233 - 236 Road Rage

Message no. 233[Branch from no. 72] Posted by Thomas Culhane (1311520071) on Monday, February 5, 2007 1:43pm Subject: Re: PC users

Thanks for sharing these instructions, Kenisha! This is wonderful to have peer to peer facilitation!

Message no. 234[Branch from no. 230] Posted by Thomas Culhane (1311520071) on Monday, February 5, 2007 2:08pm Subject: Road Rage

Thanks for posting these great reactions Pat -- it begins to feel more like an authentic class discussion when you guys do that, and I appreciate it. Speaking of Road Rage, Bell et al. discuss the topic on page 342 in the text in a box, and distinguish it from "aggressive driving". Have you seen the Michale Douglas film "Falling Down"?

(You can read about it in Wikipedia here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falling_Down)

It is the ultimate road rage picture! When I showed it to friends in Indonesia they said they were scared of visiting Los Angeles if everybody was like they see in the film. Fortunately, we aren't. But the problem is huge.

Our text asks, "What causes aggressive driving? Are we dealing with a generation of distrubed personalities on our freeways?". Forttunately, the study by Ellison-Potter et al. (2000) showed that "the culprit (may be) more our environment than our innate dispositions"... they used a simulator (virtual reality again!) to test this hypothesis and found that when drivers know who the other driver is (as would be the case if they are in a convertible or if the car is known) they become less aggressive. It seems anonymity encourages violence (no consequences!). Also, the study quoted by Parsons et. al (1988) says that natural scenery around the road decreases stress and mitigates violent behavior. It is a shame that the developers of the new shopping mall cut down the big beautiful trees that you used to use as a landmark. Perhaps the community can use the Parsons study to encourage them to landscape the new mall so that people stuck in traffic are less aggressive!

Again, thanks for sharing your environment and reacting to each others sharing.

By the way, the way I post pictures in these discussions is to go to the website where a picture is and click on the picture so it alone is on the screen. I then copy the URL, like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Falling_down.jpg

I note that the url ends with .jpg, meaning what I am looking at is a picture file address, not a web page adress (which would end in .html or .htm).

Then I write in my discussion area '<' then 'img src=" ', and I paste the url after the quote. Then I close it with another quote "
I then end the url with '>' and this puts the picture in my discussion. The code means

Try it! You can stick in pictures from any website!

T

Message no. 235[Branch from no. 234] Posted by Thomas Culhane (1311520071) on Monday, February 5, 2007 2:11pm Subject: Re: Road Rage

Oops, it seems the browser doesnt want to display the code. Here is another try...

USE THE < src="and" style=""> Type the URL inside the quotes and close the quotes ". Then end with >.

It should look like this < -- comment >

Message no. 236[Branch from no. 228] Posted by Thomas Culhane (1311520071) on Monday, February 5, 2007 2:15pm Subject: It is never too late

Hi Daniela, It is never too late to improve our work! When I taught at UCLA I told my students they could rewrite and improve papers as many times as they liked, just as you would if you were publishing something. And you are publishing! Eventually you might turn what you write here into a book. So I encourage you to write and rewrite, and help each other and edit and comment as if we were a team of writers and editors for a magazine. At the end of the year we can publish and wont Mercy be pleased!

So yes, always feel free to improve things! As my Dad, who is the author of many books, says, "The secret to writing is rewriting."

T