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exhausted
happy exhausted calm
nostalgic
Kelli Gibson
2. Do you still talk to your FIRST love?
No
3. What was your 1st alcoholic drink?
Beer
4. What was your FIRST job?
Working as a janitor at my old high school
5. What was your FIRST car?
A 1981 Chevy Malibu Classic, a.k.a. The Big Brown Boat.
6. Who was the FIRST person to text you today?
No one yet
7. Who is the FIRST person you thought of this morning?
Nicole
8. Who was your FIRST grade teacher?
I don’t remember. Mrs. Cameron, maybe? I had two, one for regular classes and one for academic/gifted classes.
9. Where did you go on your FIRST ride on an airplane?
Disneyworld, when I was 2 ½ years old.
10. Who was your FIRST best friend & do you still talk?
My first best friend was Brian Hipp. We haven’t really talked since high school, though I worked with his mother during college.
11. Where was your FIRST sleep over?
At Spike’s
12. Who was the FIRST person you talked to today?
Nicole
13. Whose wedding were you in the FIRST time?
Richard and Andrea Thompson’s
14. What was the FIRST thing you did this morning?
Rolled over and went back to sleep
15. What was the FIRST concert you ever went to?
A Christian concert in my ultra-Christian days – a no-name artist – don’t remember his name
16. FIRST tattoo?
None
17. First piercing?
No piercings
18. First foreign country you've been to?
Canada
19. FIRST movie you remember seeing?
Biloxi Blues
20. When was your FIRST detention?
I never had detention. I was very well behaved/”square” in school. I was once supposed to have detention after getting three tardies in one semester, but the assistant principal looked at my record, saw that I had never been in trouble (and this was my Senior year of high school), told me not to be late to school again, and tore up the referral.
21. What was the first state you lived in?
Indiana
22. Who was your FIRST roommate?
Markov (unless you count my brother)
23. If you had one wish, what would it be?
To find a good tenure-track professorship
24. What is something you would learn if you had the chance?
To play the piano
25. Who do you think will be the next person to post this?
No idea
irritatedI just added more Vegas pictures to my Facebook account:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/album.p
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/album.p
good
curiousA butterfly fluttered across the country road as the first rays of sunlight came flowing over the horizon. It floated for a moment over a cluster of flowers still wet with dew, seemingly enchanted by the prisms of sunlight sparkling forth from the droplets of waters as they caught the first light of the day, and then it lit upon a long blade of grass next to the road. A slight breeze stirred up a wisp of fine dust from the dirt road, barely swaying the flowers and the grass. A single cricket ceased her nighttime song as a group of birds somewhere chattered at one another loudly, making strange chirping noises. A slight scent of flowers and dust stirred in the cool morning air.
All of a sudden the air tingled, and a flash above the road momentarily overwhelmed the light of the morning sun. The butterfly took flight, alarmed by the strange electric feel of the air, and as the flash of light faded, a glowing orb appeared, filled with an otherworldly blue light. Flashes of miniature lightning cascaded from the center of the orb to its periphery, and had there been anyone around to witness the spectacle, they would have seen the light inside the six foot sphere coalesce into the figure of a human. Arms, legs, a torso, and a head appeared, solidifying from waves of electric energy into a man, five feet eight inches tall, pale skinned and middle aged, with graying red hair that blew in rhythmic spasms as lightning waves coursed through it. As soon as the man coalesced, the orb vanished and the last waves of electricity faded away across the surface of his skin. With a grunt of pain, the man doubled over and fell across the country road. He was in a significant amount of pain – not the most pain he had felt in his life, but somewhat like he had just been punched in the stomach while receiving a moderate electrical shock. He gasped in air – he could breathe at last, and the crushing cold and boiling-blood-feeling which had overwhelmed him just moments earlier was now gone, replaced by a cool breeze and warm rays of bright morning sunlight. He was safe, for the moment.
But safe from what? Where had he just been that was so frozen and blood-boiling at the same time, if such a thing was even possible? And why was he so scared that his heart was about to pound its way out of his chest? It surely had something to do with the frozen-boiling feeling. And where was he now? He hadn’t a clue. In fact, as he slowly opened his eyes and found himself lying in the dirt, it began to dawn on him that he didn’t know… anything.
“What the hell?” he said out loud, trying to shake loose the cobwebs from his brain and hoping his mind would clear. For the moment, anyway, he could not remember anything. Not who he was, where he was from, why he had just appeared out of thin air – not even his own name. He felt a strange twinge of irony, as though amnesia was a familiar story – an over-done story – yet here he was, with no memory of… anything.
He sat up and pulled himself to the edge of the road, just in case something should happen along that might run over him. He looked around, not really seeing the flowers and grasses and bushes and trees around him, trapped alone inside his own head with nothing but his own disorientation to keep him company. He shook his head in an attempt to clear it, then examined the back of his right hand for a full five minutes, as though if he stared intently enough at the wrinkles on his hand, he might find some answers written there.
Just then, something flashed into his head. “Tom!” he exclaimed aloud, triumphant. His name was Tom. He could remember no more, but this, at least, was something.
Tom gazed into the morning sky and could see the moon directly overhead, a waxing crescent more than half full. He looked over at the sun, then glanced to the south. The moon was there, too, also a waxing crescent more than half full, much closer to the horizon. He studied it for a minute, trying to figure out if he was seeing double, if he was seeing an optical illusion or mirage, or if his mind was playing tricks on him. Something didn’t add up. Tom couldn’t remember much of anything, but he was pretty sure the Earth didn’t have two moons.
Suddenly it got brighter as more sunlight streamed over the horizon, and after a few moments it became clear to Tom that he was watching the sun rise – again. Only the sun was already several inches above the horizon. Strangely fascinated, he watched as a second sun began climbing into the sky. So transfixed was he by this unusual sight that he did not realize as he glanced northward that he could see a third moon, this one nearly double the size of the other two. He stood up and turned to the west, and gasped with disbelief as he beheld an enormous orange-brown planet filling up more than a quarter of the western sky, surrounded by a spectacular Saturn-like ring system, silver in color and angled 45 degrees to the horizon. Two more moons were visible to the west, one directly in front of the ringed planet. It was utterly beautiful, yet so shocking and unexpected that Tom literally gasped out loud. “Where the hell am I?” he wondered aloud, then thought to himself, “We’re not in Kansas any more.” He could not remember what Kansas was, but he knew that it didn’t have two suns, five moons, and a planet in its sky.
contemplativeWow. Great conversation. I’ve enjoyed following this line of posts. It’s nice to see a (mostly civilized) dialogue about religion and its role in psychology. I particularly enjoyed reading the comments of people who are calling for cooperation between science and religion, rather than a science vs. religion approach which is all too common among both scientists and religious leaders. I had a feeling when I read James’s original post that there would be some strong reactions:
“Psychological testing should be targeted towards identifying men who want to make careers out of helping people believe in myths.”
My first thought was that James was using the academic meaning of the word myth – a sacred story involving symbols and multiple meanings, a larger-than-life story of great significance that is by definition considered to be true to its native culture (as in a story of mythological proportions). Predictably, most people reacted by assuming he meant a fictional story (which apparently he did, based on his responses).
James, I applaud your efforts to apply critical thinking to the basic tenets of religion. Faith, as the term is popularly used, by definition involves believing in something in the absence of evidence. Yet unexamined faith is immature faith, or at least less developed than faith which has been critically examined (at least according to James Fowler’s (1983) conception), so I think it is admirable to apply critical thinking to religious thinking. From a scientific point of view (and psychology is a science), that’s essential for knowledge to develop. From a religious point of view, a faith unwilling to be examined is a weak faith – you should at least know what your opponents say so you can defend what you believe. I’ve enjoyed reading the conversation/debate. One thing has been notably missing, however: How do you define God? In scientific inquiry, one of the first things a scientist always does is operationally define the terms of inquiry. So to disprove (or prove) the null hypothesis that God does not exist, God must be operationally defined. For example, defining God as “a bearded man who lives in the clouds and does magic tricks” makes the existence of such a being fairly easy to disprove (e.g., with aerial scans, satellite imagery, etc.). Conversely, defining God as “an immaterial being outside the universe who influences the affairs of humankind” (or, worse yet, as “ineffable” or “undefinable”) makes him/her/it/them considerably more difficult to (dis)prove. On the other hand, defining God as “the source of the universe” or “something which is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-present” makes the existence of God much easier to prove (if anything at all exists). I’m just curious to know how James and others on this list would define God. It’s a rhetorical question, but feel free to respond.
My second reaction to James’s post was the potential for him to make a clinical judgment error called clinical judgment faith bias. A misconception exists that religiousness is associated with psychopathology, though there is no empirical evidence that religiousness is associated with a greater occurrence of mental health problems. In fact, much of the evidence points to the opposite conclusion – that measures of religious involvement are positively associated with mental health outcomes, suggesting that people who are religious may be more mentally healthy than their secular counterparts (Koenig, 1998, 2005; Miller & Kelley, 2005; Oman & Thoresen, 2005). Yet research to date suggests that some clinicians make different and often more negative clinical judgments for clients who are very religious than for clients who are moderately religious or nonreligious (Gartner et al., 1990a, 1990b; Houts & Graham, 1986; O’Connor & Vandenberg, 2005). Because these clinical judgments disregard relevant base rates of pathology among religious clients, they represent a type of bias that clinicians should be aware of. Just thought I’d throw that in for consideration (it’s the topic of my dissertation!)
Good conversation!
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