Kevin N. Murphy

I watched PBS last Friday night for the first time in years. I had originally intended to set up the drums in my garage, but I couldn’t find the stand for the snare drum so I was reduced to watching TV. However, PBS had some awesome shows on. When I turned it on it was half way through a BBC America show about the differences between men and women and their brain sex. Which apparently is quite different and less clear cut than physical sex. I learned some really cool stuff.

One item of interest concerned speech. Women use both the right and left side of the brain to interpret speech. Thus, if you put headphones on them, and play two different made up words, one in each ear, women can hear both words and repeat them out loud. Men however, only use one side of the brain ( I think it was the right side) ergo they can hear that two words are said, but can only comprehend one of them and repeat it out loud. Cool huh? So women can actually listen to two conversations and comprehend both of them, or at least they have the potential to do so, I suppose not all of them have honed that skill.

This other point was a test with four couples to measure levels of testosterone during competition:

What was the competition? Go-Kart racing! What a fun experiment right? So it went like this, guys vs girls. The women’s testosterone levels stayed almost exactly the same during the race. Some were better drivers than others and that was reflected in them ranking at different places during the race, some progressing and some lagging behind. But testosterone wasn’t kicking in and giving them an edge. The men however, showed a distinctive increase in testosterone and this apparently was an advantage. Why? It caused them to take more risks in an effort to advance. I know, sounds dangerous right? More risks an advantage? In moderation. One woman commented that during the race she saw opportunities to pass someone, yet she said she would hesitate and then the opportunity would pass and so she didn’t advance in ranking. The men would take those risks because of the testosterone. One of the men’s testosterone levels absolutely skyrocketed though. He was second place in the race when this happened. Up to that point the testosterone had been giving him a real advantage. But then it skyrocketed, way above even the 1st place racer. He was a total hothead! His testosterone was way too high and he started taking bigger and bigger risks, eventually he spun out and ended up finishing 5th place.

In another show they were studying “love” and its longevity in four couples. One had been married 70 years and was still happy. One had just got married and were totally enthralled with each other. One had been married for 20 some years and had not divorced after the husband had two consecutive affairs, but now were considering divorce since they argued all the time. The fourth couple were split up recently since the husband had an affair, but had been married for 14 years had three kids and wanted to work things out. (They noted that infidelity is the No. 1 reason why marriage ends in divorce. Sad.) I found the results of one test in particular to be hilarious:

The husband from the newly wed couple was put in a brain scan machine of some sort that measured what parts of his brain were active. He was then shown a picture of his wife. As he looked at the picture, his brain started shutting down certain parts while other parts became very active. Curious which ones? Critical thinking, what do you think, turned off or very active? Turned off! Totally shut down! The part of his brain used to reason and make decisions totally shut off when he looked at the picture of his wife. While the rewards system in his brain started feeding him reward chemicals that made him feel great. Hilarious! The scientist commented that is a good indication of why phrases such as “Love is blind,” exist.

One last thing I’ll share is this:

Even just hours after birth, female newborns prefer to look at human faces. Male newborns will look at anything, human or not. The conclusion? Females like people. Males like things. Now that can change later on in life according to environment and all that jazz but I thought that was pretty interesting.

The above seems to be rife with grammatical error.

Played tennis last night. Fun stuff. Three on two was a new one for me, but hey gotta let the little kids play too right? Everyone wants to have fun. Kids are so funny sometimes. One little girl seemed kinda sad and was just sitting on the ground holding a racket, so I asked her if she wanted to play. It was funny how frustrated she was with herself when she would mess up. But she got better. After playing for awhile she was in a better mood and decided to be the photographer on hand. Her goal? Action shots! I thought it was really sweet that when she was leaving she said thank you to me and gave me a hug. I had thought I was probably annoying her before, but I guess we’re friends now. Being nice is a reward in itself. However playing tennis while being fun results in sore calves! Some how I had all sorts of energy last night. While I kept moving around that is. It’s so fun to run around and just hit the ball. I love it when I can return shots. Although, I have a horrid backhand. Trying really hard to hit the ball also tends to result in very funny jumps and swings. But hey it’s all about having fun, not looking cool. I learned how to keep score also. I never do that. It’s hard to keep score playing three on two. Always confusing.