On the morning of August 17, 1971 in Palo Alto, California, nine young men were arrested in their homes by local police.

The arrestees were among about 70 young men, mostly college students eager to earn $15 a day for two weeks, who volunteered as subjects for an experiment on prison life that had been advertised in the Palo Alto Times. After interviews and a battery of psychological tests, the two dozen judged to be the most normal, average, and healthy were selected to participate, assigned randomly either to be guards or prisoners.

Those who would be prisoners were booked at a real jail, then blindfolded and driven to Stanford University where they were led into a makeshift prison in the basement of Jordan Hall.

Those assigned to be guards were given uniforms and instructed that they were not to use violence but that their job was to maintain control of the prison.

The planned two-week investigation into the psychology of prison life had to be ended prematurely after only six days because of what the situation was doing to the college students who participated. In only a few days, the guards became sadistic and the prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress.

Today, the Stanford Prison Experiment is accepted as a classic psychological study, right up there with the work of Stanley Milgram. What you probably don't know though is that Stanford wasn't the only college to conduct a controversial experiment involving real people. Many other higher educational institutions have carried out experiments of their own in order to better understand human nature. Take a look:

The UCLA Experiment
students are studied when they realize that of all the places to not have parking spaces in sprawling Los Angeles, their school is public enemy #1

The UC Berkeley Experiment
students are studied when they realize that all the hippies sleeping on the streets around campus are just students who couldn't afford housing

The UC Davis Experiment
students are studied when they realize that cows are only fun to eat

The UC Santa Cruz Experiment
students are studied when they realize that they attend UC Santa Cruz

The BU Experiment
students are studied when they realize that a communications degree doesn't mean jack shit anymore

The MIT Experiment
students are studied when they realize that they will never ever have sex

The Harvard Experiment
students are studied when they realize that they worked their asses off in high school only to have people constantly harass them with the statement "Oh, you go to Haaaaaarvard."

The Yale Experiment
students are studied when they realize that they worked their asses off in high school only to have people constantly harass them with the statement "Oh, you go to Yaaaaaale."

The UC Riverside Experiment
students are studied when they realize that they worked their asses off in high school only to have people constantly harass them with the statement "Oh, you must have slacked off biiiiiig time during second semester of senior year."

The Dartmouth Experiment
students are studied when they realize that their school is nothing like National Lampoon's Animal House

The Penn Experiment
students are studied when they realize that they pay roughly $10,000 more a year so people will not confuse their school with Penn State

The Northwestern Experiment
students are studied when they realize that their school colors are PURPLE and GOLD

The Northeastern Experiment
students are studied when they realize that they accidentally applied to the wrong school

The BYU Experiment
students are studied when they realize that polygamy ain't worth all the other shit being Mormon entails

The USC Experiment
also known as "admission"

Weezer tickets are now on sale for the September 11th show at the Event Center Arena in San Jose (through www.tickets.com) and the September 12th show at the Henry J. Kaiser Arena in Oakland (through www.ticketmaster.com).

This October, witness the "D" on the west coast. Tenacious D plays Los Angeles (Wiltern Theatre) on October 24 and San Francisco (the Warfield) on Halloween.

Why do hurricanes and tropical storms always have such gay names? Am I honestly supposed to be scared of a tropical storm named Chantal? I might be weirded out a little if Chantal was a transvestite in North Hollywood, but this is a tropical storm we're talking about! If you're gonna name a bad weather system, at least call it something macho like Bruno or Matt Griffin, because nobody's really threatened by anything named Chantal.

Which of the following would you rather watch?
(out of 18 votes)

American Outlaws • 8 votes • 44%
Captain Corelli's Mandolin • 0 votes • 0%
Rat Race • 2 votes • 11%
Summer Catch • 2 votes • 11%
a fire in a trash can • 6 votes • 33%

I hate it when people don't "get" my polls. Retards.