Fall 2010

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the university o

new mexico

best student essays

buckley garcia hawkes kieffer lamendola lapera lewis lobaugh nodal rodriguez

The University

of

New Mexico

Best Student Essays Vol. 22, No. II

This issue of Best Student Essays was printed by: Starline Printing 7111 Pan American Highway NE Albuquerque, NM 87109

EDITOR John Erin Reidy M A N AG I N G E D I T O R Ryan Cardoza Tynan EDITOR DESI G N

and

P HO T O G RA P HY

George Richardson

EDITOR SCIENCE

Kieran Gallagher-Gonzales EDITORS CO P Y

and

RESEARCH

Griffin Arellano Kathleen Morgans Megan E. O’Connor

B U S I N E S S M A N AG E R Jim Fisher

Best Student Essays is published biannually by the University of New Mexico Student Publications Board. All opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the UNM Student Publications Board.

Correspondence may be addressed to: Best Student Essays UNM Student Publications Marron Hall 107, University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131-0001 (505) 277-5656 www.beststudentessays.org This magazine was designed in Adobe InDesign CS5.

Copyright 2010 by The University of New Mexico Student Publications Board.

SPECIAL THANKS Leslie Donovan Daven Quelle Carolyn Souther Bob Sabatini, Blue Mesa Review Andrew Quick, Scribendi Chris Quintana, Conceptions Southwest Pat Lohman, The Daily Lobo

C OV E R P H O T O G R A P H Y “Tricycle Taxi” ©2010 By Junfu Han. All Rights Reserved.

A Word From the Editor The magazine before you has emerged from a tunnel of endless experimentation, arriving finally at

a collection of pages and words and pictures bound together so that the writing of a few might reach the eyes of many. At Best Student Essays we undertake the sweeping endeavor of uniting the diversity of scholarship on this campus into one magazine each semester. In making selections our editorial board upholds the strict standards of objectivity in assessing the quality of student work, and fairness in representing all segments of our university. Our selections this year reflect several qualities that reveal themselves repeatedly in great student essays: independent thought within the often deafening drums of orthodoxy beating through academic disciplines; genuine interest in the chosen subject matter; and all too often overlooked, quality writing in which diction is deliberate and reflects an awareness of the possibilities of language to lend both precision and originality to one’s meaning.

When academic writing becomes merely a means to an end—namely a grade—one or all of these qualities flickers out. It is not the grade alone that makes a best student essay. It is one or all of these qualities, often spotted by a teacher willing to nominate his or her student for publication in this magazine. Such a teacher makes it possible for the entire university to see anew the inspiration and curiosity that are the fuel of the academic mission at our school. We are grateful to such teachers for making this contribution to the university and proud to consider the writing of their students.

In this issue we have published scientific research on two distinct topics that have never previously appeared in BSE: veteran suicides in New Mexico, and ongoing archaeological research on the Maya carried out by UNM students in Belize. For the first time BSE is publishing two photo essays, indicative of the growing number of high-quality photography submissions received by this magazine. Subtle and not-so-subtle changes in aesthetics accompany this issue. They are the result of the inexhaustible drive to create and recreate the beauty of the printed word on the page for others to read. To create them, my staff and I turned to the rich past of this magazine, specifically the issues of the early 1990s for their powerful matter-of-factness. To step into the future, we stepped boldly into the past.

I must thank my staff for their tireless enthusiasm, insight, and humor throughout the semester.

The care and attention of our three copy and research editors lend polish to every page. I thank Junfu Han, who generously donated his time to the new BSE website and whose photograph is on the cover of this issue. I thank Andrew Berry for his advice on matters of design and photography.

I thank the whole of the UNM Student Publications Board for their advice in matters of magazinecraft. I thank the many students who took the time to submit their writing to our magazine. May the authors held within these pages find their way outward into the court of public readership with the recognition and scrutiny it entails.

John Reidy, Editor

CONTENTS

VO L . 2 0 N O . I I

The Origins and Interpretations of Power…………………………… 7 C L AY T O N L O B AU G H

Nominated by Prof. Diane Rawls (UHON 122, Legacy of Power): “This is a very well-crafted essay that went far beyond the minimum requirements for the assignment. Well written, researched, and organized, it was a true pleasure to read, and is probably the best freshman paper for this Honors class that I have received in the past seventeen years.”

Indecent Exposure:……………………………………………………11 The Historical Trajectory of Ultra-Violent Film H I L A RY B U C K L E Y

Nominated by Prof. Judy Bieber (HIST 491, Historiography): “Hilary analyzes ‘ultra-violent’ films, bringing a cool analytical focus to a topic that is often gratuitously sensationalized. She addresses changing censorship norms, new technologies, and emerging aesthetic sensibilities in a persuasive way.”

Home Photography……………………………………….………………18–24 K AT H L E E N H AW K E S

Nominated by Prof. Patrick Manning (ARTS 595, Tutorial): “The photos are an inventive examination of the complexities and layering of domestic spaces.”

Patterns of Suicide among Veterans in New Mexico…………………25 N AO M I L E W I S

Nominated by Prof. Sarah Lathrop: “Ms. Lewis has done an excellent job of developing a concise, wellwritten presentation of her results. After a careful review of current literature, she worked with faculty at the Office of the Medical Investigator to determine what type of information was available for analysis. Her work expands our understanding of this tragic occurrence (veteran suicides), and lays the groundwork for better targeting of suicide prevention programs.”

Determining Status of Ancient Maya from Looted………………….. 33 and Sacrificial Contexts C.L. KIEFFER

Nominated by Prof. Heather Edgar (ANTH 554, Human Paleopathology): “This is original field data collected by the student, presented within a thorough, insightful framework.”

Friday Night Fights Photography…………………………………………. 42–48 RYA N G A R C I A

Nominated by Prof. Jim Stone: “Ryan’s work comes directly from his passion. I recommend him highly.”

Faulty Source Monitoring and Its Contribution………………………49 to an Accidental By-Product Theory of Religiosity JOSEPH LAMENDOLA

Nominated by Prof. Paul J. Watson (RELG 347, Evolution of Religiosity): “Joseph has produced a cogent essay that demonstrates an extraordinarily clean understanding of how the ruthlessly utilitarian process of natural selection can produce some very odd, extravagant, profoundly human psychological traits. Few professional evolutionary biologists could write a crisper explanation of evolutionary by-products.”

A Woman’s History of the Americas.………………………………… 56 ANNA LAPERA

Nominated by Prof. Tey Diana Rebolledo: “This is an excellent story which encompasses politics. It is poignant as well. It speaks to the heart and certainly teaches us something about love and history.”

Mind the Language Gap: Analyzing Cockney Rhyming Slang………59 H I L A RY B U C K L E Y

Nominated by Prof. Virginia Scharff (ENGL 445, History of the English Language): “A deeply researched piece of language history in a highly entertaining form. Ms. Buckley writes with immense wit and flair.”

A Balsa Wood Prayer………………………………………………….62 B E C K E T T S . N O DA L

Nominated by Prof. Jack Trujillo (ENGL 321, Creative Writing): “Beckett’s essay finds, in the metaphoric cacophony of Albuquerque’s Menaul Boulevard, the complications of adulthood, marriage, and parenthood sitting alongside the idyllic remembrance of childhood in Piedra Lisa Park. This essay reflects his love of language and his love of image, as well as his ability to manipulate both.”

From the Spring 1990 Issue of Best Student Essays

The Origins and Interpretations of Power Clayton Lobaugh

In examining the nature of power, I shall begin by elucidating a concrete definition of power. I will

then discuss how our modern definition of power originated and evolved over the course of human history, and analyze the opposing theories on the purpose and optimal usage of power (nominally realism and idealism). I will also explore the various ways that civilizations can be organized. The concepts of power are vitally important to reflect upon because they represent the imperceptible laws that, directly and indirectly, predict the motions of history, society, and (in turn) all individuals.

An understanding of the different mentalities on power equals an insight into the very instincts of humanity itself.

Power can be defined as the ability to change one’s environment to suit one’s needs, which can apply to military, sociopolitical, economic, scientific, and personal contexts. Power is the synthesis between adaptation to one’s environment and influence over one’s obstacles. This definition explains how the complex, abstract mechanisms of modern power dynamics evolved from the primitive struggles and tribulations of Homo sapiens. The earliest origin of power came from humanity’s transition from nomadic scavenging (the hunter-gatherer lifestyle) to creating agricultural settlements, in which humans learned how to master their environment. Agricultural innovation originated power in two important ways. First, it allowed people who would otherwise be agriculturally employed to specialize in other fields. Second, stationary tribal settlements required a guarantee of communal protection, which created the necessity for governance and hierarchical organization.1 Rousseau famously observed that civilization began when property was fenced off and claimed.2 The concept of property, even on a tribal scale, and the increased specialization of peoples’ duties caused the eventual progression of chiefdoms to city-states to kingdoms to empires. It had been necessary throughout this process of societal growth for absolute authorities to maintain order, which resulted in a power structure comprised of centralized institutions. This was the political atmosphere in which the writings of The Prince were most literally relevant. Machiavelli’s theories 1 2

Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999).

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Discourse on Inequality (New York: Penguin Group, 1968) 109.

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are most appropriately applied in epochs of instability and brute force. In the eras addressed within The Prince, fighting amongst monarchs and ecclesiastical factions had created a world of instability, opportunism, and legitimacy based on force.

The Prince encapsulates the mentality on power known as realist thought, which defines power as raw influence and military might. The Prince is known for suggesting that all men, subjects as well as it not as rivals, should not be trusted and should be considered to ietzsche who have an absence of loyalties claimed that save those that benefit themselves. “For this can be predatory humans said about the generality of were the more men: that they are ungrateful, fickle, dissembling, anxious complete of the to flee danger, and covetous of gain.”3 It also advises human beast any ambitious prince to be continually wary of possible attacks and uprisings in order to check ambitious enemies and capricious subjects. The Prince not only advises on issues of war and policy, but also on matters of publicity by suggesting the manner in which a prince should be perceived by the public.

Machiavelli does not advocate the use of draconian means to achieve one’s ends. However, he does not condemn such methods either. He instead acknowledges that rulers, through harsh necessity, must be willing to sacrifice virtue in order to further the state,4 which is why it is far better to be feared rather than loved by one’s subjects. That fear will more likely maintain the unity and efficacy of the state better than the mere affection of the citizens. The Prince has remained an influential work, despite the shifts in sociopolitical atmospheres over the centuries, because it unequivocally encourages a mentality of calculating, opportunistic pragmatism, which is applicable (for some) in any era. Was it not Nietzsche who claimed that predatory humans,

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Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (New York: Bantam Dell, 2003) 66.

4 Machiavelli 69.

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with strength of will and desire for power, were the more complete of the human beast?5 Over time, this pragmatically amoral attitude could not openly remain amongst those within the power structure, because the social dynamics of western societies metamorphosed from the days of conquest and suppression.

“There was a time when the division of mankind into two castes, a small one of masters and a numerous one of slaves, appeared, even to the most cultivated minds, to be a natural, and the only natural, condition of the human race.”6 However, this overarching mentality was challenged, in incremental steps, over the centuries. The purpose of political rule and the structures of institutions were eventually brought into question, and changed almost beyond recognition. The old, centralized social systems based solely on force and control, while maintainable, necessitated technological stagnation and social rigidity in order to preserve the status quo. However, as idealistic enlightenment ideas began to spread throughout western thought, it became apparent that society benefited from the unleashed potential of those from the lower classes. “[It is not that] all persons [are] to be equally qualified for everything; but that freedom of individual choice is now known to be the only thing which procures the adoption of the best processes, and throws each operation into the hands of those who are the best qualified for it.”7 As the benefits of the individualization of society were empirically discovered, the ideas for increasing the political liberties of the populace spread through the intellectual, middle, and lower stratums of western civilization. Power structures often permit the presence of economic freedoms before political freedoms due to the technological and commercial advantages that such freedoms afford the power structure. The political/economic history of western society is an excellent elucidation of this principle.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (New York: Oxford UP, 1998) 151.

6 John Stewart Mill, The Subjection of Women (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1988) 12.

7 Mill 18.

5

Medieval feudalism declined due to the rise of the merchant town (burgs) and the bourgeois middle class, which occurred through the necessity of commercial trade.

Ironically, the aristocratic classes diminished their own power by creating a large market for overseas goods (specifically luxury items), thereby increasing the power of the middle classes. The importance of trade began to grow exponentially through the creation of “trickledown” wealth and commercial activity. This process replaced outright aristocracy with the competitive social structure of imperialist mercantilism, which in turn led the European powers to scour the earth in search of raw materials. Agricultural advancements and technological innovations provided the West with sufficient knowledge and manpower to create an industrial manufacturing economy, causing the eventual death of mercantilism and the birth of consumerism, and the rest is history.8 The incremental empowerment that these economic freedoms and trends afforded individuals caused them simultaneously to seek more political freedoms as well.

As the individual became more important to society, the concept of the social contract became more influential as well. “[Governments] had their beginning laid on that foundation [that men are naturally free], and were made by the consent of the people.”9 Locke’s writings perfectly express the individualistic trends of western society that arose from the people’s thirst for economic and political freedoms.

“For law, in its true notion, is not so much the limitation, as the direction of a free and intelligent agent to his proper interest.”10 It was the gradual breakdown of the old aristocratic systems (along with realist thought) that created more opportunities for better employment and education for the average citizen, allowing the full faculties of people to flourish. “There is nothing, after disease, indigence, and guilt, so Professor Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope (MacMillan, 1966) Ch. II. 9 John Locke, Second Treatise on Government (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980) 55.

10 Locke 32.

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fatal to the pleasurable enjoyment of life as the want of a worthy outlet for the active faculties.”11 If knowledge is power, then education is the key to political and economic influence. The increased education of the populace represented a fundamental shift in the role that an individual could take within society. Frederick Douglass’s quest for knowledge demonstrated the empowering effects of education and the debilitating consequences of its absence. His narrative displayed how the restriction of educational opportunities could be used as a repressive method of maintaining the power structure. “That which to him was a great evil, to be carefully shunned, was to me a great good, to be diligently sought; and the argument which he so warmly urged, against my learning to read, only served to inspire me with a desire and determination to learn.”12 The will of the people and the exigency for specialized skills made it necessary for societies to grant economic, political, and then educational freedoms on a gradually wider scale in order to avoid technological and economical stagnation.

These Enlightenment notions changed the dynamics of the power structure because they gave less power to centralized institutions and more power to the proletariat. The Subjection of Women made strong utilitarian arguments, which can be universally applied to all people, that the f knowledge exclusion of any demographic based on criteria other than is power then merit would hurt societal productivity. Locke’s Second education is the Treatise on Government made key to political the philosophical argument and economic that any action of a government against the will of the people influence lacked legitimacy since it would break the foundations of the social contract. If the populace gave up their natural rights for the benefits of organized civilization, then it is only natural that the people can reshape their government to fulfill

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Locke 106.

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass (New York: Penguin Group, 1982) 79.

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the original agreement. The Narrative of Frederick Douglass illustrates the ways in which the lack of freedom harmed society and vindicated the right to break away from arbitrary (despotic) power.

These arguments are not meant to “refute” the Machiavellian rules of power, but they are meant to demonstrate changes in western thought that altered the ways that these rules could be applied. Idealism has, superficially, been put into practice to a greater extent in our enlightened modern era. However, beneath the surface of this egalitarian exterior lie the same ruthless power dynamics from the time before liberty. Machiavelli’s ideas will never become obsolete, so long as men have no loyalties to anyone but themselves. Western society has tried unconsciously to harness the selfishness of man for noble purposes (through the invisible hand and the power of voting), but even “free” societies have failed to extinguish the desire for and misuse of power.

Like a Hegelian dialectic, the initial thesis on power was the realistic theory, which focused on raw military and political power regardless of legitimacy. The antithesis was the idealistic theory, advocating the consent of the citizens, the abolishment of institutional castes, and equal opportunities for all members of society. In our modern world, we see a strange synthesis of this dialectic. The individualistic western powers of the world have based their national institutions on checks and balances, but have also consented to the legitimacy of highly centralized, supranational organizations (such as the United Nations [UN], the International Monetary Fund [IMF], the Bank of International Settlements [BIS], and others).

These centralized institutions paradoxically preach egalitarian sentiment, while maintaining neo-realist tendencies. Examples of these tendencies would be Security Council superiority in the UN, IMF quota systems and “structural adjustment programs,” and the BIS’s practice of setting monetary policy goals in a non-representational manner. These (and other) discrepancies between sentiment and reality in our political world demonstrate how 10 | Best Student Essays

the idealistic notions of classical liberalism have shaped our modern world, but Machiavelli’s rules still run it.

In conclusion, the Enlightenment mentality created an idealistic political and economic system that would work perfectly today if all men were noble and rational. However, Machiavelli’s estimation of human nature has proved to be applicable in any sociopolitical atmosphere. This explains how we live in a society that blends centralized authority, representational legitimacy, fierce political fighting between factions, egalitarian sentiment, and public manipulation. The result of western civilization has been a grand synthesis between two overarching mentalities on the subject of power.

Works Cited Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999.

Douglass, Fredrick. Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass. New York: Penguin Group, 1982.

Locke, John. Second Treatise on Government.

Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980.

Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince. New York: Bantam Dell, 2003.

Mill, John Stewart. The Subjection of Women.

Indianapolis: Hackett, 1988.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil.

New York: Oxford UP, 1998.

Quigley, Carroll. Tragedy and Hope. New York: MacMillan, 1966.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. A Discourse on Inequality. New York: Penguin Group, 1968.

Indecent Exposure:

The Historical Trajectory of Ultra-Violent Film Hilary Buckley

“To me [Psycho] is a fun picture.”

—Alfred Hitchcock1

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“Violence is one of the most fun things to watch.”

—Quentin Tarantino2

n ultra-violent film is defined as “the unsettling contemplation of flawed, debased behavior viewed up close and without a secure moral reference point.”1 That definition, however, does not mention the artistry required to walk the line between inspired and indecent. Instead of predictably repelling viewers, directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, and Quentin Tarantino invite their audiences to become participatory in the act of murder, complete with threatening weapons, gasping victims, and copious amounts of splattering, oozing blood. Ultra-violent films also highlight evil, psychopathic, or borderline personalities in the roles of sympathetic main characters to further set audiences emotionally and morally adrift.2 With the lack of a secure moral reference point, these movies aim to leave spectators disoriented and uncomfortable, yet somehow exhilarated. To achieve this careful balance, successful directors of ultra-violent movies use highly technical filming techniques to force an emotional response on the director’s victims, his captive audience. Through the use of montage, angles, framing, sound, and blood technology, combined with a frank look at the contemporary world, directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, and Quentin Tarantino push the envelope of censorship and make violence into a visceral and aesthetic experience for filmgoers.

Contrary to popular opinion, ultra-violent films were not invented for the video game generation.

The genre has existed since 1960, when Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller, Psycho, showed for the first time at movie theaters. As film writer Stephen Prince says, “Ultra-violence emerged in the 1960s, and movies have never been the same since.”3 One reviewer of Psycho said, “Psycho is surely the sickest film ever made. It is also one of the most technically exciting films of recent years, and perhaps an omen.”4 It was an omen. Since Psycho, many violent films have been released, usually in the horror or slasher genre. However, horror and slasher films, although violent, are not technically ultra-violent. UltraPrince, Stephen. Savage Cinema: Sam Peckinpah and the Rise of Ultraviolent Movies. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press,1998. xv.

2 Prince, Savage Cinema, xv.

3 Prince, Stephen. Screening Violence. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001. 6.

4 Callenbach, Ernest. Review of Psycho, by Alfred Hitchcock. Film Quarterly 14 no. 1 (Autumn, 1960): 47–49. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/1211065> (Accessed: 22/09/2009) 1

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violent films represent a specific methodology and philosophy, whereas horror and slasher films containing extended scenes of carnage and graphic death depiction are so excessive that they tend to overload the audience’s psyche to the point of necessary stereotyping: if you have seen one deranged, inbred cannibal, you have seen them all. Successful ultra-violence never overloads the audience or leads to stereotyping; it keeps them engaged, yet horrified by presenting the rare “aesthetic” view of violence.

Aesthetic filmmaking is also commonly misunderstood. Aesthetic violence is improperly interpreted as being, like the horror genre, so filled uccessful ultra with blood that audiences are forced to react, but the violence never proper definition is akin to overloads the Hitchcock’s view of “pure audience or leads cinema.” To Hitchcock, pure cinema consists of “us[ing] to stereotyping the cinematic art to achieve something of a mass emotion” by employing a fiercely technical presentation with every idea, image, and, most importantly, reaction, all planned in advance by the director.5 Aesthetic violence presents a “stylized rendition of violence,”6 by using only the camera and the sound to shock audiences, as opposed to using story, acting, or dialogue. As Alfred Hitchcock said, “If you’ve designed a picture correctly, in terms of its emotional impact, the Japanese audience would scream at the same time as the Indian audience.”7 Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock’s most analyzed movie, is the first mainstream example of aesthetic ultra-violence. In Psycho, the audience follows Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) who is desperately in love, but barred by money problems from living happily ever after. She steals $40,000 and skips town, only to be brutally murdered, in one of the most famous scenes of cinema, by a psychopathic mother at an unassuming motel just off the main highway.

After Marion’s death, Psycho drops the plot of

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Marion’s theft, and instead sympathetically follows the psychopath’s son, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), as he tries to evade the unofficial investigation into the mystery of Marion’s disappearance while protecting his mother. The truth about the psychopathic mother is finally revealed at the end of the film.8 Hitchcock did not shy from depicting violence, and tried to make the violence he showed as realistic as possible by showing it in quick cuts and flashes, called montages.

Montages later became a cinema standard for depicting violence, but in 1960, Hitchcock felt the need to defend his groundbreaking use of montages to depict violence: “If you stand next to a train as it’s speeding through a station, you feel it; it almost knocks you down. But if you look at the same train from a distance of some two miles, you don’t feel anything at all. In the same way, if you’re going to show two men fighting with each other, you’re not going to get very much by simply photographing that fight.…The only way to do it is to get into the fight and make the public feel it.”9

…

Kolker, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho: a Casebook, 20.

Prince, Savage Cinema, 49.

7 Kolker, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho: a Casebook, 164.

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The most famous scene in Psycho, and one that purportedly caused an entire generation of film-goers to develop a phobia of showers, is the stabbing scene in the shower. In this scene, Hitchcock used his signature technique of violent montage to “allow his audience to create what they thought they saw,” without actually having seen any real violence.10 Each cut of the butcher knife that the psychopathic mother uses to stab Marion corresponds to a new “cut” in the montage. Accompanied by the swishing sound of the knife flying through Psycho. DVD. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. 1960; Los Angeles, CA: Universal Studios, 1998.

9 Kolker, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho: a Casebook. 10.

10 Making of Psycho. “Janet Leigh interview.” DVD. Directed by Laurent Bouzereau. 1997; Los Angeles, CA: Universal Studios Home Video, 2005.

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the air and the fleshy sound of Marion’s body being sliced into pieces, the shower scene seems intensely real. This scene is the most arresting in the movie and shows Hitchcock’s true cinematic genius and ability to emotionally involve any audience. Contemporary viewers, hardened by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Exorcist, still cannot help gasping in shock and horror while watching Marion Crane murdered in her shower.

Ultra-violent film does not rest solely on montage violence; it also employs unsettling camera angles, such as the low angles (in addition to extreme close-ups) Hitchcock uses in Psycho during the parlor scene, meant to set the audience on edge during a relatively banal conversation between Norman Bates and Marion Crane. Another commonality of ultraviolent film technique is framing, especially canted frames in which the horizon lines in each shot are slanted to subtly inform the audience that something is wrong.

The judicious use of sound is yet another technical aspect involved in ultra-violent film.

In Psycho, Hitchcock warns his viewers that his characters are facing imminent danger by increasing the background sounds: rainfall and wipers on a car’s windshield, water from a shower head, an increase in the noise of crickets and frogs in a tense outdoor scene. Music is also an intrinsic part of Psycho. The score, written and conducted by Bernard Herrmann, uses a stripped-down, strings-only “orchestra” that is meant to further disorient Hitchcock’s audience by depriving them of diagetic music, or music that comes from a source in the film such as a radio, a television, or a play the characters are watching.11 Herrmann’s score also directs what the audience pays attention to; for instance, when Marion is deliberating at her home about taking the $40,000, the score gets wobbly, as if loose morals are also loosening the music.

It is remarkable that Psycho was as violent as it was, considering the censorship that Hitchcock faced in 1960 when the film was released.

The censorship laws of the 1960s were very restrictive, but the time was right for Hitchcock 11

Kolker, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho: a Casebook, 112.

to push the envelope by releasing a risqué film.

In 1915, free speech rights had been outlawed in film because film was for profit. At that time, all films that were released and distributed in America had to be stamped with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) seal of approval. While the major film companies agreed with the 1915 ruling, by the 1950s major companies were releasing and distributing films without the MPAA’s knowledge. In light of the rampant illegal movie distribution, the Supreme Court granted First Amendment rights to the movie companies in 1952, but imagery and plots were still censored. When Hitchcock produced Psycho, he had to have the movie approved, and several scenes were edited for more acceptable public viewing.12 The MPAA underestimated the American audience though, because 1960s audiences walked out of Psycho “laughing in horror, like on a roller coaster.…They came out with a sense of tremendous enjoyment.

This was a lovely evening they’d had, watching these t is remarkable murders.”13 Some critics found the movie too bloody, that sycho was as describing the psychotic violent as it was mother as “deft at creeping up with a knife and sticking considering the holes into people, drawing censorship that considerable blood,”14 while others said that the film itchcock faced in was “superbly constructed, when the film both shot-by-shot and in the overall organization was released by which the shocks are distributed and built up to.”15 The success of the movie is in the audience’s reaction. As screenwriter Joseph Stefano said, “it never occurred to me that the audience would yell at the screen: ‘don’t go down there!’”16 Taxi Driver, Martin Scorsese’s ultra-violent masterpiece, was heavily influenced by Psycho.

The film, like Psycho, was highly technical,

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Prince, Savage Cinema, 13.

Making of Psycho. “Peggy Robertson interview.”

14 Kolker, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho: a Casebook, 58.

15 Callenbach, Review of Psycho, by Alfred Hitchcock.

16 Making of Psycho. “Joseph Stefano interview.”

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employing the use of montage, angles, framing, and sound to emotionally involve the audience.

Scorsese agrees that the beauty of Taxi Driver is in the technical details: “The exhilaration of the violence at the end of…Taxi Driver— because it is shot a certain way…is also in the creation of that [holocaust] scene in the editing, in the camera moves, in the use of music, and the use of sound effects, and in the movement within the frame of the characters…and that’s where the exhilaration comes in.”17 In Taxi Driver, an isolated and twisted young veteran, Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro) gets a graveyard-shift job as a cab driver in New York City, and as he watches people who live trashy lives on the street, he formulates a plan to kill a senator who is running for president. He fails to assassinate the presidential candidate, and instead decides to save an extremely young prostitute, Iris (Jodie Foster) by shooting his way through her apartment building that serves as a brothel. After his psychotic and maniacal killing spree, Travis is chillingly celebrated as a hero in the news, because he happened to kill a mob boss amongst the carnage.18 Scorsese, like Hitchcock, depicts the violence in Taxi Diver in montage form. During the holocaust scene at the end, in which Travis kills everyone who confronts him, all the shots are quick and correspond with each gunshot.

Scorsese also apes Hitchcock in this scene by interspersing slow motion takes with quick, choppy cuts, which Hitchcock did in the shower scene. The first violent act Travis commits in the film, shooting a burglar who tries to rob a convenience store, is finished by the senseless violence of the store owner beating the dead thief ’s body with a lead pipe. This scene is handled exactly like Hitchcock’s shower scene, Prince, Screening Violence, 27.

Taxi Driver. DVD. Directed by Martin Scorsese.

1976; Culver City, CA: Sony Pictures, 2007.

17 18

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with each hit of the lead pipe accompanied by a cut in the montage; the Taxi Driver scene inside the convenience store is one of Scorsese’s many homages to Hitchcock. The difference between the Taxi Driver montage and the Psycho montage is that while Hitchcock’s murder happens in a sterile atmosphere (the shower), Scorsese’s murder is more tense because it happens on a grimy floor that the audience realizes will not be fully cleaned, which psychologically makes the murder more chilling and realistic.

Although many shots directly echo Hitchcock’s influence on Scorsese, the music that Scorsese uses is even more of an homage.

Scorsese employed Hitchcock’s score composer, Bernard Herrmann, for Taxi Driver, and while the sultry saxophone that Herrmann used in Taxi Driver does not reflect the nerve-shattering strings in Psycho, the lack of diagetic music throughout the movie is disorienting. The most obvious musical reference that is used during Taxi Driver occurs just before the convenience store scene. As Travis is walking into the store, Herrmann plays the exact three-note Norman Bates theme that he used in Psycho. This use of the exact same theme, a sound-print intrinsically linked with Psycho, suggests that Travis Bickle and Norman Bates have a similar off-balance view of the world, and also hints at the danger that both characters represent.19 In contrast to Hitchcock, Scorsese turns off the music completely during scenes of violence, making the violence seem more real and uncomfortable to the audience.

Scorsese is able to get away with a lot more than Hitchcock, due to changes in censorship laws that occurred shortly before Taxi Driver was filmed. After the 1952 Supreme Court ruling that granted free speech to films, while still maintaining that they follow the code of the MPAA created in 1930, there was a brief period in which filmmakers complied with the seeming freedom of the new regulations. However, the regulations soon began to feel like restrictions, and films began to be released that did not follow the MPAA code. By 1966, the code was revised and the content rules from 1930 were 19

Kolker, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho: a Casebook, 116.

dropped and replaced by ten broad guiding principles such as “restraint shall be exercised in portraying the taking of a life.” Violent films that had previously received Mature Audiences Only ratings began to be released on television for the general public.20 To justify this move, the MPAA “asked viewers to reorient themselves with the new styles, aims, and functions of the modern, harder-edged picture.”21 In 1967 violent films such as Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde were released, and that year Time magazine said, “United States movies are now treating once-shocking themes with a maturity and candor unthinkable even six years ago.”22 After the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy in April and June of 1968, filmmakers and the MPAA agreed to briefly tone down the scenes they showed of brutality, but by autumn of 1968 the brutality and violence had returned. On October 7, 1968, the MPAA released an entirely new rating system (the G-M-R-X system, in which all movies follow a specific letter-rating; we follow a revised version of that rating system today), designed to keep children out of violent movies, in response to increased cultural concerns about violence and youth.23 In December 1968, the president of the MPAA defended the freedom it now gave to young and upcoming filmmakers who were “not bound by the conventions of a conformist past.”24 He continued his defense of approving violent films by citing the Vietnam War: “For the first time in the history of this country, people are exposed to instant coverage of a war in progress. When so many movie critics complain about violence on film, I don’t think they realize the impact of thirty minutes on the…newscast—and that’s real violence.”25 Arthur Penn, the director of Bonnie and Clyde, said, “Every night on the news we [see] kids lifted out in body bags, with blood all over the Prince, Savage Cinema, 13.

Prince, Savage Cinema, 14.

22 Prince, Savage Cinema, 16.

23 Prince, Savage Cinema, 26.

24 Prince, Savage Cinema, 14.

25 Prince, Savage Cinema, 25.

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place. Why, suddenly, the cinema [has] to be immaculate, I’ll never know.’’26 In addition to the Vietnam War, Americans were also confronted on a daily basis with other kinds of crime. National street crime rates rose significantly with the advent of the war, and President Richard Nixon’s “lawfter the and-order platform” of assassinations of his 1968 (and 1972) campaigns reflected the artin uther rising rates of homicide, rape, aggravated assault, ing r and obby robbery, and fear. The ennedy filmmakers rising rates of violence in film simply corresponded and the agreed to society’s experience of violence. In a 1968 to briefly tone down poll, a national sample the scenes they showed that eighty-one showed of brutality percent of the country “believed all law and order had broken down,” and fifty-one percent of the country claimed “they would shoot an attacker if personally threatened.”27 Taxi Driver was released in 1976, after the end of the Vietnam War, but still in a time period in which American fears of random, violent acts prevailed. The violence and fear in the film is entirely based on American’s perception of violence in their daily world.

Blood, a major feature of ultra-violent film, was also a prevalent feature of Taxi Driver.

While Psycho was banned from showing fresh blood, Scorsese’s R-rated picture had much looser restrictions that allowed him to not only show fresh blood, but to use the new “squib” technology, invented for Bonnie and Clyde in 1967 to show splattering blood. Squibs are “condoms filled with fake blood, wired to detonate so as to simulate bullet strikes and blood sprays.”28 In the final holocaust scene of Taxi Driver, blood splatters everywhere.

Travis shoots Iris’s pimp to gain entrance to her apartment building, and then shoots off

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fingers and faces, and blows bodies down hallways, all accompanied by copious amounts of blood splatter. Scorsese’s violence was so extreme that his production company became nervous that they would receive an M (mature) rating, and they requested that he cut some of the violence. Scorsese brilliantly compromised he framing in by desaturating the color from the holocaust scene, ulp iction like so that the blood would the framing in axi not be quite so garish river is directly when it splattered, and this is the version that taken from sycho was released.29 Hitchcock had no access to squib technology, and instead purposefully filmed Psycho in black and white so that he could use chocolate sauce for the draining blood in the shower scene; he thought the texture of chocolate sauce was the most realistic representation of blood.30 Quentin Tarantino is the most recent ultra-violent filmmaker. His film, Pulp Fiction, released in 1994, wasn’t his most violent, but it was his most critically acclaimed. Like Scorsese and Hitchcock, Tarantino is a very technical director and uses angles, framing, and sound to enhance the ultra-violent feel of Pulp Fiction.

In Pulp Fiction, three stories intertwine with non-linear timing. The first, and last story, “Pumpkin and Honey Bunny,” follows a trashy couple who only call each other by the nicknames “Pumpkin” (Tim Roth) and “Honey Bunny” (Amanda Plummer). When they decide to pull their next heist at the diner they are in, they pull out their guns and mug everyone in the diner. Between the Pumpkin and Honey Bunny story comes the story of “Vincent Vega and Marcellus Wallace’s Wife,” in which a contract hitman, Vincent Vega (John Travolta), has been ordered to take Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman), the wife of the mob boss that employs him, out for dinner while the mob boss, Marcellus

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Horsley, Jake. American Chaos: from Touch of Evil to The Terminator. Vol. 1 of The Blood Poets, A Cinema of Savagery 1958–1999. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1999, 221.

30 Making of Psycho. “Janet Leigh interview.”

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Wallace (Ving Rhames), is out of town. Mia has a dangerous cocaine habit, and when she snorts Vincent’s heroin, mistaking it for cocaine, she falls into a near-fatal overdose and is saved by Vincent and a needle of adrenaline that “looks like a prop from Moby Dick.”31 The third story, “The Gold Watch,” is sandwiched between both halves of the “Pumpkin and Honey Bunny” story, and both halves of the “Vincent Vega and Marcellus Wallace’s Wife” story. It follows the ultra-violent story of Butch (Bruce Willis), a boxer who kills a man in the ring, steals the mob’s money, and must escape town before he is found and killed.32 Tarantino does not present his violence in a montage form. He wishes, like Hitchcock, to break out of the now-standard, Hitchcockian presentation of violence and present violence in another Hitchcock form: pure cinema.

According to Tarantino, “I was trying to do violence where cinema doesn’t intrude. [The violent scenes] are done in real time. Cinema isn’t coming in and showing you a lot of poppy cuts.”33 In the scene where Mia overdoses, and the ultra-violent scene near the end when Butch and Marcellus are trapped and raped by a sadomasochism gang, all the violence happens in (near) real time. This technique adds to the audience’s discomfort while watching the film, because the standards of filming that had previously been set in place were turned upsidedown, leaving the audience feeling like involved participants in the violent scenes.

Tarantino also uses Hitchcockian angles in Pulp Fiction. He uses high angles to warn of impending danger in otherwise normal scenes, such as the one used in the beginning of the film when Vincent Vega and his partner wait for the elevator in an apartment building that will soon be the scene of a crime. Tarantino’s low angles with close-ups in the diner scene between Pumpkin and Honey Bunny copy Hitchcock’s parlor scene in Psycho. During Mia’s overdose Peary. Quentin Tarantino: Interviews, 71.

Pulp Fiction. DVD. Directed by Quentin Tarantino.

1994; Burbank, CA: Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2002.

33 Bouzereau, Laurent. From Sam Peckinpah to Quentin Tarantino. New York: Citadel Press, 2000, 74.

31 32

scene, Tarantino uses canted frames to the same effect as his predecessors: unsettling the audience. The framing in Pulp Fiction, like the framing in Taxi Driver, is directly taken from Psycho. In the “Vincent Vega and Marcellus Wallace’s Wife” segment, John Travolta drives down a wide Los Angeles street, high on heroin, with framing that looks just like Marion Crane driving towards the inevitable Bates Motel, and Travis Bickle driving through the midnight streets of New York City. In “The Gold Watch” segment, while Butch is running away from Marcellus Wallace, the man he stole money from, he is waiting at a stoplight and Marcellus Wallace walks directly in front of his car. In an homage to the exact same scene (and plot) in Psycho, Marcellus stops in the middle of the road and stares at Butch through the windshield.

This same scene was in Taxi Driver as well, though not as directly copied from Hitchcock.

Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle mistakenly almost hits Iris, while Pulp Fiction’s Butch intentionally hits Marcellus Wallace, throwing Marcellus far across the intersection, covered in blood. Since Butch ran a red light to hit Marcellus, he is now in the path of oncoming traffic, and he gets hit as well, leaving both characters bathed in blood.

Tarantino’s use of sound also refers back to Scorsese and Hitchcock. When danger and violence are imminent for the characters in Pulp Fiction, the soundtrack silences and the background sounds become louder and more ominous, such as the overdubbed clanking that is heard while Vincent’s drug dealer frantically searches through his messy storage room for the shot of adrenaline that will revive Mia from her comatose, overdosed state. As soon as safety returns for the characters, Tarantino uses the Hitchcock technique of returning the music instantly and jarringly. Instead of Hitchcock and Herrmann’s shrill strings, however, Tarantino supplies Pulp Fiction with a loud, non-diegetic, surf music soundtrack.

Tarantino did not face much censorship when he made Pulp Fiction. After the slasher films of the 1970s and the gore fests of the 1980s, blood on screen, even the gratuitous amounts that Tarantino used, did not give him

any higher than an R rating. If his characters had refrained from cursing, Tarantino would probably have received a PG-13 rating for Pulp Fiction. He was able to show “graphic imagery of bodily mutilation,”34 and the prosthetic and latex technology of the 1980s allowed Tarantino to show bullets ripping through flesh and limbs being hacked off, all with dazzling, splattering, squib-enabled blood-spray.35 Like Scorsese, Tarantino’s producers became worried with the amount of violence in Pulp Fiction, but Tarantino rightly pointed out that the most graphic violence was not actually shown in the film, only suggested. When Butch escapes from the gruesome basement of the sadomasochism pawnshop, he goes back to rescue Marcellus and maims, then kills the sadomasochism perpetrators with a sleek katana he finds in the pawnshop. Butch does slice and stab the sadomasochism perpetrators, but the actual contact between katana and flesh happens just outside of the range of the camera’s framing.

Like Hitchcock, Tarantino allowed his audience to see what they wanted to see.

Ultra-violent film has undergone many phases, from the black and white, chocolate syrup-filled Psycho, to the desaturated and squib-laden Taxi Driver, and currently to the super vibrant, latex and blood filled Pulp Fiction. The next logical step for ultra-violence might be three-dimensional films filled with realistic, flying blood, or victim’s screams that are personalized with audience member names.

For the squeamish, this could be the final straw, but for violent movie junkies, this would be heaven.

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Patterns of Suicide among Veterans in New Mexico Naomi Lewis

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ecent studies demonstrate that nationally there are upward of 30,000 suicides per year, causing media reports to focus more attention on the risk of suicide among veterans. With the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) respectively, military members are experiencing longer, more frequent deployments with reduced breaks in between. There is evidence pointing to an increased risk of suicide among this group (Kang & Bullman, 2009; Kaplan, McFarland, & Huguet, 2009). Traditionally, veteran suicide rates have been lower compared to the rates of the US population, thus the observed increase in the risk of suicide among OEF/OIF veterans merits awareness (Kang & Bullman, 2009). Current epidemiologic studies set out to determine any potential increased risk of suicide for veterans by comparing veteran rates to those of the general population (Kang & Bullman, 2009). Though many of these studies did not include women, the few that did illustrated that female veterans are generally at a lower risk of suicide than male veterans, but are at a greatly higher risk than their civilian counterparts (Foster & Vince, 2009). Other studies have demonstrated that OEF/OIF veterans as a whole had a higher risk of suicide, but also considered this difference not to be statistically significant (Kang & Bullman, 2009). Further research on patterns of veteran suicides, including demographics and risk factors such as post-traumatic stress disorder, can aid in suicide prevention programs tailored to the needs of veterans.

Risk Factors General risk factors for suicide include marital/relationship problems, financial difficulties, depression, and alcohol and drug abuse (Pietrzak, Goldstein, Malley, Rivers, Johnson, & Southwick, 2009). In addition, veterans face exposure to combat and acute stress, combat-related injuries, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), and inadequate social support (Pietrzak et al., 2009). Moreover, women veterans are at a high risk to experience military sexual assault and trauma, both increasing the development of PTSD (Martin, 2009). Taken as a whole, veterans had a higher suicide fatality rate compared with non-veterans and were less likely to die of natural or other external origins (Kaplan et al., 2009). When tested, service members score higher on evaluations

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for psychosocial difficulties, stigma, and barriers to care, and lower on resilience and social support (Pietrzak et al., 2009). Suicidal veterans also often have access to lethal means, which is unfortunate because engaging in suicidal behavior with a firearm is almost always fatal (Foster & Vince, 2009; Kaplan et al., 2009).

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder On May 11, 2009, a US Army sergeant shot and killed five servicemen at a military counseling center in Baghdad. To evaluate his mental state, his superiors sent him to a stress clinic where he killed five more people, two of whom were doctors (Sher, 2009). During the course of the Iraq war, this was the deadliest occurrence of soldier-on-soldier violence (Sher, 2009). PTSD is a psychological reaction to trauma and is receiving much attention during the OEF/ o better OIF wars (Tanielian understand patterns & Jaycox, 2008).

Numerous factors can of veteran suicides influence the sensitivity in ew exico a of a person to traumatic quantitative analysis events, which result in the development of data from the of PTSD, depression, and ultimately suicidal ew exico iolent behavior (Tanielian & Jaycox, 2008). Past eath eporting studies demonstrate that ystem was performed people with PTSD tend to develop additional mental disorders, including alcohol abuse and dependency, depression, and panic disorders (Suris, Lind, Kashner, Borman, & Petty, 2004).

The exposure to traumatic events, combat situations such as being shot at or attacked, seeing dead bodies, and/or knowing a casualty of war increases veteransâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; risk for PTSD and other mental disorders (Sher, 2009). Additionally, due to combat medicine enhancements, soldiers are dying less frequently from combat related injuries; however, they are left with physical, psychological, and emotional wounds (Tanielian & Jaycox, 2008). These mental and physical problems/limitations are the basis

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for transitional barriers that veterans face when readjusting to the lives they left behind for so long (Foster & Vince, 2009). Previous research indicates that women are at a higher risk for contracting mental health conditions, specifically PTSD, than their male counterparts and tend to experience longer lasting symptoms (Foster & Vince, 2009). Also, women who have encountered military sexual assault (MSA) are nine times more likely to develop PTSD, regardless of whether they had been in combat (Martin, 2009). Even though female veterans could possibly have an elevated risk for suicide like their male counterparts, very few studies have been conducted on this group (Foster & Vince, 2009; Kaplan et al., 2009). PTSD screenings of all veterans are essential for proper diagnosis and treatment. Existing investigations show that if symptoms are left untreated for a period over three months, PTSD is likely to become chronic and less responsive to treatment (Suris et al., 2004).

Female Veterans In recent years, the numbers of female veterans have drastically increased, and they now make up a considerable amount of the armed forces (Kaplan et al., 2009). This alone demonstrates the need for women to be included in all studies along with males. Along with the other various risk factors of suicide for veterans, women have a higher probability of experiencing MSA and military sexual trauma (MST) (Foster & Vince, 2009; Martin, 2009). Research indicates that MST is widespread and an estimated 20â&#x20AC;&#x201C;48 percent of women have been sexually assaulted and up to 80 percent have been sexually harassed (Foster & Vince, 2009). Like their male counterparts, studies show female veterans between the ages of 18 and 34 as having a 300 percent higher rate of suicide than civilians of the same age (Kaplan et al., 2009). Since women veterans are especially vulnerable to many of the risk factors for suicide, the need for their statistical inclusion in studies pertaining to suicide patterns among veterans is pertinent to initiating effective prevention techniques for all service members.

Method of Suicide Studies reveal that firearms are the most common method of suicide in the US, representing 52 percent of all suicides in 2005 (Kaplan et al., 2009). A review of recent literature demonstrated that firearms were the most common method of suicide among males who were older, white, married, and a veteran (Kaplan et al., 2009). Female decedents who engaged in this method of suicide were also older, white, married, and predominately veterans. To be noted, women have a tendency to engage in more passive methods of suicide such as a drug overdose, whereas men are more likely to use highly lethal methods such as firearms (Kaplan et al., 2009). Other findings included increased firearm use for suicide among older veterans who had suffered an acute crisis in the prior week, possessed health and relationship problems, and were located in regions with a higher rate of firearm accessibility (Kaplan et al., 2009). Comparably, older women who were veterans, were married, were depressed, had had an acute crisis during the previous week, had experienced the death of a family/friend, or had relationship problems used firearms (Kaplan et al., 2009).

Research Methods To better understand patterns of veteran suicides in New Mexico, a quantitative analysis of data from the New Mexico Violent Death Reporting System (NM-VDRS) was performed. NM-VDRS is part of the 18-state National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) organized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to supply standardized data on violent deaths, including homicides and suicides. Three years of data on veteran suicide, from 2005 to 2007, were extracted from NM-VDRS, and consisted of age, sex, risk factors, method of suicide, marital status, and race/ethnicity. The victims’ medical, drug and alcohol histories were also included along with the toxicology reports. Veterans were categorized as either under the age of 50, assuming more recent service, and over the age of 50, allowing comparison between the

two categories. Risk factors were compared by gender, as many previous studies have not focused on the challenges faced by female service members. Categorical variables were analyzed with either chi-square or Fisher exact tests, and continuous variables were analyzed with either t tests or Wilcoxon rank sum tests, depending on the number of cases. P values of 0.05 or less were considered statistically significant.

Results In this study, 254 veteran suicides from 2005 through 2007 were reviewed, with an age range of 19–95 for males and 21–68 for females.

Thirty percent (77 of 254) were under the age of 50 and 5 percent were females (Table 1). When compared to the 2006 race/ethnicity of New Mexico residents, white non-Hispanics (81 percent) were over-represented and American Indians (2 percent) were under-represented in the veteran suicide population (Figures 1 and 2). There was a slight decrease observed in suicides from the year 2005 (80) to 2006 (78) and an increase from then to 2007 (96).

Table 1: Age Demographics (Years) Median Range Under 50 50 and over Gender Male Median age Range Female Median age Range Race/Ethnicity White non-Hispanic White Hispanic American Indian African American

59 19–95 77 (30.3%) 177 (69.7%) 242 (95%) 59 19–95 12 (5%) 47 21–68 205 (81%) 39 (15%) 5 (2%) 5 (2%)

Year 2005 2006 2007

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Figure 1: Race/Ethnicity of New Mexico Veterans Suicides

African American: 2% White non-Hispanic: 81% White Hispanic: 15% American Indian: 2%

Figure 2: Race/Ethnicity of New Mexico Residents

White non-Hispanic: 44% White Hispanic: 43% American Indian: 10% African American: 2%

Post-Mortem Blood Samples Analysis of post-mortem blood samples (Table 2) indicated that alcohol was the most commonly detected substance (30 percent), followed by opiates (14 percent). When examining blood alcohol concentration (BAC) at the time of death, 30 percent of veterans had alcohol present at the time of their death, and 19 percent were over the legal limit for driving (0.08 percent), with 12.6 percent at the â&#x20AC;&#x153;aggravated DWIâ&#x20AC;? level of 0.16 percent or greater (Table 3). Veterans under the age of 50 were significantly more likely to have alcohol (p value <0.0001), amphetamines (p value =0.009), and cocaine (p value =0.004), with females more likely to have amphetamines (0.008) and opiates (p value= 0.006) present at the time of death (Tables 4 and 5).

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Table 2: Alcohol and Drugs Isolated from Post-Mortem Blood Samples Substance Present Not present Not tested for n n (%) n (%) (%) Alcohol

76 (29.9)

155 (61.0)

23 (9.1)

Amphetamines

7 (2.8)

190 (74.8)

57 (22.4)

Antidepressants

22 (8.7)

141 (55.5)

91 (35.8)

Cocaine

5 (2)

193 (76)

56 (22)

Marijuana

1 (0.04)

197 (77.6)

56 (22)

Opiates*

36 (14)

161 (63.4)

57 (22.4)

Other 50 (19.7) 25 (9.8) 179 (70.5) substances** *Includes both prescription opiates (such as hydrocodone) and illicit opiates (such as heroin). **Includes benzodiazepines, carbon monoxide, and over-the-counter drugs.

Table 3: Blood Alcohol Concentrations (BAC) (gm/100 ml) at Time of Death BAC gm/100 ml Number of decedents (%) 0 155 (61.0) .001–0.079 28 (11) 0.08–0.0159 (legally intoxicated) 16 (6.3) 0.16–0.20 7 (2.8) Greater than 0.20 25 (9.8) Not tested 23 (9.1) Table 4: Alcohol and Drugs Isolated from Post-Mortem Blood Samples by Age Substance Veterans under 50 Veterans over 50 p value (n=77) (n=177) Alcohol 36 (47%) 40 (23%) <0.0001 Amphetamines 5 (7%) 2 (1%) 0.009 Cocaine 4 (5%) 1 (0.6%) 0.004 Marijuana 1 (1.3%) 0 0.02 Opiates 12 (16%) 24 (14%) 0.1 Table 5: Alcohol and Drugs Isolated from Post-Mortem Blood Samples by Sex Substance Men (n=242) Women (n=12) p value Alcohol 71 (29%) 5 (42%) 0.64 Amphetamines 5 (2%) 2 (17%) 0.008 Cocaine 4 (2%) 1 (8%) 0.17 Marijuana 1 (0.4%) 0 0.5 Opiates 30 (12%) 6 (50%) 0.006

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Precipitating Circumstances Health problems (47 percent) and depression (43 percent) were found to be the most commonly identified precipitating circumstances for suicide among all veterans (Table 6), with older veterans showing a significantly higher rate of reported medical problems (p value <0.0001) and younger veterans significantly reported job/legal problems (p value <0.001). A significant difference was observed in marital status by age with veterans over 50 more likely to be married (42.3 percent with a p value of 0.0003); 30 percent were widowed, divorced or separated. When analyzing differences by sex, female veterans who committed suicide were significantly younger than male veterans who did so, with the median age for females at 47 compared to 59 for males (p=0.007). Female veterans who committed suicide were more likely to have a history of depression. The female veteran population was more likely to have left a suicide note (75 percent), with a p value of 0.06, approaching statistical significance (Table 7). Additional testing on homelessness and interpersonal violence did not differ between veterans under 50 and over 50 (Table 6). Self-inflicted gunshot wounds (SIGSW) were found to be the most common method of suicide (172/254, 67.7 percent) followed by hanging (27/254, 10.6 percent).

Table 6: Precipitating Circumstances for Veterans by Age Circumstance

Under 50 (n=77)

50 and over (n=177)

p value

Crisis

17 (22%)

22 (12%)

0.06

Depression

31 (40%)

75 (42%)

0.93

Death in Family

7 (9%)

13 (7%)

0.6

Financial Problems

12 (16%)

15 (8.5%)

0.07

Health Problems

12 (16%)

106 (60%)

<0.0001

History of Mental Illness

27 (35%)

48 (27%)

0.13

Homeless

2 (3%)

3 (1.7%)

0.64

Interpersonal violence

0

2 (1.1%)

0.5

Job problems

16 (21%)

9 (5.1%)

<0.001

Legal problems

8 (10.4%)

5 (2.8%)

0.01

Left a suicide note

19 (25%)

58 (33%)

0.25

Table 7: Precipitating Circumstances for Veterans by Sex

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Circumstances

Men (n=242)

Women (n=12)

P Value

Crisis

37 (15%)

2 (17%)

0.3

Depression

102 (42%)

6 (50%)

0.16

Death in Family

21 (9%)

0

0.5

Financial Problems

27 (11%)

0

0.4

Health problems

117 (48%)

6 (50%)

0.05

History of Mental Illness

69 (29%)

6 (50%)

0.05

Homeless

5 (2%)

0

0.6

Interpersonal Violence

0 (0.08%)

0

0.94

Job Problems

25 (10%)

0

0.44

Legal Problems

12 (5%)

1 (8.3%)

0.29

Left a Suicide Note

72 (30%)

6 (50%)

0.06

Discussion This study examined demographic information and risk factors of 254 veteran suicides from 2005 through 2007 in New Mexico. Differences between male and female veterans, as well as younger and older veterans were analyzed.

Several statistically significant differences were noted.

Analysis of post-mortem blood samples demonstrated alcohol to be the most commonly detected substance followed by opiates in veteran suicide cases. When reviewing differences by age and sex, veterans under the age of 50 were significantly more likely to have alcohol, amphetamines, and cocaine, with females more likely to have amphetamines and opiates present at the time of death. Previous studies examined the history of drug and alcohol abuse, but did not report post-mortem toxicology data (Kaplan et al., 2009; Pietrzak et al., 2009).

As to be expected due to differences in life stage by age, veterans 50 and older were more often found to be struggling with health problems and to be married compared to younger veterans. Similar factors have been observed in previous studies (Pietrzak et al., 2009; McFarland & Huguet, 2009).

However, relationship status and precipitating circumstances were analyzed to determine differences between veterans and non-veterans, not age differences. Younger veterans displayed a higher occurrence of job/legal problems, with similar levels of depression as older veterans.

Independent from past research, this study examined differences between male and female veterans. Female veterans who committed suicide were significantly younger than male veterans who did so, and were more likely to have a history of depression. Given the small number of females included in this population, however, these differences will need to be verified by larger scale studies of female veteran suicides. A trend of substance abuse was also observed among this population. Half of the female decedents observed in this study were shown to have left a suicide note.

Previous studies conducted by Kaplan, McFarland, and Huguet (2009) revealed that

firearms are the most common method of suicide, demonstrating widespread firearm usage among veterans who suffered an acute crisis in the week before suicide. In these studies, depression, as well as health and relationship problems were noted as precipitating circumstances, and most precipitating circumstances did not differ significantly between male and female veterans.

Unlike previous studies (Kaplan et al., 2009), females were observed to engage in harder methods of suicide such as hanging or gunshots. Limitations of this study include a lack of data on veteransâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; branch of service and years served. When reviewing autopsy reports, a lack of reporting of health problems by veterans was also detected, and a small female population was noted.

Perhaps this increase in veteran suicides may be due to veterans not receiving adequate support, particularly in the field of mental health treatment and awareness. Throughout this study, there were only a few decedents who were diagnosed with PTSD. Out of these few, none were seen to have had any treatment noted in their medical history. For veterans it can be extremely difficult to overcome the stigma of asking for help; therefore, the military and healthcare professionals should take the necessary steps to screen returning military for any kind of mental health problems on a longterm basis, along with providing in-person pre and post-deployment trainings with an emphasis on suicide prevention and support.

Future research should expand upon these results, using a broader range of years including a larger female population, more data on branch of service, and more data on years served for each veteran. An analysis of military suicide prevention trainings and techniques, as well as pre and post-deployment briefings are also necessary to have a better understanding of what is being done to prevent suicide ideations within the veteran community.

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References Foster, L. K., & Vince, S. (2009). Californiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s women veterans: The challenges and needs of those who served. Sacramento, CA: California Research Bureau.

Kang, H. K., & Bullman, T. A. (2009). Is there an epidemic of suicide among current and former U.S. military personnel? AEP, 19(10), 757-60. Retrieved from http:// www.aep.org.uk/ Kaplan, M. S., McFarland, B. H., & Huguet, N. (2009, September). Characteristics of adult male and female firearm suicide decedents: Findings from the National Violent Death Reporting System. Injury Prevention, 15, 322-27. Retrieved from injuryprevention.bmj.com Kaplan, M. S., McFarland, B. H., & Huguet, N. (2009, October). Firearm suicide among veterans in the general population: Findings from the National Violent Death Reporting System. The Journal of TRAUMA Injury, Infection, and Critical Care, 67(3), 503-07. Retrieved from http:// journals.lww.com/jtrauma/pages/default. aspx Martin, C. E. (2009). The combat within: Female veterans and PTSD benefits [Supplemental material]. The American Prospect. Retrieved from http://www. prospect.org/ Pietrzak, R. H., Goldstein, M. B., Malley, J. C., Rivers, A. J., Johnson, D. C., & Southwick, S. M. (2008). Risk and protective factors associated with suicidal ideation in veterans of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom.

Journal of Affective Disorders, 123, 102107. Retrieved from http://www.jadjournal.com/ Suris, A., Lind, L., Kashner, T. M., Borman, P. D., & Petty, F. (2004). Sexual assault in women veterans: An examination of 32 | Best Student Essays

PTSD risk, health care utilization, and cost of care. Psychosomatic Medicine, 66, 749-56. Retrieved from http://www. psychosomaticmedicine.org/ Tanielian, T. L., & Jaycox, L. H. (2008).

Invisible wounds of war: Psychological and cognitive injuries, their consequences, and services to assist recovery. Retrieved from http://pzweb.harvard.edu/sumit/

Determining Status of Ancient Maya from Looted and Sacrificial Contexts C.L. Kieffer

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any research questions formulated about an ancient civilization revolve around themes of group dynamics, politics, religion, economic systems, resource distribution, and exchange networks. Before any of these questions can be addressed, it is important to understand the roles that individuals within the civilization have and how their actions impact these topics. It is for this reason archaeologists study status and ranking through material remains. However, determining the status of an ancient Maya individual exemplifies the difficulty that can occur in interpreting status. Archaeologically, the use of grave goods has been used cross culturally to identify an individualâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s status. However, this approach is limited to specific burial conditions. It is axiomatic that attempts to determine status based on burial furniture will be severely limited where looting has occurred and in cases of sacrifice where no looting has occurred, yet grave goods were never present. In instances when bone fails to preserve due to taphonomic processes, teeth have an increased chance of survival in the archaeological record due to their tightly woven crystalline matrix. This makes teeth an excellent source for data in the Maya area, at surface and subterranean cave sites. The site of Midnight Terror Cave in the Cayo District of Western Belize is one specific example of a site where sacrifice, looting, and taphonomic processes may have contributed to a loss of data regarding status.

In cases like these, dental pathology and modification may be useful in determining status, due to different diets between elites and commoners in the Maya area. This possibility is hampered by limited studies for comparison, and the fact that diet is not stationary over time and space (Scherer et al. 2007). Due to climate changes and periods of extended drought in the Terminal Classic period, nutritional stresses may have been felt by all levels of society in certain areas that were not equipped with a greater variety of natural resources, whereas areas with marine and riverine resources may not be affected to the same extent as areas forced to live predominately off agriculture. Therefore, in order to determine the status of individuals found within Midnight Terror Cave, the dental paleopathology of individuals will be compared to those from other documented sites in the Maya area.

Maya Dental Pathology and Modification Enamel hypoplasia is a â&#x20AC;&#x153;deficiency in enamel thickness due to disruption of ameloblast activityâ&#x20AC;?

(Goodman et al. 1980). The defect can be found in association with infectious diseases such as congenital syphilis and tuberculosis, nutritional deficiencies, along with endocrine and metabolic

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disorders (Ortner 2003:595–596). This association with different infectious diseases, deficiencies, and disorders does not give paleopathologists correlation of causation.

Given that numerous other factors have also been found to have associations with this dental defect, the causation must be something that is produced or a reaction that occurs due to these conditions. It is believed that the stress that the body undergoes at these moments of poor health is what triggers the ameloblast activity to cease, thus leaving linear indentations on the surface of the enamel (Wright 2006:161–162).

In addition, the stress the body is under can cause disruption of hormone production in the pituitary-adrenal cortical axis and sympatheticadrenal medullary axis (Selye 1971) which is necessary for proper production of calcium.

When this stress persists for a long enough period of time during the formation of the tooth, a linear defect is formed, while repetitious periods of prolonged stress cause multiple serial linear defects in the deposition of enamel.

This stress is more likely to affect the anterior teeth due to a lower critical threshold during the formation process (Goodman and Rose

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1990). Since enamel is unaltered by subsequent nutrition and does not have the capability of future growth (Blakely et al. 1994:371; Hillson 1986:129), it can be seen in the archaeological record.

Among the Maya, enamel hypoplasia is a frequently documented pathological condition.

However, many researchers have expressed some difficulty in calculating the extent of the pathological condition because preservation and cultural modifications conducted by the Maya have made it difficult to get accurate percentages. Wright’s (2006:165) study documents the difficulty in calculating enamel hypoplasia due to post-mortem tooth loss, calculus, and dental modification. Due to these factors she was only able to document the presence of enamel hypoplasia in 59 percent of the teeth she analyzed from the Pasión Maya area, and estimated actual rates to be much higher. Wright was also able to determine that maxillary central incisors and mandibular canines are more likely to show lesions (Wright 2006:163). Interestingly, Saul (1973:319) reports the exact same percentage of lesions at Altar de Sacrificios (59 percent, n=63), while

the percentage at Seibal is significantly higher (80 percent, n=45). It is important to note once again that not all areas were affected equally through time. Saul (1973:319) indicates that the frequency of enamel hypoplasia at Altar de Sacrificos and Seibal remained constant through time in adults.

The patterns of enamel hypoplasia are not constant through time and space among the Maya. Interestingly, the lower second molars and upper second molars showed reduced indications of stress during the Terminal Classic, and it becomes more common (with the Pasión Maya in particular) for the second lower incisors and lower first premolar to be affected by this growth arrest during this time when compared to the Late Classic period data (Wright 2006:167–168). This indicates that severe stresses become more focused at a younger age (around four years of age) than in the Late Classic sample. This is the same age that was suggested by Saul (1973) decades earlier, and he proposed the same causality as Wright has proposed. However, Wright (2006:162, 171) suggests that weaning is downplayed as an explanation for enamel hypoplasia and proposes that it may be caused by reduced weaning age, reduced post-weaning morbidity, or possibly due to an improved food supply. Her first speculation is more accurate than the latter two. Given the droughts that have been well documented throughout the Maya area during the Terminal Classic, it is unlikely that an improved food supply would suddenly become available. If anything, mothers may have been under enough stress themselves, and were unable to continue wasting their caloric needs on milk production. This action of lowering the weaning age would have increased post-weaning morbidity due to the reduction in antibodies from the mother and the earlier exposure to possibly contaminated water sources.

Dental caries form when acid-producing bacteria in dental plaque destroy the enamel, dentine, and eventually the cement of the tooth (Hillson 1996:255, 269). Over time the formation of caries can progress if they are not taken care of. They can develop into pulpitis,

periapical periodontitis, periapical abcess, and in more severe cases can eventually result in septicemia and death. Multiple factors play a role in the formation and development of dental caries. Newbrun (1982) notes that the three causes for caries are dependent upon the host (saliva and teeth), presence or absence of plaque, and the individual’s diet. Further research on the topic is more specific in defining the multitude of factors that contribute to the rate of caries production, which include saliva pH, plaque flora, and diet (including the quantity of fluorine) (Hillson 1996:275–279).

The more acidic an individual’s saliva, the more likely he or she is to get caries. A change in diet can quickly change the pH in an individual’s mouth. For instance the consumption of more sugary, starchy, or glycol-protein rich diet can interact with bacteria cell walls and plaque to increase the quantity of acid production (Hillson 1996:255). This change in diet is most evident cross culturally in the archaeological record with the introduction of agriculture which drastically increases the rates of caries (Larsen 1995; Larsen et al. 1991; Lukacs 1992; Ettinger 1999). However, this increased production of acid can be counterbalanced with the excretion of alkaline waste by other bacteria.

The presence, absence, or activity level of any mong the aya of these acid producing enamel hypoplasia bacteria is dependent upon the immune is a frequently system’s acquired and documented innate ability to defend against microorganisms pathological (Hillson 1996:260).

The only contributing condition factor that is not part of a potentially well-balanced system is the direct contribution hormones have in the formation of caries. Studies have demonstrated that an increase in estrogen changes thyroid activity, which then reduces the rate of saliva production. This decrease in saliva production decreases the protection of tooth enamel and increases the rate of caries (Delman 1955; Muhler and Shafer 1955). Hormones alone do

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not contribute to the increased rates of caries that women experience. Lukas and Largaespada (2006:541) indicate there are additional factors that increase caries rates in women such as an earlier tooth eruption, hormone changes that come about due to pregnancy, and snacking on food during meal preparation (Larsen et al.

1991).

Furthermore, dental caries are an excellent indication of diet and thus an indirect proxy for status in the Maya area due to the commonerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reliance on a more gritty maize diet while the elite have greater access to softer foods like meat.

This is supported by archaeological evidence from Calakmul, DzibanchĂŠ, and Kohunlich in the PetĂŠn area of Mexico. There Cucina and Tiesler (2003) analyzed 62 individuals who were from he modification low status (N=30), high status (N=19), and problematic of teeth is well contexts (such as caches and documented isolated deposits) which they throughout the classified as low status. When sexes were grouped together; aya area the lower status individuals had a higher rate of caries than the elites (Cucina and Tiesler 2003:6).

The fact that the rate of caries is more related to socioeconomic factors such as diet and status is further indicated by the lack of correlation between age and sex with antemortem tooth loss (Cucina and Tiesler 2003:1).

Since diet can affect the rate of caries, location and access to ecological resources matter. This is demonstrated with coastal sites that have the lowest incident of caries (Seidemann and McKillop 2007:308), while the highest frequencies of caries come from individuals in the Maya lowlands (Seidemann and McKillop 2007:309). This would be expected given the increase in aquatic meat resources that would lower the incidence of caries for coastal communities. The rate of caries also changes through time in the Maya area. During the Terminal Classic there was a documented reduction in the frequency of caries due to a decline in maize production at that time (Seidemann and McKillop 2007:308).

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Numerous sites have documented this change in incidence of caries through time. At Wild Cane Cay a 14.3 percent frequency of caries has been documented for the Protoclassic period, 11.1 percent for the Early Classic, and 28.5 percent in the Late to Terminal Classic. These data create the appearance of a fluctuating level of incidence with the Terminal Classic at the highest level. It would be suspected that the rates for the Middle Classic period at that site if they exist would be somewhat higher than those for the Terminal Classic due to the spike in maize production at that time.

Some archaeologists have argued that temporal variations of caries are due to changes in corn preparation at different sites through time. It is likely that not all sites switched over to the new method of alkali processing, which mixes corn with lime and removes phytate from the corn (Seidemann and McKillop 2007:310).

This change in corn processing reduced the calculus formation and thus increased the rate of caries. Maggenis (1999) suggests that this change occurred in the Late to Terminal Classic based on information at Kichpanha, Belize, while White and Schwatcz (1989:466) argue that this change occurred in the Postclassic based on lime-lined ceramic vessels and isotopic levels discovered at Lamanai, Belize.

Due to the potential progression of caries developing into alveolar abscesses, it is possible to also correlate abscesses to status to a certain degree. Alveolar abscesses do not have a constant distribution across the Maya area. At Colha 30 percent of the population was affected by dental abscesses (Massey and Steele 1997) as compared to the 13.3 percent at Altar de Sacrificios (Saul 1972), 5.3 percent at Fighting Conch Mound (Seidemann and McKillop 2007), while only 4.2 percent affected at Cuello (Saul and Saul 1997). It is important to note that these percentages may be skewed by the classification of reabsorbed teeth in the populations as alveolar abscesses. While abscesses can lead to tooth loss, other factors can also contribute to antemortem tooth loss. Cucina and Tiesler (2003:8) indicate that in cases where little to no tooth wear is evident, it is likely they subsisted on softer foods

that caused little need for forceful bites and over time this may have contributed to tooth loss. It may be due to these reasons that Storey’s (1999) study of Copán elite showed evidence that 35– 57 percent of the females and 27–33 percent of the males had abscesses. Yet according to Cucina and Tiesler (2003:2), the Copán elite had less caries, which was used as an indication that they had greater access to protein.

The modification of teeth is well documented throughout the Maya area. The extent of modification warranted the creation of classification systems by Romero (1958, 1970) and Rubín de la Borbolla (1940).

There has been some debate as to the use of dental modification as an indication of elite status. Many archaeologists have speculated that the decorative nature of the inlays and probable signaling to lower class individuals involved with this modification is an indication of elite status (Romero 1958; Smith 1972; Becker 1973). These speculations were supported by Williams and White (2006) who conducted a detailed analysis of the Lamanai, Belize collection with site provenience and isotopic data.

The study demonstrated that individuals buried in larger ceremonial structures, presumably elite individuals, had more dental modifications than those that were not buried in such structures. Tiesler’s (1999) study of modification at 94 sites throughout the Maya area indicates a higher occurrence of this practice among women (65.81 percent) compared to males (58.02 percent), and that presence or absence of modification does not indicate social status. Tiesler did however notice a correlation at Copán between style of decoration (Ik and E shaped designs) and social status.

Pathology and Modification at Midnight Terror Cave Of all the pathological conditions at Midnight Terror Cave, dental pathologies are the most numerous. An almost complete mandible fragment had three caries: one on the right first molar’s lingual surface, a smaller caries located

on the right second first molar on the buccal surface, and a caries with perimortem chipping on the left first molar’s lingual surface. Another mandible fragment shows the transition from caries to abscesses with caries on both canines, reabsorbed central incisors, and multiple abscesses. Another probable abscess is located on a maxilla fragment over the left canine; however, calcium carbonate build-up on all surfaces and post-mortem loss of numerous teeth prevent further dental analysis. The most extensive dental abscess in the collection is located on a mandible, possibly belonging to a male based on morphology. On this individual the abscess is centered over the left first molar’s

Operation V

anterior buccal root and is causing full exposure of that aspect of the root. During the 2010 field season numerous smaller fragments (including teeth) have been recovered from Operation V (see diagram) than previous seasons. This is due to the fluvial context which allows smaller bones and teeth to settle into the deeper layers of sediment. Based on this taphonomic phenomenon and preliminary lab analysis, the quantity of caries and abscesses is expected to increase dramatically for the site after further analysis.

Interestingly, even with all of this dental pathology the site has indications of elite dental morphology in the same area. Two probably male craniums that were cemented in place by calcium carbonate have dental modification in the form of filing. One individual has modification only to his first upper incisors, Best Student Essays | 37

while the other individual had modification to all his incisors. The design of the incisors would fall under C3 (the Ik design) or C6 according to Romero Molinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (1986:11) classification system. Sadly verification cannot be confirmed due to looting of the skulls that occurred between the 2009 and 2010 field seasons. The classification of other modifications discovered at the site include styles A2, B2, C3, C6, F3, and an undocumented variation of D10 that has horizontal rather than diagonal incisions. More important than the presence of the Ik design is the fact that a majority of the modified teeth have calculus, which indicates that the individuals had access to a diet rich in protein. Numerous other teeth have been noted throughout the site to be in excellent condition with little indication of wear, further suggesting a diet that is not as abrasive and possibly lower in corn and other processed foods. The only other indication of calculus that has been documented at the site is in Operation VI Lot 3E, located in the chamber northeast and adjacent to Operation V. There, a mandible with significant post-mortem tooth loss is cemented into calcium carbonate and has calculus at the cementum enamel joint continuing up a third of the right canine and first premolar.

This calculus formation is more indicative of a diet rich in protein than one of starchy maize (Lieverse 1999), indicating a possible elite individual with greater access to dietary variety. It should be noted that this mandible was discovered in a lot with at least four individuals covered in a red pigment, possibly ocher or cinnabar. The only burial goods discovered in this room were a shell tinkler, a fragment of a stone pendant, and three shell beads. Considering this area was looted prior to analysis, it may be possible that this deposit of human remains contained more decorative grave goods and is comingled due to previous human disturbance.

Conclusions The evidence for dental pathology and dental modification indicates the possible presence of elite and commoners. As Hillson (1996:280) 38 | Best Student Essays

notes, statistical analysis on caries in situations where teeth are missing can be difficult. Since half of the teeth from Midnight Terror Cave were discovered loose and not associated with a maxilla or mandible, no statistical analysis was attempted. Even without statistical analysis, it is obvious that there are two very distinct groups of dentition. One group consists of the very healthy individuals with little to no wear and dental modification, while the other group contains individuals with caries and abscess.

Evidence presented here indicates that pathological conditions alone suggest the presence of both elite and commoners at Midnight Terror Cave, although at this time, it cannot be determined if these elite individuals are local or outsiders that were captured through warfare. Midnight Terror Cave is similar to other sacrificial contexts within the Maya area that have adults and children as well as males and females. Although these sites have documented the sacrifice of either commoners or elite, there is no evidence at this time indicating that any one context had sacrificial victims consisting of commoners and elite prior to the present study.

Since environmental conditions change over time and thus impact health, this deposit may just indicate a change in the populationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s health rather than a change in preference of sacrificial victims. This suggests that pathology alone may not be an ideal indicator of status for burial or sacrificial contexts.

References Cited: Becker, Marshall J. 1973 Archaeological Evidence for Occupational Specialization among the Classic Period Maya at Tikal, Guatemala. American Antiquity 38:396–406.

Blakely, M. L., T. E. Leslie, and J. P. Reidy 1994 Frequency and Chronological Distribution of Dental Enamel Hypoplasia in Enslaved African Americans: A Test of the Weaning Hypothesis. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 95:371–383.

Cucina, Andrea, and Vera Tiesler 2003 Dental Caries and Antemortem Tooth Loss in the Northern Peten Area, Mexico: A Biocultural Perspective on Social Status Differences Among the Classic Maya. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 122:1–10.

Delman, L. A. 1955 Effect of Gonadectomy on Dental Caries: Review of the Literature.

Journal of American Dental Association 51:155–158.

Ettinger, R. L. 1999 Epidemiology of Dental Caries.

Dent Clin North Am 43:679–695.

Goodman, Alan H., George J. Armelagos, and Jerome C. Rose 1980 Enamel Hypoplasias as Indicators of Stress in Three Prehistoric Populations from Illinois. Human Biology 52(3):515–528.

Goodman, A. H. and J. C. Rose 1991 Dental Enamel Hypoplasia as Indicators of Nutritional Status. In Advances in Dental Anthropology, edited by M. A. Kelly and C. S. Larson, pp. 279–293. Wiley-Liss, New York.

Hillson, Simon 1986 Teeth. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1996 Dental Anthropology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Larsen, C. S., R. Shavit, and M. C. Griffin 1991 Dental Caries Evidence for Dietary Change: An Archaeological Context.

In Advances in Dental Anthropology, edited by M. A. Kelley, and C. S. Larsen, pp 179–202. Wiley-Liss, NY. Larsen, C. S. 1995. Biological Changes in Human Populations with Agriculture. Annual Review of Anthropology 24:185–213.

Lieverse, Angela R. 1999 Diet and the Aetiology of Dental Calculus. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 9:219–232.

Lukacs, J. R. 1992 Dental Paleopathology and Agricultural Intensification in South Asia: New Evidence from Bronze Age Harappa. American Journal of Phys Anthropology 87:133–150.

Lukacs, John R. and Leah L. Largaespada 2006 Explaining Sex Differences in Dental Caries Prevalence: Saliva, Hormones, and “Life History” Etiologies. Journal of Human Biology 18:540–555.

Magennis, Ann L. 1999 Dietary Change of the Lowland Maya Site of Kichpanha, Belize. In Reconstructing Ancient Maya Diet, edited by Christine D. White, pp.

133–150. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Massey, Virginia K. and D. Gentry Steele 1997 A Maya Skull Pit from the Terminal Classic Period, Colha, Belize. In Bones of the Maya: Studies of Ancient Best Student Essays | 39

Skeletons, edited by Stephen L. Whittington and David M. Reed, pp.

62–77. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C. Muhler, J. D. and W. G. Shafer 1955 Experimental Dental Caries VII. Journal of Dental Research 34:661– 665.

Newbrun, E. 1982 Sugar and Dental Caries: A Review of Human Studies. Science 217:418– 423.

Ortner, Donald J. 2003 Identification of Pathological Conditions in Human Skeletal Remains. Second edition. Academic Press, San Diego, California.

Romero, Javier 1958 Mutilaciones Dentarias Prehispánicas en México y América en General. Serie Investigaciones 3. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.

1970 Dental Mutilation, Trephination and Cranial Deformation. In Physical Anthropology, edited by Thomas D. Stewart, pp. 50–67. University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas.

Romero Molina, Javier 1986 Catálogo de la Colección de Dientes Mutilados Prehispánicos IV Parte.

Colección Fuentes Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.

Rubín de la Borbolla, Daniel F. 1940 Types of Tooth Mutilation Found in Mexico. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 26:349–365.

Saul, Frank P. 1973 Disease in the Maya Area: The PreColumbian Evidence. In The Classic Maya Collapse, edited by T. Patrick

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Culbert, pp. 301–324. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Saul, Julie M., and Frank P. Saul 1997 The Preclassic Skeletons from Cuello. In Bones of the Maya: Studies of Ancient Skeletons, edited by Stephen L. Whittington and David M. Reed, pp. 28–50. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Selye, H 1971 The Evaluation of the Stress Concept – Stress and Cardiovascular Disease. In Society, Stress and Disease, edited by L. Levi, pp. 299–311.

Oxford University Press, London.

Scherer, Andrew K., Lori E. Wright, and Cassady J. Yoder 2007 Bioarchaeological Evidence for Social and Temporal Differences in Diet at Piedras Negras, Guatemala.

Latin American Antiquity 18(1):85– 104.

Seidemann, Ryan M., and Heather McKillop 2007 Dental Indicators of Diet and Health for the Postclassic Coastal Maya on Wild Cave Cay, Belize.

Ancient Mesoamerica 18:303–313.

Smith, A. Ledyard 1972 Dental Decoration. In Excavations at Altar de Sacrificios: Architecture, Settlement, Burials and Caches, edited

by A. Ledyard Smith, pp. 222–229.

Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology Vol. 62 No. 2. Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Storey, Rebecca 1999 Late Classic Nutrition and Skeletal Indicators at Copán, Honduras. In Reconstructing Ancient Maya Diet, edited by Christine D. White, pp.169–179. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Tiesler, Vera 1999 Head Shaping and Dental Decoration Among the Ancient Maya: Archaeological and Cultural Aspects Paper presented at the 64 Meeting of the Society of American Archeology, Chicago, Illinois.

White, Christine D. and Henry P. Schwarcz 1989 Ancient Maya Diet: As Inferred from Isotopic and Elemental Analysis of Bone. Journal of Archaeological Science 16:451–474.

Williams, Jocelyn S. and Christine D. White 2006 Dental Modification in the Postclassic Population from Lamanai, Belize. Ancient Mesoamerica 17:139– 151.

Wright, Lori E. 2006 Diet, Health, and Status among the Pasión Maya: A Reappraisal of the Collapse. Vanderbilt Institute of Mesoamerican Archaeological Series Vol. 2. Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville, Tennessee.

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F R I DAY N I G H T F I G H T S

By Ryan Garcia

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Faulty Source Monitoring and Its Contribution to an Accidental By-Product Theory of Religiosity Joseph Lamendola

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eligion and superstitious beliefs are so pan-human and intensively utilized by so many cultures, that people’s propensity to believe in something supernatural must be a component of our biology.

But how? How can a cultural practice be connected to human genetics? As with any physical trait or psychological capacity inherent in a creature, this human propensity to believe in the supernatural, termed religiosity, is subject to natural selection and, after sufficient time, must have had some reason to evolve the way it has. Many theories, from environmental, to sociological, to psychological, have been proposed to map out and explain the development of religiosity. In this paper, I will explain how the emergence of religiosity may have originated accidentally, as a by-product of other psychological mechanisms interacting simultaneously within the evolving human brain.

The emergence of the human race as the dominant species on the planet is due to the development of nature’s most complicated apparatus: the human brain. Distinct from any other animal, humans’ cognitive ability is unmatched. Given the human ability to abstract imaginary worlds and intangible concepts, why would such a complex yet seemingly superfluous capability emerge as a product of evolution? In 1975, Nicholas Humphrey suggested that the evolution of self-awareness in humans may have been the foundation of an adaptive strategy which provides means to speculate about the motives and intentions of others. Due to the social nature of groups of humans and pre-humans, the ability to deal and bargain with other members of one’s social group would be an invaluable skill and a trait very highly selected for. We use this ability daily to infer the thoughts of others and predict what choices they may make (Budiansky 1998). Not only would effective deal-making provide an individual with bartered resources and protection agreements with fellow group members, it would also potentially afford more mating opportunities in the form of negotiation with a bride’s family or by good-old-fashioned persuasion. It is this increased likelihood of lifetime reproductive success (staying alive and staying healthy enough to sire children) that keeps the ability to bargain a trait passed down and disseminated through the human gene pool, promoting the fitness of those individuals who inherit it.

Human intelligence, however, was not developed solely for its uses in social navigation. Powerful intellectual capacities also evolved as tools used to ensure survival. Intelligence is measured by the manifestation of many capacities including, but not limited to speed of learning, retrieval of

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memory, decision making, problem solving, communication, concept formation, and the use of tools (Sternberg 2000). The general abilities to make quick decisions that effectively solve problems and to remember the consequences of previous attempts to find a solution are skills that undeniably promote an animal’s fitness.

This capability has been so highly evolved in humans and so successful that these mental processes have been employed far beyond the domain of survival related decisions.

The brain tackles problems by using several different unconscious strategies. For the sake of the context, the two that will be focused on in this paper are algorithms and heuristics. An algorithm, by definition, is a he emergence of step-by-step procedure that is guaranteed (eventually) the human race as to produce a solution the dominant species (Kassin 2001). An example of an applied algorithm is on the planet is due when someone goes to a supermarket looking for a to the development particular item, but looks for it by systematically looking of nature s most through every item on every complicated shelf in every section. While exhausting, this strategy apparatus the would guarantee a result human brain every time. Unfortunately, with reliability comes the tradeoff of sacrificing speed and efficiency. Also, an algorithm may not be available in a certain circumstance. On the other hand, heuristics are rules of thumb that act as a shortcut to a solution that is usually correct, such as our grocery shopper looking for the carrots by going to the vegetable section first. Heuristic rules are generally based on previously successful attempts from successfully utilized algorithms.

Heuristics are very important to the decisionmaking process because they can save an enormous amount of time, providing a quicker response to challenges. Oddly enough, since an individual cannot be certain that a correct answer will be found via use of a heuristic, the individual can only rely on the established likelihood of its success.

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Now that we have introduced the concepts of using rules to solve problems and how one relies on the likelihood of said rules working, I would now like to shift to the subject of causality. In his book Reasoning and Logic, Richard Angell notes that “[an] understanding of the causes and explanations of natural events is generally considered more valuable for human progress than mere knowledge of specific facts or descriptive regularities” (1964).

Philosopher David Hume devoted much of his studies to the workings of causal explanations and held that a human being’s conclusions about fact in the world beyond his or her direct experience are founded on the relation of cause and effect (1964). Philosophically speaking, to say that one causes another, Hume puts forth three requisites. The first is that the cause and effect occur contiguously (or close together) in both space and time. The second is that the cause always precedes the event in time. Finally, the cause and effect must always be found in constant conjunction with each other (1964).

It is important to note that each of these requirements is determined by observation.

We reliably have only the evidence provided by our senses. The same holds true for all causal judgments. Even after we get a concept of cause, we never find any basis other than experience for those judgments (Merril 2008). While this topic may seem extraneous, the human understanding of causality plays a major role in one’s supernatural assumptions, which will be tied in later.

Logically, causality constitutes an “If P, then Q” statement. Should P cause Q, it can be safely stated that if cause P occurs, effect Q will follow. Normally it is considered a logical fallacy to apply this principle in reverse (Q happened, therefore P caused it), since effect Q could have more than one cause. However, in our daily lives, this assumption is made constantly. An essential part of the process by which problems are solved is what is known as the inductive leap. This refers to that activity of the mind by which one goes from a few instances of the same kind that have been observed to a general principle that governs all instances of the same

kind (Patterson 1937). Although not concrete, conclusions derived via induction are generally reliable when the leap does not overstretch the evidence gathered.

There is a fundamental flaw within the process of induction itself. Due to its nature, even a single contradictory observation is enough to disprove fact and dismantle a theory.

However, empirical facts must be treated as statistical likelihoods. Correlating evidence only increases the probability of that outcome recurring, since one does not have direct insight into the future. Knowing an empirical fact via observing cause and effect is merely one’s belief and conviction in a highly probable outcome; the mind has been, as Hume put it, habituated and accustomed to expect the results (Johnston 2009). However, relying on nothing but the probability of outcomes is implausible for every causal relation in everyday life, so loose generalizations are common (Schaeken, Schroyens, Vandierendonk, d’Ydewalle 2007).

Unconsciously, people continuously make assumptions regarding the likelihoods of outcomes based on rules created from successful prior heuristics.

Intelligent animals are instinctively driven to fill in the blanks of these causal scenarios with inductive leaps, due to the inherent danger of variables left unaccounted for. Justification supporting this instinctual drive is easy to posit in the context of survival. Take, for instance, an animal finding the fresh tracks of its natural predator. The prey able to make the assumption that the predator is around and is the cause of those tracks are going to be the ones most likely to stay vigilant or run away to a different area and avoid bumping into said predator. By this example, a rather simple inductive leap directly promotes fitness.

The assumptions made in the animal kingdom as explained above are collectively called the agent detection mechanism and are a crucial component of the theory presented here. Most, if not all animals have developed this instinctual response to certain types of stimuli to avoid falling prey to other dangerous creatures. Daniel Dennett, in his 2006 book

entitled Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, elaborates on the application of this mechanism: More mobile animals…tend to have the ability to divide detected motion into the banal (the rustling of the leaves, the swaying of the seaweed) and the potentially vital: the animate motion of another agent, another animal with a mind who might be a predator, or a prey, or a mate, or a rival (con specific). This makes economic sense, of course.

If you startle at every motion you detect, you’ll never find supper, and if you don’t startle at the dangerous motions, you’ll soon be somebody else’s supper.

This is another Good Trick, an evolutionary innovation—like eyesight itself, or flight—that is so useful to so many different ways of life that it evolves over and over again in many different species.

The evolutionary development of this agent detection mechanism has been vital to the survival of nearly every species. For predators, this device allows for more effective hunting and less expenditure of energy, so as not to attack every wind-rustled bush or drip of water.

Conversely, this same mechanism allows for prey to avoid the claws and jaws of predators on the prowl. This characteristic would be disseminated throughout the species’ gene pool should it positively impact an individual’s lifetime reproductive success, with its immediate survival obviously included. The “fittest” creature is the one that has the most well adapted traits, and their greater average lifetime reproductive value, dubbed Natural Selection, leads to the improvement of each creature (Darwin 1872).

Agent detection is reflexive and inescapable for most advanced creatures, humans especially.

It is so effective that it functions seamlessly within our consciousness, remaining always Best Student Essays | 51

switched on in the background of our awareness (MacNeil 2006). This ever-present readiness is an excellent characteristic for the constantly threatened animals of our ancient evolutionary environment, but now, in most modern societies, this mechanism is seldom used for its evolved purpose of detecting predators in the bush.

The agent detection mechanism is utilized so widely that it tends to be overused by the unconscious. Humans have an inborn tendency to construct meaningful perceptions from fragments of sensory input (Kassin 2001). With more rapid responses to stimuli being more valuable attern recognition to the probability of survival than slower a fundamental aspect responses, this resulted in “the system being of intelligence is trip wired to respond to fragmentary information also an automatic under conditions of process of the uncertainty, inciting figures in the clouds, unconscious mind voices on the wind, lurking movements in the leaves and emotions among interacting dots on a computer screen” (Atran 2002). As a by-product, the mechanism designed to keep us safe yields many “cheap” false positives, to avoid the dangerous and costly false negatives (Watson 2009). These false positives are very necessary, seeing as how the phrase “better safe than sorry” could not be applied to a more apt circumstance than survival. This automatic association of certain undefined stimuli to the possibility of an agent as the cause of the observed effect was highly effective for individuals, but created a very odd side effect.

Pattern recognition, a fundamental aspect of intelligence, is also an automatic process of the unconscious mind. While pattern recognition is key to agent detection, it also stands as the general basis for a phenomenon known as faulty source monitoring. Faulty source monitoring is when the brain misidentifies the source of its experiences and occurs when an individual is confronted by a lack of sensory patterns in his

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or her environment. The brain then reflexively superimposes its own patterns of imagined stimuli when none exist (Vaughn 2009). In a continuation of a psychological experiment originally performed in the 1960s, in 2009 O.J. Mason and F. Brady placed test subjects in a sensory deprivation room individually for fifteen minutes. Afterward, the subjects filled out an inventory of their experiences within the zero stimuli environment. The researchers found that without the normal barrage of sensory information flooding their brains, many people reported experiencing visual hallucinations, paranoia, and a depressed mood. Prior to the study, the nineteen subjects specifically selected for the study were surveyed. Subsequent analysis controlled for those who were more and those who were less prone to hallucinations in order to test the differential response between the two groups. While the group of subjects prone to hallucinations experienced far more than their counterparts, nearly all participants felt they had experienced something special or important during the experiment, with several feeling what they could only describe as an evil presence (Leggett 2009). Within this experimental setting, the mind not only imposes its own stimuli, but assumes they are due to external forces, even when none are present.

An environment truly devoid of any stimuli has never been experienced by any human ancestor, nor has any purely anechoic chamber ever been constructed before this century. So how can our reaction now to sensory deprivation allude to the evolution of religiosity? Simply put, we must rework our understanding of sensory deprivation. According to psychologist R.J. Lifton, an example of a deprived milieu would be the old-fashioned back ward within a psychiatric care facility in which patients sat about aimlessly, with little or no change, challenge, or activity in their surroundings (1989). A sensory-deprived milieu does not have to be void of any sensory input, just any meaningful sensory input. This notion can even be applied to situations outside of blank walls and quiet hours to accommodate common life scenarios. For example, the dull, plain, boring,

day-after-day routine environment faced by a socially stagnant individual can be thought of as void or empty of any stimuli worthy of special attention (Watson 2009). An everyday experience for any individual is packed with input to process. But if one is too used to the same-old, stale, uneventful, safe environment, one hardly has to process anything of value.

This form of deprivation seldom causes severe hallucinations, but rather the imposition of patterns where none exist and the assumption that imaginary stimuli originated from outside sources.

People, for the most part, largely fear the unknown. This fact is the driving force behind anxieties about death and fears such as a child’s fear of the dark. For example, fear of the dark is most likely an unconscious tool for avoiding nocturnal predators. A sweeping generalization would be, as mentioned earlier, that there are inherent dangers in survival-based variables that are left unaccounted for. An unknown X is a potentially threatening X, whether that X be a lack of visual input or potentially deadly diseases undetected in one’s environment.

Broadly, the safest animal is the one who is the most knowledgeable about what is happening around it and is able to make decisions readily.

When it comes to being confronted with the unknown, humans can feel a discomfort so intense that it leads them to believe certain comforting explanations over others, even when that explanation cannot be proven true or is contradicted by personal experiences (Steadman, Palmer 2008). Reaching for explanations and these inductive leaps are what keep our bodies safe, but get our cognitive minds into a bit of intellectual trouble.

Before any attempts to pin down the emergence of supernatural explanations of phenomena, let us first retrace our steps to our current position. The intellect evolved as a problem-solving tool not only to adapt to, but to change our environment to suit one’s needs (Ayala 2008). The most successful algorithms used by the mind to solve problems developed into heuristics and other logical thinking strategies, one of the most important being

the concept of causality. This usually reliable notion of cause and effect, when coupled with survival instincts, yielded an overdeveloped (even hyperactive) agent detection mechanism in animals, especially humans. Tying together our reluctance to accept the unknown, our drive to fill in the blanks of causal scenarios, and the unconscious tendency to impose patterns in instances of minimal stimuli, we are predisposed to assume that there must be some sentient actor that cannot be verified when faced with unexplainable phenomena. The mind concludes that an unseen, potentially powerful actor (or group of actors) is causing the effects we cannot explain, such as lightning or outof body-experiences. Since this sentient actor cannot be verified, the mind concludes that the actor is unverifiable, existing in some form that would explain how it cannot be seen or heard consistently, at least by “normal” means.

Here we are, left with the concept of supernatural forces as a by-product of the interaction between many individually effective strategies which enhance our mental efficiency and thus our fitness. Intellectual explanations of religion argue that the aim of religious belief is to explain efore there or make sense of phenomena (Steadman, Palmer 2008). In was the concept of ancient times, gods, goddesses, static discharge ghosts, and goblins all explained different events that there was hor s our limited understanding mighty hammer could not. Before there was the concept of static discharge, there was Thor’s mighty hammer.

Before the summer hurricane and typhoon season, there was Poseidon’s rage. Reaching for explanations, people find themselves satisfied with the immediate answers made available by using processes that have been overwhelmingly reliable in the past.

This accidental by-product theory, when viewed from an intellectualist perspective, explains not only the origins of religiosity, but its decline in recent centuries. As science advances and technology grows, the intellectual realm of religion shrinks; people now have fuller, more

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detailed, verifiable explanations of phenomena at their fingertips, leaving supernatural causes unneeded for those satisfied with more rational conclusions. Even though religious beliefs and practices can be fitness enhancing in many ways, the origins of religiosity may have been just another accident that turned out to be valuable enough for natural selection to keep.

Whether religiosity is retained for its socially beneficial effects or for the fact that its causes are too valuable not to be kept (such as sensitive agent detection mechanisms), religiosity is here to stay. It is important to note that this accidental by-product theory does not negate other attempts at explaining religiosity, and it can even be used in tandem with most others.

While its origins may be accidental, religiosity’s potentially vital social functions are still to be sorted out.

Works Cited Angell, R. (1964). Reasoning and logic. New York: Meredith Publishing.

Atran, S. (2002). In gods we trust. New York: Oxford University Press.

Ayala, F. (2008). Egg-to-adult, brain-to-mind, ape-to-human transformations. In Cobb Jr., J. (Ed.). Back to Darwin. (pp.88-98).

Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Co. Budiansky, S. (1998). If a lion could talk. New York: The Free Press.

Darwin, C. (1872). On the origin of species (6th ed.). London: John Murray.

Dennett, D. (2006). Breaking the spell: religion as a natural phenomenon. New York: Penguin Group.

Johnston, A. (2009, November). Hume’s causality. Modern Philosophy. Lecture conducted from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

Kassin, S. (Ed.). (2001). Psychology. London: Prentice Hall.

Leggett, Hadley. “Out of LSD? Just 15 Minutes of Sensory Deprivation Triggers Hallucinations.” Wired.com.

Condé Nast Digital, 21 Oct. 2009.

Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/ wiredscience/2009/10/hallucinations/.

Lifton., R. J. (1989). Thought reform and the psychology of totalism. Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press.

MacNeill, A. (2006, August 18). On the detection of agency and the intentionality of nature. Retrieved from http://evolutionlist. blogspot.com/2006/08/on-detection-ofagency-and.html.

Mason, OJ, & Brady, F. (2009). The psychotomimetic effects of short-term sensory deprivation. Journal of Nervous

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Mental Disorders, 10(197), Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ pubmed/19829208 doi: 19829208.

Merril, K.R. (2008). Hume’s philosophy.

Lanham, MA: Scarecrow Press Inc..

Patterson, C. (1937). Principles of correct thinking. New York: Longmans, Green and Co. Schaeken, W., Vandierendonk, A., Schroyens, W., & d’Ydewalle, G. (Eds.). (2007). The Mental models theory of reasoning. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Steadman, L. B., & Palmer, C.T. (2008). The Supernatural and natural selection. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.

Sternberg, R.J. (2004). Handbook of intellegence [pp. 217-220]. (Google Books), Retrieved from: http://books.google.com/books?h l=en&lr=&id=YnBGMpIMfJ0C&oi=fn d&pg=PP13&dq=evolution+practical+i ntelligence&ots=l_HQlzw0z0&sig=_JL WRnFVHrha_8pdW2LOn4iQwhU#v= onepage&q=evolution%20practical%20 intelligence&f=false.

Vaughn, A. “Hallucinations in sensory deprivation after 15 minutes.” Mind Hacks 19 Oct. 2009. Retrieved from http://mindhacks.com/2009/10/19/ hallucinations-in-sensory-deprivation-after15-minutes/.

Watson, P. (2009, October-November).

Reconciling by-product and adaptationalist views of religiosity. Evolution of Religiosity.

Lectures Conducted from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

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A Woman’s History of the Americas Anna Lapera

When my mother and I moved to America, all my grandmother asked for us to bring her back was

a red Revlon lipstick. The color of the lipstick has stuck with me since childhood—a red too bright for her pale face, applied dramatically and always a little beyond where the lips began and ended, kind of like her stories. “Ben pa’ ca.” “Come here,” my small grandmother tells me, from a room she has set up like an altar, and for the third time she asks me if I remember her first husband who died after being trampled at a soccer game before my mother was born. I’m certain somewhere in the distance an embassy exploded, and stories formed like mountains, cradling secrets and covering truths. I don’t remember my grandmother too well before she lost her memory. I just know that with the loss of memory, the stories began.

In 1960, the year before my mother was born, Guatemala officially entered into the longest civil war in Latin American history. Thirty-six years. Four years earlier, the US led a coup against the elected government of Jacobo Arbenz formed by left-leaning professionals and students. During a civil war, so many different factions try to keep from dying out. The struggle waged by some is to fight for their story not to be forgotten, so the poor took up arms—or, intellectuals and students took up arms in the name of poor—and formed militias and revolutionary armies. The Rebel Armed Forces, the Revolutionary Organization of Armed People, etc., all infiltrated and armed the poorest areas and the universities. I’d like to think they fought for the old woman with a thousand different stories, but this was a time when old women spoke with bullets—warriors during the day and song singers at night. This was a time, I’ve been told, when collective memory was in danger.

The loss of my grandmother’s memory has made for the funniest and most ridiculous of stories, because it is in this world where she once carried around a tiny pink pistol in her purse, or where the president told her she was beautiful, or where Muhammad Ali came to visit her over tortillas and un cafecito. When my grandmother began telling stories, I listened desperately, and I felt I was the only one paying attention. I felt I had more to lose, having spent only part of my childhood in Guatemala. I was convinced that those stories needed to be in every part of the fabric that makes me, that they needed to be braided tightly into my hair, into my voice, into every word that came out of my mouth. I needed to hang on to every word she said and hope that it would give me a glimpse into history. I’ve learned about Guatemala’s history through my grandmother’s stories and love affairs. Her lovers are what she

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most remembers from her life before the loss of memory; her life before storytelling.

“What is your name again, Señorita?” she asks me. I tell her for the third time, and she sings for me a song she learned in childhood.

She sings it as if she had been singing it every day of her life. She tells me that boys fell in love with her when she sang for them. “Manzanita” they used to call her, which means apple, for her red cheeks. I can picture her, smiling and laughing with her face turned back towards them. She lived for those moments. My grandmother was a passionate, irresponsible, and cradled woman, the product of a love affair with a Mexican businessman. And she loved during the most intense fighting of the civil war.

Guatemala became a landmine. The countryside became a safe haven for revolutionaries and the poor armed themselves with Made-in-USA weapons and defended themselves against the government army.

After being exiled to El Salvador for his revolutionary activity at the Universidad San Marcos the year Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown, Otto Rene Castillo returned to Guatemala in his early twenties. He joined the guerilla forces, where he headed education, so that the history experienced by the poor would not be left out of the national conscience. He swore that one day, the poor on whose back and breast the country was raised and nursed, but who never had as much as a name in its books and poems, would rise up and write their own books and poems.

January 10, 1981—the first broadcast of Radio Venceremos (“We Shall Overcome Radio”) is transmitted in the neighboring country of El Salvador in the womb of their civil war. The broadcast opened with the chant, “¡El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido!” That day began the use of community radio in all of war-torn Central America, a space that would forever change the agents of storytelling. It initiated the struggle to keep stories alive and to make sure that the narrative of the poor would never be lost. Radio Venceremos belonged to FMLN, the main guerilla group in El Salvador who believed that community radio and dealing with communication at the guerilla level would

keep the people alive. Antennas popped up on every cardboard and tin-roofed home, and people began to listen.

My grandmother tells me of a lover who I later found out was a prominent figure in Guatemala’s political history, though she did not mention this. In 1979 he was assassinated by the military for his leftist activities. Sometimes at night she waits for him, but not in that desperate lonely way. She sits next to me and demands that I watch her put on her red lipstick m certain so that I may observe and perhaps learn a little somewhere in the something about love. distance an embassy She applies the lipstick in large, hard strokes across exploded and her lips, presses them together and looks at me. stories formed like She asks me if Leopoldo mountains cradling De la Huerta is waiting secrets and for her outside, and she becomes a little girl again, covering truths waiting in her room to build the tension as long as she can between herself and the ghost outside. But sometimes she remembers that he has died, and the stories begin to knock at the door. “Mija,” she calls me, “did you know that the day before Leopoldo De la Huerta died, I told him that I could not be with him because he did not believe in God?” She opens her eyes wide, and does that fast snapping of the fingers thing that Latina women do when they are angry or surprised that seems to only get more intense with age. “I think that’s why he died.” But I know he died with a bullet in his head. I ask my grandmother if she knew that he was politically involved. “I don’t know, mija, everyone probably was at one time.”

Once Radio Venceremos became popular on such a massive scale, it was the biggest threat to the Salvadorian army and the paramilitary groups. People demanded that the role of the radio in a time of civil war be to make sure the stories that never get recorded are never lost.

When voices were silenced by disappearances and killings, the radio grew loud. Radio saved

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the story. Young boys were being kidnapped by the military to kill their own people, so the guerillas spoke to young boys through the radio to recruit them to fight their war.

Otto Rene Castillo was in love with a fellow camarada, Nora Paiz. Not much is known about Nora. He wrote feverish, sensual, and patriotic poems to Guatemala, and spoke to her as a woman. I’d like to think that Castillo’s patriotic poems to Guatemala are really secretly to Nora Paiz, where he uncovers layer after layer of story and struggle. I find her in all his poems, and I feel once again that I am the only one who pays attention. I listen carefully to them, to her, so that I may never forget. No poem directly to her has ever been found.

In 1987, the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional de Guatemala (URNG), a guerilla group in Guatemala, hijacked a government radio station and established its own resistance radio called Voz Popular. The station ran for nine years. They came during a time when a small elite chose what would be the national consciousness, and they claimed that community radio spoke the people’s language.

While organizing the poor who worked in the mines of northern Guatemala, Castillo and Nora were captured, and days later they were interrogated, tortured, and burned alongside each other. Castillo imagined a day when the poor would rise up and interrogate their oppressors, not with weapons, but with words— with a collective voice so massive that even men with guns and radio stations would seem meek.

I’d like to think that his last poem as he died and his face burned into forms and shapes that looked like melted wax, warm, like the ground exploded by a hundred landmines, was not a poem about revolution, land, or arms, or anything that defined a period of time left up to old women’s stories. Instead, I’d like to think that he turned to her and told her a story.

I’ve never found any letters that Leopoldo De la Huerta wrote my grandmother. Perhaps she threw them out; after all, she was a romantic who never understood the political context of her romance. Perhaps she has transformed them into incoherent stories with no chronology that 58 | Best Student Essays

she saves and forms for me once a year for brief moments, allowing me only glimpses, testing me to see if I will create a story that fully explains her. Or perhaps the next lovers used fuller words and loved more fully. I’ve imagined the poetry and words he has given her that have tied her to the earth, to the struggles; I’ve imagined the womb below the silence filled with stories and I’ve been forced to create them because only my grandmother seems to know the beauty of these untold stories. She repeats and repeats them, but every time they are different so I act as a songcatcher, at times pathetically waiting.

I look at her hair, now like white cotton, and I imagine it black and long, and I think of the stories that must have nested there, in that black river. I imagine because imagine is all I’ve been able to do.

Mind the Language Gap: Analyzing Cockney Rhyming Slang Hilary Buckley

Every summer my husband and I travel back to his hometown of Orion, Illinois: population

1,600. Orion, oddly pronounced “OR-ee-un,” is so small that it is technically called “A Great Village to Call Home,” and the closest major retailer is located twenty minutes away through Milan (MY-l’n) to the South Park Mall.

South Park is a terrible mall. The dual-option food court is centrally located and the suffocating aromas of “Chicken on a Stick” waft through the dark, labyrinthine halls that bypass stores selling “Mary’s Moo-Moo” knick-knacks, Hallmark cards, John Deere farming equipment and pastelcolored, XXXL-sized sweaters. The customers are dull, the employees are falsely cheery, and whenever my husband and I get bored enough to actually visit this small shopping mecca, we amuse ourselves by assuming British accents.

We each have specific accents that we stick to. I speak with a sort of British mash-up in which I round my vowels in a feminine imitation of Melvyn Bragg, and my husband, who commonly sports trilby hats and full-zip jackets, affects a Cockney accent. Through years of such escapist entertainment, my husband and I have discovered that Americans treat British people very nicely.

(We also discovered, through briefly assuming other nationalities, that Midwesterners treat French people very badly. “Freedom” fries are still on the menu in the local Denny’s.) We thought, until I started researching this paper, that my husband performed a pretty good approximation of a Cockney accent; recently I was forced to inform him that his accent is, in fact, terrible.

The term Cockney does not adhere to the movie industry interpretation of East End (London) criminals, but is instead defined as any lower-class Londoner who hails from the area within the sound of the bells of St. Mary Le Bow, a church actually located in Cheapside, which is not technically a part of the East End (McCrum 299). The word originally comes from Middle English cokeney, meaning a malformed bird’s egg. In 1521, cockney began to be a derogatory term to refer to a townperson who no longer knew country ways, and by 1600 the term was specifically applied to those people who were “born within the sound of Bow bells.” By 1890 the term was extended to all the people who spoke with an East End accent (“Cockney, n.” OED Online). The misinterpretation of Cockneys as living in the East End came from later interpretations that “the sound of Bow bells”

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identified the ringing that came from any of the churches along Bow Road, which divides the East End in half but is certainly outside the range of St. Mary Le Bow’s bells.

It is not surprising that the Cockney area was relocated due to a misunderstanding about the language; such misunderstandings are common when dealing with Cockneys, as their accents and their facility in playing with the language can be confusing to outside listeners.

Cockneys frequently use double-negatives to make emphatic (although e thought until grammatically incorrect) points, and when Eliza started researching Dolittle sings, “Just you wait, ‘Enry ‘Iggins, just this paper that my you wait” in My Fair Lady, husband performed she is dropping her h’s in the traditional Cockney a pretty good manner. However, doublenegatives and dropped approximation of a h’s are not the only ockney accent linguistic tics separating the Cockneys from recently was other English speakers; forced to inform him Cockneys also replace that his accent is in letters, creating oftenmystifying pronunciations. fact terrible It is common to hear v or rf sounds replacing th sounds within Cockney English, as in the sentence, “Me bruvver is taking a barf” (“My brother is taking a bath”). Before the twentieth century, Cockney speakers also ordinarily switched v and w sounds, leading to the threat that Sherlock Holmes received: “Go on!. . . So help me gracious, I have a wiper in this bag and I’ll drop it on your ‘ead if you don’t hook it!”

(Doyle 146).

In addition to their disconcerting accent, Cockneys also enjoy using Cockney rhyming slang. Although scholars debate the dates of Cockney rhyming slang’s origin (1500–1800), they agree that the slang has always been an underground criminal “argot,” which David Crystal, a leading linguistic expert, defines as the “special language of a secretive social group” intended to befuddle the police (Crystal 182). To

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use rhyming slang, a linked trio (or sometimes a pair) of words are chosen to replace another, entirely different intended word that does not have a related meaning, and the last word in the triad must rhyme with the intended word.

However, the rhyming word is not used; instead only the first word in the trio is actually spoken.

The reason why this sounds complex is because it is complex. In essence, certain lexical words are rhymed with sets of other lexical words, but making sense of the replacement words that appear in a sentence is impossible without having first learned the plethora of rhymes available. Apples and pears is a common rhyme for stairs, creating the sentence “I’m going up the apples to me apartment” (remember that only the first, non-rhyming word in the trio is used in Cockney rhyming slang). Other commonly used rhymes are loaf [of bread] for head (“Use your loaf, man!”), trouble [and strife] for wife (“Me trouble is in the apartment waiting for me”), and pins [and pegs] for legs (“I almost fell off me pins when she nagged me again!”).

Cockney rhyming slang is further confused because different accents create different rhymes.

Because Cockneys have such a unique way of speaking, some of their rhymes make no sense to English speakers with different accents. Since the mid-nineteenth century, the term Charing Cross has been a rhyme for horse, but cross does not rhyme with horse unless the speaker has a heavy Cockney accent, which makes cross sound like course. Also, the term piano is rhymed with Joanna, but is further obscured by the pronunciation “Jo-AN-er” (“Cockney Rhyming Slang”). Rhyming slang is also going through an evolution currently, introducing new rhymes for common words and using both rhymes interchangeably to describe the same term.

Therefore, whereas apples and pears was the common rhyme for stairs thirty years ago, now Britney Spears is used as well (“Understanding Cockney Rhyming Slang”).

Other countries use Cockney rhyming slang as well, although in a lesser degree. It is thought that the term brass tacks is an American version of rhyming slang, meant to replace the word facts (Green, “Brass Tacks”). The phrase

“blowing a raspberry” is thought to be derived from a rhyme for raspberry tart, which rhymes with fart (Green, “Raspberry Tart”). Therefore, because other countries and nationalities besides Cockneys sometimes use rhyming slang, it is possible for me to tell you that me frying has the prettiest minces, long, lean bacons, and he eats a lot of holy. He saves me bees.1 Now you tell me, would that be a dirty thing to say to an overworked employee at the dreaded South Park Mall, or not?

Works Cited

“Cockney, n.” The Oxford English Dictionary.

Second ed. 1989. Web. 3 May 2010.

Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Second ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. “The Sign of Four.”

Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories. Vol. 1. New York: Bantam Books, 1986.

Duckworth, J.M. “Cockney Rhyming Slang.”

A Dictionary of Slang. 2005. Web. 5 May 2010.

Green, Jonathon. “Brass Tacks.” Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005.

Green, Jonathon. “Raspberry Tart.” Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005.

McCrum Robert, et al. Eds. The Story of English. Third ed. New York: Penguin Books, 2002.

Phespirit. “Cockney Rhyming Slang.”

Phespirit.info. 1 March 1999. Web. 5 May 2010.

“Understanding Cockney Rhyming Slang.”

Cockney Rhyming Slang. 2008. Web. 5 May 2010.

My frying [pan] (old man/husband) has the prettiest mince [pie]s (eyes), long, lean bacon [and egg]s (legs) and he eats a lot of holy [ghost] (toast). He saves me bees [and honey] (money).

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A Balsa Wood Prayer Beckett S. Nodal

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lbuquerque grew in a semi-arid cacophony of expanding asphalt, based off the arterial Americana that was once US 66. Shunted time and again by loosely organized name systems of presidents, states, and universities, Route 66 has been branded with the generic moniker “Central.” The chaos of pickup-stick avenues invades our endless sunsets and ancient petroglyphs. The turbulence of daily living corrodes the simplicity of life that grants us peace. Our ability to reclaim that peace comes through communion with the past.

Albuquerque’s intersections and detours are prolific. However, a single street, Menaul, will take you to Piedra Lisa Park. This is the place I played as a small child. I wondered if the journey was still that easy. Could anything be that easy in a city that interrupted and took hold of the native landscape like the insidious salt cedar tree? Distractions of school and work, devotion to my wife, and my newfound duties of fatherhood culminated in the quest to reunite myself with the unadorned memories of my childhood, as a means of self-renewal.

The simplicity that was the blessing of my childhood seemed obscured by the passing of time and the manic crosshatching of the city streets. Perhaps the existence of this childhood sanctuary at the end of this single street would validate my hope that such refuge and simplicity still exist. So I began from the fertile Valley, where the cottonwood trees still feel the nurturing compassion of the Rio Grande, and drove west from my Second Street home.

Turning east onto Menaul, you know that you have entered the haphazard grid work of Albuquerqueproper when the earth arroyos become concrete, and the pace of traffic goes into dysrhythmia. The grass and granite of the Sunset Memorial Park Cemetery rush by on the right. Heavy traffic from the Pan American Freeway overpass vibrates the car windows. Stop lights replace the cottonwoods, and the other drivers race past them in defiance. Chaos dominates the roadways. Yellow lights are green lights; red lights are brake-checks, and stop signs appear in the form of jay-walking transients and disorderly juveniles darting, dashing, or languidly sauntering across the pockmarked lanes of faded gray asphalt.

Beyond the early entanglement of stagnant traffic that emanates from the University Boulevard intersection, larger buildings begin to dominate the landscape, including the strangely attractive American Home building, standing like a silent museum of mattresses, bureaus and nightstands, on

62 | Best Student Essays

the corner of Menaul and Carlisle. The noxious smell of exhaust is strongest here as traffic struggles toward the Sandia Mountains.

Farther along Menaul, old landmarks mingle with new businesses. Charlie’s Records sits near a new Denny’s. The Octopus Car Wash and the massive neon Hoffmantown sign overshadow a nearby CVS drugstore and a drab strip mall.

Although new buildings spring up occasionally, the old bastions cannot be uprooted.

Ten miles east of the Valley, the city begins to melt away once again. Traffic regains a steady rhythm and the tension releases from my shoulders, mingling with the familiar scent of sagebrush.

Menaul Street continues on, and as I face a bend in the road and the imminent foothills of the Sandia Mountains, I begin to wonder, once again, if Piedra Lisa truly is at the end of this street.

As I pass the last stoplight at Tramway Boulevard, I sense the park’s closeness and hope that the waning light will remain long enough for me to view my destination. The neighborhoods split into a V like the roots of a tree surrounding the immovable, and there stands Piedra Lisa Park; ethereal, elegant, ghostly in the early twilight.

The park is on the left where I thought it would be, deep green and cool, imbued with the gaiety of a thousand children who have played here before. The deep-set, sloping levee on the east end of the humble oasis looms like an un-inscribed tombstone facing the park’s twisting slide and swing set. I remember flying balsa wood airplanes from the head of that tombstone. As a child, you felt that your little balsa wood construction, like a fervent prayer, could reach the heavens above. Now the crooked slab seems to warn, “The city below will steal this memory,” and laughing children turn their backs intuitively.

There is a mesa behind the park, a cemetery shrouded in granite, a burial place for rusted beer cans, broken glass, and stray laughter from the park below. When these burial grounds flooded in the summer, we would catch tadpoles, with the hope that they would sprout legs and spring

away. It is cool here too, but this is a serene chill, trapped by the mountains above. The beauty of the high desert extends up the hillside, turning your attention from the city below.

The endurance of Piedra Lisa Park and the simple course that leads there provides me with a s a child you renewed sense of comfort and felt that your understanding. No destination can ever match the complex little balsa wood time capsule that is our memory, but those that come construction like closest reveal the emotions and a fervent prayer experiences that create meaning in our lives. My destination could reach the is a brief escape from life’s heavens above challenges. The safety of my childhood memories gives way to a hope for the future and a sense that in spite of the increasingly frenzied world that surrounds me, simple havens still exist.

Standing at the head of the levee, once again, in the waning sunlight, patches of the city lights glint and peek through the thick green trees, but Albuquerque cannot touch Piedra Lisa Park. She belongs to the mountains and the hidden laughter of those who follow a single street beyond the city below.

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