Chapter Two (continued)
Becky and Other Students Talk About Interesting Things Over a Long Lunch Break

The Students Talk More About Nutrients and Allergies, and Joke Around Some More

When the laughter died down, the student who'd first interrupted the one talking about healthy food said in a tongue-in-cheek way with a grin, "Sorry Vanessa, we shouldn't have interrupted your public service broadcast. ... Sorry, I'm only joking. It's interesting. Carry on."

Vanessa said, "Allright. I was going to give another example of someone giving up something they're allergic to and replacing it with something else with the same vitamins and minerals in it: Anyone who gives up milk could find out what nutrients are in milk and look into what else they could get them from. For instance, milk's the main source of calcium, which the body needs to make strong bones and teeth, and which also helps the blood clot when someone's bleeding; so as long as the cut isn't too bad, the body can stop it because some of the blood can harden so it stops up the wound. Calcium helps it do that, and so do other things like vitamin K, which is found in cucumbers, green cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, celery, spinach, green beans and some other foods.

"Anyone who gives up milk can still get calcium from wholemeal bread, cheese, lettuce and salad leaves.

"One thing worth finding out if you've got an allergy though is whether the replacement foods you're thinking of trying have the same things in them that are causing the allergy to the food you're giving up. Or the intolerance. A milk allergy is a bad reaction to one of the proteins in it, whereas an intolerance tends to be to one of the sugars in it called lactose, which a lot of people can't digest properly and that's what causes the problem.

"So for instance, if a person's lactose-intolerant, and they've found that out, they can try to find drinks that don't contain lactose to be replacements. I heard you can get milk made with all kinds of things now, like almonds, or even potatoes! If someone's just got a bit of intolerance to lactose, they can try goat's milk instead, because that still contains some lactose but it's apparently easier to digest so it might not matter so much. But if someone's severely lactose-intolerant, it's best to go for something with none in whatsoever, like one of those milks made with completely different things."

One student said, "It's funny to think of milk having a kind of sugar in it; it doesn't taste sweet."

Another one said, "Maybe it's a kind that doesn't taste sweet. Anyway, blood's got sugar in it, but that doesn't taste sweet."

One student said, "Maybe if someone ate loads and loads of sugar it would. Hey imagine if a child ate so much chocolate their blood tasted of chocolate, and one day they cut their lip, and the school nurse said, 'I'll put a plaster on it to stop the bleeding', and the child said, 'No, please don't stop the bleeding! My blood tastes so nice I want to drink it all! Actually my teacher's been telling us that nice people share their things. So do you want some?'"

The students laughed and made disgusted faces.

Then the one talking about nutrition said, "Anyway, if you want to hear what I was saying about giving up milk, the thing is that if you do that, it's worth looking into what vitamins and minerals you might be losing in your diet when you give up milk, and ways of replacing them, if you're not getting them from other things. For instance, milk contains a chemical called tryptophan which the body can convert into vitamin B3, which is called niacin. But if you give up milk, you can still get vitamin B3 from lentils and nuts, and quite a few other foods, and you don't need all that much to get a healthy amount. And other animal products contain tryptophan which the body can convert into it.

"Vitamin B3 helps the body make energy from food, and helps keep the skin, nervous system and digestive system healthy. It's pretty easy to get all you need, but if you don't get enough in your diet, you can get fatigue, depression, and worse things in severe cases.

"Mind you, as well as suffering if you don't get enough of the vitamins and minerals you need, too much of some of them can be harmful too. Just because a vitamin or mineral might be very good for you, it doesn't necessarily mean that the more you take, the better it'll be; some vitamins are toxic if you have too much, although it's very unlikely you could overdose on most of them just with food; you'd have to take big doses of supplements. I think about the only exception is vitamin A; the form of it found in liver could be toxic if you just ate loads and loads of liver."

"Oh yuck, who'd want to do that!" said one student with a chuckle. "Liver's disgusting! Hey Imagine someone piling their plate high with it, and then thinking they just hadn't had enough, so they went to a hospital and asked if they had any spare ones they'd thought of using to transplant into people but then rejected. Imagine them being so enthusiastic to eat it they just chomped it all up raw right in front of the nurses and doctors!"

"You're disgusting!" said another student, laughing. "Actually though, that reminds me, I hated liver when I was little, but my parents used to love it, for some reason. I remember one bonfire night, they were out and my sister and me were at home, and we heard this squeaky noise, like the way some fireworks sound. It happened quite a few times. We thought it must be people outside having a firework display. But when my parents came home they said it was some liver in the oven they'd been planning to eat that they'd forgotten about. It was overcooked by then!"

One student said, "Gosh, I didn't know liver squeaked. imagine if human livers squeaked. Imagine everyone squeaking as they walked along, or whenever they sat down, from their livers squeaking!"

Another student said, "Or imagine if food sometimes squeaked all of a sudden unexpectedly when you put it in your mouth, and you never knew which foods were going to do it or when they were going to do it!"

One of them laughed and said, "You'd have a lot of people walking around with food spilled all down them, from where they'd jumped in surprise and dropped it on themselves when it squeaked!"

One student grinned and said, "Maybe no one would ever believe any food was good for us if it made people do that!"

The students giggled.

Then one said to the one who'd been talking about vitamins and minerals, "Mind you, it seems odd that some of the things in food are good for us. It seems funny that people need to eat things like copper and iron."

"Only in very small amounts though," said the student who'd been talking about it. Then she joked, "So don't go chewing the water pipes, or crawling under your parents' car to see if you can find some rust you can lick off, or standing in front of a copper mine snaffling the bits of stone they bring up to the top and doing your best to crunch them up and swallow them!"

"Oh as if I would!" said the student she'd said it to with a chuckle. "Mind you, I wonder! Imagine if scientists did a strange study and it was reported in the papers, that supposedly found that licking rust off cars was good for people's health. I wonder if many people would start crawling under cars to lick rust off them. Or imagine if it was good for people to eat tin, and a study found that in certain areas of the world, people were eating lots of foods with tin in them and developing tin skins, so they were becoming like tin cans walking around."

The students laughed. One said, "It would take a lot to believe a report of a study like that!"

One Student Tells the Others About a Scientific Discovery About the Brain, and Then the Conversation Becomes Humorous Again for a Little While

Then the conversation became more serious, as one student said, "There are some interesting studies around though. I read an article not long ago, to do with new discoveries about medical conditions, where there was an interview with a scientist, who said other scientists have discovered that there are certain brain cells that they've called mirror neurons, that become active both when people do things, and when they're watching other people do them, as if the brain's subconsciously imagining what it's like for other people to do them, or anticipating what their intention must be in doing them, using the same cells it uses to think through how to go about doing them when the person actually does them or something. That's their theory about why they become active then anyway, I think. At least some of these brain cells are in the part of the brain that controls the muscles that allow people to move things around or move parts of themselves. I think that's where they were first discovered. But then scientists found some in other parts of the brain, like the ones to do with people's abilities to taste things and touch things and worry about things, and all kinds of places like that. So, for example, they found ones that react both when people experience being touched, and when they watch other people being touched, and other ones that become active when people have certain feelings, and also when they watch other people having experiences that would likely often cause them to feel a similar way. I might not be explaining this very well, but the kind of thing I mean is that those brain cells might react, say, both when the person whose brain they're in feels upset, and when the person hears someone else being given bad news, that's the kind of news that would likely be upsetting. Scientists can't be sure just what they're doing when they're becoming active, but they reckon that it's something to do with imagining what other people might well be thinking and feeling, and that kind of thing.

"Anyway, it's been discovered that those mirror neurons are less active in people with certain disorders, like autism and schizophrenia, and also in psychopathy, I think. Some scientists reckon that some of them have something to do with people's ability to identify with and feel for other people when they're having problems, since they might help people imagine what it's like to have them.

"So it's possible that part of the reason psychopaths don't feel for other people is that their mirror neurons aren't working well. And what I read said that people with autism can't imitate other people well, and don't seem to be able to feel for people much either, which could be for the same reason.

"But anyway, some scientists reckon that one way of telling how active a person's mirror neurons are is to yawn while you're looking at them, because yawning's contagious in a lot of people, for some reason - once one person starts, other people often start. Some scientists reckon that's to do with people's mirror neurons firing off, although I don't know why they'd make people actually yawn, instead of just being to do with subconsciously imagining yawning, or whatever they're doing when they fire off but the person doesn't do anything.

"But because they seem to give people an urge to yawn when other people do, some people reckon that if someone's behaving in a way that makes you think they might be a bit psychopathic, or even that they're a full-blown psychopath, one experiment you could do to help you make up your mind about them is to yawn unexpectedly while you're talking to them, and see if they yawn too.

"Mind you, I don't think yawning's contagious in everyone anyway, so it definitely wouldn't be conclusive proof. There might be something in it though.

"But I read about a study that seemed to show that as well as yawning being less contagious in people with schizophrenia and autism and psychopathy, it's less contagious among old people. When I read that, I thought it must mean the studies that found that it was less contagious in people with psychopathic characteristics probably weren't done that well, since if the effect could often be found among people who were just ordinary, it wouldn't say much if they were found among some psychopaths, so the studies might not have measured the effect in enough ordinary people to find out if it was a big enough effect to be even worth thinking about; and I thought the studies were only small, so they wouldn't prove that yawning's not contagious in all psychopaths anyway. But I was talking to someone about it, who said, 'What if it's really the opposite, that the studies are evidence that people's mirror neurons can deteriorate with age, and that's why yawning's less contagious among some old people as well as in psychopaths?'

"So maybe these mirror neurons do deteriorate with age, I don't know, although I read that quite a lot of people don't find yawning contagious anyway. But I read that the number of people who found it contagious in a study that was done dropped by only less than ten percent with age, so still a lot of older people did find it contagious. So if the reason the other old people didn't was to do with their mirror neurons not working so well, it might mean either that they don't deteriorate in everyone, or that they can deteriorate slowly with age, so maybe if some really really old people had been in the study, more of them wouldn't have found yawning contagious."

Some of the students began to yawn themselves, as if just hearing someone talking about yawning was setting them off. One said with a smile, "Sorry, you're not boring me; I think I'm catching yawning from just hearing you talk about it!"

The student who the others had been listening to said, "That's allright. Actually, a couple of articles I read said people can even start yawning when they just read about other people yawning. Anyway, I don't think scientists have worked out all the reasons why some people find it contagious, although it turns out it's even contagious among chimpanzees as well! And I read that studies were done that found that chimpanzees found yawning more contagious when a chimpanzee they knew yawned than when a stranger did; so maybe they yawned more often when chimps they were emotionally attached to yawned, ... if chimps get emotionally attached to other ones. Maybe they do. So I wonder if that kind of thing happens in humans too, and it's evidence that these mirror neurons get more active when someone you're interested in does something than they do when a stranger does it."

One student said with a mischievous grin, "That's interesting! I think I often used to yawn at school, but it never started my teachers off yawning. I wonder if that was because they always thought of me as a stranger, ... or whether they were all psychopaths!

"Just imagine if there was a family get-together at Christmas, and during the dinner, one of the children yawned, and they noticed their grandma didn't yawn afterwards. If they knew about those studies, imagine them saying, 'Grandma! You're a psychopath!' And then just imagine if later the family were handing presents around, when the child yawned again, while they were looking at their grandma who'd just got a present, and she didn't yawn again. Imagine if they said, 'Right, Grandma, I'm getting even more sure you're a psychopath now!' That would do something for the Christmas cheer, wouldn't it!"

The students giggled, and one said, "Yeah, and imagine if they kept on saying it, and there was a baby in the house who imitated them, and their first ever sentence was, 'Grandma, you're a psychopath!'"

They laughed.

But then one of the group said, "Some old grannies really are psychopaths though, aren't they; you know, sometimes you hear stories, don't you, about old grannies being discovered to be running secret cannabis farms in their greenhouses, and things like that."

Another student grinned and said, "I'm sure you don't have to be a psychopath to run a cannabis farm. ... Actually, I bet most people would secretly like to grow their own cannabis if it was legal."

They giggled again, and one said, "Hey imagine if there were lecturers who grew cannabis, who would always give everyone in their lectures some before they started talking. I bet those classes would be the most popular ones on the course, even if they were boring. Just imagine if one of the tutors said to a student, 'I can't understand why you and so many other people go to those classes; they sound like the most boring ones on the course!' and the student said, 'They are, but none of us care about that after we've smoked the cannabis the lecturers give us before they start!'"

The others chuckled, and one said with a grin, "That would be kind of a waste of an education though, wouldn't it. I can imagine people regretting taking those classes afterwards, when they thought about what they'd missed out on!"

The others agreed.

Then the one who'd been talking about scientific discoveries about the brain smiled, and said good-naturedly, "Anyway, about these mirror neurons - remember those? I was talking about them about six years ago, before people started making jokes. Well anyway, in this article I read by the scientist who was studying them, he said they work less efficiently or not at all in people with autism, and I thought, 'Oh, maybe that's what causes autism then!' But just after that, he said something like, 'People who read this might think autism must be caused by people's mirror neurons not working properly in that case, but that's not necessarily true.' I thought, 'I suppose so. It might just be one possible cause of autism, or just part of the cause, and scientists ought to look for all the other things that contribute to causing it too, or maybe it's a symptom of the real cause, not the cause itself, like if there's something else going on that's what's preventing these mirror neurons from working properly, so what needs to be looked for is what's causing them not to work, since that'll give more clues about what the cause of the autism is.'"

The others thought that was interesting.

One Student Tells the Others About a Fake Study That Was Said to Prove Subliminal Advertising Works, and They Joke About What Could Happen If It Did

Then one said, "Hopefully the studies that have been done into that kind of thing will make scientists curious to find out more, and then some will discover things that might really improve some people's lives, by curing them of problems like autism, that have got something to do with these mirror neuron cells not working properly. ... Not that psychopaths would want to be cured of psychopathy, I don't suppose. ... And I don't suppose it would lead to a cure for old age. ... It would be good if it could, wouldn't it!"

The students grinned.

Then the one who'd started talking said, "But anyway, as well as studies being accurate and leading to good things, I know about studies that have been fake, and ended up scaring people. I read about one not long ago."

He eagerly told the story of a study of subliminal advertising that was fake, and yet it led to legislation by people who were worried about its findings and didn't know the man who did it had made up the results. Apparently it happened in the late 1950s. A cinema was fitted with equipment that flashed the words 'Eat popcorn' and 'Drink coke' onto the screen for a split second every five seconds during films, so fast that people didn't register it with their conscious minds. But the researchers claimed that people were taking it in with their subconscious minds, and that the proof was that coke sales went up 18 % and popcorn sales went up almost 58 %. The study was carried out over six weeks.

Reports of it were all over the newspapers, and people were angry and frightened that they might be being influenced without them even realising it. The scare resulted in a new law, stating that anyone using subliminal advertising would lose their broadcasting licence. Not just in America where the experiment was carried out, but also in Britain and Australia, subliminal advertising was banned. The United Nations said that if it was used for evil purposes, it could be a major threat to human rights throughout the world.

But a few years later, the man who'd carried out the study admitted that the results were faked; he'd done the study in hopes of drawing customers back to his failing marketing business, and he'd apparently thought subliminal advertising like that might replace ordinary adverts so people wouldn't have to sit through them so they might prefer it.

Not everyone had believed the study was genuine; some official organisations and research psychologists had demanded proof, and when the man demonstrated his machine and tried to influence them by subliminal advertising, they said it didn't influence them at all.

One student said with a grin, "It's a good thing it doesn't work. I mean, imagine if a subliminal message ordered everyone to buy marmite, and loads of people rushed out of the cinema after the film ended and went to buy it, whether they liked it or hated it. Imagine there wasn't enough on the shelves of a shop and people were fighting over it, and then one gave up and said to someone they'd been trying to grab a jar off, 'Allright, you can keep it!' And the other one said, 'Actually, thinking about it, I don't know why I've been so desperate to hold onto it; I hate marmite! You can have it after all!' And the person who'd just been trying to grab it off them said, 'Actually it's allright. Thinking about it, I hate marmite too! I don't know why I was just trying to grab it off you!'"

The students laughed.

Another one said, "Hey imagine if a supposedly scientific paper came out, claiming that the more marmite people eat, the more they'll fall for subliminal advertising. ... Or imagine if it said the more vegetables people eat, the more likely they are to fall for it, because the more vegetables you eat the more you turn into a vegetable."

The other students chuckled, and one said with a grin, "I don't suppose anyone would believe That one!"

The student telling the others about subliminal advertising grinned and said, "I dunno. I'm sure a lot of people would try their best to believe it, since I'm sure a lot of people would like an excuse for not eating vegetables.

"Anyway, since the fake study in the 1950s, a lot of other studies have been done to see if subliminal advertising works, but none have found it does: Some results have been faked just as the ones in the cinema in the 1950s were, other studies have been done badly so they're unreliable, and other ones have found it didn't work at all."

The Students Walk To a Lecture With a Thunder Storm Looming, But They Make Jokes and Talk About Weird Things They've Heard Have Come Down In Rain

As the student telling the others about it talked, they noticed the skies outside growing very dark, and it looked as if it was just beginning to rain. Someone interrupted the story and suggested some of them traipse over to the psychology department so they'd get there for their next class before it poured down. They agreed, and the media studies students decided to tag along with them so they could finish their conversation.

Then they heard a rumble of thunder in the distance, unusual for the time of year. One student joked, "Sorry, that was my stomach. You know what they say: A dried apricot in boys makes them make a lot of noise!"

They giggled. One said sarcastically while smiling, "I bet they do! Just like they say, 'A thunder storm in your way can ruin your day!' Come on, we'd better get going!"

They thought they'd better leave quickly and started off.

Just as they went out, they heard another rumble of thunder. It was getting closer. One student said, "Don't you think it's a bit spooky that there's thunder at this time of year?"

Another one joked, "I think it would be spookier if it started snowing. I mean, what if we got to our lectures covered from head to foot in snow? We'd walk in looking like ghosts!"

They sniggered. Then another student said with a grin, "Hey, imagine if one of us opened the door of a lecture theatre one night, and saw a group of ghosts being lectured by another ghost!"

They laughed.

Then one said, "You know, I wouldn't mind rain if it was hot, like a hot shower. I might even want to stand out in it! Not in thunder though! I wonder if they have hot rain in Iceland."

"Oh what do you mean!" said one student with a chuckle. "Hot rain in Iceland? It would be more likely to be raining icicles! Gosh, imagine what it would be like if it did! Scary! It would probably hurt quite a bit, being hit by one hurtling out of the sky!"

The student who'd wished for hot rain said, "Yes but I was thinking, in Iceland they have hot springs, where the water's heated up by volcanic activity or something, so even if the air's cold, you might still be able to soak yourself in hot water outside! I was just wondering if the water's ever sucked up by wind and it could come down as hot rain or something."

"I don't think that could ever happen!" said one student. "It's freezing up in the atmosphere, so even if the water was hot to start with, it would be cold by the time it got there and back. Anyway, who'd want to have a relaxing soak in water that's hot because it's being heated up by volcanoes! Yikes!"

They grinned.

Then one said, "Oh well, at least it's only raining water here. I've heard about some strange things coming down as rain sometimes. I heard it can rain frogs sometimes. I read it's because types of tornados over water can suck them up, and then they come down somewhere else when the wind dies down, maybe miles and miles away.

"And I've heard that can happen to fish too. I read about a time in a town in Australia when it rained fish for two days!

"And in some parts of the world it sometimes looks as if spiders are raining down! It's caused because there are some spiders living there that make massive webs, and they can be caught up by the wind, and if it catches up a lot of them, they can all come down in one go somewhere when the wind drops, so it looks as if it's raining spiders!

"And once in America it rained golf balls! Real ones. People think it was probably because a tornado sucked up a load from a pond that golfers had kept accidentally hitting their golf balls into and not felt like fishing them out till loads got in there.

"It rained apples one day, over a main road. They bounced off people's cars. People reckon it might have been because an unusual wind current lifted them all up from an orchard or garden and they were all let go when it died down."

Another student said, "Wow! Mind you, it's not just rain that gets weird sometimes! Have you heard about these huge hailstones that come down sometimes? I've heard there have been hailstones bigger than tennis balls before! And I heard they can sometimes contain pebbles, twigs, leaves, and even insects and nuts!"

"Yikes!" said one student. They sped up instinctively, as if they were all worrying that massive hailstones might come down on their heads all of a sudden. But actually the rain stopped for a few minutes, and the sun even came out for a few seconds, so they slowed down again half a minute later.

One student said with a grin, "Hey imagine squeezing a snowman so hard it compressed and went like ice, and then taking it to a lecturer and claiming it was a hailstone that had just fallen from the sky, that just happened to be in the shape of a big snowman!"

They laughed, and one said, "That might make headlines all around the world if they believed it, just like those fake subliminal experiments we were talking about."

Becky Complains That Some Psychology Books Make Mistakes, and Tells a Joke She Says They Remind Her Of

Becky said, "You know, that story about the faked subliminal advertising experiments reminds me of a book I looked at recently; at the beginning it said it was going to prove that people often behave in a silly way against what are really their best interests, not realising they're doing that, and that it was going to prove it by telling us about psychology studies that had been done where people did do things that weren't sensible, and that if we didn't believe what the studies found, we should, because lots of other studies had got the same results. But really, if all those studies were done badly, it doesn't matter if they all found the same thing; no matter how many there were, if they were done badly, it still won't prove what they say they prove! But then their findings might get into textbooks that say they did prove that.

"I mean, it seems people do make bad decisions because they're feeling a particular way for a few moments, when they could have made better ones if they'd thought about things more sometimes, or if they'd waited a few minutes and their feelings had calmed down. But maybe not as often as the book was saying.

"The man who wrote it was saying that one example of people doing silly things was that some people go to films, and even if they think they're really boring, a lot of them stay there, saying they don't like to leave after paying money to go in. He said that's daft, because there's no point staying, thinking you want to get your money's worth, if it just means you suffer the discomfort of the boredom; you just increase the disadvantage you got when you handed over money that wasn't worthwhile more. Far better to just resign yourself to the loss of your money and walk out.

"But it's easy to say that in hind-sight. People watching the film won't know if it's going to be boring all the way through or whether it might improve, and they might be staying partly in the hope it does, or in the hope they at least get something out of it.

"Books like that have given me the impression that some psychologists do these experiments or watch people's behaviour, and then sometimes if they think people have behaved in a silly way, they feel sure it must be for one particular reason, when actually, there might be other reasons they behaved that way too, or instead, not so foolish. I don't like the way they do that. It reminds me of a joke I heard once:

"A group of boys used to mock another one, calling him stupid. They thought they could prove he was stupid, because they sometimes offered him the choice between a nickel, which is five cents in America, and a dime, which is ten cents, and he would always take the five cent piece. They were sure it was because it was bigger, and that he didn't realise it was worth less. They laughed at him because of it.

"But one day, a shopkeeper who'd seen what went on a few times and didn't like what he saw took the boy aside and told him the other boys were laughing at him because they didn't think he knew a dime was worth more than a nickel. He asked the boy if he was taking the nickel because it was bigger.

"The boy slowly turned to him and began to grin. Then he said, 'Well, if I took the dime, they'd stop playing that game, and so far I've saved 20 dollars!"

The Conversation Gets Back to Discussion of Whether Subliminal Advertising Works, With a Break For a Bit More Joking

The students who heard Becky giggled. Then the one who'd been talking about subliminal advertising said seriously, "That's a funny joke. But yes, I've read about wrong conclusions that psychologists and other people came to getting into books too. I heard there was an experiment in subliminal advertising that was done at the beginning of the 20th century that scientists tried to do for themselves not long afterwards but weren't successful, but still the original experiment findings appeared in textbooks as if the experiment had actually proved something worthwhile.

"If one experiment supposedly gets certain results, but then other experiments done the same way don't get them, it does cast doubt on whether the original experiment really worked or whether something happened to either make the experimenters think it had when it hadn't, or whether they themselves faked the results. ... Or I suppose it could sometimes mean that the people trying to repeat the experiment are doing things wrong.

"Anyway, about the subliminal persuasion experiments I said were done badly before we came out in the rain, some ways they were done badly were that in some, the message that was supposedly flashed in front of people subliminally was actually clear enough for them to see, so they could be influenced the same way they would be with normal advertising.

"Other studies claimed a success rate because some of the participants said they Felt affected by whatever they were supposed to have been affected by, but to prove they really were being affected by it, the researchers should have had a group of people who were told subliminal advertising was being done on them when it wasn't really, to see if they thought they were being affected by it too; if as many people from that group thought they were being affected by it as people from the group it really was being tried on, it would mean people were probably just imagining it was working when it probably wasn't really."

The rain had started again. One student said, "Oh no, the rain's back! I'm glad we're near the lecture theatres now!"

Another student said with a grin, "That makes it sound as if you love lectures! Do you know, I heard that sometimes after people have been given heart transplants, they find themselves having the same thoughts and feelings as the person they got the heart from. So maybe it does a bit more than just pump blood round the body. I mean, someone who didn't used to like classical music might find themselves longing to hear it, and that kind of thing.

"Imagine if you needed a heart transplant and you got the heart of someone who just loved to listen to lectures and do work! You might find yourself skipping lunch, saying to people, 'Yes, I know I should go and eat, but I'm just longing to hear another lecture so much that since there isn't one going on in our department at the moment, I'm going to search in the history department and the science department and the English department, and all the other departments, till I find one to go to!'"

The students giggled, and the one who said that it was good that they were near the lecture theatres said with a chuckle, "Yikes, I'd be mad! I'd need help!"

But then the conversation turned serious again as the one talking about subliminal advertising said:

"I've read that nowadays there's a whole industry where self-help tapes and things are being sold that claim to influence people for the better and improve their health by subliminal persuasion, such as ones to help people give up smoking and to stop being depressed and things; and people buy them because they're convinced subliminal persuasion works, but since it doesn't really, they're probably wasting their money. There are messages telling people to do things all through the tapes that are too quiet for people to hear properly. There's classical music and things over the top.

"In fact, a study was done to test them by people who didn't believe they worked, where people who believed they did were sent tapes. Some were told they were being given tapes with subliminal messages that would tell them their memories were improving day by day, and some were sent tapes with subliminal messages telling them they had better self-esteem than they really had. But half the people who thought they were getting self-esteem tapes really got memory tapes, and half the people who thought they were getting memory tapes really got self-esteem tapes; the labels were switched. They were told to listen to them every day for five weeks, which is what the companies who sold them recommended they did for maximum effect. Most people in the study did that.

"At the end, they were tested, and it seemed no one had improved their memory or their self-esteem. But the ones who thought they'd received the memory tapes, whether they had or not, were convinced their memories had improved, and the ones who thought they'd received the self-esteem tapes, whether they had or not, were convinced their self-esteem had improved.

"Several other studies found the same kind of thing - people thought the tapes had worked even when they hadn't.

"But even though so many studies have found that subliminal persuasion doesn't work, I read that lots of newspaper articles have been written where the people writing them either just assumed it does and didn't question it, or said there was quite a high possibility it works. Less than a fifth said it doesn't work. That shows you people can't always rely on newspapers to be accurate about what works and what doesn't.

"Besides, I read that a lot of the experiments that found it doesn't work weren't even reported in the papers; boring findings like that just aren't newsworthy, I suppose."

One student asked, "What does it matter if it doesn't work if people feel sure they're getting some benefit from it? If it makes them happier, why are you bothering to make a big deal of it?"

The person talking about it said, "Well, the thing is that belief in it can be bad sometimes. I read that a rock star was even put on trial because two of his fans committed suicide and it was claimed that there was a subliminal message in some song of his that said 'Do it'. But these were teenagers whose families were violent to them, they had learning disabilities, they were unemployed, they had problems with the police, and they were into drugs and alcohol. But the trial of the rock star and the newspapers just focused on the sensation of whether the subliminal messages could have caused their suicide and what could be done about them.

"I'm not saying that nothing subliminal ever happens; I mean, I think the brain can do and take in a lot of things without us consciously realising it. I know with me, sometimes I suddenly realise there are birds singing or there's music or the sound of water running in the background or something, and I realise the noise must have been there for ten minutes or so, ever since I got there, but my brain must have decided for me that it's not important enough to focus on and filtered it out so I could give all my attention to other things. But I didn't realise it was doing it at the time, so it must have been my subconscious mind taking the decision to do it without me even knowing.

"But I'm just saying that according to what I've read, there's no proof subliminal advertising works."

The students had arrived at the lecture theatres during the conversation. It was nearly time for their classes. It was just as well they'd got indoors, because the rain was getting harder and the thunder storm was getting nearer. They stood around talking for just a few more minutes.

One said, "Hang on! You tell us about a study with tapes that was done to prove subliminal persuasion doesn't work, but how do you know that study was any better than all the studies that found it does that you say were no good? And how does the person you got the information about them being no good and the papers saying it works despite that from know that? What if his own information's no good?"

"Yeah OK, you've got me there; I can't be sure," said the student who'd been talking about it, scratching his head. "Maybe look up information for yourselves if you're interested."

One student said, "I wonder if subliminal persuasion could work better if it's actually enticing in some way, rather than just telling people to do things. Maybe if barely detectable messages said, 'You could win a million pounds in a beauty competition if you were thinner' or something, that would make people want to lose weight more than one that just said 'Diet'."

"Or one that said, 'Corr you fat ugly pig, you must be carrying around the equivalent weight of a sumo wrestler in pure fat there!" joked another student.

"That would do a lot for their self-esteem, wouldn't it!" said another one sarcastically with a chuckle.

The students wanted to think about it some more. But they had to wait, because they had to get to their lecture.

Chapter Three
Becky and a Few Other Students Make Up Silly Stories for Fun

Becky was chatting to a few of her friends one day while they had a break between lectures. One of them, Charlotte, thought it would be a laugh if they thought up daft stories to tell each other for fun. They decided to give it a go.

Charlotte started. She said:

"One day a cup looked out of the window and said, 'There's a helicopter sauntering around outside. I think it might be sunbathing.'

"His mother, an egg, said, 'Don't look at helicopters when they're sunbathing; they don't like it. Come into the lounge and have some tea.'

"The cup sat down and had a nice drink of tea. Then he put some music on and got up to dance.

"The egg joined in and started to sing. But the cup said, 'Don't sing. It makes the carpet wrinkly. You know he doesn't like getting wrinkled. He'll complain in a minute.'

"Sure enough, the carpet growled and said, 'Someone's dropping baked beans on my face. You know I don't like baked beans!'

"The egg and cup decided to go in the kitchen and talk to the Lino in there instead, who was friendlier, and enjoyed having baked beans dropped on it, because it liked eating them.

"It introduced itself to them just then by saying, 'The microwave just flew out the window and caught a cabbage that was running down from outer space to go to a business conference. It told us it's going to speak there about how bits of space junk could be employed at a very reasonable rate by businesses interested in space exploration, to give them detailed information about the landscape in space. It said there are lots of bits of space junk that are very well qualified to do that, because they've travelled far and wide in space, and communication won't be a problem because they've all learned English from satellites up there that spend their days teaching them.

"The egg and the cup welcomed the cabbage and gave it some refreshments. Then it said goodbye and jumped out of the window to skip down to its conference. It said it might drop in on the way back to have another cup of tea.

"The egg, the cup and the Lino chatted happily till it was their bedtime."

The students enjoyed that. Then one called Kerry said, "I'll tell you a silly story. Here goes:

" A lump of coal called Anthony one day told his parents he was bored of sitting around in a mine and wanted to go out and see the world. But his parents told him he was safer in the mine, because out in the world, people threw bits of coal on fires for fuel.

" Anthony said enthusiastically, 'Not so much nowadays. I've been watching the news, and it says people are trying to give up burning fuels like us, and they want to burn sunshine instead. There's so much sunshine up there that they could burn a whole load, and there would still be enough around for us to enjoy. I wish I had legs, so I could walk out of this mine and go and enjoy some sunshine! And maybe if it got cold, even we could burn sunshine for fuel to warm ourselves up!'

" Anthony's mum said, 'Well I don't think we'll ever get out of here, sadly. The government closed this mine down some years ago, so there's no one around to take us out any more.'

" Anthony said, 'I thought it was quiet down here! Not even the walls talk to us any more! I wish there was something we could do!'

" Another piece of coal, Sarah, said, 'Hey, I wonder if it would work if we all made such a loud noise, someone would come down here to find out what was going on, and then we could all escape!'

" Anthony loved the idea, so he tried to persuade all the other bits of coal around him to join in. But sadly most of them were asleep, and he couldn't wake them up, so he just had to put up with carrying on sitting around in the mine with nothing to do."

"What a pity!" said one of the others, Emma. Then she said, "Hey Becky, have you got a story you can tell us? Some people say you're a genius. Maybe you can tell us a funny story about geniuses."

Becky said, "OK then. I can think of something. Here goes:

" A block of ice cream in a freezer one day decided it would really liven up its day if it could find a genius who it could pit its wits against in some kind of competition for fun. It asked all the other bits of food in the freezer if any of them were geniuses. A frozen chicken said he used to be a genius when he was alive, but frustratingly, the farmers hadn't realised his potential and had had him killed, and he didn't know if he had any genius powers left.

" The block of ice cream wasn't sure it wanted to compete with someone who was only a has-been genius, but its day needed livening up, so it decided it may as well give it a go. It said to the chicken, 'OK, let's compete. What are you good at?'

" The chicken said, 'I used to be really good at maths, but I'm not sure I'll still be any good at it now I'm dead.'

" They agreed that the ice cream would test him to see if he still had any mathematical skill, and it said, 'OK, how many vegetarians does it take to change a light bulb?'

" The chicken did several complex calculations in his mind, and was pleased that he still had some mathematical ability. Unfortunately, before he could answer, a vegetarian opened the freezer door, took out the ice cream, and scooped several bits out of the tub and put them in cones for his family. Each one of the bits would have liked to ask the people they were given to if they were geniuses they could have fun competing with, but they were all eaten before they got the chance.

" The remainder of the ice cream was put back in the freezer. It spoke in a much higher voice than it had before, because it was so much smaller. It wanted to carry on the genius competition with the chicken, but it turned out that it couldn't, because the chicken couldn't hear it properly any more because the ice cream was speaking at a frequency that was almost too high for him to hear, so he couldn't understand it well. The ice cream was upset about that.

" But soon its troubles were over, although not in the way it would have liked. The family decided they'd like second helpings of ice cream, and someone came and took it out of the freezer and put the rest of it in cones, so there was none left.

" The chicken was sad to have lost a friend. But he soon struck up a conversation with a loaf of bread, and they wiled away the day chatting, hoping it would be some time before they themselves were eaten.

" Still, the bits of ice cream in the families' stomachs at least got to have a bit of a chat to the rest of their stomach contents before they were digested."

"Yuck!" said Charlotte. "Actually though, that reminds me of what some scientists say about how plants can do more than we think they can, like somehow communicating with each other about what condition they're in, and remembering things. There was an experiment where a scientist put a light on on one side of a row of bean plants in his lab for a couple of hours a day in the middle of the afternoon, and he put a fan on that made a noise at the same time. The bean plants all leant towards the light a bit, because plants are attracted to light, because it helps them grow, I think.

"After a while, the scientist stopped turning the light on, but he still put the fan on at the time of day when he used to put the fan and the light on, and the plants still leant over towards where the light used to be on, as if they'd come to expect the light to be there when the fan was on, and they were looking forward to it."

Kerry said, "Are you sure the wind from the fan wasn't just blowing the bean plants over a bit?"

Charlotte replied, "Actually, I don't know enough about the experiment to be sure about that. You'd have thought a scientist would be intelligent enough not to put the fan near enough to the beans that that would happen, and then get confused and think the beans were remembering the light being there when they were really just being blown over a bit by the breeze from it. Maybe I'll find out a bit more about the experiment to make sure."

The students grinned.

Then Emma said, "If scientists discover that plants have got thoughts and feelings, it's going to be a dilemma for vegetarians who became vegetarian because they objected to the cruelty of killing animals. I wonder what they'll eat if they decide it's cruel to kill plants too."

Kerry said, "Maybe they'll just decide that nature's a bit savage and there's nothing they can do about it, and carry on eating them anyway. Actually, Becky, when you said a vegetarian took the ice cream out of the freezer, I thought you were about to say they took the chicken out of it, and I wondered how you were going to explain why."

Becky joked, "If the vegetarian had taken the chicken out, it would have been to sneak it out of the house and release it into the wild in the bushes, hoping it would come to life again when it thawed out. Vegetarians are always doing that kind of thing, especially to chickens and rabbits, because they think they're cuter than other animals. That's why there are so many rabbits in the world. A lot of the ones that get caught and killed for food and put in the freezer are taken out and released outside by vegetarians, so they warm up and come to life again and escape. There would be nowhere near as many rabbits in the world if they didn't keep being recycled like that."

Charlotte grinned and teased, "Is that what they taught you in biology class at school?"

Becky said, "No. It's probably just as well!"

The students chuckled. Then they realised it was about time for their next lecture, so they got up and went into their lecture theatre.