Author: Jinavie

Posted in Science & Nature

Head Bobbing

Posted on by Jinavie

If you take the time to look at how most birds walk, such as a chicken or a pigeon, you will notice that they bob their heads. This seems extremely impractical as if we bobbed our heads like that, we would likely become dizzy and vomit quite soon. So why do birds do it and why does it not make them dizzy?

A major difference between birds and human beings is the way our vision works. In humans, our eyes are constantly moving at a rapid rate (saccade) to collate information and stabilise images. Even when we are walking and our head is moving around, our eyes use various sensory information and reflexes to fix our vision at one point, giving us a clear picture. This is such a powerful reflex that one test to check a person’s brainstem function (for example, when they are in a coma) is to move the head and see if the eyes stay fixed on a point or if they follow the head (doll’s eye test). If the brainstem is intact, the eyes will keep looking at a fixed point despite head movement.

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Birds on the other hand, cannot fix their vision this way. Instead what they do is they keep their head absolutely still in three-dimensional space when their body is moving. If you hold a chicken in the air and move the body around, you will find that the head stays stationary. This means that when they are walking, the bird’s head will stay still while the body takes a step forwards, then it will move to catch up to the body. From a third person’s point of view, this makes it look like they are bobbing their head, although they are just keeping it very still. In 1978, Dr Barrie J. Frost did an experiment where he put pigeons on a treadmill surrounded by a still backdrop and found that the pigeons did not bob their heads because there was nothing to see.

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Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Rubber Hand Illusion

Posted on by Jinavie

The five senses are something we take for granted as we never even give a thought as to how complex the way we receive sensory information about the world we live in. As incredible the science behind all the senses may be, it is also interesting to see such intricate mechanisms being fooled by sensory illusions. An experiment that highlights how intricate the senses can be is that of the rubber hand illusion.

In this experiment, researchers made participants look at a dummy rubber hand, while obscuring their real hand from view. They then applied exactly the same stimulus to the real hand as the rubber hand, such as stroking it with a brush or feather. Within a short amount of time, the participants reported that they were convinced that the rubber hand was their real hand, confusing the visual sensation of seeing the rubber hand with the tactile sensation of their real hand being brushed.

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Because the brain is so good at piecing together things to come up with explanations, it links the two sensations and thus concludes that the rubber hand must be part of the body. The association is so strong that some participants would even feel pain when the rubber hand was attacked, pulling away their real arm.

One of the lesser known senses of the body is proprioception – the sensation of knowing where your body lies in three-dimensional space. This sensation is what lets you do things with your eyes closed, while also being responsible for the feeling of embarrassing yourself with a fall when someone pulls the chair out from under you. Proprioception is based on a delicate “body map” your brain draws out from various sensory information such as your joint position and touch sensation from your muscle and skin. It then adds more information such as vision and spatial orientation information from your inner ears to accurately predict how you will interact in your environment. In the case of the rubber hand illusion, the brain is fooled into remapping the body map to accommodate the rubber hand.

The application of this phenomenon, known as multisensory integration, extends from out-of-body experiences to phantom limb pain, where amputees feel pain and sensation from an amputated limb. There are also anecdotal evidence of men with penile prostheses being able to achieve orgasms, most likely thanks to the rubber hand illusion.

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Posted in Life & Happiness

Compassion Meditation

Posted on by Jinavie

One way of achieving happiness is through compassion – the wish that other people will be happy and free from suffering. Empathy is a powerful tool and when others are happy, we tend to feel happy as well (but not always). But in modern society, people are so busy with their own lives and stresses that they do not have the luxury of caring for the well-being of others. The result of this is our compassion drying up, crippling our ability to be happy. Here is a simple meditation that helps train your compassion.

The first step of this meditation is simple: think of someone you know that is suffering and wish them good fortune. It could be a friend who has gone through a break-up or a family member who is ill. Wish that they will find the right one eventually or that they will get better soon. An important point is that you should be sincere with this, ergo it is easier to do it for people you care about. Over time, you will find that it is easier and easier to wish for someone to not suffer and it will slowly become almost a “habit”.

Once you feel yourself becoming comfortable with this, try it out on strangers on the street. If you see someone, think to yourself “I wish that person will have a good day”. It could be that you wish that person will have a loving family to go home to, or even a little thing such as someone complimenting them. Much like training an unused muscle, it will be difficult at first but you will slowly see your compassion grow and strengthen, as you genuinely wish the better for others. Perhaps you will even find yourself doing little things to brighten someone else’s day, such as giving a compliment, listening to someone’s problems or giving a small but thoughtful gift.

The ultimate step of this meditation is being compassionate towards someone you truly dislike. If you are able to wish good fortune on your worst enemy and sincerely hope that they would be happy, you would truly be a compassionate person. Like any skill, it takes much training and effort to train yourself to be this compassionate. But even if you cannot reach this level, every single step towards becoming a more compassionate person will make you feel just a little bit happier.

Posted in History & Literature

Baker’s Dozen

Posted on by Jinavie

A dozen is a counting term used to describe 12 of something. But when you have a baker’s dozen of bread, you have 13 pieces of baking, not 12. This may seem like a charitable gift from the baker, but the historical origin is somewhat different.

In the Middle Ages (particulary around the 13th century), baking was not an exact science and loaves of breads were made with varying sizes and weights. This made it easy for bakers to short the customer by giving them smaller loaves than what the customer needed.

To stop this, many countries implemented laws that prevented bakers from shorting the customer, usually by setting a minimum weight for a dozen loaves of bread. However, it is entirely possible for the baker to lose a few loaves of breads to accidental dropping, burning or thieves stealing them. Because the breads may come out smaller, it could not be guaranteed that a dozen loaves would be heavy enough to meet the guidelines – no matter how honest the baker was. To offset this, bakers began adding an extra loaf to ensure that they would not disobey the law (and pay a hefty fine or be seriously punished).

Another theory with less historical evidence is based on the shape of baking trays. Most baking trays are made in a 3:2 ratio and the most efficient way to place loaves of breads on these trays is a 4:5:4 hexagonal arrangement. This arrangement has the advantage of avoiding the corners, where the temperature will heat up then cool down faster, making the results less perfect. Therefore, bakers may have sold a batch of 13 loaves together instead of selling 12 and leaving one out.

Posted in History & Literature

Scribbling

Posted on by Jinavie

When we make a mistake while writing in pen, we usually scribble out the mistake. But whether you draw zigzags, spirals or scratch left and right, it is difficult to complete hide the mistake as the letters will show through the scribble. The brain has a fantastic skill of recognising letters, so it can read between the lines, so to speak.

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To truly obscure your mistake or to redact confidential information, the best way to scribble it out is by writing on it. If you write over your mistake repeatedly with random letters of the alphabet, it will completely obscure whatever word lies beneath.

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Posted in Philosophy

Why Things Happen

Posted on by Jinavie

We have a tendency to want to believe in reasons. The human brain loves answers and explanations, so when something unexplainable or uncertain happens, we try our best to find a “reason” for why it happened. This psychological bias has shaped history, resulting in women being burned at the stakes as witches, cults and religions being founded and even entire ethnic groups being purged for a crime they did not commit.

But believing that things happen for a reason – whether such a thing exists or not – is not always a negative thing. Hope and faith that things will be alright and that the future will play out according to destiny or fate gives us comfort, as it allows us to begin to understand an uncertain future. Although the future will come no matter what and there is usually not much we can do to change it, we still want to know what will happen. This is why people seek fortune tellers, read horoscopes and secretly enjoy spoilers for books and movies.

But no matter how much we wish that our lives will play out as the universe has planned (hopefully towards a happy ending), the harsh reality is that things just happen. Things happen in the world not because of a pre-written script, but because of causality.

Earthquakes happen because of plate tectonics and hurricanes happen due to warm oceans and convection currents. Wars and economic crises happen because of human greed. You get heart disease because of lifestyle choices and your genetic make-up. Good things happen to good people because they treat people well and their deeds are reciprocated. You lost your wallet because you were careless and you ended up with “the one” because the two of you took action to get to know each other and did everything in your power to be together.

Everything in life is a result of cause and effect. Although it is more comforting to think that the hand of fate will push you towards the right career or your soulmate, or that good things are happening because of some karmic reward system, but isn’t it more rewarding to think that your happiness is a result of your own choices and actions? Sure, sometimes in life we need something to blame when bad things happen, but never let that be an excuse to stop yourself from taking that leap of faith to try change and build your own destiny.

(Image source: http://maythethoughtsbewithyou.com/)

Posted in Philosophy

Souls Of Trees

Posted on by Jinavie

In spring and summer, everything is green and idyllic, with every tree boasting its own coat of leaves. But in winter, the trees are stripped of their leaves and are forced to show their bare branches. A once lush, beautiful forest becomes a field of bony, crooked wooden skeletons. No matter how magnificent a tree may be in the summer, you can see its true form in winter.

But are the trees ashamed to show their true selves? The reason trees bare themselves in winter is so that they can store up energy and chlorophyll to produce more leaves in spring, when there is more sunshine. The branches continuously reach upward and outward, biding until better time has come.

It is the souls of the trees we see in the winter – continuously struggling to survive, but always holding on until it can bloom its flowers and leaves again. No matter how tough the conditions, these souls live on.

(Inspiration from Nymphomaniac Vol. I)

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Posted in History & Literature

The Devil’s Interval

Posted on by Jinavie

(See below NB for a simple guide to musical notes and tones)

In music, depending on what notes you use in a single chord, you can produce beautiful harmonies as the tones complement each other. The opposite of this is called dissonance and it results in a harsh, unpleasant sound. A famous example of this is a tritone – a chord made from two notes exactly three whole tones apart. In a standard C major diatonic scale (which doesn’t involve any flats or sharps), there is only one tritone per octave: F and B. But on the chromatic scale (all keys), any number of tritones are possible.

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Historically, the tritone has been the black sheep of music theory due to its dissonance crashing any harmony of a song and being difficult to sing. It sticks out like a sore thumb among the sea of beautiful harmonies that other tones make. The tritone was hated so much so that it was named diabolus in musica (“the devil in music”) or the devil’s interval since the Middle Ages, even being banned in the production of music prior to the Renaissance. To this day, the tritone is suggested as an “evil”, “scary” sound.

Over time, composers worked around the tritone until they realised that thanks to the connotations, the tritone was a useful way to express “evil” in a musical way. The cultural association was exploited freely in works such as Franz Liszt’s Dante Sonata, where the tritone is used to depict Hell. The association is found in modern music as well to produce an unsettling feeling, such as the opening notes of Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze. The tritone is a common feature of heavy metal bands such as Black Sabbath.

Even though these songs use the devil’s interval, they are not at all inferior to “normal” major scale music. They are still beautiful in their own, interesting way. Perhaps the notion of good and evil have no place in judging whether something is beautiful or not.

NB: Musical tones are noted using the alphabet: C, D, E, F, G, A and B, with a flat(b) to denote a semitone lower, or a sharp(#) to denote a semitone higher. This is easy to visualise on a piano keyboard, where a single tone interval involves a white key, a black key in between and another white key. The interval between a white key and a black key is a semitone.

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(Image: Portion of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights depicting musicians’ hell)

Posted in Philosophy

Ticking Bomb Scenario

Posted on by Jinavie

Imagine a situation where a terrorist has planted a nuclear bomb in a major city and has it rigged to explode in 24 hours. Only he knows where the bomb is and how to disarm it. The authorities successfully capture him but he is not volunteering the information after hours of interrogation. Millions of lives are at stake because one man hides behind his rights and the control of his tongue. In such a scenario, is it morally justified to torture him until he gives away the information needed to prevent a catastrophe?

Torture is an unacceptable violation of a human being’s most fundamental rights. By inflicting pain and terror, the torturer systematically destroys the victim – physically, emotionally and psychologically. However, in the above scenario, not torturing the bomber will result in the death of countless innocent lives. Is the right of a murderous madman equivalent to a million other human beings? When asked this, the majority of people would answer that yes, in this scenario, torture can be justified.

However, this scenario is a hypothetical philosophical model to outline the argument that torture may be morally justified in certain situations. It is not a way to prove that governments should legally use torture as part of interrogations. The ticking bomb scenario has many weaknesses, such as the fact that such a scenario where all the elements line up so perfectly is highly unlikely to arise. But even so, it may be used as a base of a slippery slope, with people arguing that if a million lives can be saved by torturing an individual, what about a thousand lives? A hundred lives? Or even five lives? What if we have a legal system in place where a judge must issue a warrant after assessing the scenario? Then surely an argument can be made that in certain scenarios, there is no time for this process and lives are at stake. Ultimately, the legalisation of torture is an extremely dangerous slippery slope that can facilitate the violation of human rights with ease.

An alternative system is the so called Dirty Harry case. In this case, torture is still illegal, but a single individual in law enforcement decides to go rogue and takes the matter into his own hands. Because he decides to torture the suspect as an individual, not as part of an institution, he will be committing a crime for which he will be tried in the future. If the jury finds him guilty, he will be punished by being imprisoned. Therefore, the “Dirty Harry” must weigh the potential benefit of torturing the suspect (i.e. saving lives) versus the potential risks (i.e. going to prison), giving him incentive to make a more careful decision.

(Source: Check out this Reddit comment for a more elaborate explanation with references)

Posted in History & Literature

Break A Leg

Posted on by Jinavie

In theatre, there is a superstition that wishing good luck to an actor or actress brings them bad luck instead. Because of this, theatre cast around all around Europe have traditionally wished bad luck on each other or cursed to counteract this. This superstition is likely the root of the phrase “break a leg”, which is an expression used to wish well for a person who is about to perform. Similar customs are found in other European countries, such as “merde!” in France (meaning “shit”). “Merde” is also used frequently in professional dancing circles, especially ballet dancers.

The exact meaning of the phrase is not known, but there are many theories. The “leg” may be referring to the side curtains of the stage. In the past, actors were not paid unless their act made it onto the stage. Therefore, “breaking” the “leg” – as in stepping past the curtains on to the stage – was an act of success and a guarantee of a paycheck. “Breaking a leg” may be referring to the act of bending one’s leg and bowing – something that is done repeatedly at the end of a show, especially if it was successful. More obscure theories include the story of a famous British actor in the 18th century literally breaking his leg while passionately acting out a scene from Shakespeare’s Richard III.

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