Minds.com

I can easily smell a scam as soon as I see one on the Internet. The advanced scam spotter can differentiate between the two varieties of Free. The variety known as “Free as in Free Beer ” is true to its form and means no hidden costs are attached whatsoever. The large portion of this category refers to intangible products. In other words, you can use it but you can’t physical touch it. When you open up a web based email account at Yahoo or Gmail you get a decent amount of inbox space at no cost to you. Open source software such as Wordpress which this blog runs on and Joomla! for site content management also fall under this category. If you are looking for a web host, but don’t wish to pay a monthly fee, you can host your site at BraveNet.com for free. Such free products are either supported by ads, have a volunteer-based ground roots community, or serve as a basic package so that if people like the free product they can upgrade it to get more features.

If physical products are what you desire, free is not always limited to virtual zeros and ones. I personally stay away from most free physical products advertised online, but there are a few legitimate companies. StartSampling.com has free product samples that you can try out and is partnered with WalMart. Many of these are health and beauty related such as hair color, sunscreen , and colognes. Nothing can beat free, but you need to be even more cautious with shippable items. This is when the scam radar should be kicked up a notch. You have to pretend you are in the marketing driver’s seat of the company and question their motives: Why they are offering this free stuff? Some only want to give people a chance to try their products and hope to gain a few loyal customers along the way. Be warned though as these companies are far, few and in between. In general, larger companies like Loreal should be trusted more that XYZ Co that you have never heard of in your life.

Many of these rogue businesses attach dozens of strings to your free* product. For example, consider the now infamous Video Professor offer. If you visit their official site at VideoProfessor.com, they have a pitch just like any typical marketing campaign: “Get the computer training you’ve always wanted and needed. Try my product for free*.” Note the asterisk after free. You only have to pay $6.95 for shipping to get your software discs but if you are not paying attention you may miss that you will also be billed $389.95 for additional products if you don’t cancel your membership. It was not until recently that they made their terms more clear thanks in part to the Better Business Bureau looking after them. Previously, you had to find the terms buried inside links and legal jargon.

Another common offer is the free acai berry weight loss supplement. The sales scheme is the same only what is being sold is different.

Step 1: The pitch – It starts with pretty eye-catching fonts.

Step 2: Shipping Information and Credit Card Information – The forms look typical like any that you have seen online.

Step 3: Terms

Wait a minute. Shouldn’t you see the terms before you enter your credit card information?

The terms are displayed in tiny size 8 font. Notice that they tried to camouflage what you will be charged if you do not cancel. Instead of writing out that you will be charged $79.95 after 30 days, they spelled it out as seventy-nine dollars and ninety-five cents. Also note the spelling error. They hope you just skim the terms without taking a closer look at what it actually says. When it comes to the small shipping change they don’t mind writing the $3.98. Every scam has its bag of trickery.

If you have any doubts about whether an offer is too good to be true, it probably is (you knew that one was coming). A common business model on the web is to lure customers in on a free $10 product, collect their credit card information, and then bill them for $150 later. This model continues to survive because of the uninformed users that do not understand what they’re truly getting into.

I have noticed a trend among some 50-somethings, especially if they are educators. They cannot seem to get out of their old ways. Let me point out a few examples.  I cannot help but lament about my bioethics professor’s lack of computer prowess. As a retired lawyer, she can sure talk the talk but is constantly grumbling while in front of a computer screen. When pages freeze, files don’t load, or the projector fails to turn on, she just gets stirred up. It is not just major problems, but basic Computers 101 stuff which are an issue.  One time she was even about to call tech support because the university webmail wouldn’t come up. It wasn’t a real problem. She just wasn’t typing the URL in the address bar correctly. I couldn’t take it that she was calling support for such a silly reason. I just got out of my seat and typed the darn address. How many times does it take before you know how to view a Powerpoint slideshow? (Yes, you press that silly little icon on your bottom right!) She ended the semester with a closing statement: “As you can see, I flunked Computers.” She says it like technology is an insurmountable body of knowledge.

In another example, I consider my aunt who is a middle school social studies teacher. When she checks her email and the page loads slowly, she’s the one who says the computer is “thinking.”  She asks me how anybody could ever spend so much time on a thing. She’s the type who thinks she got robbed if her TV set lasts for less than 25 years. She has electronics from ages ago. So when her VHS player started going haywire before expected, she was mortified. Together we went on a hunt for a replacement. I knew it was not going to be an easy ride. She couldn’t let go of her VHS collection so we settled on a VHS/DVD combo.  We went to RadioShack. She purchases a model. We go back to her place and due to a technical problem, it wasn’t compatible with her TV system. The second combo has defective. The third time my aunt grew even more impatient. “I’m like the Unabomber,” she told the unsuspecting sales clerk. “I HATE technology!”  The clerk took two steps back. She took time to absorb her own words. “No, wait. I didn’t mean that. I don’t hurt people. I just meant the technology part.” Luckily the third time was a charm, and we ended the night on a movie. Yes, it was on DVD too.

Perhaps the most basic way to categorize a person is to separate male from female. At first glance, the differences are so obvious it’s like separating night and day. We like to think that science has made it easy; girls have XX chromosomes and boys have XY chromosomes.  Every now and then though a case like Caster Semenya’s causes us to rethink the facts we take for granted. Semenya was a virtually unknown 18 year old South African athlete. That all changed on July 30 when she won the African Junior Championships, clocking in at an astonishing 1:56.72. This was a breaking record, making her the fastest 800 meter runner of the year. She then broke another record for her senior championship marathon run.

These records were amazing – so amazing that people questioned whether she was really a he after all. They pointed at her deep voice, her muscular physique, her strong masculine features. She was banned from using the female restroom after complains from other women. Yet her family continued to deny the outrageous allegations, calling her “my little girl.”

Officials have given her the benefit of the doubt because even though there is speculation, there is no hard evidence proving that she is a man. Semenya will be going through extensive gender tests. This means examinations inside and out from gynecologists to psychologists to endocrinologists.

“It’s a medical issue. It’s not an issue of cheating,” said public relations director Nick Davies.

What exactly are some medical issues that cause ambiguous gender (or other issues)?

Ambiguous Genitalia- This is a birth defect where the outer appearance of what identifies infants does not appear male or female. This could mean that a typical XX female could have a clitoris that looks like a small penis or a typical XY male with undescended testes and a small penis that looks like an inflamed clitoris.

Androgen Insensitivity- This condition is caused by a gene mutation. The person has a curvy female appearance on the outside but inside the abdominal cavity there are testes instead of ovaries.

Turner Syndrome – Girls with Turner Syndrome have only one X chromosome, signified by XO.  The ovaries and uterus are small and undeveloped. Many do not go through puberty, but some have given birth using donor eggs.

Klinefelter Syndrome – Males with this syndrome have extra X chromosomes in addition to a Y chromosome. Affected males have no facial hair and have underdeveloped testes. There may be female traits such as breast development. They also have very long arms and legs.

Poly-X Females – This condition, also known as a superfemale, occurs when there is a third extra X chromosome.  There are no extraordinary features except that the girl may be tall and thin.

Jacob’s Syndrome –Males that have Jacob’s syndrome are known as supermales because they have an extra Y chromosome. They may be taller and have reading and speech problems. It was once suggested that XYY males are more likely to land in prison, but this later got proven false.

What if something is found to be “wrong” with Semenya? What is she is slapped with the man label and banned from running for the champs? This means that society has said that a person has to pass three tests before they are determined male or female. They need to look it. They need to have the right internal machinery. And on top of that, they need to live it. Strong female athletes may not cut it.

Some people are just born musically challenged. The Journal of Neuroscience is reporting on the reason why some people cannot sing in tune. Ten percent of the population has a faulty brain wiring that keeps them from telling the difference between musical notes. The brain region, dubbed the “highway,” links music and language centers to voice production. This area, the arcuate fasciculus as it’s known, was not only smaller in tone deaf people, but the upper portion was actually missing.

You can take the tone deaf test here: http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/tunetest/dtt.asp.

On the opposite side, some people have a remarkable talent known as perfect pitch. They are able to identify any note on the spot without a reference. Of course, perfect pitch is rare. Some estimates have said that 1 out of 10,000 people have this ability. But among special populations like autistic people, 3 out of five 5 can identify notes like the back of their hand. This has been linked to unusual brain structure that is evident even before birth. People that have perfect pitch have more asymmetric brains. The temporal lobe that is responsible for auditory processing is usually larger on the left side of human brains. Perfect pitch possessors have an even larger left side when compared to their right. But even if people are born with this feature, they need to have been musically trained to have pitch naming ability.

No matter how hard people train, most people cannot learn to identify notes. This means perfect pitch is hard wired from the beginning.

We tend to view the mind as an intellectual abstraction, while the brain is a biological organ much like the heart or lungs.  We refer to the mind a result of all of our thinking processes – the choices we make, our style of conversation, how fast we can add and subtract, and our logic and reasoning. The mind is one huge metaphor. I have dissected a brain in anatomy class but can you dissect a mind? The mind is complex and thought of highly as the process that separates man from animal.  We all may have heard of the movie “The Beautiful Mind” but we usually do not hear about “The Beautiful Brain.” (Actually, I remember a student standing not too far away from me during dissection who saw the sheep brain, with its perfect colors and contours, and said “Wow, what a beautiful brain!”) The brain and spinal cord are the control centers of the human body.  Vital functions such as our temperature, heartbeat, and breathing are ultimately regulated by the brain in the cerebellum region.  The cerebellum, that lower part of brain that looks like cauliflower in pictures, can be thought of as the primitive brain which controls life functions. Now all the way to the front of the brain is the cerebrum near where your forehead is located. This is known as the intellectual brain. When we refer to the mind, we refer to the processes of the cerebrum. This is the bridge connection between brain and mind.