I love comedy, so when it came time to start writing these blogs, comedy was one of the first places I started to search for scientific discovery. And though I did find information about a lot of aspects of comedy, I never would have expected this: The Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic of 1962.

Kashasha is a town in modern day Tanzania.

The Laughter Epidemic takes the concept of laughter being contagious and cranks it up to a whole new level. The story goes that the laughter started with three girls in a town called Kashasha, and from there the intoxicating guffaws spread to 95 students shutting down school and causing panic. This affliction went on to cause hundreds of people to laugh uncontrollably for six to eighteen months, in the end forcing 14 different schools to close at one time or another.

When I first read this story, I couldn’t believe it. I checked to see if the post was from April 1st, I googled the scientist who cited the event and, after all that checked out and the epidemic seemed to be a real thing, I decided to investigate the situation further.

As it turns out, the Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic was a real epidemic but there was nothing funny about it at all; it was a large-scale anxiety attack. Christian F. Hempelmann presented the argument at the International Society for Humor Studies Conference at Northeastern Illinois University in 2003 and in an interview with the Chicago Tribune, saying that the incident was caused by “an underlying shared stress factor in the population.” According to Hempelmann, laughter was just a symptom of the mass hysteria, also know as mass psychogenic illness, that also caused other symptoms such as pain, fainting, respiratory problems, and crying fits. Mass psychogenic illness often occurs in people who have little power to control their world or to express their emotions, so the mind finds what ever way it can to release.

What was the situation in Tanganyika that drove these students to feel so overloaded with stress that they had no ability to cope with. Hempelmann tells us, “In 1962, Tanganyika had just won its independence. The young people involved reported that they were feeling stressed by the higher expectations of their teachers and parents.” So, at a time when most people would be joyous and content with newly won independence, these students were debilitatingly stressed over school? Does this seem all a little too mundane? It should, because stress is quite a common thing in our lives, and attacks of mass psychogenic illness happen far more often than you’d expect.

The list of examples that last an entire year may stop with the Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic, but smaller cases can be seen all around us. According to The Guardian, in 2007 students from William Byrd high school in Virginia suffered a wave of “twitching, tremors, dizziness and headaches” that spread from student to student like a bug. Dr Jim Bolton, consultant psychiatrist at St Helier hospital in Surrey, said that this was very likely to be a case of mass hysteria as well. Just as with the Epidemic, the victims were students bogged down by stress with no way to express it. A similar event occurred in New York in 2012, except this time the twitching fits were only spread between teenaged girls all on the school’s soccer team. If you’re interested, Discovery.com goes deeper into the history of mass hysteria here.

Stress is a very real yet intangible struggle that we all must deal with. To add to the problem, it is often difficult to gauge someone else’s stress, as seen by how these mass stress attacks baffle school officials. Dr Lorraine Lange, the superintendent of the students from WIlliam Byrd high school, even said, “I don’t think students here are differently stressed from any other high-school students,” and yet somehow they were stressed enough to break down in such a way. Seeing as how we’re all students here, we all know that stress is a part of the daily routine. To avoid a Penn State fit of mass hysteria this finals week, please read The Cleveland Clinic’s ten ways to ease stress. If you still find yourself swamped with stress, read this quote by the fourteenth and current Dalai Lama,

“If a problem is fixable, if a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry. If it’s not fixable, then there is no help in worrying. There is no benefit in worrying whatsoever.”

Im no Buddhist, but that sentiment has gotten me through a lot of hard and stressful times. Thanks for reading.

Sleep and I have a love-hate relationship. I love to sleep, but I hate it when I oversleep. I love to be well-rested, but I hate when I have to go to sleep just as I begin to get some work done. May the reasons for my sleep issues lie with the traditional sleep cycle that I was taught as a child? Could there be a better way to sleep other than the singular 8-hour sleep that I’ve used all my life?

To start, there are three main types of sleep cycles: monophasic, biphasic, and polyphasic. Monophasic sleepers usually sleep between 7-9 hours a day during their one sleep. Biphasic sleepers usually sleep around 6-8 hours, having two 3-4 hour sleeps a day. Finally, and most controversially, polyphasic sleepers can, allegedly, sleep as little as 2-4 hours a day on certain sleep cycles that require several separate naps. Of course, you are probably wondering how such a promise could be kept. The theory about polyphasic sleep cycles is based on the idea that taking short naps can trick our brains into entering REM sleep faster than it would with one long sleep. REM sleep is the most important part of sleeping, so to reduce the other parts of sleep, we might be able to condense the entire process into a much shorter amount of time with no problems, in theory. This infographic from Dreams, a United Kingdom bed retailer and manufacturer, does a great job of spelling it all out but is too large to put in this blog.

The two most popular examples of polyphasic sleep cycles are the Uberman, a cycle that requires six 20-30 minute naps a day; and the Everyman, which requires one long “core” sleep along with 3-5 shorter naps a day. These two polyphasic cycles have been given quite of bite of attention online due to their promise of an increase in waking hours with no adverse side-effects, and if you go on Youtube and search for either you are sure to find videos documenting many peoples’ attempts to try and make these sleep cycles work. The key word is “attempts.” People who attempt to switch to a polyphasic sleep cycle often have a two week period of struggle known to the internet community as the “adaptation period.” Many, such as this poor bloke, fail to apply either the Uberman or the Everyman past this period and end up returning to monophasic.

Some, though, do make it through to the other side and these people could not be happier. This go-getter, whose YouTube channel is suitably called BeYourPotential, is just the type of motivated, young person who might want to make something like polyphasic sleep work. He did, in fact, make it work for thirty days, but eventually fell off the boat once he accidentally drank some caffeine and missed a nap, throwing off his entire sleep schedule. Many others online say that they made polyphasic sleep work for them, but could not continue due to the contrast between their schedules and the rest of the world. Even if polyphasic is more efficient, it certainly is not realistic.

But could a polyphasic sleep cycle be more natural for humans than monophasis or biphasic? Many animals are polyphasic, and even human babies sleep with a polyphasic cycle before they eventually conform to the rest of the world. But how could it be more natural when so many on the internet have such a difficult time adapting to it? Surely our bodies would be quicker to reform if our current monophasic cycles were really that bad for us. Scientist and researcher Thomas Wehr authored a paper on an experiment in which subjects were exposed to sixteen and ten hours of light a day. Wehr found that as the amount of light was reduced, subjects began to sleep in biphasic cycles with about one to three hours in between the sleeps. Could the true, natural sleep cycle for humans be the less controversial biphasic sleep cycle instead of the Uberman or the Everyman? Some Hispanic countries have even made biphasic sleep a part of their culture, incorporating a daily siesta after a mid-day meal. Interestingly, a resource from the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School tells us that “Afternoon naptime typically coincides with a brief lag in the body’s internal alerting signal.” This signal helps to offset the body’s drive for sleep, and its sudden drop off may be a sign from our body telling us that we need a rest.

Some people, known as short-sleepers, do not need and afternoon nap and barely even need sleep at all. According to Ying-Hui Fu, a professor at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine, these short-sleepers need only about six hours a sleep a day and tend to be much more ambitious and energetic than the average person. A paper published in Science in 2009 by Fu revealed that people you are qualify as short-sleepers have a mutation in the gene known as DEC2 that makes them require less sleep than the rest of us. Making up about one-percent of the population, these super-humans could probably pull of polyphasic sleep better than the average person because of the decreased effects of sleep deprivation that they would experience. I’m pretty jealous.

The worst part about this is that we don’t really have a chance to try out the more complex sleep cycles because we, as college students, have hectic schedules that are constantly changing. When taking on something like the Uberman, one missed nap can completely ruin everything. Regardless, it is known that a large number of the world’s greatest geniuses have tried polyphasic sleep at one time or another. Somehow the likes of Nikola Tesla and Leonardo Da Vinci made such rigorous schedules work for them. Just know that before you try any of this for yourself, you should talk to your doctor about the risks and dangers that sleep deprivation can cause to you. If you are not in peak physical condition there is a large chance that the consequences may be much worse than being a little sleepy. Stay safe, and thanks for reading.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always tried to make people laugh. “Tried” is the important word here. Though I did often succeed, it has always been clear to me that I am not funny to everyone. One thing that has never been clear is why. Why can I be completely bored with a comedy movie while my friend dies of laughter? Why can famous comedian Louis C.K. leave me in awe of his hilarity while simultaneously offending millions of people? These are the questions I ask today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x84GKqcpY4E

Imagine that a man slips and falls. This could be hilarious to an observer while the fallen man is left enraged, throwing his snow shovel. Now imagine the same scenario, except the bystander worriedly rushes to the fallen man’s aid while the man laughs at his own blunder. These instances show that humor is largely unpredictable, but the Benign Violation Theory gives us a hint as to why. The theory explains that for something to be funny, it must be a violation of what you expect while also being benign and harmless. In the scenarios above, the fall of the man is a violation, because the man and his observer were not expecting the fall to occur. This idea is also seen in the Incongruity Theory, in which humor is caused by the realization that something that has occurred is abnormal and ridiculous (Boyd). The reactions after the violation, the fall, shows us whether or not the situation is deemed benign by the two participants. Those who see it as harmless will also see it as humorous. This is the reason why a joke about Hitler in 1940, no matter how clever, would not be funny while that same joke today might elicit a lighter response.

The Benign Violation Theory works fine when the thing that is funny is also a surprise, but what if I saw a banana peel in front of the man’s path and expected the fall? Then, surely, the fall would no longer be a violation of my reality and would not meet the needs of the theory. This situation can be explained by one of two theories: Superiority Theory and Relief Theory. The former tells us that we might laugh at the man because we see that he has failed in his duty of walking and wish to bask in our superiority with laughter. This theory is not a favourite of mine because it focuses on using laughter in a hurtful way, but you cannot deny that this ideology is a staple of bullies across the globe. With the Relief Theory, we may laugh because we are have a build up of other, more stressful emotions, and need a release through laughter. In the banana peel example, maybe we have a build up of tension because we anticipate the man to fall. Maybe we are just having some trouble in our lives and seeing somebody fall is just something to allow ourselves to feel good. Either way, we laugh. A famous example of Relief Theory, the Tanganyika laughter epidemic occurred when students burst into spurts of laughter that lasted for years because of recently added stress put upon them from higher academic expectations. In a way, there was nothing funny about the laughter, it was simply stress relief.

Another strange way to be funny does not involve humor at all: this article from LiveScience.com tells us that laughter itself can make a person laugh. Something about the positive emotion effects our brains in a way that makes us laugh along with other people who are laughing, even if we missed the joke or didn’t think it was funny at all. Psychology Today reports on findings from Sophie Scott of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, London that, since humans are good at telling fake laughter from real laughter, we tend to act more positively to inappropriate laughter because it seems more genuine. Still, some people might find the situation too inappropriate and, instead, think that you are childish and insensitive. If this happens to you, perhaps citing this scientific excuse will help you save face.

It is clear that what is funny to you will never be exactly what is funny to someone else. What you perceive as being benign is different from others, because you have different life experiences and values than others. Your current life situation and stress will never be the same as someone else’s, so how could you equally engage in humor through Relief Theory? There really is no way to make something funny for everyone, so, next time you make someone laugh, appreciate the connection you’ve made with your audience.

Boyd, Brian. Laughter and Literature: A Play Theory of Humor Philosophy and Literature — Volume 28, Number 1, April 2004, pp. 1-22

Nature’s sick reality or Hollywood’s frightening fantasy? As it turns out, mind-controlling predatory organisms are a real threat for the likes of ants and other insects. A specific group of fungi known as Cordyceps can take over the insect’s mind and control the body. Let me repeat: A FUNGUS TAKES OVER THEIR MINDS AND BODIES. How is this even possible!?! Let’s focus on the fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, known across the Internet as “the fungus that makes ants go crazy.” This fungus’s mechanism for life is something you would expect to see in a television show about how the world is ending.

Ophiocordyceps unilateralis is an insect pathogen that was discovered by Alfred Russel Wallace, a British naturalist, in 1859. They are found most often in tropical rainforest ecosystems, probably because eighty percent of all insects live in jungles, the Cordyceps’s main prey. Being a pathogen, the objective for the fungus is too infect as many insects as possible, so the rainforest’s density of insects makes sense to be the place where Ophiocordyceps unilateralis would have the best chance of survival. The fungus releases spores into the forest hoping to infect any insect it can find. All Cordyceps have specific types of insects that they are most potent against, and for Ophiocordyceps unilateralis that specific insect is the Camponotus leonardi ant. The fungus can also infect species of ant that are closely related, but the pathogenic qualities will work at varying degrees of effectiveness.

When a spore lands on the ants exoskeleton, enzymes in the spore work to degrade the hard shell so that it can make its way into the soft body. The fungus makes its way to the ant’s brain and begins to eat away as it takes over the at’s motor skills. Taking control of the ant’s body movement, the fungus climbs up to as high a point that it can get to, bites down on something for steadiness, and kills the host ant. From there, the fungus will begin to grow a piece of mycelium, a long piece of fungus, straight from the head of the host until it eventually shoots its spores into the air, searching for more hosts. The mechanism that the fungus uses to take control of the ant’s body is still unknown, adding a bit of uneasy ambiguity to an already gruesome scene.

The ants have become savvy to the fungi’s efforts though. When a healthy any finds the corpses of an ant infected with Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, the ants makes a point to carry the ant as for as possible from the ant colony to avoid an outbreak. Also, ants evolve quickly and after one generation have already become immune to any specific strain of the fungus. This forces the fungus to move on to another colony if it is going to survive. Eventually though, the fungus will also evolve and be able to successfully infect the colony once again. The zombie-creating fungus is also under attack from another pathogenic fungus, Penn State’s David Hughes tells us. Apparently this newly discovered pathogen, “effectively castrates the zombie-ant fungus so it cannot spread its spores.” And I’m sure this new fungus also has a whole load of forces fighting and aiding it as well, reminding just how complex and absurd our planet is.

As seen in a 48 million year old leaf that seems to have markings on it that are characteristic of the ants final bite marks, this battle between insects and fungi has gone on for a long time with no sign of stopping. The fungus is a scary one, but is generally good for the environment. Having Coryceps around helps to control the population of any particular insect that begins to overpopulate and keeps the natural equilibrium of nature in check. Luckily, in all the years it has been around, Cordyceps have never evolved to infect humans. So sorry if you were hoping for a zombie apocalypse anytime soon. You’ll just have to show off you archery skills some other way.

Four servings of vegetables, three of fruit, a whole load of starch for some reason… This is the food pyramid. It may be complete nonsense. If you’ve ever had the urge to lose trust in the government, the food pyramid might be a good place to start.

Back in 1894, the USDA released the first United States government endorsed diet when, at the time, science knew very little about what a healthy diet was. The USDA’s recommendations were little more than guesswork and go to show that the government does not always incorporate scientific information when making declarations. In the 1940’s, with its citizens dealing with the rationing of foods for the war, the United States started to push the “Basic 7,” telling everyone that, in order to stay healthy, they had to eat a little from each of the seven groups. This idea eventually was simplified to the “Basic 4,” with groups consisting of fruits and veggies, dairy, meat and protein, grain, and a fifth miscellaneous group.

Finally, in 1992 we were introduced to the food pyramid. The food pyramid was the first of the USDA’s recommended diets that focused on wheat and grain as the foundation for a healthy diet, advising the public to 6-11 servings per day. This diet, created nearly 100 years after the first also comes after an extra 100 years of research on what a healthy diet truly is. Regardless, the food pyramid may be no more valid than the guesswork of 1894. There are many examples healthy diets that blatantly ignore the food pyramid, like the Inuits whose diets once consisted of far more fat and protein than any pyramid will tell you to eat due to the lack of vegetation growing in their environment. The Inuits were not exactly unhealthy with this diet either. In fact, a study between 1950 and 1974 found that the diabetes rate amongst Greenland’s Inuits was 0.00056%. That number would rise to 9.7% in a study from 1991 to 2001, though this rise is thought to be associated with the westernization of the diet which incorporated much more wheat and grain. How can a diet so different from the food pyramid churn out healthy humans for so many years?

Some studies, like this one published by Nutrition & Metabolism in 2007, show that diets low in carbohydrates and high in fats and proteins lead to improved cholesterol levels. That study tells us,

“In spite of orthodox concerns about the impact of dietary cholesterol and saturated fat, no significant deleterious changes were observed to result from adherence to either the [red meat] or [poultry, fish, and shellfish] diets, which were both high in total cholesterol and total fat.”

This study gives me pause, especially with the fact that they did not use a control group, but the fact that the incorporations of the diets did no harm to the dieters gives me pause with the validity of the food pyramid as well.

Many new food pyramids have begun to surface as research has continued. This one from New York Times best-selling author Dr. Joel Fuhrman recommends massive amounts of nutritious vegetables, both raw and cooked, with every other food group taking a diminished role including red meats, which fill the smallest portion of the pyramid. This dietary recommendation in the shape of a plate from the Harvard School of Public Health gives high importance to vegetables as well, but makes a point to relegate fats to small portions. Yet another pyramid, this one from award-winning scientific journalist Dr. Joseph Mercola, stays focused on vegetables but invests much more of the space to proteins and fats.

With such an abundance of differing opinions, its no wonder why the diet industry has become so prevalent in our world. As of right now, there is a lot of conflicting evidence that makes it impossible to say what diet is necessarily correct, but you should know that the USDA’s food pyramid is no better of an estimator of what you should eat than any other source. My opinion? I would probably place my bets on whatever people eat in Japan, considering Japan has the highest rate of 100 year olds per 100,000 people than any other country. But really, mental health is just as important as dietary health, and I think I would lose my mind if i was only allowed to eat seafood and veggies. A more palatable option? I could see myself following the paleo diet. Also know as “The Caveman Diet,” if you want a diet that is natural then this is the one for you! I wonder, sometimes, if a natural diet is necessarily the best diet. That would mean that, after all this time and all of the advances humans have made, we still would just be better off eating what we ate back in the Stone Age? I can’t believe that.

It’s funny how putting food categories into a pyramid makes it seem like us humans have it all figured out. In reality, we only have a shadow of an idea of the truth. Regardless, we will keep eating and eating until we figure it out.

Famed German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “…I could never have survived my youth without Wagnerian music.” Indeed, Nietzsche was alive during the 19th century and few young people now could credit Richard Wagner as being their savior, but the sentiment is still true. With music being such a strong force in our lives, who wouldn’t want to learn about it? As a pitifully amateur music producer myself, I’m always trying to analyze the music I listen to to gain a greater understanding of how it is all put together. Of course different genres evoke different techniques from the producer and the performer, but why not shoot for the stars right off the bat? Today I ask: What makes a song a hit?

One possible clue involves the Mere Exposure Effect. This is basically the reason why a song can “grow on you” with repeated listens. Humans tend to act more favorably towards people or experiences they have encountered before, and the same goes for music. This phenomenon might explain why I slowly started to enjoy the Katy Perry song “Dark Horse” when I originally hated it, but only big-name artists like Katy Perry will be able to utilize the Mere Exposure Effect to manufacture a hit. Other, lesser known artists do not have the ability to saturate the airwaves with their music, so how can some nobody like Carly Rae Jepson shake up the world with the best-selling digital single of all-time “Call Me Maybe?”

The song received a little help when Justin Bieber tweeted about it, but its real strength comes from the lyrics. Pop songwriter Eve Nelson said about the hit, “The hook of the song is talking about something that every young girl can relate to. It talks about that crush that we all have when we’re 13 and 14.” Professor of Music Composition here at Penn State Paul Barsom says that “A cultural connection between music and listener can make a tune more memorable,” so the fact that teens can relate to the lyrics is vital. The song’s focus on the teenage audience was huge for sales, because, according to Nielsen, teens are more likely than any other age group to buy recent music. In addition, “Call Me Maybe” also appeals to older folk through nostalgia. If this song were entirely modern, it would be called “Text Me Maybe” due to texting being the predominate communication method of the youth and actual phone calls losing popularity. Jepson, or her writers, most likely made the conscious choice to say “Call” instead of “Text” not just because it sounded better with the song, but because they wanted the song to resonate with the older generation as well. The thoughts of pleasant memories gives the consumer nostalgia, and this manufactured nostalgia makes people buy the song. Utilizing yet another great pop music technique, this song succeeds by avoiding anything too risque or vulgar so that no audience member is offended or alienated. The innocent themes of “Call Me Maybe” make the song accessible to pretty much anyone, and that makes the money in those wallets more accessible to Ms. Jepson.

The importance behind relatable lyrics cannot be overstated, but they are not the only thing that makes a hit. Scientists like Musicologist Dr. Alison Pawley and psychologist Dr. Daniel Mullensiefen of the University of London have tried to pin-point what makes a song “catchy.” The two Doctors studied the greatest hits of the United Kingdom and came up with a highly controversial list of traits that all the largest and most popular songs have that make people want to sing along. These traits are: longer vocal phrases, larger number of pitches, male vocals, and passionate vocal effort. Some of these traits seem valid, but considering their “research” happened primarily by observing what people would sing along with in United Kingdom bars and clubs, we should take these findings with a grain of salt. Most of these traits don’t apply to “Call Me Maybe.” Other than the infectious vocal effort, “Call Me Maybe” doesn’t include long vocal phrases, complex pitching or male vocals and yet it is still a smash hit that people love to sing along with. Might this disconnect be to the difference in culture between the UK and the USA? Or maybe “Call Me Maybe” is an exception to the rule?

Making pop music isn’t as simple as a lot of pop music’s haters would like you to believe. I know this because I just wrote a full blog post on the topic without talking about any of the music theory or instrumentation involved in making a hit and there are still many questions to be asked. I hope reading this post will help you to look at pop music with a more scientific lens. Instead of hating on Fetty Wap, for example, why don’t you analyze him and figure out why people shell out money to him? This kind of analysis helps us to better understand the world, and with that understanding we can possibly get some of that money for ourselves.

With presidential campaign season in full stroke and over twenty candidates making the bid for the Republicans and Democrats, it is almost impossible for people to keep track of each candidates views and plans. In these early stages especially, the presidential race is really just a popularity contest that has little to do with actual politics. Noticing this, I got to thinking: What does the perfect President look like?

If we were basing this solely on statistics, we would say that the ideal candidate is white. This is obviously not true, considering that our first black President Barack Obama has gone on to have two terms as President and currently has a higher approval rating than George W. Bush had at this time in his second term. This is a good example of a stat that exists because of the circumstances of American culture over the years. One thing that has held generally true over the years, is that voters prefer leaders with lower voices. Obviously there are exceptions, most notably Abraham Lincoln was said to have a voice that was “a little shriller,” but the lower a politicians voice is, the more that they sound like a leader. In a similar vein, it seems like voters prefer leaders who are taller. Since the first televised presidential debate in 1960, the Presidents’ heights average out to over six feet tall, about four inches taller than the average American. (Kane) There is research that shows that taller people are more confident, and it is possible that this confidence helps to set the taller candidate apart from their more vertically challenged opponents.

With a bit of information that seems to come out of left field, this study shows that when asked to chose between a thin candidate and an overweight candidate, voters will often choose the overweight gentleman (I say gentleman because this effect does not occur with women candidates). It’s interesting that nearly all of the biggest celebrities are in perfect physical shape, yet the American people would rather see a president that looks like some ordinary shmuck. This information contradicts the previous evidence, though, because a candidate who is taller and has a lower voice will surely bring about an air of power while a chubby candidate might just seem to be average. The fact that there are so many different sources and ideas on the topic tells us the obvious answer to the question: There is not perfect presidential candidate.

Kane, Joseph (1994). Facts about the Presidents: A Compilation of Biographical and Historical Information. New York: H. W. Wilson. pp. 344–45. ISBN 0-8242-0845-5.

You’d think that, after so many years of eating food, us humans would have the perfect diet down to a science by now but, with dietary products being such a large industry, it is clear that we still have no clue how to eat. I’ve heard many different ideas about diets throughout my life, and the only thing that I’ve learned is that no one diet is perfect for everyone. We all have our own preferences when it comes to the food we eat, and most of us want to be able to eat the things we like without needing to feel guilty. This blog is not about what we want to eat, but what we should eat. My question for today relates to one of the most controversial diets there is: Should we all be vegan?

Starting from a health perspective, the answer could swing both ways. Though research shows that abstaining from meat, fish and poultry can improve your mood, the vegan diet has also been known to lack some important nutrients like vitamin B12, a deficiency in which can cause anemia. As seen in the Japanese island of Okinawa, it is highly possible that the real perfect diet lies somewhere in between being a herbivore and a omnivore. The Okinawa diet consists mostly of vegetables, like vegans, but also includes a large amount of seafood. What is so special about this diet? Japan has the highest number of centenarians per 100,000 people out of any other country, and five out of the ten oldest people alive today are from Japan. In addition, the oldest male to ever live, Jiroemon Kimura, was from Japan. Clearly the Japanese have got something right.

Ok, so maybe being a full fledged vegan isn’t the healthiest for a human, but if you are someone who feels strongly about the hardships of animals that are eaten, then you could probably make a case that being a vegan is the only moral way to live. In addition, eating meat can harm the entire Earth. Whether it manifests itself in the form of natural habitats destroyed to make way for farmable animals or pollution that comes from the farm, eating meat and supporting such a environmentally unfriendly process can be hard to swallow. Should we all be vegan? I’ll say no, because the evidence against it in terms of health risks would make it unfair to prescribe it to everyone. What I think we should do, though, is try to find protein in places other than meat so that we may cut down on the destructive factors of the meat industry. I think that the vegan way is a noble cause in the name of the environment and animal rights, but such a commitment is not for me, mostly because I need to be able to have dairy in order to enjoy Peachy Paterno at the creamery.

As someone who has always faced social anxiety, I’ve gotten into the habit of studying the way I handle conversational situations. Whether it be an awkward silence or a joke that didn’t land, I try to learn from every failure so that I might be able to talk to people with these that I hope for. In my attempts to become a great conversationalist, I’ve always stumble with the topic of being boring. Being boring has always been a detrimental pitfall to my conversations because there does not seem to be any way of easily identifying what is boring. So, my question for this blog is: How can I avoid being boring?

Because I feel it necessary to define the topic of issue, Cambridge Dictionaries defines “boring” as “not interesting or exciting.” It can be difficult to guess what topics of conversation a person finds interesting, but the problem gets more complex when you consider that both the content of your words and the way you say them can contribute to the boredom of your audience. Dealing first with content, author and advisor Julian Treasure has “seven deadly sins” for verbal interactions that can kill a conversation and make anyone lose interest: gossip, judging, negativity, complaining, excuses, lying and dogmatism. Gossiping and judging are seen as distasteful because they often express unkindness towards people who we may feel are undeserving, but also because these judgements and gossip will probably be aimed at us later. Negativity, complaining and excuses all fail to add anything to a conversation because they do not engage the listener and they promote non-action and irresponsibility. Lying makes the speaker seen not credible, so therefore whatever they have to say is worthless to the listener, and dogmatism makes us feel like we are under pressure to be controlled when all we wanted was a simple conversation. Knowing to avoid these “sins” will not necessarily make you exciting, but people will be more receptive to what you have to say if you show that your words come from a good place.

Also, dealing now with the way you speak and reaching back to Julian Treasure’s words, there are many different aspects of your voice that you can work with to garner more attention and to keep attention. Changing tempo of voice and pace of voice can be vital when telling a story or getting a point across in an interesting way, and speaking at a deeper register is know to make the speaker seem more credible and powerful. Putting inflection in your voice and fluctuating tone is good because no one wants to hear someone who is monotone and lifeless, but none of these vocal tricks can truly make a person less boring. These tricks act more as disguises for boring words so that they may not seem as boring as they really are.

In addition to making people want to hear what you have to say, you need to be prepared to reciprocate your attention toward them. Vanessa Van Edwards tells us that humans want to feel important, so it is crucial that you make the conversation great for the other person as well as yourself. To let someone know that you are fully engaged, you need to face them completely, retain eye contact and nod every once in a while to reaffirm their points. By following these tips, you are more likely to get that person to continue talking, and the longer they talk the more likely you will be able to figure out what they might deem “interesting or exciting.”

In the end, though, there is no way to avoid being boring. The information in this blog will open the door to a life as an exciting conversationalist, but the only real way to be interesting is to have a personality that is compatible with the person you are talking to. I’m sure there are two people in the world that think that discussing the lyrical genius of Miley Cyrus is interesting, but unless those to people are talking to each other I’m not confident with how long that conversation will last. I guess our only option is to keep on talking to people until we find the ones that make us happy.

Hello everyone, my name is Ty Miller. I am a Smeal freshman from Boyertown, Pennsylvania, and I could rank my favorite things in life as follows: music, comedy, and friendship. One common theme in this short list is the lack of exactness involved in each. These things are loose, off the cuff, and, most notably, cannot be boiled down to a science. I understand the necessity for science in our lives, I appreciate those who do science, but I am personally not interested in learning about our world in a traditionally scientific way.

I’ve posted this photo of the Hindenburg because I could not think of anything better, but also because this may well represent my performance in SC200.

I am taking this course because I enjoy challenging myself and participating in critical thinking, but I am not a science major because I found no joy in any aspect of my high school science classes. I most assuredly hated the experiments that inhabited my time in those classes, and I am happy to be in a science class that is more conceptual than physical. Speaking of conceptual thought, I have recently become interested in ancient Greek philosophy, and have been working my way chronologically through its history from the pre-socratics now to Aristotle. Did you know that early philosophy looked a lot like crude science? Many great minds took a stab at explaining the universe in ways that seem largely ridiculous now, but, given the lack of scientific knowledge available to them, made a decent amount of sense at the time. Representing this interest and my love of music, please enjoy this video of philosophers having a rap battle.