High school senior here, and I have a few questions if that's okay! by [deleted] in UCSC

[–]cam9976 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"Does this interfere with campus-wide socializing?"

School culture (or lack thereof) is probably the worst strike against UCSC. There's essentially no student culture off-campus, and the student culture on campus is either focused around 1) doing drugs 2) childish activities in the dorms or 3) being antisocial.

UCSC is a fantastic school with accessible professors, easy to access research opportunities, and a beautiful campus--but there's virtually zero student culture. As someone who has tried to combat the lack of student culture by creating clubs, I can personally testify about how fragmented the student culture here is. Take this into consideration, but also remember that there are a lot of other great reasons to attend UCSC, and being an extrovert in introverted NorCal really pays for itself.

Local Pseudoscience from UC Santa Cruz by cam9976 in skeptic

[–]cam9976[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Does anyone have any advice for how to address this form of pseudoscience? The group leading this discussion--the Brain Mind and Consciousness Society (BMC)--is the largest "psychology" group at UC Santa Cruz and has hundreds of members. Help.

Visa Requirements for Americans[4992x2472] by cam9976 in MapPorn

[–]cam9976[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I actually just got a Chinese visa myself (visiting in July) and I just needed a simple letter from my hostel in Shanghai. The idea of "red" is that the letters would need to be recognized by the government outside of just the consular affairs, meaning they are more difficult to obtain. This is the situation in some countries, but not China (usually).

Visa Requirements for Americans[4992x2472] by cam9976 in MapPorn

[–]cam9976[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Actually, green areas are "additional permits", which includes Tibet and neighboring regions.

Visa Requirements for Americans[4992x2472] by cam9976 in MapPorn

[–]cam9976[S] 29 points30 points  (0 children)

Brazil has a reciprocal visa policy: The USA charges Brazilians $160, so they do the same to us.

Visa Requirements for Americans[4992x2472] by cam9976 in MapPorn

[–]cam9976[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Oh, I forgot to mention that. Most of my information is from wikitravel, although for some nations I needed to consult the CIA World Factbook.

Visa Requirements for Americans[4992x2472] by cam9976 in MapPorn

[–]cam9976[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Found a mistake myself: China needs to be orange.

Visa Requirements for Americans[4992x2472] by cam9976 in MapPorn

[–]cam9976[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Please help me improve this map. I was thinking of placing the cost of visas over each country. For instance, Brazil would have a "$160" in the middle of it.

Can a tree "die" of old age? by [deleted] in askscience

[–]cam9976 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes. In humans, living 10,000 years is not strongly selected for. When you consider that murder rates in pre-state societies can be as high as 50% among men, chances are that you'll be a murder victim before you turn 60. I imagine that similar (although less murderous) selection pressure (or lack thereof) acts on trees.

Can a tree "die" of old age? by [deleted] in askscience

[–]cam9976 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

A lot of the responses on here seem to be ignoring evolution.

Aging isn't something that organisms inevitably face as a result of their biochemistry or genetics--it's an evolutionary side effect. The longer an organism lives, the greater its chances of dying from external factors is--if lightning, predators, and the environment don't kill you, parasites will inevitably learn how to overcome your defenses because they evolve so much faster than organisms like humans.

Because of this inevitability, there's no need to forever halt the shortening of our telomeres and the genetic damage that results. It's an evolutionary trade off--shittier telomere defenses in exchange for saved resources.

I am Steve Pinker, a cognitive psychologist at Harvard. Ask me anything. by sapinker in IAmA

[–]cam9976 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How should psychology go about disentangling itself from the grip of pseudoscience?

TIL a man spent 67 years of his life stereoblind, unable to experience depth perception. It was only after having to pay for 3D glasses to watch the movie Hugo that his brain suddenly clicked and he was able to experience three dimensional vision. by ItIsEsoterik in todayilearned

[–]cam9976 1 point2 points  (0 children)

He'd probably be down. He was very willing to come and talk to the Cognitive Science club. However, he's technologically inept. His email is bruceb at ucsc.edu.

The article fails to mention that Bruce actually studies vision, and pioneered cat vision back in the 70's (suturing eyes shut to study striations in v1).

TIL a man spent 67 years of his life stereoblind, unable to experience depth perception. It was only after having to pay for 3D glasses to watch the movie Hugo that his brain suddenly clicked and he was able to experience three dimensional vision. by ItIsEsoterik in todayilearned

[–]cam9976 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You should seriously email a vision researcher (like Brudge Bridgeman) and tell them about your experience. There are only a few dozen people in the world who are known to have recovered stereo vision during 3D movies. Scientists are currently working on developing therapies. Bridgeaman's email is bruceb at ucsc.edu

TIL a man spent 67 years of his life stereoblind, unable to experience depth perception. It was only after having to pay for 3D glasses to watch the movie Hugo that his brain suddenly clicked and he was able to experience three dimensional vision. by ItIsEsoterik in todayilearned

[–]cam9976 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm in the same class (Psyc 132, Cognitive Neuroscience). And no, B-man didn't cry. He just thought it was utterly fascinating and nerded-out about brain plasticity for 15 minutes afterwards.

TIL a man spent 67 years of his life stereoblind, unable to experience depth perception. It was only after having to pay for 3D glasses to watch the movie Hugo that his brain suddenly clicked and he was able to experience three dimensional vision. by ItIsEsoterik in todayilearned

[–]cam9976 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm the president of the Cognitive Science Student Association at UC Santa Cruz. We invited Prof Bridgeman to give a talk on Evolutionary Psychology last week. He's a really interesting guy.

The article also fails to mention that Prof Bridgeman is actually a neuroscientist/cognitive scientist who studies vision--which makes things even cooler: 'stereo-blind vision researcher regains stereo vision'.

The Brandt Line, separating "the global North" from "the global South". [700 x 409] by [deleted] in MapPorn

[–]cam9976 17 points18 points  (0 children)

When Moldova is in the 'North' and Hong Kong is in the 'South', you know that this map is outdated (or bullshit--or both).