Posted in Life & Happiness

The Perfect Toast

Toast is one of those simple meals that anyone can make. Bread goes in, toast comes out. But some scientists decided to embark on a quest for the “perfect” toast. After spending a week toasting and tasting over two thousand slices of toast, the scientists came up with some figures.

The perfect toast should be:

  • 14mm thick
  • Made from pale-seeded loaf of bread taken from a fridge at 3°C
  • Cooked in a 900-watt toaster set to 5 out of 6 power
  • Cooked at a temperature of 154°C evenly from both sides
  • Cooked for exactly 3 minutes and 36 seconds (216 seconds)
  • Transferred gently to a plate that is pre-warmed to 45°C
  • Immediately slathered with 68.2mg per square centimetre of butter
  • Sliced once diagonally

The result of this formula is a perfectly golden-brown toast of 12:1 exterior to interior crispiness, with the “ultimate balance of external crunch and internal softness”.

Posted in Life & Happiness

Coins

I have two coins in my pocket that add up to the value of 30 cents. One of them is not a nickel. What two coins do I have in my pocket? (This riddle uses US currency, which means that the only coins available for the riddle are: penny (1c), nickel (5c), dime (10c) and quarter (25c))

The answer is a quarter and a nickel. Some might angrily retort that one of them should not be a nickel and that is correct. One of them is not a nickel, the other one is. We commonly place such simple yet seemingly unbreakable barriers in our minds. If you cannot solve a problem, take a step back and try to look past the barriers.

Posted in Life & Happiness

Time And Healing

A tiny wound like a paper cut or pin prick takes about one week to heal. A cut from a sharp object like a knife takes 2~4 weeks to heal. Broken bones take 6 weeks to heal. Even after a heart attack (myocardial infarction), with proper medical care and rehabilitation you will return to living a relatively normal life 3~4 months later (assuming you survive). But there is no concrete figure of how long it takes to heal the aches of a broken heart.

The time it takes to get over a broken heart is extremely variable from person to person, case by case. Even so, ultimately the wound will heal and you will be able to move on with your life. Sure, the healing process will leave a scar that may cause you to wince every now and then, but you will come to accept and become okay with things. People do all sorts of things to hasten this process, from harmless things such as demolishing a tub of ice cream to acts such as rebounding or walking down a self-destructive path. But there is nothing that will heal a broken heart like the best medicine – time.

Time has an incredible effect on the body, mind and heart. It is like fertiliser for good memories, letting it bloom and flourish over time, while acting as pesticide for bad memories, slowly weeding them out until it is out of sight. So if you are in pain from a wound – physical or emotional – let time do its job and work its healing magic. And remember that just like a cut, poking at the wound in your heart will only delay the healing process. While time does all that, all you have to do is survive.

Posted in Life & Happiness

Sweet Dreams

Every night, just before I fall asleep, I make a small wish that I will have sweet dreams tonight. But I cannot help but wonder if I will wake up with a smile because it was pleasant, or if I will wake up with a sense of emptiness and sadness because it was a bittersweet dream that will never come true. In the end, I guess it does not matter, as those dreams will fade away, like tears in rain.

Posted in Life & Happiness

Life Review

They say that when you face your mortality, your entire life flashes before your eyes like a sped-up autobiographical film. This tends to happen in situation where a person feels they are in danger of imminent death, such as moments before a car crash. Reports say that the event typically lasts anywhere between less than a second to few seconds, and what they perceive as major life events flash before their eyes, usually in chronological order. However, reports are very subjective and variable.

This phenomenon sounds very clichéd, but it has been widely reported throughout time and space. Over 8 million people in the United States of America stated that they experienced this “life review” in a near-death experience, with countless records in historical texts, reaching far back as at least 1795 in a letter by Rear-Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort. It is fascinating to see that there is even a set name or phrase for this phenomenon deeply ingrained in various languages, such as English, German, French, Dutch, Russian, Persian, Arabian and Korean, suggesting that the phenomenon is widespread and common.

There is no strong evidence for why this phenomenon occurs, but there is one theory that is persuading. The brain is always subconsciously referring to past experiences and knowledge to apply to the present to help solve a problem. It has been suggested that when you are at the brink of death, the brain frantically searches through everything in an attempt to save you from demise. This is a rather messy process as the brain does not routinely encounter such near-death experiences and does not have much information to refer to immediately. In this process, it brings up every memory that you thought you had forgotten, which you see as a montage flashing before your eyes. For example, a man who was attacked by a great white shark reported that out of nowhere, he recalled his son watching a documentary on sharks and remembered that putting your hands down a shark’s gills will incapacitate it. Thanks to this, he survived.

The brain does indeed have an amazing ability to alter your speed of thought and delay time perception when you are in danger, or the so-called “fight-or-flight” mode. There is much anecdotal evidence of firefighters instinctively knowing that a building will collapse very soon, or emergency physicians making complex clinical decisions in the blink of an eye by drawing from a well of past experiences.

Calvin and Hobbes

Posted in Life & Happiness

The Wind

Sometimes when you’re lost and don’t know which direction to go, just follow the wind. It might not be the right direction but at least the breeze will keep you cool.

Posted in Life & Happiness

Good

Good food.

Good wine.

Good coffee.

Good dessert.

Good song.

Good show.

Good laugh.

Good company.

The simpler your demands, the easier life can fulfil them and give you happiness.

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Posted in Life & Happiness

Godwin’s Law

In 1990 when the internet was still in its infancy, Mike Godwin observed something while browsing through internet forums. From his observations, he humorously coined the following adage: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1”. This essentially means that no matter what the topic of the online discussion may be, given enough time, someone will eventually make a comparison to Adolf Hitler or the Nazis.

For example, during a discussion about animal rights, someone may decide to post: “You know who else loved animals? Hitler.” No matter how unrelated the topic may be, someone will inevitably make a hyperbolic comparison to Hitler. It is also widely accepted that the moment this happens to a discussion, it is considered dead and the one who made the comparison loses the discussion. It should be noted that this law only applies to discussions not originally related to Hitler, the Nazis or totalitarian regimes and ideologies where the comparison to Hitler may be appropriate.

This law is closely related to a logical fallacy known as reductio ad Hitlerum, where someone tries to refute an opponent’s argument by comparing it to something Hitler would think or say. It is a crude, classless form of the ad hominem fallacy, where someone attacks the opponent personally rather than the argument itself. The reductio ad Hitlerum is extremely ineffective as in an intelligent discussion, such an effort would simply be considered childish and moronic.

Posted in Life & Happiness

One Hundred Eggs

How many eggs can you eat in one sitting? Three? Half a dozen? No matter how big or hungry you may be, eating a hundred eggs is just unthinkable. Whether you fry it, boil it, scramble it or straight out drink it, “one hundred’ is simply too much. Too difficult to imagine how much one hundred eggs would be? A hundred eggs weigh about 4~5kg. Considering a steak is usually 200~400g, this is an incredible amount. The nutritional values cannot be ignored either. A hundred eggs contain about 32350kJ of energy (7750 calories), 56g of carbohydrates, 530g of fat and 630g of protein. It is an astonishing amount of food. How could anyone eat such a massive amount in one sitting?

Surprisingly, even a petite, slim girl can eat a hundred eggs. The secret lies in how the eggs are cooked. The best thing about eggs is that they can be cooked in various ways, such as fried eggs, poached eggs, scrambled eggs and boiled eggs. The following is a fascinating way of cooking eggs to maximise the amount of eggs you can eat in one sitting. The secret method is noodles.

This is not the same as standard “egg noodles” that merely contain eggs. This is noodles only made of eggs. As strange as it sounds, once you learn the recipe and some simple scientific facts, it all becomes very clear.

Firstly, take a hundred eggs, crack them into a very large bowl and whisk thoroughly. This may be difficult due to the sheer amount of eggs as mentioned above. Next, take a cupful of the whisked eggs and strain it through a sieve straight into boiling water. The egg instantly solidifies into thin, long noodle-shapes. The reason you strain it is to make the texture smoother. Repeat this method until all of the eggs are used up and then cook the noodles in whatever way you fancy.

How does turning eggs into noodles let you eat more of it? The reason being, two-thirds of an egg is just water. Most lifeforms contain a large proportion of water. For example, about two-thirds of your weight is water too. By dripping the whisked egg in the boiling water, the water disperses out while the proteins and fat solidify to form noodles. Ergo, the nutritional components of the eggs are preserved but the filling portion is thrown away. Any other way of cooking eggs causes the water to be trapped in the final product.

Of course, this is an extremely wasteful way of eating eggs, but it can be of some benefit for a person seeking a high-protein diet to bulk their muscles.

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Posted in Life & Happiness

Point Of View

Sometimes, we make a mistake while talking to someone and say something to offend them. But what is worse than accidentally doing so is not understanding why they were offended, or why they are suddenly angry at you. Everyone’s life is as unique as their fingerprints, with different experiences leading to the forming of different values. If you do not consider someone’s point of view, what may appear harmless to you may end up being a hurtful comment for the other person.

Even when the message was not particularly offensive, not taking a person’s point of view in consideration can lead to an uncomfortable moment. For example, imagine that you were giving someone a friendly advice when they suddenly turned angry and walked away. If you were to come to me and ask why the person became angry, I could reply in two ways. If I said “Well no surprises there, you clearly didn’t consider their feelings and she had a right to be angry”, you would probably feel quite down. The reason being, you were reaching out with a genuine desire to help, but it ended up with you feeling as if you hurt that person instead. No matter how good your intentions were, the way you say it and the way the other person hears it can turn it into an insult.

Let us use an analogy to make the above lesson easier. Now, let us imagine that I suddenly threw a candy at you with no warning. You will probably be surprised and not catch the candy, letting it drop to the ground. Even though what I threw at you was a sweet candy, throwing it at you when you were not ready just made that candy fall so no one could eat it. Even worse, I might have accidentally thrown it too high and hit your face. Like so, if I throw something at a time I judge to be right, the other person will find it difficult to catch it. But if I was to ask you “Are you ready?” first, then you would find it much easier to catch the candy. The key is to say something when the other person is ready, and in a way that they could accept.

No matter how good your intentions may be, first consider whether the person is prepared to receive that message. Thinking before you speak, being considerate of others and respecting their points of view will quickly make you a beloved friend who everyone wants to talk to.

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