Real vs Synthetic Happiness

          A commonly unknown fact is that not all happiness is the same.  There are two types of happiness; real and synthetic.  Real happiness comes from something that truly makes you happy because you enjoy it, while synthetic happiness comes from making yourself happy, even if you don't necessarily like it.  Most people see them as one in the same, happiness, but in reality they are not.

          Real happiness comes form something that truly makes you happy, like the summer time or your dog or something like that.  Synthetic happiness comes from something that may not always make you happy because you may be stuck with it.  It is something that was important to the speakers so he decided to conduct an experiment about it.  There have been a few experiments done on the is topic.

          An example of synthetic happiness comes from an experiment conducted by the speaker.  The experiment was to give a person a choice between two pictures, one group could chose one and that was that, but the other group was able to change their choice after a week if they don't like their decision.  When the person was given the choice they often returned.  Most people returned to change their choice because they weren't happy with their original choice.  The other group was asked a week later if they liked their choice and they said that they were happy with it.  They were stuck with their original choice and almost everyone liked it.

          This shows that people will create a sense of happiness, even if they aren't very happy with a situation.  They will find a way to be happy about it.  Real happiness is a better happiness to have, but it also good to be able to create your own sense of happiness.

Wrongful Convictions

           In the world before we could use DNA evidence, there were many wrongful convictions   At this point with the technology to look at DNA there are many cases being looked at again, whether it is by the state or by the Innocence Project.
           In 1958 Lori Roscetti was murdered and three teenage boys were wrongfully convicted of the crime.  here body was found on some train tracks.  The police told the first teenager that if he confessed to the crime than he could go home, but after confessing he was put in jail.  the police made up a whole story surrounding the incident to make the teenagers sound guilty.  The story came from a theory by one man, not from fact.
          One of the most interesting quotes from the story is when the person is talking about how they get people to confess to crimes that they do not actually commit, they just continue to batter the person with questions about it and eventually the person may believe that they did it, like in the case of the boy who was convinced that he killed his sister.  It was also interesting when the teenage boys were talking about the Lori Roscetti case and they are saying that they could hear the guards watching TV and the guards were watching the news and on the news they were talking about the boys that were convicted.  The police even called some people to try to get some fake witnesses to testify against the boys in court.
          Although there have been many wrongful convictions and the courts may sometimes take the side of the prosecutor rather than the defendant.  If you get the correct attorney they can help you prove your innocence.  Not everyone that is convicted of a crime is guilty, just like with the three teenage boys.

Lucy

While we were learning about evolution we started to learn about Lucy.  Lucy is a chimpanzee that was born in a circus tent in the eastern part of the United States.  The goal with Lucy was to see how human they could make another species, such as a chimpanzee.  She was raised as if she were a human child, rather than a chimpanzee. 

Lucy's caretaker was Janis Carter, but her home was with Maurice Temerlin and Jane Temerlin in Oklahoma.  Lucy was taught sign language by Roger Fouts as part of the ape language project, she eventually learned 140 signs.  She had appeared in Life magazine for multiple reasons, some of which were drinking straight gin and rearing a cat.  By the time she as about 12 she started to get very destructive and she started to tear the Temerlin's house apart.  She ended up being put into the wild, where she lived about a year before she died.

While hearing this story I was interested.  This is an interesting topic and it was kind of confusing to understand at first.  They developed such an attachment to Lucy that it was almost heartbreaking when they had to release her into the wild because they couldn't find a suitable place for her to live otherwise. This story is interesting and I think it requires learning more on the topic to learn properly about how some animals can be influenced to be like other animals.