Author: Jinavie

Posted in Philosophy

Skeleton

Posted on by Jinavie

Is it better to have a skeleton inside the body, or on the surface?

In the case of insects, the skeleton is on the surface and takes the form of a shell that protects them from external damage. The flesh is protected by this shell and becomes soft until it becomes fluid-form. Therefore, when something sharp penetrates the armour, it causes critical, irreversible damage.

If the skeleton is inside the body, it takes the form of thin, hard bones. The soft flesh on the outside is exposed to harm. This leads to endless number of wounds. However, the weakness of being exposed leads to the muscles becoming harder with more resistant muscle fibres. The flesh evolves.

I have met many people who wear an intellectual shell made from remarkable knowledge and intellect, protecting themselves from attacks made by people with different ideas. They appeared much more robust than normal people. They would laugh at everything else, saying “I don’t care”. But when a different opinion would penetrate the hard exterior of their mind, the blow to their ego was indescribable.

I have also met people who would be hurt by even the smallest, insignificant confrontations or dissonance. However, they were sensitive because their minds were open and they learnt something from whatever attack they received.

(from The Encyclopaedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge by Bernard Werber)

Werber spoke of the “skeleton” of the body and mind, but human beings have one other thing that needs a sturdy skeleton – the heart. Many people protect their heart from being broken with hard armour. They do not open up themselves easily and always give an image of strength and stability. But there is no such thing as a life without pain. People who put a skeleton on the outside of their heart tend to be those who have been hurt badly before and trying to protect themselves from being hurt again. This may be effective to some degree, but if you close off your heart, you cannot heal your wounds and you also shut off the happiness of connection. If they suffer pain greater than their armour can withstand, their heart is shattered and they fall into a pit of despair, unable to recover.

On the contrary, some people open up easily to others, exposing themselves to frequent pains from social interactions. These people are sensitive to pain and heartbreak. Hence, the world considers them frail and weak. But as these people have a strong skeleton inside their hearts, they can recover from any wound and they become stronger like well-developed muscle. They grow through pain and their heart – like a warrior who has fought countless battles – becomes strong and resilient against the pains of the world.

We mustn’t avoid suffering and pain and instead try to overcome it. Through this we learn how to bounce back and through experience, we develop ourselves. Suffering is hard, but it is a catalyst that helps us grow into a strong, resilient person.

image

Posted in Science & Nature

Atrophy

Posted on by Jinavie

With exercise, muscles get bigger and bigger to generate enough power to meet the demand. This is called hypertrophy, where the cells in tissue divide faster to increase their numbers and build mass. When you do not use the muscles as much, the body decides to recycle the precious resources by breaking down the extra muscle. This is called atrophy – also known as wasting.

Muscles are not the only things that atrophy. The less you think deeply and explore your curiosities, the more your intelligence and wisdom atrophies. As you care less, your heart and ability to love atrophies. As you smile and laugh less, your happiness atrophies.

Like much of nature, the human body dislikes the status quo and strives to avoid stagnation. It continuously breaks down old, unnecessary things to make way for new, different things that will help you better adapt to your environment.

Unfortunately for us, that means to maintain the parts of us that we like, we must train and use the relevant “muscles” – whether it be lifting weights, reading books or laughing heartily for no reason.

Posted in Philosophy

Threading A Marble

Posted on by Jinavie

It is recorded that one day, Confucius was presented with a small marble that was filled with tiny holes with twists and turns. He was challenged to try thread the marble with a piece of thread. Confucius tried and tried but could not complete the challenge.

Feeling lost, he asked for some time to think and took a walk. A passing woman noticed him and asked what was wrong. Upon hearing the story, the woman said: “Think quietly, quieten your thoughts”. This gave Confucius an idea, so he thanked the woman and returned to the puzzle. In Chinese, the character for “quiet (密, mi)” sounds the same as “honey (蜜, mi)”. He found an ant, tied a thread around its waist and then placed it on one hole. He smeared some honey on the hole on the other side of the marble and the ant followed the scent, threading the marble as it travelled through the twists and turns.

Thomas Edison famously said that “Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration”. Although this quote is usually used to stress the importance of effort and striving to succeed, you still need that 1% of creativity and out-of-the-box thinking to achieve true success. The inspiration can be from anywhere – a small memory in the recess of your mind, the casual remark of a passerby, an insignificant detail in your surrounding… What is important that you open your eyes and be open to such inspiration, no matter how silly or lowly you think the source is. You never know what or who will inspire you to have a eureka moment.

Posted in Science & Nature

Mandrake

Posted on by Jinavie

The plant Mandragora officinarum, more commonly known as mandrake, is a plant that has interested people in various fields throughout history. Firstly, the root is split into two at the end, giving the uprooted plant the appearance of a human being. Secondly, it belongs to the nightshade family, containing plants such as the infamous deadly nightshade (belladonna), tobacco, Datura, petunia, tomatoes and potatoes. Like its relatives the belladonna and Datura, mandrakes contain alkaloids such as atropine, scopolamine and hyoscyamine. These substances are potent (and toxic) hallucinogenics and sedatives, which is why they have had various uses ranging from witchcraft to anaesthesia to murder through poisonings.

The shape of the mandrake and its hallucinogenic effects have given it notoriety. Legend goes that when a mandrake root is dug up, it shrieks with such terror that anyone who hears it will die – possibly referring to the toxicity of the alkaloids. Historical texts give detailed instructions on digging up mandrakes by tying a hungry dog to the root and making it pull the plant out of the ground when the owner is out of earshot and he lures the dog with food.

Other folklore suggest that mandrake only grow when the ground is inseminated by semen dripping from a hanged man. This folklore is likely fuelled by the mandrake’s human-like appearance. Ancient and medieval literature associates mandrake being used to make fertility agents and love potions(again, likely related to the hallucinatory, sedative effects). Mandrake is a common ingredient in magic rituals of various kinds, such as in Wiccan rituals.

Alkaloids extracted from mandrake have been used in medicine since the Middle Ages, where extracts were used to anaesthetise patients before surgery, as it has a sedating, hypnotic effect. Eye drops made from mandrake extract were used for hallucinations and mandrake syrups were used to aide sleep. In modern medicine, scopolamine is used in motion sickness patches and atropine is used to speed up the heart rate when it slows too much.

The extensive list of supposed and actual properties of mandrake has made it a popular plant in fiction as well and it can be found in countless works throughout time, such as works of Shakespeare, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and J.K. Rowling.

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

The Importance Of Hugging

Posted on by Jinavie

American psychologist Harry Harlow was interested in the debate surrounding the role of the mother. Some scholars argued that a mother’s role is to provide food for the baby, while others argued for the importance of the mother’s tender loving care for the baby. To investigate this, Harlow created two “mothers” for a group of infant rhesus macaques (species of monkeys). One mother was made of wire and wood and the other made of soft cloth to simulate the physical contact of an actual mother monkey. The twist was that only the wire mother provided milk for the infant. Despite this, an overwhelming number of infant macaques chose the cloth mother over the wire mother, choosing physical contact over nourishment. It was found that when given the two choices, the infants would visit the wire mother only for a feed, then would cling to the cloth mother the rest of the time. Harlow concluded that the mother’s role is not only to feed the young, but to provide them with “contact comfort” through physical contact.

Hugging is a form of physical contact found in almost every culture across the globe. It non-verbally communicates to the other person that you love and care for them and that you are compassionate for their happiness. It can provide the warmth, comfort, support and security the other person may need at the end of a tough day.

The act of hugging induces a massive release of oxytocin into your system, giving you the sensation of happiness and connection. It reduces your blood pressure and dissolves anxiety, making you feel more at peace. The behaviour of hugging is seen in a mother holding her child, a child cuddling a teddy bear, a couple communicating their affection, or two friends sharing a moment of happiness.

When two people hug, they become something more than a simple group of two people. In that moment of a hug, the two people enter a transcendent zone filled with only love and happiness, where they are protected from the sorrows and evils of the world. It is the physical form of human connection. In other words, a hug is the closest thing to the physical manifestation of true happiness.

1 + 1 = 3

Posted in Science & Nature

Interesting Numbers

Posted on by Jinavie

One of the more humorous sides to numbers is mathematicians’ attempts to categorise numbers as “interesting” or “dull”. For example, 1 is interesting because it is the first positive integer. 73 is interesting because it is the 21st prime number and 21 is a multiple of 7 and 3. The number 1729 is a good example of how a number can seem dull but later found to be interesting. When the British mathematician G. H. Hardy visited Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, he commented that the number of the taxicab he rode in on was 1729 – a number he found to be rather dull. Ramanujan objected and stated it is very interesting as it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways (1729 = 1³ + 12³ = 9³ + 10³). Such numbers are now referred to as taxicab numbers and 1729 is called the Hardy-Ramanujan number.

A way to discover the smallest most uninteresting number is through the Online Encyclopaedia of Integer Sequences, which documents every integer worth noting as it is in some sort of arithmetic sequence. The smallest integer that does not appear in this encyclopaedia as part of a sequence could be considered as objectively the smallest “uninteresting” number. In 2009, this number was 11630, but has since changed to 12407, then 13794 and now 14228 (22 April 2014).

But paradoxically, the smallest uninteresting number is interesting in itself by being the smallest most uninteresting number. This is known as the interesting number paradox. By this paradox, every natural number is unique and ergo, “interesting”.

Number Line

(Image source: http://www.xkcd.com/899/, and here’s an explanation of some of the numbers on it)

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Stampede

Posted on by Jinavie

In the movie The Lion King, Simba’s father Mufasa is killed when he is trampled by a wildebeest stampede. Stampedes are a common behaviour in herd animals such as cattle, horses, wildebeests and elephants. When one animal is startled by something, it shows a fear response which then startles the animals around it. This startle propagates rapidly through the herd and the entire herd begins running away from whatever caused the first startle. They run with no clear reason or direction – it is a mindless rush of fear. Because of this, anything in the path of a stampede is crushed to death as the herd blindly rushes forward with impressive power and energy.

The destructive nature of a stampede not only affects whatever is in the path of the herd, but the herd itself. Native Americans are well-known for their buffalo jump style of hunting, where they would herd wild bison then trigger a stampede. They would direct the stampede towards a cliff and the frightened bison would blindly jump off the cliff to their deaths.

As deadly as a bison or wildebeest stampede may be, there is a species that causes far greater damage to humans when they stampede: us. Human stampedes are a well-known phenomenon documented throughout history, from crowds rushing away from a city being bombed to religious pilgrimages to sports games. Just like animals, when there is a large enough crowd of people, a simple spark of fear can cause mass panic.

This is described as the “falsely shouting fire in a crowded theatre” effect. In 1941, 4000 people were killed when the Japanese army bombed the Chinese city of Chongqing, causing a mass panic at an air raid shelter. More famously, 96 people were killed in the Hillsborough stadium crush in England, 1989, when crowds of people attending a soccer match squeezed into a tunnel blocked at the other end. There have been several incidents during the pilgrimage to Mecca where hundreds of people were killed during stampedes.

In human stampedes, death is not usually caused by trampling but by compressive asphyxiation. The sheer force of people pressing on each other limits chest expansion, making breathing impossible. The force of a panicked crowd can be great enough to bend steel bars. This phenomenon is also called crowd crush.

Posted in History & Literature

Tea Etiquette

Posted on by Jinavie

The following are some etiquettes invented in Victorian England when the culture of tea drinking boomed:

  • Stir the tea with your spoon back and forth rather than swirling it
  • The spoon is placed behind the cup and never left in the cup
  • Hold the teacup by its handle between your thumb and fingers without curling your fingers in the hole
  • Holding out the little finger is not a traditional way of holding a teacup and can be considered rude
  • Never cradle the cup with your fingers, keep the saucer close to the cup instead
  • Sip instead of slurping
  • Never sip tea from the teaspoon
  • When drinking the tea, look into the teacup, never over it
  • When not drinking the tea, the cup should be placed on the saucer

The “pinky out” rule of fanciness likely came from a Roman tradition of a cultured person eating with three fingers, contrasting the commoner using five. It is likely that the “pinky out” rule is a misinterpretation of the “three finger” rule and a misguided show of elitism (or irony).

Of course, these “etiquettes” are merely arbitrary social rules imposed on what can be enjoyed however you like it, so unless you feel extra fancy, drink tea in whatever way you please.

Posted in Science & Nature

Chocolate Overdose

Posted on by Jinavie

It is common knowledge that you should not feed dogs and cats chocolate as it is poisonous to them. This is because chocolate contains a substance called theobromine. The name theobromine comes from the Greek words theo (“god”) and broma (“food”), thus meaning “food of the gods”.

Cats and dogs metabolise this chemical very slowly, so they can easily overdose on it. Theobromine poisoning causes vomiting and diarrhoea initially, then progresses to cause hyperactivity, cardiac arrhythmias (irregular heartbeats), seizures, internal bleeding, cardiac arrest, respiratory failure and eventually death. Although cats and dogs have the same metabolism rate of theobromine, there are far less cases of cats overdosing on it as they do not have sweet taste receptors and do not particularly like the taste of chocolate.

Luckily for us, the human body can metabolise theobromine much more efficiently and we are much less likely to get theobromine poisoning (although it is still possible if you eat too much of it). Although it is weaker, theobromine behaves similarly to caffeine in the human body. It stimulates the heart to beat faster, relaxes the blood vessels, reduces blood pressure and stimulates your nervous system to decrease your tiredness and give you a “buzz”.

The effects are potent enough that there is some evidence that eating dark chocolate (which has a higher theobromine content) regularly can reduce your risk of heart disease. However, this is counterbalanced by the negative health effects of sugar and fat found in chocolate. That being said, a small amount of chocolate every now and then not only has a positive effect on your heart, but is a great medicine for your exhausted mind and soul.

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Autopilot

Posted on by Jinavie

Anyone who drives to work knows the strange sensation of realising that you have no memory of driving the last few kilometres. It is as if you turn on an autopilot in your brain. Because your brain is a master of pattern recognition, it analyses the route and all the movements like handle turning that takes you to the destination then converts it into a habit. After many commutes, the habit is so strong that the brain does not need to spare any thought on the activity. Ergo, your brain literally turns on an autopilot for you so to spare brainpower.

Thanks to this autopilot, the brain does not have to think about the drive to work. This means that it creates no new memories about the commute and you come out the other side not remembering the drive. An analogy would be to think of your brain’s information processing ability as if it was taking photos. The more new information it processes, the more photos it takes. Because your commute is an automatic process, the brain takes hardly any photos. Therefore, the “album” has few photos and takes little time to flip through. In comparison, your brain takes far more photos if you were to spend an equal time exploring a new scenic route. When you look back on this drive, the album is much thicker and you perceive it as a longer, more detailed memory.

Of course, this is extremely dangerous as your brain’s autopilot does not protect you from changes to your usual commute, such as a car swerving into you by accident. The automatic process means your brain is less ready for information processing and you have a delayed reaction, which may cost you your life.

The same goes for meeting a new person. On a first date, you learn many things about the other person and your brain frantically takes as many photos as it can. Looking back on it, it feels as if every second lasted forever and you can remember every little detail like the song that was playing in the background or the colour of her nails. But twenty years down the line, a day with that same person might feel less special and more “automatic”. Just like your drive to work, such an “autopilot” might result in a horrible accident.

So never stop paying attention to details, avoid forming ruts with surprises and new things. Don’t let your relationship turn into a boring commute.