Posted in Life & Happiness

The Mermaid Theory

The myth of mermaids originates thousands of years ago from sailors who had been out in the waters for many months. Without seeing a woman for such long times, they reached a point of desperation where manatees on the rocks appeared as beautiful women with strangely attractive fish tails. This portrays the basic male drive and the way we perceive the world.

This applies to modern days as well. Upon meeting any woman, regardless of their level of attractiveness, a “mermaid clock” begins ticking inside a man’s head. The time that takes for this clock to expire varies for every woman, but ultimately a time comes when the man will see the woman as attractive and will not be able to take his eyes off of her. This is The Mermaid Theory, which thus proves that the attractiveness of a woman to a man increases in direct proportion to the time exposed to her. Or put even more simply, no matter how attractive or unattractive a woman is, eventually a man will want to sleep with her. This process may be accelerated by the usage of alcohol and the level of depravation of the man at the time. 

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The Mermaid Theory proves to be potentially dangerous, for example when the woman in question is a close friend of the man or even his partner. Sometimes the mental shock that someone once so unappealing is now so beautiful looking may be crippling as well.

True story.

Posted in History & Literature

The Twelve Labours Of Hercules

After killing his children in a psychotic state inflicted by Hera, Hercules was dethroned and was set ten tasks, all deemed impossible, which he had to complete for forgiveness of his sins. Each task required problem-solving and unconventional thinking, which eventually granted Hercules the reward of immortality.

The twelve (including two that were added as he was blamed for cheating in two tasks) labours in order were:

  1. Kill the Nemean Lion, a monster with hide so thick that no arrow can pierce it. Hercules stunned the lion with a club and then strangled it, after which proceeded to skin its hide with its own claws to use as armour.
  2. Kill the Lernean Hydra, a monster with nine heads, which could regrow two heads in the place where one was cut. Hercules instructed his charioteer, Iolaus, to cauterise the necks after cutting the heads to prevent it regenerating, then used the poisonous blood to coat his arrows. This was considered cheating as he used the help of Iolaus.
  3. Capture the Cerynian Hind, Artemis’ beloved deer. Hercules followed the hind for an entire year and then safely carried it away, to avoid harming the frail creature and angering the goddess.
  4. Capture the Erymanthian Boar, a wild beast that intimidated all of the inhabitants of the mountain. Hercules captured the creature using a net.
  5. Clean the Augean Stables, a gigantic stable housing thousands of cows that had not been cleaned in 30 years, Hercules was given one day for the task, so he bent two rivers so they flowed through the stables to clean the filth. He was about to receive payment for his service, which was considered cheating by King Eurystheus (who set the tasks).
  6. Kill the Stymphalian Birds, murderous birds with bronze beaks and claws, and metallic feathers that they could shoot like darts. Hercules killed them with poison arrows tipped with the Hydra’s blood.
  7. Capture the Cretan Bull, a rampant bull capable of breathing fire. Hercules wrestled to control the beast and successfully captured it.
  8. Capture the horses of Diomedes, that were trained to feed on human flesh. Hercules killed King Diomedes who raised them and fed his corpse to the horses, thus taming them.
  9. Take the Girdle of Hippolyte, the queen of the Amazons. Hercules was gifted the girdle by Hippolyte, but Hera spread a rumour that he was there to conquer the Amazons, forcing him to kill the Amazons and steal the belt in the end.
  10. Capture the Cattle of Geryon, a winged monster with three human bodies. Hercules killed Geryon and his guardian dog, and then took his herd of cattle.
  11. Take the Golden Apples of Hesperides, protected by Ladon, a dragon with a hundred heads. Hercules bargained with Atlas to hold the Earth while he retrieved it. Atlas tried to walk away free from his damned task, but Hercules tricked him by asking to hold the Earth while he shifted his cloak.
  12. Capture Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guarded the underworld. Hercules had to wrestle Cerberus into submission as he was not allowed to use his weapons, and Cerberus agreed to be taken to see the king, after which it returned unharmed to the underworld.

This goes to show that any task is possible as long as one has the right mindset, can think outside the square and put in all of his or her strength into it.

Posted in Science & Nature

Rule Of Threes

This is how long you can survive for without certain things:

  • 3 minutes without air
  • 3 hours without shelter
  • 3 days without water
  • 3 weeks without food
  • 3 months without hope

Posted in Science & Nature

Parkinson’s Law

Parkinson’s Law states that the bigger a company grows, the more inefficient workers it will hire while paying out more wages. The reason for this is simple: those in power like to stay in power, and the best way to ensure this is to eliminate competition.

Hiring skilled workers brings upon the chance of a strong competitor that can over throw the bureaucrats, which is undesirable. Therefore, by hiring useless people, the bureaucrats are able to keep their seat of power.

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

Posted in Science & Nature

Echo

Because sound is a wave, it is reflected by a surface. An echo is when this reflection is sufficiently loud and is quite common in everyday life. It is heard especially in places such as a mountain top or in a canyon because the surface needs to be quite far for our ears to detect the echo. If it is too close, as in within 340m – the distance covered by sound within one second – the echo overlaps with the original sound and cannot be heard. However, if a room is lined by a smooth surface, such as a bathroom or opera house, an echo may be heard. In these cases the delay between the sound and its echo is so close that it merely sounds as if the sound is amplified, thus explaining why singing sounds better when in a bath.

An echo can be very powerful, an example being St Paul’s Cathedral in London, England. This building is built with a giant, hemispherical roof that can amplify a whisper from one corner and replay it audibly at a corner on the opposite side of the room.
It is also very useful as it is used in technologies such as sonar and ultrasound machines to see through objects.

The word “echo” originates from a nymph named Echo from Greek mythology. Echo was instructed by Zeus to distract Hera from noticing him having an affair by chatting to her constantly. Hera caught on to this and cursed Echo to only be able to repeat what others say. After that, Echo could not even say “I love you” to the man she loved, and eventually lived in the mountains where she repeated whatever travellers said in an attempt to speak.

An interesting fact about echoes is the common myth that a duck’s quack does not echo. This is incorrect in that it does in fact echo, but since a quack is soft and fades quickly, the echo is usually too faint to be audible.

Posted in History & Literature

Wilhelm Scream

Often while watching a movie, you hear a scream that you feel like you have heard it before. This phenomenon occurs quite commonly, and the reason for it is rather simple. It is not because of some psychological phenomena, but because it is always the same scream. But how is it that the same scream appears in movies spanning over 50 years, with no common actors? 

This is the famous Wilhelm Scream, a pre-recorded sound clip frequently used in movie sound editing. It first appeared in the 1951 film “Distant Drums” (when a villain is snatched away by an alligator), and became famous when it was used again in 1953 in “The Charge at Feather River”, when a soldier named Wilhelm gives off the scream when shot (hence the name).

From then on, this scream has become somewhat a cliché in the film world, with numerous directors humorously sneaking it in their movie. George Lucas is especially well-known for his love with the sound clip, as he used it in every Star Wars and Indiana Jones movie. Including appearances in movies, games and other media, the Wilhelm Scream has been used over 200 times to date. This peculiar scream tends to be used when a nameless villain, such as a stormtrooper or a Nazi soldier, is shot, fell or somehow mortally harmed.

Next time you watch a film, look out for the Wilhelm Scream.

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Sensory Illusion

The five senses we use to experience the world are simply wondrous. However, thanks to our not-so-perfect brain, these senses can easily be distorted. Illusions are a very good way to show how the brain processes sensory information and there are many fascinating examples.

Almost everyone has seen an optical illusion before, such as Penrose’s endless stairs or the Muller-Lyer illusion. There are countless more examples such as static pictures that appear to be moving and illusions in colour perception (A and B are the same colour). This is caused by the brain not recording images like a camera, but rather processing visual information and reconstructing an image. There are four main types of optical illusions: ambiguous (e.g. rabbit or duck), distortion (Café wall illusion), paradoxical (Penrose triangle) and fictional (only seen in hallucinations or by schizophrenics).

(Do you see the dolphins? Children cannot see the man and woman because they cannot comprehend it, whilst adults cannot overpower the sexual image)

Like vision, every other sense can be fooled in a similar fashion.
Auditory illusions that distort what we hear are fairly common, a good example being the infinitely ascending Shepard scale (which are just a series of the same ascending octave scale). Also, the McGurk effect shows how the brain uses a multimodal approach where it involves both hearing and vision when listening.

There are also tactile illusions. For example, if you pull your top lip to left and the bottom lip to the right, then prod the middle of the lips with a pencil, it feels like there are two. However, the more famous case is of the Phantom Limb, where an amputee’s brain still believes that the limb is there, causing it to “feel” the limb or even feel pain.

The other two senses aren’t as famous in terms of illusions, but definitely exist.
Smell is easy to fool through chemicals as it is the physiological method of detecting smell. It also exhibits olfactory fatigue where it becomes desensitised to a strong smell.
Taste illusions are more fascinating and easily seen. They are caused by two or more tastes forming a synergy to produce a completely different taste. For instance, mixing barley tea and milk produces a coffee milk taste, while cucumber and honey tastes like melons.
A more fascinating illusion involves Miracle Fruit Berries, which contain a substance called miraculin that distorts the taste of sourness to sweetness.

This shows how we can fool all five senses, and learn more about the mysterious organ that is the brain.

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Dunning-Kruger Effect

People are very interesting animals that, despite possessing the most powerful brain out of all the species, exhibit many strange psychological phenomena. For example, in psychology there is a well-known cognitive bias (the act of subconsciously making bias while thinking) called the Dunning-Kruger effect. 
This effect states that people who are unskilled are more likely to fail to recognise their incompetence and rather overestimate their capabilities. It is most prevalent in cases where someone first learns a skill, such as singing at the karaoke, then believing that they are extremely skilled or an expert in the field when it comes to learning knowledge.

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This strange effect is caused by the belief that learning is an easy process. For example, it is simple to understand the basic principles of science, but it takes far more effort to understand the deeper, more complex pieces of knowledge to become an expert in the field. However, people are deluded into thinking that the time required for a beginner to become an amateur is equal to the time for an amateur to become an expert. This can be easily explained through the analogy of a role-playing game, where “levelling”, or gaining more experience, is much easier in the earlier levels compared to much later. For example, the time taken to go from level 1 to 30 may be equal to the time taken to go from level 30 to 33.

The Dunning-Kruger effect scientifically explains the proverbial frog in the well (who believes he is the best, not knowing that there is a bigger world). Also, this effect extends to those who are actually skilled, as it causes them to believe they are not as skilled and rather underestimate themselves. This is often due to them understanding that it is much more difficult to master a skill and that they are “nowhere near” that point. 

These two factors combine to produce a strange paradox where the less skilled are less likely to believe they are incompetent and rate themselves as more skilled than the expert. This is frequently seen on the internet or during debates and arguments.

Posted in Life & Happiness

Blueberry Pancakes

Let’s make some blueberry pancakes, a tasty and nutritious brunch item.

Ingredients:

Flour 115g
Baking powder 5g
Salt 1g
Milk 100ml
Egg 1
Sugar 30g
Butter 30g
Blueberries 20~30 

  1. Sieve the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl
  2. Mix the egg, milk and sugar together, and whisk well
  3. Mix 1 and 2 together with the pre-melted butter to make the batter
  4. On a pre-heated frying pan, drizzle some cooking oil on it, then pour a scoop of batter on (or all of it to make one large pancake)
  5. Cook on a weak flame and when bubbles start to fill the surface, sprinkle some blueberries (as much as you want) and flip the pancake carefully, to keep the shape 
  6. Let the bottom surface cook for a bit longer, and then serve on a plate, then repeat until there’s no batter left
  7. Serve with blueberries, jam, honey, maple syrup, whipped cream, banana, icing sugar, bacon etc. according to your taste and enjoy 

Pancakes are easy to make, soft, warm, moist and delicious which makes it ideal for brunch. Also, blueberries contain potent antioxidants which have anti-aging and anti-cancer properties.

Posted in History & Literature

Dragon

Dragons are mythical animals that appear in many myths and legends. They are usually portrayed as gigantic reptiles, similar to snakes or lizards, and appear in stories from cultures around the world. Due to this, they can be split into two large groups: Eastern and Western Dragons, which have quite a few differences between them.

  • Western dragons look like dinosaurs or giant lizards, with a large body with bat-like wings and usually able to breathe fire.
    Eastern dragons are sleek like large serpents, with four legs and antlers and the ability to control weather (water-element based).
  • Eastern dragons are wise and benevolent creatures that help people, with omnipotent powers contained in yeouiju (dragon orb).
    Western dragons are violent and evil creatures that harm people, loot gold and jewellery and destroy villages.
  • Western dragons are the greatest enemy the hero has to kill, and is feared by the people.
    Eastern dragons are often teachers to heroes, giving them advice and help, while being worshipped by the people.

Like this the two kinds of dragons are mirror images regarding many characteristics, but the idea of a large reptile being conceived by so many cultures so far apart is quite strange. This leads many to believe that dragons are based on actual animals, and is likely the result of explorers finding dinosaur fossils, wondering what those animals would look like if they were alive.