The Reality Check Episode 86

Snakes + Shampoo + Michael Jackson vs Sonic the Hedgehog

Cows, monkeys and dogs are revered by some cultures yet consumed as food by others. So, too, snakes are respected in some parts of the world and despised in others. The way that people feel about snakes is heavily influenced by cultural beliefs and mythology.

Some cultures held snakes in high esteem as powerful religious symbols. Quetzalcoatl, the mythical "plumed serpent," was worshipped as the "Master of Life" by ancient Aztecs of Central America. Some African cultures worshipped rock pythons and considered the killing of one to be a serious crime. In Australia, the Aborigines associated a giant rainbow serpent with the creation of life.

Other cultures have associated snakes with medicinal powers or rebirth. In India, cobras were regarded as reincarnations of important people called Nagas. Our modern medical symbol of two snakes wrapped around a staff, or 'caduceus,' comes from ancient Greek mythology. According to the Greeks, the mythical figure Aesculapius discovered medicine by watching as one snake used herbs to bring another snake back to life.

Judeo-Christian culture has been less kind to snakes. Tales of the Garden of Eden and the serpent's role in "man's fall from grace" have contributed to a negative image of snakes in western culture. In Appalachia, some Christians handle venomous snakes as part of ritual ceremonies, relying on faith to protect them from bites. Among Catholics, Saint Patrick is credited with ridding Ireland of snakes, a feat celebrated by many as a good thing.

Deep rooted cultural biases may be responsible, in part, for widespread fear and disdain for snakes. However, modern myths, from folk tales to plain old misinformation, also contribute to their negative image

Modern Myths

Size. Snakes are almost always described as larger than they really are. Stories about New England water snakes eight and ten feet long are simply not true.Northern water snakes rarely exceed three and a half feet in length, with the largest stretching only four and a half feet. While the black rat snake, our largest native snake, can reach lengths of just over eight feet, most New England snakes are less than three feet long.

Poisonous Snakes. The regularity with which people kill a snake first and ask questions later might lead you to believe that the world is overrun with venomous snakes. In fact, venomous snakes only make up about 10 percent of snake species worldwide, and in Massachusetts only two of the state's fourteen species of snakes are venomous (timber rattlesnake and northern copperhead). Both are rare, reclusive and generally confined to isolated areas.

Folk Tales. Folk tales about snakes are handed down from generation to generation and include such things as snakes that charm prey, swallow their young for protection, poison people with their breath, roll like hoops, and suck milk from cows. These folk tales could be just interesting and amusing stories except that many people still believe them. As we learn more about the true nature of snakes, we can begin to base our perceptions of them on fact rather than fiction.

Hoop Snakes

Myth: When frightened, hoop snakes will bite their tails and roll downhill like a wagon wheel.

Reality: Anatomically, snakes are not well equipped for rolling and there are no reliable accounts of this ever occurring. The hoop snake myth may have been associated originally with mud snakes found in the southern United States. Mud snakes will occasionally lie in a loose coil shaped like a hoop, but they slither away from danger like other snakes.

Swallowing Young

Myth: When confronted with danger, mother snakes swallow their young, spitting them out later once danger has passed.

Reality: Parental care is not very well developed in snakes and there is no evidence that mother snakes protect their young in this way. The myth may result from the fact that some snakes eat young snakes of their own species or of other species, though usually not their own brood.

Charming Snakes

Myth: Snakes have the ability to charm prey, especially birds, so they cannot flee.

Reality: There is no evidence that snakes charm their prey. Small animals may become "frozen with fear" when confronted by snakes but they are not charmed. Birds may flutter about in front of a snake in an attempt to lure it away from their nests; occasionally a bird may actually be captured by the snake, giving the impression that it was charmed. The fact that snakes never blink may also have played a role in this myth's origin.

Sucking Milk

Myth: Milk snakes are so named because of their ability to suck milk directly from the udders of cows.

Reality: Although milk snakes are common around barns that house cows, they completely lack the anatomy necessary to suck milk (or anything else for that matter). Barns are attractive to milk snakes because they provide abundant food in the form of small rats and mice.

Poisonous Breath

Myth: Puff adders (hognose snakes) mix poison with their breath and can kill a person at a distance of twenty-five feet.

Reality: Although the bite of a hognose snake can produce swelling and a burning sensation, these snakes rarely bite people and are not considered venomous. When confronted, they do puff themselves up and hiss, but their breath is harmless.

Cottonmouths in New England

Myth: Swimmers in New England are advised to watch out for venomous cottonmouths, also known as water moccasins.

Reality: Simply put, there are no water moccasins in New England. The cottonmouth, or water moccasin, is a venomous snake of the southeastern United States that occurs no farther north than the Great Dismal Swamp of Virginia. Many people mistake non-venomous water snakes for water moccasins.

Part 2:

In the USA, the FDA mandates that shampoo containers accurately list ingredients. The government further regulates what shampoo manufacturers can and cannot claim as any associated benefit. Shampoo producers often use these regulations to challenge marketing claims made by competitors, helping to enforce these regulations. While the claims may be substantiated however, the testing methods and details of such claims are not as straightforward. For example, many products are purported to protect hair from damage due to ultraviolet radiation. While the ingredient responsible for this protection does block UV, it is not often present in a high enough concentration to be effective. The North American hair Research Society has a program to certify functional claims based on third party testing. Shampoos made for treating medical conditions such as dandruff are regulated as OTC drugs in the US marketplace. In other parts of the world such as the EU, there is a requirement for the anti-dandruff claim to be substantiated, but it is not considered to be a medical problem.

Vitamins and amino acids

The effectiveness of vitamins, amino acids and "pro-vitamins" to shampoo is also largely debatable. Vitamins are substances that are essential for chemical processes that occur within the body, chiefly inside living cells and in the bloodstream. They cannot have the same beneficial effects on dead tissues like grown hair. However, the physical properties of some vitamins would have a temporary cosmetic effect on the hair shaft while not having any bioactivity.

The proteins that make up the strand are chains of amino acids connected in very specific sequences, and are tightly packed in interlocking arrangements. Proteins are unable to penetrate the skin or the hair, and even if they stick to the outside of the hair they will not help strengthen it. Amino acids cannot penetrate cells through the skin, either; they may be able to enter the dead strands, but without the complex protein-building machinery of the living cells they will not actually return damaged hair proteins to their undamaged state.

Science Myth of the Week:

So, did Michael Jackson write a song for the game Sonic the Hedgehog 3?

He did write the song for Sonic the hedgehog 3, but it was because of various reasons why no one knew about it. One, he finished it, and didn’t feel satisfied with the music. Two, it was that time he was courted for the sexual assaults. Three, he wanted to play a prank on his family, getting an impostor to sing the song. 

The Reality Check Episode 85

Do Violent Video Games Lead To Violence? + Alcohol in Soft Drinks + Hangover Cures

Part 1: 

So, do violent video games lead to violence? 

One of the most common criticisms of video games is that they allegedly increase violent tendencies among youth. However, several major studies by groups such as The harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health, The Journal of Adolescent Health, and The British Medical Journal have shown no conclusive link between video game usage and violent activity." One study did find an increase in reports of bullying, noting, "Our research found that certain patterns of video game play were much more likely to be associated with these types of behavioral problems than with major violent crime such as school shootings. One of the first widely accepted controversial video games was developer Exidy’s 1976 title Death Race, in which players controlled cars that ran over pixelated representations of "gremlins". The game caused such an outcry that it was pulled from store shelves and profiled on 60 Minutes. Long Island PTA president Ronnie Lamm pushed for legislation in the early 1980s to place restrictions on how close video game arcades could be to schools, asserting that they caused children to fight. Portrayals of violence allegedly became more realistic with time, and so politicians such as U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman conducted hearings during the 1990s regarding what he referred to as "violent video games" which, in his opinion, included such games as Mortal Kombat . His sentiments have been echoed by certain researchers, such as Dr. Craig A. Anderson who testified before the Senate, "Some studies have yielded nonsignificant video game effects, just as some smoking studies failed to find a significant link to lung cancer. But when one combines all relevant empirical studies using meta-analytic techniques it shows that violent video games are significantly associated with: increased aggressive behavior, thoughts, and affect; increased physiological arousal; and decreased pro-social (helping) behavior.” Anderson himself was later criticized in a 2005 video game court case for failing to cite research that differed from his view. Much of the research has been criticized for overstating effects, ignoring negative results and using unstandardized and unreliable measures of aggression.

Disbarred attorney Jack Thompson has filed lawsuits against the makers of violent games, alleging the simulated violence causes real-world violence.

An example of video game controversy Grand Theft Auto: Vice City came under similar criticism, also for implying allegedly racist hate crimes: The game, taking place in "Vice City" in 1986, involves a gang war between Haitians and Cuban refugees, and the player often serves both gangs to plot against one another. Haitian and Cuban anti-defamation groups highly criticized the game for these actions, including using phrases such as "kill the Haitian dickheads". After the threat of being sued by the Haitian-American Coalition, Rockstar removed the word "Haitians" from this phrase in the game's subtitles.

Lt. Col. David Grossman, a former West Point psychology professor, has written several books that pertain to the subject of violence in the media, including On Killing and Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill. During heights of video game controversy he has been interviewed on the content of his books, and has repeatedly used the term "murder simulator" to describe first-person shooter games. He argues that video game publishers unethically train children in the use of weapons and, more importantly, harden them emotionally to the act of murder by simulating the killing of hundreds or thousands of opponents in a single typical video game.

A study by Craig A. Anderson et al. says "The 14-year-old boy arguing that he has played violent video games for years and has not ever killed anybody is absolutely correct in rejecting the extreme “necessary and sufficient” position, as is the 45-year-old two-pack-a-day cigarette smoker who notes that he still does not have lung cancer. But both are wrong in inferring that their exposure to their respective risk factors (violent media, cigarettes) has not causally increased the likelihood that they and people around them will one day suffer the consequences of that risky behavior.”

Other studies, however, reach the conclusion that violence in video games is not causally linked with aggressive tendencies. This was the conclusion of a 1999 study by the U.S. government, prompting Surgeon General David Satcher to say, "We clearly associate media violence to aggressive behavior. But the impact was very small compared to other things. Some may not be happy with that, but that’s where the science is."A meta-analysis by psychologist Jonathan Freedman, who reviewed over 200 published studies and found that the "vast and overwhelming majority" did not find a causal link, also reached this conclusion. A US Secret Service study found that only 12% of those involved in school shootings were attracted to violent video games, while 24% read violent books and 27% were attracted to violent films. An Australian study found that only children already predisposed to violence were affected by violent games.

In Grand Theft Childhood: The surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do, researchers/authors Lawrence Kutner, PhD, and Cheryl K. Olson, ScD, refute claims of violent behavior increase caused by violent video games. The researchers' study shows that adolescents that don't play video games at all are most at-risk for violent behavior (but without statistical significance), claiming that video game play is part of an adolescent boy's normal social setting. However, they do not completely deny violent (M-rated) video games' negative influences on pre-teens and teenagers.

It is also worth noting that violent crime rates in the USA have declined dramatically since the early 1990s, among both juveniles and adults, even as sales of violent video games exploded and such games became increasingly graphic over time.

According to media scholar Henry Jenkins:

According to federal crime statistics, the rate of juvenile violent crime in the United States is at a 30-year low. Researchers find that people serving time for violent crimes typically consume less media before committing their crimes than the average person in the general population. It's true that young offenders who have committed school shootings in America have also been game players. But young people in general are more likely to be gamers — 90 percent of boys and 40 percent of girls play. The overwhelming majority of kids who play do NOT commit antisocial acts. According to a 2001 U.S. Surgeon General's report, the strongest risk factors for school shootings centered on mental stability and the quality of home life, not media exposure. The moral panic over violent video games is doubly harmful. It has led adult authorities to be more suspicious and hostile to many kids who already feel cut off from the system. It also misdirects energy away from eliminating the actual causes of youth violence and allows problems to continue to fester.

Some researchers believe that while playing violent video games leads to violent actions, there are also biological influences that impact a person's choices. According to Sean P. Neubert of Rochester Institute of Technology, a person who is biologically predisposed to aggression will be more strongly influenced by violent scenes and thus will have a greater risk for carrying out destructive actions. For example someone with Antisocial personality disorder, like Charles Manson, has a greater risk of going out and shooting someone after playing hours of Grand Theft Auto or a game of a similar nature. By exposing someone to violence who is already predisposed to lack a sense of judgment and be reclusive is like turning on a switch and giving them the fuel to go out and perform dangerous acts of violence on themselves and others around them.

Part 2:

So, are there alcohol in soft drinks? 

The story is that a student found out that a soft drink that he was drinking said it has less than 0.05% of alcohol in it. The student panicked and told teachers, who told the principal, who told someone else, and then it was all over the news.

Read Full Report here: The Colbert Report: Nailed 'Em - Fentiman's Victorian Lemonade - American Link

Science Myth of the Week:

So, can you cure a hangover?

The answer is sadly no.

The Reality Check Episode 122

Prosecutor’s Fallacy + Queueing Theory + 2011 Predictions

Part 1:
The prosecutor's fallacy is a fallacy of statistical reasoning made in law where the context which the accused has been brought to court is falsely assumed to be irrelevant to judging how confident a jury can be evidence against them with a statistical measure of doubt. If the defendant was selected from a large group because of the evidence under consideration, then this fact should be included in weighing how incriminating that evidence is. Not doing so is a base rate fallacy. - Wikipedia

The opposite from the prosecutor's fallacy is the defense attorney's fallacy. Let's say that there is 1/1000000 chance of match that the accused is innocent. The prosecutor would say that there's 1/1000000 chance of innocence. But if everyone in a community of 10000000 people is tested, there will be 10 matches even if everyone is innocent. The defense fallacy would say that 10 matches were expected, so that this kind of evidence says that 90% of the chance that the accused is innocent, and has little relevance to the case. 

Part 2: 
I'm sure we all have experienced this queueing trouble. It feels like every time we need to stand in a line for something, the line we stand in always takes the longest. It just frustrates us that it's so unfair when you are just standing there and watching other lines finish. So, is there a better way to do things? There are a few ways to solve this problem. The most popular one is to have just one line, like when we go through customs. We all wait in one line, and the next person will go to the next counter that finishes first, so no matter what the person behind you will always be slower, which is quite fair. But that might cause other problems in some situations, such as supermarkets. There is no way that there will be enough space for all those shopping carts to stay in just one lines, it's quite impossible. That's why there's another method, which is having different lines doing different things. There will be lines with fewer than 5 items, a normal amount, and a large amount of stuff. That way the people that just want to buy a few items can move faster. 

A short something on bboying

Bboying. Just one word. Nothing has been more influential in my life than this type of dance. 

The first time I started to encounter bboying was in sophomore year when a group of my friends started a club for dancing. We were all amateurs and didn’t really know what we were doing. By the end of the semester, there were only two people left. Terence and I encouraged each other to keep going while trying to learn moves from youtube. By the end of sophomore year, I was all alone. I started not only watching more videos but also reading just about anything people wrote about the dance. I studied the music, the history, the culture, and so on. I found out there’s so much more to bboying than just flashy tricks and powermoves most people like watching. There’s also style and flavor to it.

       Bboying changed me because I saw that it represents everything that I want in this modern and restricted world. I don’t want to be bound to rules and laws; I want to be free. Bboying gave that to me; the variety of moves that people can do to a beat is extraordinary. It made me understand that there are no limits to what we can do in this world. The only restriction is that we believe we can’t do it; it’s always too difficult or takes too long to do it. Just like everything else in life, the first step to Bboying is the hardest, and it takes time to get a hang of it, then even longer to perfect it. 

       What most people don’t understand is that Bboying is an aggressive yet a very peaceful activity. It’s a gesture of a fight, without actually touching someone. But with the same intensity or a battle of a gang. Which leads to why people don’t respect Bboying as much as ballet and other types of dance. Even though Bboying did come from drugs and gangs, but it was because they wanted to change and be better.  I want to be better. I really think Bboying deserves much more credit than it does today.

Me on multiculturalism

       My whole life can be summed up in one word. Multiculturalism. Everything that have accomplished revolves around it. I owe it all to my father. Being a sociologist, he believes that the mind might be restricted if only exposed to one culture. Which is why he takes me along on many of his research trips. I have accompanied my father to 14 different countries and have seen a variety of cultures, which all seem so extreme when placed next to each other. Not only do I experience the culture by being there. My father would always encourage me to do research on everything from bus routes to historical backgrounds of the area’s well-known sites. Then he would always ask me to lead the way around to places by public transportation. By that I learned that not everyone think the same way; in order to achieve a goal, there are plenty of routes to get there, and that’s what different cultures display. In order to observe and keep track of the details of the cultural differences, my father would encourage me to keep a journal. He even published a book on his own observation of me observing. 

From trips, I saw and experienced the more pronounced variations of each culture.

       It was from schools did I have the opportunity to spend longer periods of time apprehending  the people from a completely different cultural background than mine.

       I suppose having been in contact with so many different cultures led me to bboying, a type of dance under the Hip Hop culture, which is all cultures put together in one. The dance itself is a sign of peace, love, unity, and having fun. It is also the only kind of dance that allows people to compete aggressively without any physical contact. Anyone can practice it, doesn’t matter where you are from, what you do, even if you are disabled. There are no right way of doing things, there are no advantages, everyone starts at zero and work their way up, there are no limits. I really fell for this dance, because each culture has it’s own restrictions and rules, and bboying is telling us to do whatever we want to do, as long as we are all in harmony with each other. 

       Another extreme cultural experience for me up to this point was entering the military. Under the protection of my parents my whole life, I never understood how different I was from others. Not only did I realize that people from the same country can be so diverse, let alone different cultures, but also the importance of freedom. I lived in a different world compared to most people, and I never really realized that before I entered the military. The military is what the majority actually is. I was far more fortunate than I ever imagined. The military is the first time into the real world for me, so I had to adjust to the situation, it was the only place I couldn’t just leave. There I was taking orders and realizing for the first time that people can come from such different environments, and yet, we can still all live and work together. 

       The most important personal quality of mine is my love for animals. I have always loved animals since I was young. After being being aware of many different cultures, I realized that many of us humans don’t have enough respect for our fellow creatures. The truth is that we can’t live without them; without them, we wouldn’t have become who we are today. Throughout my life, there is nothing I love more than to care for them, to see them as an equal, and to try and understand them. Which lead me up to explore my passion much further by studying it as a major in UC Davis.

An Essay I wrote on my views

The human civilization advances rapidly at an exponential rate. The technology we see today is so sophisticated and well developed that it is impossible to be avoided. But like all things, there is a positive and negative side of all these impressive inventions. The positive side is that it saves us time and energy; it puts flavor and variations into our lives. However, the negative side cannot be neglected. Pollution is everywhere; from the air to the sea, nothing is left untouched by the toxic substances, and the rate of cancer has never been higher. Technology is currently making the planet a flithy place for us. Nevertheless, not only does it affect humans, but also harms other living organisms. Humans have used technology to restrict other living creatures to smaller restricted areas to live in.

Humans have been living with other animals, side by side, for millenniums. We never treated them as an equal; we failed to see that we can't live without them. I have read articles about the government in (better not say where) sent people to beat strays dogs to death with sticks; seen how some immoral salesmen would buy loads of huskies to sell just because they are in fashion, then leave them to die, caged, in bushes when they are out of fashion. To find out more about their contributions to us, it takes an exceptional amount of work to find it. There was one book I found on how hundreds of war dogs sacrificed their precious lives throughout history for us, yet when we learn and read about the wars in history, never once do we even have a paragraph about how much we benefitted from their lives. We would never be where we are today without them. Every time some disaster happens, the numbers we see in papers are all about us: humans losses and money losses. What about their losses? What about their wounded? They give up their lives without a thought to help us. Why do we always treat them as an inferior?

Throughout history, humans have looked down on other animals. Even some of the great mins in history have thought them as inferior to us. 

"Animals eat without pleasure, cry without pain, grow without knowing it; they desire nothing." - Nicolas Malebranche. 

Back in the 17th century, it is easy to see why people would agree with it. The understanding of animals is only more profound recently; there is still so much to learn. We had no understanding of them, we would naturally feel superior because we can control their fate. Another example is the painting called The Creation of Adam; human superiority is shown. The painting echoes earlier divine hierarchy, that animals do not have the traits that God and humans share, such as intellect and a sense of morality. No matter where you go in this world, there is always the feeling of superiority over animals in many people. It's a difficult task to change that thought. We are taught that we are special and are destined to rule the world; we alone are made in God's image.

Throughout my life, I have noticed these things happening around me. Which is why I set my life goal to be educating people to see them as equals, and to strive to let us all live in harmony. The powerful feeling  of wanting to help them wherever I can has lead me to volunteer at the animal shelter and the zoo. I studied their behavior in order to understand them more. Even though it pains me to see them in such small and restricted areas, there's not much I can do at the moment. Every time I look into their eyes behind the bars and glass, they look so lost and confused; they don't understand where they are and what's going on, it's as if they given up on life. When we see other humans looking confused and lost, we pity them. Then why should it be different when it comes to other living creatures? Is it just because they don't look like us? Are we really superior because we have all these technology and they don't? Are they really inferior because they don't have the ability to communicate with us and follow "our" rules? Why do we assume that they are much less than we are when we know so little about them? I want to the someone who persuades other people to understand and feel the animals' pain and to treat them as an equal.

"Hold then the same view of the dog which has lost his master, which has sought him in all the thoroughfares with cries of sorrow, which comes into the house troubled and restless, goes downstairs,  goes upstairs; goes from room to room, finds at last in his study the master he loves, and betokens his gladness by soft whimpers, frisks, and caresses. There are barbarians who seize this dog, who so greatly surpasses man in fidelity and friendship, and nail him down to a table and dissect him alive, to show you the mesaraic veins! You discover in him all the same organs of feeling as in yourself. answer me, mechanist, has Nature arranged all the springs of feeling in this animal to the end that he might not feel?" - Voltaire

What if the world was turned around, and we were the ones being tortured and mistreated. We wouldn't want to live like that; we would hold a grudge against anything that abuses us. They on the other hand, won't. They don't want to fight or have any conflict with us, the only reason they would hurt us if because they feel threatened. But, they would not attack us simply because we are taking the same resources from the same land. Another reason why I love animals so much is because we always hear humans talk about how they love someone else just the way they are, but they actually don't. There's always some part of that people they don't love, they might just don't know about it yet. But animals, on the other hand, are different. They actually do love the you the way you are, they don't care what you look like, how much you earn. They won't want you to change because you don't live your life their way,  none of that matters to them at all. As long as you love them, they will love you for you.