Tag: encyclopaedia

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Question

Posted on by Jinavie

The word that children say the most as they grow up is probably “why?”. Children always ask this and that, seeking knowledge as if they want to understand every object and everything happening around them. This is an extremely important developmental step that trains the most powerful weapon a human being possesses: the brain. Children can use their brain’s amazing information processing abilities to start building a massive knowledge tank, absorbing information like a sponge. Furthermore, they never ask a question just once but love to repeat the same question over and over, driving an adult crazy. This is not because the child wants to frustrate the adult. Just like how you cannot fully understand all of the meanings in a good book on the first read, a child learns through repetition and ruminating knowledge. If you do not repeat something, the knowledge only lasts in short term memory and is soon deleted, making it a very inefficient study process. Ergo, famous children’s educational programs such as Sesame Street and Blues Clues teach children things by constantly repeating the same thing. After that, the children watch the same episode over and over again to acquire knowledge.

As children do not know much about the world, they need to inherit knowledge from adults. Because adults possess a vast amount of knowledge, children need to ask a series of specific questions to build their knowledge base slowly and steadily. As their basic knowledge base builds, they can start to learn through other means such as books and encyclopaedias. However, whether you are a child or an adult, if you have something that you want to know, there is no faster and effective way of finding out than asking someone that knows. If you do not ask, you cannot learn and your brain will atrophy. Curiosity is a sign that there is still something you can learn. Thus, no matter how old you are, you should have the courage to ask a question. Curiosity is progress.

On the other hand, if someone (especially a child) asks you a question, do not brush them away; calmly answer their question and try to pass on as much of your knowledge to them as possible. That is your responsibility as a member of society; a sacred duty of feeding and nurturing the future generation.

Posted in Life & Happiness

Forgetting

Posted on by Jinavie

“Blessed are the forgetful for they get the better even of their blunders.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

If you could forget a horrible memory or experience forever, would you? Although some traumatic experiences are best forgotten, something like a break up may leave painful yet bittersweet memories. Does the cost of heartbreak outweigh all the precious memories you had with that person? There may be doubt that you may miss the lovely memories and regret your decision, but ultimately without the memory you will have no regret either. Is ignorance bliss?

Posted in Science & Nature

Marriageable Age

Posted on by Jinavie

When is the right time to get married? According to Professor Tony Dooley, you can use an equation to find the right age for proposing. To do this, take “the youngest age you want to marry” and minus it from “the oldest age you want to marry” then times 0.368. Add this number to the youngest age. For example, if you would consider getting married from age 21 onwards and at the latest 30, your ideal age to marry is: (30 – 21) x 0.368 = 3.312 + 21 = 24.312, thus about 24 years and 4 months old. 

This equation is very practical as it is a modified version of equations used in financial and medical fields. This equation is used to maximise profit while minimising loss using mathematics. It may not sound romantic, but according to Professor Dooley, after you reach the calculated age you should not waste time and ask the hand of the next person you date in marriage.

(Source: http://soulofautumn87.deviantart.com/art/All-We-Need-Is-A-4-Letter-Word-111260511)

Posted in History & Literature

Communism

Posted on by Jinavie

A professor was lecturing about communism. The students insisted that communism worked since no one would be poor and no one would be rich – a great equalizer. To show the students whether communism worked or not, the professor designed a social experiment. The professor announced to the class that all grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade.

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who had studied hard were upset while the students who had studied very little were happy.
But when the second test came, the students who had studied little studied even less and the ones who had studied hard before decided that since they could not make an A (even if they got 100%, the bottom half of the class would pull the average down), they also studied less. The second test average was a D.
No one was happy. By the third test, the class average had fallen to an F. Now no one was rich, but everyone was equally “poor”.

Communism ultimately fails because it removes one of the major driving forces of economies – incentive. Money is a key (but not the only) incentive that motivates people to work harder as they are rewarded with a better quality of life. But when private wealth is abolished and wealthy is “equally” (note that it is not “equitably”) split among the population, there is no longer motivation to try harder. Because no one wants to work for the benefit of strangers (due to psychological phenomena such as responsibility splitting and the monkeysphere), the economy does not grow and everyone becomes poor.

Communism essentially relies on the goodwill of the people while disregarding all realistic factors of economic growth. It is an extreme ideal that has failed in every instance in history. The only times communism works is in a small society setting such as a small village or tribe where there are less than 150 people (within the monkeysphere, thus people actually care about all of the others). The idea behind it is admirable – that all human beings have equal rights to a certain quality of life. However, it disregards the most important factor of economics; that resources are scarce and we cannot fulfil the infinite needs of everyone. Monetary incentives at least allow us to seek out these resources ourselves, with market economies rewarding such behaviour with money.

Thus, we should not focus on “equality”, which means that everyone should receive the “same”, but “equity”, which means that everyone should receive a “fair share” according to how much they have worked and contributed to the society.

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Weltschmerz

Posted on by Jinavie

There is a German word called weltschmerz, which translates into “world pain” or “weariness against the world”. This word describes sad emotions felt after realising that the material world cannot satisfy the mind and that the ideal, hypothetic utopia in your mind cannot exist. It also describes the sadness felt after realising that your weaknesses arose from physical and social conditions of the world. Weltschmerz was widely used by poets such as Lord Byron, mainly as a way of viewing the world. It is a very pessimistic view of the world that often leads to or associated with depression, resignation and escapism. In severe cases it may lead to mental disorders such as hikikomori (a social disorder where the person does not and cannot leave their room due to fear and disgust of the world, also known as agoraphobia).

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Spinach

Posted on by Jinavie

Spinach is a vegetable that is excellent for your health as it is rich in nutrients such as vitamins and minerals. If you ask someone the first two things that come to mind regarding spinach, they will most likely reply Popeye and iron. Popeye is a cartoon that began airing in the 1930’s and every child knows that the man gains superhuman powers from eating a can of spinach. In fact, after Popeye began airing, US consumption of spinach grew 33%. Most people believe that Popeye gains powers due to spinach having a high iron content. Thus, adults always tell children that if they want to be as strong as Popeye, they must eat their spinach.

Unfortunately, eating spinach does not make you as strong as Popeye. In fact, it is not even related to iron either. Firstly, the reason why Popeye eats spinach was because the producers wanted to advertise the high vitamin A content in spinach. Furthermore, spinach does not have a high iron content. The spinach iron myth originated from a German scientist named Emil von Wolff. In 1870, von Wolff was analysing the nutrition contents of different foods when he, from severe fatigue, accidentally misplaced a decimal point while recording the iron content of spinach. This led to spinach being known to have ten times the amount iron it actually has (to the level of red meat).

One problem with this is that this story is not true either. There are no detailed records of von Wolff’s experiments and no one knows if he misplaced a decimal point or not. The myth most likely originates from a 1980 article in The British Medical Journal that first brought up the story. Does that mean spinach is actually is a good source of iron? Wrong. Vegetarians often claim that spinach has iron levels close to red meat, but there is something about iron that they do not know. Many plants have a high iron content (it is found in chlorophyll which is used for photosynthesis), but this is mostly non-heme iron. There are two types of iron the human body can absorb: heme and non-heme. Heme iron can be used directly after absorption whereas non-heme iron needs to be metabolised by the liver to be usable. This takes a long time and is inefficient meaning it is far more effective to eat foods rich in heme iron. Plant iron is all non-heme iron while 40% of iron in red meat is heme iron, meaning it is a much better source of iron. Furthermore, spinach has a high oxalate content, which is an iron absorption inhibiting agent, making what little usable iron it has unabsorbable. 

In short, it is true that spinach has “iron” but as we cannot absorb it or use it, it practically has no iron content. But if you tell this to your parents and refuse to eat spinach, you may get into a lot of trouble.

Posted in Philosophy

Politics

Posted on by Jinavie

The following is an excerpt from the Analects by Confucius, titled The Secret of Politics:

Confucius’ disciple Zi-gong asked him: “What is politics?”
Confucius replied: “The key to politics is to make food plentiful(足食), keep enough soldiers(足兵) and earn the people’s trust(民信).”

Zi-gong thought about this, but decided it was too hard to do all three. He asked again: “If you had to give up one, which would you choose?”
Confucius replied: “I would give up the soldiers.”

Zi-gong asked again: “If you had to give up one more thing, which would you choose?”
Confucius thought for a minute and said: “I would give up food. If you believe, you can withstand hunger for a while and withstand the hardships of war, but if you lose trust you will immediately lose everything.”

The character 信 stands for trust, which is believing in another person. Of course there must be trust among the people, but Confucius teaches us that the trust between the people and their leaders is the most important. In fact, with trust and faith you can overcome anything. If you can respect and trust in your leaders, you can endure hunger and at times, even summon the strength to defeat your enemies with your bare hands.

An administration that has lost the hearts of the people will fail.

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Clubbing

Posted on by Jinavie

Among the thousands of signs and symptoms in the field of medicine, there is one that every doctor and medical student knows since the development of medicine. Clubbing is an easily noticeable sign in a patient’s fingers that can have wide implications on their health.

Clubbing is essentially when the angle (gap) between the fingernail bed and finger disappears. The formal definition is much more complicated, such as “the loss of the normal <165° angle, or Lovibond angle between the nailbed and the fold”, but for all intents and purposes the simple definition is sufficient.

To see if a patient has clubbing, the physician carefully studies the fingers against light. There are a few ways to check for clubbing but the most popular methods are holding the fingers out straight and holding them parallel to the ground, checking the angle between the nailbed and finger, or the Schamroth’s window test. The latter test is done by holding two opposing fingers (such as the left and right index fingers) against each other nail to nail. The fingers are then held against the light so that the light can shine through the “window” that is made. If the window is not seen, the test is positive and the patient has clubbing.

What does clubbing suggest? Clubbing was first noticed by Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine, who observed that people with clubbing tended to grab their chest and fall dead. This is one of the most common associations to clubbing – a congenital cyanotic heart defect such as tetralogy of Fallot or patent ductus arteriosus. Other common associations are related to the lungs, such as lung cancer (one of the most common causes) and various other lung diseases such as interstitial lung disease, tuberculosis and other chronic infections. There are also a myriad of other diseases associated to clubbing, including but not limited to: Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, cirrhosis, celiac disease, Graves disease and certain types of cancers (lung, gastrointestinal and Hodgkin’s lymphoma mainly). Clubbing can also be idiopathic, where there is no apparent cause for the clubbing and the person just has it (possibly just born with it).

Despite knowing about clubbing for over 2000 years, we still do not know the exact reasons for clubbing. There are theories that it is related to a fall in blood oxygen content leading to vasodilation in the peripheries. As the pathophysiology is not clear and so many diseases are associated with it, when clubbing is found in the patient the physician should investigate the related organ systems (heart, lungs, GI mainly) to narrow down the possible cause of it. As many of the causes (such as lung cancer) carry a rather morbid prognosis, it is quite important to notice whether the patient has clubbing when doing a physical examination.

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Fugue State

Posted on by Jinavie

Any computer user would have had an (unfortunate) experience where their computer crashed and all the information there was destroyed in a second. You may still be able to format it and use it without problems, but the data you had on the computer and any customisation you made would be lost. But what if this exact thing could happen to a human being?

There are many types of amnesia, with causes ranging from neurobiological (where trauma to the brain, a drug or some other pathology causes memory loss) to psychogenic (where there is no apparent biological cause for the amnesia). With psychogenic amnesia, one only experiences retrograde amnesia, where they cannot recall memories from the past. However, anterograde amnesia, where you cannot form new memories and keep forgetting what happened, is absent in psychogenic amnesia. Psychogenic amnesia is often caused by extreme stress or a traumatic event. One type of psychogenic amnesia is situation-specific amnesia, as seen in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that occurs after a severely stressful experience such as war, rape, child abuse or witnessing a brutal death. In this case, the patient tends to only lose memories regarding the event, as if the brain is trying to protect the person from the hurtful memories.

A more interesting and much rarer type of amnesia is global psychogenic amnesia, also known as a fugue state or dissociative fugue. Unlike situation-specific amnesia, patients in fugue states have absolutely no memory of their original identity and personality. Simply put, they (usually) retain all their functions such as speaking and social interactions, but their persona has been wiped out like a formatted computer. Fugue states often develop after severe stress and can happen to anyone. Similar to situation-specific amnesia, the brain blocks all memories of the past in an attempt to protect the person’s psyche. Due to the “deletion” of the previous persona, patients in fugue states often generate new identities and begin wandering (sometimes even travelling to another country) away from the place they lost their memories. This is most likely the brain attempting to leave the environment to avoid the stressor that caused the event. 

Fugue states are often short-lived, lasting from days to months. However, very rarely they can last for years. Once out of a fugue state, the patient recovers all of their past memories but have no recollection of what happened during the fugue state. This creates a hole in their memory. For obvious reasons, this usually causes intense confusion and distress in the patient and treatment is often based around helping the person come to an understanding about the episode and cope with the stressor that caused it.

Posted in History & Literature

Totalitarianism

Posted on by Jinavie

People take interest in ants for many reasons. Some people are fascinated by how ants have achieved what they deem a perfect totalitarian system. In fact, if you observe it from the outside, an ant nest appears to be completely harmonious as everyone works the same, everyone focuses on the good of the whole and everyone is prepared to sacrifice themselves. But humanity has failed in every attempt at totalitarianism up until now. The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Babylonians, Carthaginians, Persians, Chinese, French, British, Russians, Germans, Japanese and Americans all experienced an age of glory and appeared as if the world would be assimilated into them, but fortunately a tiny grain of sand would always fall and destroy their unified systems.

This is why there are people who try to imitate insects who live in hive societies (consider how Napoleon’s insignia was of a honeybee). If what unifies an ant nest’s thoughts into one is pheromones, then modern society’s worldwide media does the same function today. People always suggest something that they believe is good and expect others to follow it. They believe that this way, we will achieve a perfect human society one day. But this is not the way of the universe.

Nature, unlike what Darwin suggested, does not evolve so that the fittest survive and rule (and what standard could possible differentiate “fit” and “undesirable”?). Nature’s powers lie in variation. In nature, there are good, evil, insane, devastated, lively, ill, deformed, demented, happy, depressed, intelligent, foolish, selfish, generous people and big, small, black, yellow, red, white things etc. They must all exist. If there is one danger in nature, it is when one group is destroyed by another group.

If there is a field of corns and only the corns that have the “best” traits (i.e. require the least water, stand cold weather and produce juicy corn) are used to pollinate, then the entire crop can be wiped out by a single disease. Contrastingly, a wild crop with individual corns having unique traits with varied weaknesses and differences can survive diseases as the corns find a way to beat it among the many different traits.

Nature hates standardisation and loves diversity. It is through diversity that nature exerts its original abilities.

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