BYU-I: Elephants and Donkeys Throwdown in the Cage

I have the days off Tuesday and Thursday while the love's at work, coincidentally I get really bored. I study and what not but sometimes that doesn't stimulate me enough. Luckily today there was something goin' down that did the trick, this is after I played soccer in the hail for a few hours, the College Republicans and College Democrats (the phantom group that I guess represents my views the most) faced off amongst a predominately republican crowd at BYU-Idaho, yeah go figure.

I went and enjoyed myself. It was entertaining but the Republicans obviously had home field advantage and took the debate with ease, considering it was graded on crowd response and not the issues themselves. It didn't matter what the democrats presented or how well they did it, the Republicans were able to conquer with one of the many cards they borrowed from Sean Hannity; democrats would present figures for immigration the republicans would play the national security card, regarding energy national security with the addition of anti-ecosystem rhetoric.

My big pet peeve of the night was that there were obvious gaps and double standards that the "away" team in blue didn't capitalize on. It was this fact alone that inspired me to make a life changing decision, embrace my inner-democrat. JUST FOR THE RECORD, I really dislike Barrack Obama and Hilary Clinton but considering the obvious domination of the reds here on campus I should support the party I'm registered with; especially considering we'll be in Iraq for the next 50 years and the Republicans still decide to tie every political issue today to 9/11.

That being said, don't be suprised when you see my name associated with the BYU-Idaho Campus Democrats. I'm a yankee fan, I can't help but support a losing side.

I Love Curved Test Scores.

I enjoy good grades. Sometimes I enjoy mindnumbing activities more, which sometimes hinders my pursuit for good grades. Luckily, in this world of univerity exams there's a great tool that helps people like me out. The curve.

I am currently in a class at BYU-Idaho where the lectures don't do much at all, in fact the professor on www.ratemyprofessor.com has a rather consistent grading of around 2 out of 5 for most things. I don't want to share his name because that's rather immature and blogging is stupid, even more so when it's done to harm one's character. Anyway, back to the story.

I was so pumped to score a 69% on his exam (a personal improvement I might add). I was all set to accept the 69% and be proud, however that's not the case in this class. Apparently I'm not the only person in his class that feels this way about the teaching methods, in fact the average test score was way below that of mine which introduced me to the beauty of the curve. Thanks to the majority of the class being worse than my mediocre self I was able to score a 91% on the test after he brought the average test score to the 75% range. How amazing is that.

College, it doesn't matter if your top of the class just make sure you're better than last.

Here's a picture that epitomizes this post if you're one of them folks that prefer pictures.

Misled Mayhem Archive Post 1

I'll periodically post some old Misled Mayhem stuff that's been chillin' on my hard drive for years in order to back it up on the interweb. Enjoy it.

Mike Experience Update 5/29

Life's been mad busy lately, with the whole three tests in three days thing and suprise test material in Biology on the day of. Regardless, Cambra and I survived and we're still pushin' on.

I was a little bummed to find that I couldn't perform at the Guitars Unplugged concert because I'll be coming back to the mothership that weekend but luckily BYU-I has the "acoustic cafe" which is apparently Guitars Unplugged Lite which I'll be auditioning for on Tuesday.

College spirit weeks seem a bit bland, in fact I would of had no idea that we were currently showing off our spirit if it were not for our dress up days at work. Of course, the only day I participated in was "Sports Apparel Day." Can you blame me? You know I'd wear my Yankees jersey any day of the week instead of my Business attire, come on.

Speaking of baseball, I used some positive reinforcement on myself which was on a fixed ratio schedule with Stephen Colbert being the stimulus. It worked, my biology test score went up 9% points and I also got to see this hilarious video. Watch it; seriously, it'll change your life.

BYU Idaho's Version of Rebellion

Student dissent has been a long standing tradition in the US as well as the world over. In America it's become somewhat of a sociological paradox. Why would a privileged group of young adults, keep in mind less than half of Idaho High School graduates attend College, choose to fight the system that'll give them success later in life?

Student activism has had many hardcore groups that did less than intelligent things, some bordered terrorism (Google Weather Underground), and protested everything beneath the sun (Google 1968). BYU-I now has it's own group of rebels who, taking the cue from their predecessors, have begun their dissent... in a neat little newspaper.

These privileged mormon kids aren't worried about insignificant crap like the environment, civil rights or any of that boring stuff you see on CNN, they have bigger fish to fry. Take for instance the on going battle over the honor code. Who cares about our energy crisis when you can't wear flip-flop sandals to class. I agree with them, however, having to shave before class is a pain but is it worth printing a newspaper about? I think we're pretty lucky if our biggest concern is having to wear pants during the summer.

Why We Get Hungry and Sleepy at Church.

Studying Psychology has allowed me to become acquainted with various schools of thought as well as their theories on what dictates our actions. It was this state of enlightenment that allowed me to come to a possible reason as to why we all get sleepy and hungry at church. That reason being prayer.

LDS doctrine states that we should pray often, most LDS families pray before eating and going to bed at night. The experiment of the behaviorist Ivan Pavlov has provided us with information on how we become sleepy and/or hungry after a prayer. In Pavlov's experiment he found that a dog had a conditional reflex that caused the dog to drool when presented with a certain stimuli, in his case chili.

Is it far-fetched to believe that we as LDS people have developed a conditional reflex? Is our desire for sleep and food triggered by the stimulus of prayer? I'm starting to think Pavlov was right. If you say a prayer before dinner each night of the work week, that's five different prayers signaling food. If a prayer is said before bed each night of the work week, that five prayer's signaling rest. Now it seems plausible to conclude that in a three hour block of church that, excluding sacrament, consists of six different prayers one could have a reflex action to such a stimulus. And in our culture, it appears as though that reflex would be food or rest.

If you're still confused, watch the Office explain Pavlov's findings. It's in the video 3:00 minutes in.

My Pez Wishlist

2008 appears to be an awesome year for new Pez, according to the official Pez Website they've released a commemorative Mickey Mouse Tin and also added to the Finding Nemo and Disney Princess series. A huge addition, because of my other obsessions, was the contemporary MLB series which was released in February and yes it includes the New York Yankees.

There are still two huge releases to come. One of which is the Pirates of the Caribbean series which includes Captain Jack Sparrow, Davey Jones and Will Turner. Yes I want all three. The second huge release is the Star Trek gift set that has the original crew, a great collector's item that will be coming in October. It's fun to see that ever since the Orange County Choppers tin that Pez continues to make realistic human dispensers, it really has become a new era.

Here's my wish list thus far:

Mickey Mouse 80 years collectible tin
Sours: Color Crystal set
MLB pez New York Yankees
Batman Offer
Lion King set total
Pirates of the Caribbean Series
Star Trek Gift Set

That's How I Do It...

I don't know why I'm even writing in this, I'm so disappointed in all 30 of you that have viewed my blog and haven't voted. Tisk Tisk Tisk, consider yourself chastised. Vote already.

Story Time
After some last minute cramming, which I've learned doesn't work thanks to my psychology book, I took my first university exam. Since I haven't ruled out the idea of graduate school I was really pushing for something over 90% however I pulled out an 85% after realizing there was a section I overlooked when studying.

In my book an 85% isn't anything to complain about, especially since this unit was based on Neuroscience and other biological crap that I suck at. Heck, if I'd gotten an 85% back in high school Mom and Dad would have taken me out to celebrate my rare moment of raising the bar. Speaking of which, mom and dad if you're reading this I expect some Spooky's Pizza in my mail box.