told that he tries much harder during the french debate because obviously more Quebecers will be tuning in to that. Ignatieff, while an intelligent debater and a pretty smart guy that I can respect, did drop the ball a couple of times, able to issue smart arguments but failing to put an emotional punch when he was agressing Harper.

Steven of course played his normal role of prudish miserly grandmother, chastising the other party members for not supporting him and mindlessly repeating his droning argument that he wants to continue his "work" even though he was found in contempt of parliment and routinely hides things from parliment and taxpayers, and has a party composed of corrupt and dishonest hypocrites. He constantly ignored direct questions and repeated his mantras, hoping the Canadian public is too dumb to pay attention to his invalid arguments.
Like I said, Layton was great in my opinion. I really had no heart for the NDP until I had seen him in the 2008 debates - he does a really great job and stands apart from the two major party cardboard cutouts. He made some great points, like "What happened to the old stephen harper who wanted to come to ottawa and clean up government?", kept on track in answering the initial debate questions with straightforward answers, and even stuck up for Elizabeth May getting left out of the debates and made a good argument for proportional representation:

The Bloq and Green party got about the same amount of votes but the green party didn't get any seats, proportional representation can more accurately represent Canada's ideals and wishes for government. I agree that our government needs real fundamental change in how it is run. Stephen thinks the answer is a majority government, but that will just help him ram his agenda through and will end up pissing off a majority of Canada in the end. A system where more views are represented, and where parties are FORCED to work together to form policy that works for everyone. Possibly even a component similar to Switzerland where citizens are able to regularly vote on important issues and keep their parlimentary representatives in check and more accountable for policy decisions. We can all agree that the world has been changing too much to think that old ways of doing things are still functional, and besides it would also be pretty awesome.