Truth, semen, e-mail, TV, lack of sleep, and AC make you fat - but not necessary in this particular order. Fruits make you fat. The air we breathe makes us fat. Apparently everything makes us fat, including fat. Apart from the obvious don’ts like deep fried thingies, seminal fluid (a tablespoon of semen contains 25 calories and 150 mg of protein, 11 mg of carbohydrates, 6 mg fat, 3 mg cholesterol, 7% US RDA potassium and 3% US RDA copper and zinc) and debaucheries with fondue French cheeses and Spanish wine, we have a new palette of fattening enemies.
Experts say AC and heating keep us where we should not be, in a “thermoneutral zone”, which is a temperature range where we don’t have to regulate our body temperature. When our bodies are above or below this zone, we increase the amount of energy we spend which decreases energy stores, such as fat. So basically, we fool our bodies that the temperature is a comfortable 22C instead of an excruciating 40C and accordingly, the body stops sweating, burning calories and consequently, staying thin.
And as insane as it might seem, some advance the idea that the lack of sleep makes you fat. How? Well, is quite simple, really. When you are tired you don’t have enough time to exercise so you are tempted to over eat to compensate, in order to gain energy. Moreover, the lack of sleep disrupts one of our hunger hormones (leptin and ghrelin), which can make us fat. Researchers at UCLA claim that poor sleep causes increased ghrelin and decreased leptin during the day, which doubly increases your appetite when you don’t get enough sleep.
Not thinking about leptin and ghrelin, Timothy Dumouchel sued the cable company, claiming it made his wife fat, gave him a liver disease and turned his children into lazy monsters. Tim claimed that if the programs were fewer and lousier, his wife wouldn't have been tempted to watch the TV all day long and thus exercising less, his children would have studied more and he wouldn’t have picked up on his old habits of smoking and drinking.
Oh, by the way, did you know that the email (and, by extension, blogging and social networks) makes you fat? That is without doubt a no-brainer. Instead of running up and down those stairs in the business building to spread the juicy gossip, you prefer to update your Facebook status or to push the send button. If you are worried about your waistline, next time try going down the stairs to the hot chicks at HR from the 3rd floor.
We all know which are the habitual enemies: fat food, lack of exercise, lack of sleep, faulty genes, contraceptive pills, cold medication (a sachet of Fervex contains 11.7 g of sugar, so 7 days of flu x 2 sachets/day deposit 163.8 g sugar on your rollerblader butt), diet beverages (aspartame makes you crave for real sweets), being stressed, a fat partner, sugary beverages, quitting smoking, this and that and the other. What is it to be done? Well, for starters break up with your boyfriend, turn off the AC, and sleep yourself to death. Or you can try this innovative and highly speculative hypothesis, which was not verified enough as I only lost 10 grams or so since I started writing it.
The good news is that lying keeps you in a tiptop shape. You now obviously wonder why your co-worker is so damn thin! Here's why. Stats claim that the most common lie in the world is considered to be “I’m fine” as most people would rather lie about how they feel at the moment. Lying, as in oral or written deception in communication, takes way too much energy of a person, as it involves creativity and mental stimulation, if we let aside the obvious immorality of such practice. We are not talking about how indecent is to lie, as lying is, as Nietzsche said, a condition of life. But when someone is lying (imagination), he needs to remember the details of his lie (memory), and follow it up, eventually, invent new details (creativity). Unless you have a subarachnoid hemorrhage in your frontal lobe, which would turn you into a chronic confabulator, the above mentioned processes involve some heavy thinking, and we all know the brain requires a tenth of a calorie per minute, just to stay alive. To produce the neurotransmitters, neurons extract 75% of the sugar glucose (this is why you seem smarter after gulping down a Mars) and 20% of the oxygen in the blood. The frontal lobe of your brain is where your thinking takes place, so if you are joggling with big questions (the chicken or the egg? Mars or Venus? Atheism or Religion? Why am I here? and similar) you need to bring on the sugar. It is an avalanche effect. The more you lie, the more you have to work to keep your lie alive, and that requires a lot of mental energy, hence you burn more calories. So we might conclude that a liar that strenuously works to keep up with his concoctions might have more chances to stay fit than someone who is telling the truth (of any kind subjective, relative, objective, absolute, coherent, correspondent or kripkean). Hence, the truth could be illegal and certainly is immoral but one things is sure: it makes you fat. Oh, by the way, you look wonderful today!
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Truth, semen and e-mail make you fat!
Truth, semen, e-mail, TV, lack of sleep, and AC make you fat - but not necessary in this particular order. Fruits make you fat. The air we breathe makes us fat. Apparently everything makes us fat, including fat. Apart from the obvious don’ts like deep fried thingies, seminal fluid (a tablespoon of semen contains 25 calories and 150 mg of protein, 11 mg of carbohydrates, 6 mg fat, 3 mg cholesterol, 7% US RDA potassium and 3% US RDA copper and zinc) and debaucheries with fondue French cheeses and Spanish wine, we have a new palette of fattening enemies.
Experts say AC and heating keep us where we should not be, in a “thermoneutral zone”, which is a temperature range where we don’t have to regulate our body temperature. When our bodies are above or below this zone, we increase the amount of energy we spend which decreases energy stores, such as fat. So basically, we fool our bodies that the temperature is a comfortable 22C instead of an excruciating 40C and accordingly, the body stops sweating, burning calories and consequently, staying thin.
And as insane as it might seem, some advance the idea that the lack of sleep makes you fat. How? Well, is quite simple, really. When you are tired you don’t have enough time to exercise so you are tempted to over eat to compensate, in order to gain energy. Moreover, the lack of sleep disrupts one of our hunger hormones (leptin and ghrelin), which can make us fat. Researchers at UCLA claim that poor sleep causes increased ghrelin and decreased leptin during the day, which doubly increases your appetite when you don’t get enough sleep.
Not thinking about leptin and ghrelin, Timothy Dumouchel sued the cable company, claiming it made his wife fat, gave him a liver disease and turned his children into lazy monsters. Tim claimed that if the programs were fewer and lousier, his wife wouldn't have been tempted to watch the TV all day long and thus exercising less, his children would have studied more and he wouldn’t have picked up on his old habits of smoking and drinking.
Oh, by the way, did you know that the email ( and, by extension, blogging and social networks) makes you fat? That is without doubt a no-brainer. Instead of running up and down those stairs in the business building to spread the juicy gossip, you prefer to update your Facebook status or to push the send button. If you are worried about your waistline, next time try going down the stairs to the hot chicks at HR from the 3rd floor.
We all know which are the habitual enemies: fat food, lack of exercise, lack of sleep, faulty genes, contraceptive pills, cold medication (a sachet of Fervex contains 11.7 g of sugar, so 7 days of flu x 2 sachets/day deposit 163.8 g sugar on your rollerblader butt), diet beverages (aspartame makes you crave for real sweets), being stressed, a fat partner, sugary beverages, quitting smoking, this and that and the other. Stop it!
The good news is that lying keeps you in a tiptop shape. You now obviously wonder why your co-worker is so damn thin! Here's why. Stats claim that the most common lie in the world is considered to be “I’m fine” as most people would rather lie about how they feel at the moment. Lying, as in oral or written deception in communication, takes way too much energy of a person, as it involves creativity and mental stimulation, if we let aside the obvious immorality of such practice. We are not talking about how indecent is to lie, as lying is, as Nietzsche said, a condition of life. But when someone is lying (imagination), he needs to remember the details of his lie (memory), and follow it up, eventually, invent new details (creativity). Unless you have a subarachnoid hemorrhage in your frontal lobe, which would turn you into a chronic confabulator, the above mentioned processes involve some heavy thinking, and we all know the brain requires a tenth of a calorie per minute, just to stay alive. To produce the neurotransmitters, neurons extract 75% of the sugar glucose (this is why you seem smarter after gulping down a Mars) and 20% of the oxygen in the blood. The frontal lobe of your brain is where your thinking takes place, so if you are joggling with big questions (the chicken or the egg? Mars or Venus? Atheism or Religion? Why am I here? and similar) you need to bring on the sugar. It is an avalanche effect. The more you lie, the more you have to work to keep your lie alive, and that requires a lot of mental energy, hence you burn more calories. So we might conclude that a liar that strenuously works to keep up with his concoctions might have more chances to stay fit than someone who is telling the truth. So there, the truth makes you fat. Oh, by the way, you look wonderful today!
Experts say AC and heating keep us where we should not be, in a “thermoneutral zone”, which is a temperature range where we don’t have to regulate our body temperature. When our bodies are above or below this zone, we increase the amount of energy we spend which decreases energy stores, such as fat. So basically, we fool our bodies that the temperature is a comfortable 22C instead of an excruciating 40C and accordingly, the body stops sweating, burning calories and consequently, staying thin.
And as insane as it might seem, some advance the idea that the lack of sleep makes you fat. How? Well, is quite simple, really. When you are tired you don’t have enough time to exercise so you are tempted to over eat to compensate, in order to gain energy. Moreover, the lack of sleep disrupts one of our hunger hormones (leptin and ghrelin), which can make us fat. Researchers at UCLA claim that poor sleep causes increased ghrelin and decreased leptin during the day, which doubly increases your appetite when you don’t get enough sleep.
Not thinking about leptin and ghrelin, Timothy Dumouchel sued the cable company, claiming it made his wife fat, gave him a liver disease and turned his children into lazy monsters. Tim claimed that if the programs were fewer and lousier, his wife wouldn't have been tempted to watch the TV all day long and thus exercising less, his children would have studied more and he wouldn’t have picked up on his old habits of smoking and drinking.
Oh, by the way, did you know that the email ( and, by extension, blogging and social networks) makes you fat? That is without doubt a no-brainer. Instead of running up and down those stairs in the business building to spread the juicy gossip, you prefer to update your Facebook status or to push the send button. If you are worried about your waistline, next time try going down the stairs to the hot chicks at HR from the 3rd floor.
We all know which are the habitual enemies: fat food, lack of exercise, lack of sleep, faulty genes, contraceptive pills, cold medication (a sachet of Fervex contains 11.7 g of sugar, so 7 days of flu x 2 sachets/day deposit 163.8 g sugar on your rollerblader butt), diet beverages (aspartame makes you crave for real sweets), being stressed, a fat partner, sugary beverages, quitting smoking, this and that and the other. Stop it!
The good news is that lying keeps you in a tiptop shape. You now obviously wonder why your co-worker is so damn thin! Here's why. Stats claim that the most common lie in the world is considered to be “I’m fine” as most people would rather lie about how they feel at the moment. Lying, as in oral or written deception in communication, takes way too much energy of a person, as it involves creativity and mental stimulation, if we let aside the obvious immorality of such practice. We are not talking about how indecent is to lie, as lying is, as Nietzsche said, a condition of life. But when someone is lying (imagination), he needs to remember the details of his lie (memory), and follow it up, eventually, invent new details (creativity). Unless you have a subarachnoid hemorrhage in your frontal lobe, which would turn you into a chronic confabulator, the above mentioned processes involve some heavy thinking, and we all know the brain requires a tenth of a calorie per minute, just to stay alive. To produce the neurotransmitters, neurons extract 75% of the sugar glucose (this is why you seem smarter after gulping down a Mars) and 20% of the oxygen in the blood. The frontal lobe of your brain is where your thinking takes place, so if you are joggling with big questions (the chicken or the egg? Mars or Venus? Atheism or Religion? Why am I here? and similar) you need to bring on the sugar. It is an avalanche effect. The more you lie, the more you have to work to keep your lie alive, and that requires a lot of mental energy, hence you burn more calories. So we might conclude that a liar that strenuously works to keep up with his concoctions might have more chances to stay fit than someone who is telling the truth. So there, the truth makes you fat. Oh, by the way, you look wonderful today!
Thursday, May 13, 2010
No more emodom for you!
In Orwell’s “1984”, the chocolate ration was only 43 grams weekly. However, a year later the weight of the bar "went up" to 25 grams. The process of re-writing that piece of bad news without altering the reduction was named, in that particular case, chocorat.
By extension, emodom has become nowadays a state of renunciation to emotional freedom. Let me explain what I mean by emodom. A person that is considered mature and balanced has emotions that are directly proportional with the intensity of the emotional factor. Meaning, if your boss just gave you a load of crap, you do not throw the laptop in his head, you rather try to repress your genuine emotions of anger, maybe frustration or even pure hate, and pretend you have a state of calmness and inner-poise. Your heart beat goes up, your eye is twitching, you get an extra-systolic every five beats and your pulse hits 120. Yet, apart from extreme redness in the face, you show no other signs. How could you? You are a civilized adult and being an adult implies not necessarily having emotions which are proportional to the emotional factor, but lying about how we express them.
However, we often react indirectly proportional to the situation. Regardless of whatever we know about emotions and emotionality and how we label others ('Oh, she is an emotional mess', or 'He is so over emotional') in the end our emotions do not necessarily take the best of us, but reveal our true inner selves. 'The best of us' is just an erroneous collocation, an uncreative cliché, which can never be taken by a genuine expression of emotion.
During our childhood, our educators inculcated us the idea of self restraint. In some societies, emotional honesty is highly appreciated and even recommended. In some others, it is regarded as mental unbalance. An emotional person is not predictable and society mechanisms require predictability. Hence, what is considered normal (within norms) in the Japanese society (eg: smiling respectfully when you are scolded) is not considered normal in the American society (eg: accepting the scolding, eventually bowing your head, avoiding eye contact).
Although truth is greatly valued, most of our dissensions are basically generated by the way honesty and emotional expression is perceived in our societies. The emotional sincerity is not always regarded as a virtue, even though was considered ideal by certain societies. In order to socialize properly you need to mask a certain amount of sincerity in social wrapping. To be accepted means to keep your feelings restrained. We are turning into emotionally mutilated machines as apparently, modern psychologists view sincerity as a construct rather than a moral virtue, and we seem stuck in an answerless conundrum where the joke is on us.
Some cultures even consider expression of emotions as a possible threat to the social order. Others went further and imagined how a world without emotions and Two Minutes of Hate would look like. It looked bleak. The two minutes of hate were not necessarily a way to allow people to “freely” express their emotions but were a mode of brainwashing by throwing them into a controlled frenzy of hatred. In Romania, The Pitesti Prison (known as the Pitesti Experiment) was a brainwashing experiment carried out by Communist authorities between 1949 and 1952 and was meant to "re-educating" the political prisoners, opposed to the authoritarian regime. The experiment's goal was for prisoners to dispose off their political and religious convictions, and to adjust and rewire their personalities to the point of absolute obedience. The number of people that have been brainwashed in three years was estimated to 5,000 and Pitesti was considered the largest and most intensive brainwashing program in the Eastern bloc.
The usage of emotional torture followed by physical torture was a main stage of the re-education program. Humiliation was the one that worked best. The inmates were forced to denounce their beliefs, loyalties, and values, betray family members, forced to clean the WC floor with a rag clenched between the teeth, or eat their own feces. Frequently, they were asked to torture other prisoners and repress their own feelings of mercy, empathy, pity, clemency, and kindness. Sometimes beating was not even necessary. Humiliation would suffice. After a while, an inmate became a re-educator. The Stanford Prison Experiment (1971), conducted 19 years later, confirmed what communists knew already: that the best and most efficient punishment is the psychological one, aiming at emotions, such as fear, shame, guilt along with coercion and intimidation. All extremely powerful tools. And while Stanford Experiment was just a science experiment that went bad, the Pitesti one was an applied and atrocious one that went well.
Nowadays, 50 years later, in a society that fortunately eliminated (at least theoretically) torture and repression, we are told to repress our feelings as a sign of civilization and maturity. Yet, torture (of any kind, psychological, emotional, or physical) is still practiced in some 45 countries. As of June 2008, only 145 states are parties to the Convention against Torture. As the research in the field of psychology refined, so did the coercion methods, and torture by proxy or extraordinary rendition became a modern technique. Meaning, the torturer apprehends and extrajudicial transfers the suspect/victim from one state to another where torture is practiced, without getting his hands dirty. The rendered suspects are denied due process because they are arrested without charges, deprived of legal counsel, and illegally transferred to third world country with the intent and purpose of facilitating torture and other interrogation measures which would be illegal in the USA, let’s say. According to a European Parliament report of February 2007, the CIA has conducted 1,245 flights, many of them to destinations where suspects could face torture, in violation of article 3 of the United Nations Convention against Torture. The Patriot Act became the Über Alles rule. All authoritarian regimes had a supreme utilitarianist rule, of group welfare versus individual liberties, and the excuse that the moral worth of an action is determined by its outcome. If the outcome is justified by the potential group safety, any action prior to that (torture included) is morally acceptable.
Apfelbaum and Sommers claim there is an inner bigot within us and we choose to celebrate the power of mind to make hard choices, despite our emotions. So, I am asking you, where it will lead this rejection and repression of our true feelings? I hear someone in the back said happiness. Civilization you say? Oh, really? You think so?
By extension, emodom has become nowadays a state of renunciation to emotional freedom. Let me explain what I mean by emodom. A person that is considered mature and balanced has emotions that are directly proportional with the intensity of the emotional factor. Meaning, if your boss just gave you a load of crap, you do not throw the laptop in his head, you rather try to repress your genuine emotions of anger, maybe frustration or even pure hate, and pretend you have a state of calmness and inner-poise. Your heart beat goes up, your eye is twitching, you get an extra-systolic every five beats and your pulse hits 120. Yet, apart from extreme redness in the face, you show no other signs. How could you? You are a civilized adult and being an adult implies not necessarily having emotions which are proportional to the emotional factor, but lying about how we express them.
However, we often react indirectly proportional to the situation. Regardless of whatever we know about emotions and emotionality and how we label others ('Oh, she is an emotional mess', or 'He is so over emotional') in the end our emotions do not necessarily take the best of us, but reveal our true inner selves. 'The best of us' is just an erroneous collocation, an uncreative cliché, which can never be taken by a genuine expression of emotion.
During our childhood, our educators inculcated us the idea of self restraint. In some societies, emotional honesty is highly appreciated and even recommended. In some others, it is regarded as mental unbalance. An emotional person is not predictable and society mechanisms require predictability. Hence, what is considered normal (within norms) in the Japanese society (eg: smiling respectfully when you are scolded) is not considered normal in the American society (eg: accepting the scolding, eventually bowing your head, avoiding eye contact).
Although truth is greatly valued, most of our dissensions are basically generated by the way honesty and emotional expression is perceived in our societies. The emotional sincerity is not always regarded as a virtue, even though was considered ideal by certain societies. In order to socialize properly you need to mask a certain amount of sincerity in social wrapping. To be accepted means to keep your feelings restrained. We are turning into emotionally mutilated machines as apparently, modern psychologists view sincerity as a construct rather than a moral virtue, and we seem stuck in an answerless conundrum where the joke is on us.
Some cultures even consider expression of emotions as a possible threat to the social order. Others went further and imagined how a world without emotions and Two Minutes of Hate would look like. It looked bleak. The two minutes of hate were not necessarily a way to allow people to “freely” express their emotions but were a mode of brainwashing by throwing them into a controlled frenzy of hatred. In Romania, The Pitesti Prison (known as the Pitesti Experiment) was a brainwashing experiment carried out by Communist authorities between 1949 and 1952 and was meant to "re-educating" the political prisoners, opposed to the authoritarian regime. The experiment's goal was for prisoners to dispose off their political and religious convictions, and to adjust and rewire their personalities to the point of absolute obedience. The number of people that have been brainwashed in three years was estimated to 5,000 and Pitesti was considered the largest and most intensive brainwashing program in the Eastern bloc.
The usage of emotional torture followed by physical torture was a main stage of the re-education program. Humiliation was the one that worked best. The inmates were forced to denounce their beliefs, loyalties, and values, betray family members, forced to clean the WC floor with a rag clenched between the teeth, or eat their own feces. Frequently, they were asked to torture other prisoners and repress their own feelings of mercy, empathy, pity, clemency, and kindness. Sometimes beating was not even necessary. Humiliation would suffice. After a while, an inmate became a re-educator. The Stanford Prison Experiment (1971), conducted 19 years later, confirmed what communists knew already: that the best and most efficient punishment is the psychological one, aiming at emotions, such as fear, shame, guilt along with coercion and intimidation. All extremely powerful tools. And while Stanford Experiment was just a science experiment that went bad, the Pitesti one was an applied and atrocious one that went well.
Nowadays, 50 years later, in a society that fortunately eliminated (at least theoretically) torture and repression, we are told to repress our feelings as a sign of civilization and maturity. Yet, torture (of any kind, psychological, emotional, or physical) is still practiced in some 45 countries. As of June 2008, only 145 states are parties to the Convention against Torture. As the research in the field of psychology refined, so did the coercion methods, and torture by proxy or extraordinary rendition became a modern technique. Meaning, the torturer apprehends and extrajudicial transfers the suspect/victim from one state to another where torture is practiced, without getting his hands dirty. The rendered suspects are denied due process because they are arrested without charges, deprived of legal counsel, and illegally transferred to third world country with the intent and purpose of facilitating torture and other interrogation measures which would be illegal in the USA, let’s say. According to a European Parliament report of February 2007, the CIA has conducted 1,245 flights, many of them to destinations where suspects could face torture, in violation of article 3 of the United Nations Convention against Torture. The Patriot Act became the Über Alles rule. All authoritarian regimes had a supreme utilitarianist rule, of group welfare versus individual liberties, and the excuse that the moral worth of an action is determined by its outcome. If the outcome is justified by the potential group safety, any action prior to that (torture included) is morally acceptable.
Apfelbaum and Sommers claim there is an inner bigot within us and we choose to celebrate the power of mind to make hard choices, despite our emotions. So, I am asking you, where it will lead this rejection and repression of our true feelings? I hear someone in the back said happiness. Civilization you say? Oh, really? You think so?
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Happiness is a falsifiable theory
A while ago, BBC came up with this piece of news that Romanians are the unhappiest nation on earth. Is Romania a country suffering from ecstatic impotence? What prevents Romanians from having that childish attitude of positivism doubled by naïve optimism? Is Romania a living example of Murphy’s Law that “if things can go worse, they will?”
The foreign observers’ opinions are radically split. While some claim that Romanians are friendly and sometimes perfunctory gregarious, easy going people or just easy, some insist that Romanians are clinically and chronically unhappy. And this has nothing to do with standard of living. Romanians have an extra gene (or rather a missing one) that prevents them from being happy. They are chronically yet understandably unsatisfied, envious and egocentric.
David T. Lykken
believes that 50% of one's happiness depends on one's genes (plus the neurobiological factors such as dopamine, opiate, serotonin), based on studying identical twins, whose happiness is 50% correlated even when growing up in different houses. Only 10% to 15% is a result of various measurable life circumstances variables, such as socioeconomic status, marital status, health, income, sex and others. The remaining 40% is a combination of unknown factors and the results of actions that individuals deliberately engage in to become happier.
The survey also claimed that Russians (with Moscow being the most expensive city on earth) along with Armenians and Romanians, consider themselves the unhappiest nations on earth.
For a moment, I thought that maybe SES (socio economic status) is strictly related to how people perceive happiness these days. You have less (money, education, friends, hopes, dreams, stability), you are less happy. Then as I further read the statistics and what makes people happy, I have found out to my surprise that Nigerians – an example of poverty by excellence- are happier than the richest nations. Ironically, the happiest people on earth are Nigerians in spite of only $2,100/ income per capita per year, a public debt of 14.4% of GDP, 310,000 AIDS deaths/year and 45% of population below the poverty line.
Leaving aside its infamous poverty, generalized corruption, and symptomatic legislation, lack of education and sanitary needs, and skyrocketing death rates, the Nigerians define themselves as HAPPY. So, once more we are tempted to agree with the proverb that “money doesn’t bring happiness”.
In this case, I am tempted to believe the popular credo held by monks and opposed to the current belief of the consumerism society that the desire for material goods suppresses happiness.
What makes the Nigerians happy then? What is their secret? Sure, it is well understood that material comfort plays an important role in insuring a basic happiness which satisfies the immediate needs: good clothing, good food, sexual comfort and well being, access to better medical services, etc. But well-being is not happiness. Joy is not happiness. Contentment is not happiness. Felicity is not happiness. Blessedness is not happiness. Satisfaction is not happiness. Ecstasy is not happiness. Comfort is not happiness. Fun is not happiness. Again, what is happiness? Bluntly said, happiness is a state of well-being characterized by emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.
Yet, there is an Amazonian society called Pirahã which has no number words at all. The Pirahã uses hói to describe a small number of objects, hoíg to describe a slightly larger number, and baágiso for an even larger number. These words seem to mean "around one," "some" and "many." Explaining addition and subtraction to Pirahã is explaining what happiness is to people who have never experienced it.
Maybe the best way to define happiness is the same way we define faith, by negation. Can we define happiness by saying it is not unhappiness? Is happiness falsifiable? Yes, if it is a theory. Are all people happy? If we find one single unhappy person, logic allows us to conclude that the statement that all people are or could be happy is false. Well, apparently, happiness is a theory. The Greeks used to say “theoria” to something that you look at, view, or behold. In philosophy, there was an interesting definition of theory, which came to refer to contemplation or speculation, as opposed to action, including "practice". Apparently, all we can do about happiness is theoretically contemplate it, and yet never practice it.
The foreign observers’ opinions are radically split. While some claim that Romanians are friendly and sometimes perfunctory gregarious, easy going people or just easy, some insist that Romanians are clinically and chronically unhappy. And this has nothing to do with standard of living. Romanians have an extra gene (or rather a missing one) that prevents them from being happy. They are chronically yet understandably unsatisfied, envious and egocentric.
David T. Lykken
believes that 50% of one's happiness depends on one's genes (plus the neurobiological factors such as dopamine, opiate, serotonin), based on studying identical twins, whose happiness is 50% correlated even when growing up in different houses. Only 10% to 15% is a result of various measurable life circumstances variables, such as socioeconomic status, marital status, health, income, sex and others. The remaining 40% is a combination of unknown factors and the results of actions that individuals deliberately engage in to become happier.The survey also claimed that Russians (with Moscow being the most expensive city on earth) along with Armenians and Romanians, consider themselves the unhappiest nations on earth.
For a moment, I thought that maybe SES (socio economic status) is strictly related to how people perceive happiness these days. You have less (money, education, friends, hopes, dreams, stability), you are less happy. Then as I further read the statistics and what makes people happy, I have found out to my surprise that Nigerians – an example of poverty by excellence- are happier than the richest nations. Ironically, the happiest people on earth are Nigerians in spite of only $2,100/ income per capita per year, a public debt of 14.4% of GDP, 310,000 AIDS deaths/year and 45% of population below the poverty line.
Leaving aside its infamous poverty, generalized corruption, and symptomatic legislation, lack of education and sanitary needs, and skyrocketing death rates, the Nigerians define themselves as HAPPY. So, once more we are tempted to agree with the proverb that “money doesn’t bring happiness”.
In this case, I am tempted to believe the popular credo held by monks and opposed to the current belief of the consumerism society that the desire for material goods suppresses happiness.
What makes the Nigerians happy then? What is their secret? Sure, it is well understood that material comfort plays an important role in insuring a basic happiness which satisfies the immediate needs: good clothing, good food, sexual comfort and well being, access to better medical services, etc. But well-being is not happiness. Joy is not happiness. Contentment is not happiness. Felicity is not happiness. Blessedness is not happiness. Satisfaction is not happiness. Ecstasy is not happiness. Comfort is not happiness. Fun is not happiness. Again, what is happiness? Bluntly said, happiness is a state of well-being characterized by emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.
Yet, there is an Amazonian society called Pirahã which has no number words at all. The Pirahã uses hói to describe a small number of objects, hoíg to describe a slightly larger number, and baágiso for an even larger number. These words seem to mean "around one," "some" and "many." Explaining addition and subtraction to Pirahã is explaining what happiness is to people who have never experienced it.
Maybe the best way to define happiness is the same way we define faith, by negation. Can we define happiness by saying it is not unhappiness? Is happiness falsifiable? Yes, if it is a theory. Are all people happy? If we find one single unhappy person, logic allows us to conclude that the statement that all people are or could be happy is false. Well, apparently, happiness is a theory. The Greeks used to say “theoria” to something that you look at, view, or behold. In philosophy, there was an interesting definition of theory, which came to refer to contemplation or speculation, as opposed to action, including "practice". Apparently, all we can do about happiness is theoretically contemplate it, and yet never practice it.
Friday, May 07, 2010
Bow to small breasts, gentlemen!
I have small breasts. However, according to biology, I breastfed my daughter until she was 14 months old. As my Anglo-Saxon pals would say, that is way too much information. But! This personal info has a purpose. I have recently read an article written by Satoshi Kanazawa who admits that small breasts are as capable as big breasts when comes to offspring feeding. Super, we all know that breast size does not affect lactation, as this is luteotropic hormonally driven, and not size driven. If dissected, the breast is composed 90% of fat, tissue and mammary glands.
If men like big breasts, they like fat. If fat is present on the breasts, it is definitely present somewhere else, like hips, tummy or thighs. Women with big breasts and small hips are naturally rare because fat tends to be equally distributed (but than again, with liposuction and silicon implants we can artificially remediate that and lie to men).
Kanazawa insists that men could tell women’s age more accurately if they had larger breasts and that would be why men find women with large breasts more attractive (as they are evolutionary conditioned).
Yet, men prefer big breasted women, even if they (know they) are lied. Kanazawa bases his hypothesis on 1990 Frank Marlowe’s theory who said that big breasts are a woman’s real ID. In the '90s breast augmentation was not that fashionable, so Marlowe’s hypothesis made sense. But Kanazawa should know better in 2010. So, since a man cannot ask for a driver’s license or birth certificate on a first date, he has to rely his estimates of a woman’s age based on the (excuse my language gentlemen, and sorry for ruining your sexual appetite tonight) sagginess of her breasts. Meaning, a woman with small breasts can be 50 years old and her cup size can lie, implying she is, ahem, 35 years old, let’s say (maybe small size resonates with young age in men’s head).
While, if she has big breasts, you know for sure, based on the sagginess factor that she is 40 or 50. Or 60 (where I come from it is called gravitational law: what goes up, must come down). Hence, since men prefer the truth, they prefer the big breasts. But, for men’s info only: the 90-60-90 size actually means hip-waist-UNDER the bust- measure. Oh, and one more thing for those who evolutionary assess a woman’s bust by her size, eight out of ten women wear the wrong size bra (that is when they do not have breasts implants).
Now, a group of Yale scientists, led by Stephen Stearns (a Swiss evolutionary biologist), claim that the future woman will be shorter and plumper, but will have a healthier heart and longer reproductive windows. These changes are predicted by the strongest proof to date that humans are still evolving. Stearns believes that differences in survival may no longer select "fitter" humans and their genes, but differences in reproduction still can. The study was made on 14,000 individuals since 1948 and concluded that in 400 years women will be shorter, fatter, more fertile and will have healthier hearts. If these trends continue for 10 generations, Stearns calculates, "the average woman in 2409 will be 2 centimeters shorter and 1 kilogram heavier than she is today".
Super, let’s make this calculation: women will be 2 cm shorter and 1 kg heavier in 400 years. That means they might be 0, 05 mm shorter and 2, 5 g heavier already next year. In less than 10.000 years, women will be 50 cm shorter and 25 kg heavier on average, while men will probably develop in accordance with historical evolution by gaining an average height of 2, 20 m by then.
To our indignation, cohorts of die hard dieters, science insinuates that the future belongs to the rotund women and not to us, who shred our knees in gym clubs and eat an orange a day (that is not me, but I sympathize with my always-on-a-diet coworkers- by the way, women spend ten years of their lives on a diet, to no avail I might add).
According to this study, shorter and heavier women tend to have more children, on average, than taller, lighter ones. Yet, Kanazawa claims small-waisted women are to be priced. The good news is that such strong proportional breaches will definitely not encourage too much reproduction on the long term. Men will be forced to kneel down to the ground each time they feel like hugging their lady, hoping their arms will be long enough to make it all the way round. So meet the future woman: kneel, gentlemen!
If men like big breasts, they like fat. If fat is present on the breasts, it is definitely present somewhere else, like hips, tummy or thighs. Women with big breasts and small hips are naturally rare because fat tends to be equally distributed (but than again, with liposuction and silicon implants we can artificially remediate that and lie to men).
Kanazawa insists that men could tell women’s age more accurately if they had larger breasts and that would be why men find women with large breasts more attractive (as they are evolutionary conditioned).
Yet, men prefer big breasted women, even if they (know they) are lied. Kanazawa bases his hypothesis on 1990 Frank Marlowe’s theory who said that big breasts are a woman’s real ID. In the '90s breast augmentation was not that fashionable, so Marlowe’s hypothesis made sense. But Kanazawa should know better in 2010. So, since a man cannot ask for a driver’s license or birth certificate on a first date, he has to rely his estimates of a woman’s age based on the (excuse my language gentlemen, and sorry for ruining your sexual appetite tonight) sagginess of her breasts. Meaning, a woman with small breasts can be 50 years old and her cup size can lie, implying she is, ahem, 35 years old, let’s say (maybe small size resonates with young age in men’s head).
While, if she has big breasts, you know for sure, based on the sagginess factor that she is 40 or 50. Or 60 (where I come from it is called gravitational law: what goes up, must come down). Hence, since men prefer the truth, they prefer the big breasts. But, for men’s info only: the 90-60-90 size actually means hip-waist-UNDER the bust- measure. Oh, and one more thing for those who evolutionary assess a woman’s bust by her size, eight out of ten women wear the wrong size bra (that is when they do not have breasts implants).
Now, a group of Yale scientists, led by Stephen Stearns (a Swiss evolutionary biologist), claim that the future woman will be shorter and plumper, but will have a healthier heart and longer reproductive windows. These changes are predicted by the strongest proof to date that humans are still evolving. Stearns believes that differences in survival may no longer select "fitter" humans and their genes, but differences in reproduction still can. The study was made on 14,000 individuals since 1948 and concluded that in 400 years women will be shorter, fatter, more fertile and will have healthier hearts. If these trends continue for 10 generations, Stearns calculates, "the average woman in 2409 will be 2 centimeters shorter and 1 kilogram heavier than she is today".
Super, let’s make this calculation: women will be 2 cm shorter and 1 kg heavier in 400 years. That means they might be 0, 05 mm shorter and 2, 5 g heavier already next year. In less than 10.000 years, women will be 50 cm shorter and 25 kg heavier on average, while men will probably develop in accordance with historical evolution by gaining an average height of 2, 20 m by then.
To our indignation, cohorts of die hard dieters, science insinuates that the future belongs to the rotund women and not to us, who shred our knees in gym clubs and eat an orange a day (that is not me, but I sympathize with my always-on-a-diet coworkers- by the way, women spend ten years of their lives on a diet, to no avail I might add).
According to this study, shorter and heavier women tend to have more children, on average, than taller, lighter ones. Yet, Kanazawa claims small-waisted women are to be priced. The good news is that such strong proportional breaches will definitely not encourage too much reproduction on the long term. Men will be forced to kneel down to the ground each time they feel like hugging their lady, hoping their arms will be long enough to make it all the way round. So meet the future woman: kneel, gentlemen!
Thursday, May 06, 2010
Say it loud, say it proud!
Becky was a kind, nail biting, big-breasted, gravy loving, southerner blonde. She loved Baby Jesus and her husband, who used to cut carton stars and planets for her and stick them on the ceiling. For some curious reason (foreigners lost in Beirut) we ended up friends, with very little in common. My wide views on sensitive issues like euthanasia, abortion and atheism made her feel uncomfortable around me. At times, I was spicing up my socio- political diatribes with swears, trying to emphasize the importance of the subject and making sure the quality of my character stands out. My slang seemed to bother her the most and she sadly told me that “Baby Jesus hates it when a nice, pretty, sweet lady like you, Daieeena, curses like thaaaat”. Since I perceive cursing and swearing as a mandatory part of my squabbled speech, Becky and Baby Jesus stopped loving me.
So, what makes us curse and swear? When it is appropriate to use a sexual reference curse (fuck) of just a blasphemous one (goddamn, bloody hell, fucking heavens)? When is it acceptable to use a sordid miasma one (oh, shit! holy crap!) or just a simple yet effective stereotyping slam (faggot)? Do we always curse when we are upset or angry? (eg: bloody bastard!) Or to simply express joy and happiness? (Fuck, I won the lottery!). Do we use it to express trouble and release anxiety? (I am fucked!) or to simply show consternation? (Fuck it!). Is it a natural form of human curiosity to hungry grasp the world’s knowledge (what the fuck is that?) or just a way to show repulsion and contempt? (fuck off!).
Among the curse words the sexual “fuck” seems to be the most versatile. It can express a whole palette of emotions depending on the context. It is used to express pain, pleasure, joy or anger. It is also used equally and indiscriminately by individuals with low or high SES. I personally know a couple of cognitive psychology professors that “f this and f that” every other Freud phrase (obviously as a sign of non-appreciation for an obsolete cigar smoker, and not necessarily to release frustration or anger). Or maybe…
Fuck, as a word, not deed, is obviously considered profane and gives a mouthful of satisfaction to the user. It can be said in various ways (snapping the teeth off of the lower lip to give the word emphasis or a powerfully rendered click of the CK in the back of the throat - as advised by psychologist Lawrence Rubin) and used in various contexts. It can stand alone or be inserted in the middle of other words (eg: absofuckinglutely! or infuckingcredible!, neurofuckingscientist)
Etymologically speaking, its origins are highly controversial and while some linguists claim it was recorded in English since the 15th century, with cognates in other Germanic languages (Middle Dutch fokken “to thrust, copulate with"; ) others say it is of Latin origin (futuere). M.E. Buck cites proper name John le Fucker from 1278. The word apparently is hinted in the poem "Flen flyys," written in Latinum vulgare: “Non sunt in celi/quia fuccant uuiuys of heli” (The monks are not in heaven because they fuck the wives of Ely). Johnson excluded the word, and fuck wasn't in any English language dictionary from 1795 to 1965. Once The Penguin Dictionary officially defined it in 1966, all the fucking hell broke lose.
Now, some psychologists claim that polluted language is a sign of aggression which can lead to violent acts. Hence, the repeated beeps we can all hear in “The Sopranos”. The moralists persist that tainted words show a decline in civility and an erosion of moral values. So, what the fuck is morality?
Philosophy steps in for this particular definition of morality and describes it as a system of conduct that is righteous. Now, morality itself can hold three ethical nuances: moral standards (with regard to behavior); moral responsibility (with regard to conscience) and moral identity (capacity for right or wrong action).
Modern psychology and neurocognitive scientists in particular reckon that capacity to recognize what another individual is undergoing is a progress in understand morality (the mirror neurons that fire in imitation when another person is observed doing a certain action are thought to have a role in empathy or other conducts believed to be exclusively moral). So empathy and, by extension, morality could have a biological basis.
Others even go further and claim that swearing is a way to relieve anger and frustration in a nonphysical way. According to De Klerk (1991), the use of expletives by men may be related to the assertion of power, while Daly, Holmes, Newton and Stubbe (2004) claimed that the word fuck has a complex sociopragmatic functions and is rather related to solidarity and friendship. A more recent study at Keele University found that cursing may actually relieve the perception of physical pain and when swearing, the volunteers reported less pain and on average endured about 40 seconds longer. Now, the curses would seem less powerful with a decreased linguistic resonance if they were used repeatedly (prolonged subjection) in order to habituate the potential undesirable effects of the words (what psychologists call desensitization or inurement).
Unfortunately (or fortunately), the debate concerning the harmful effect of the (fetid) words is going on. Some say that those who curse are in fact verbal abusers. To counter act on the potential harmful effect of foul language, some restrict the speech within legal frames (calumny and insult are punishable by law in most countries and rely on the psychological aspect that words are harmful). However, since speech is emblematic, how problematic can it be?
So, why is swearing considered immoral? Well, let’s see. The making of moral right and wrong judgments links to activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, while as the intuitive reactions to situations containing implicit moral issues activates the temporoparietal junction area. And this is not where the language (even the foul one) happens. The language happens in the left hemispheric cortex in most adults (from childhood until about age 25, language capacity in right-handers grows stronger in the left hemisphere of the brain) and there are three precise regions involved in speech production, reading and naming. Now, swearing and cursing are rather learnt processes that mostly involves the naming (hence name calling) rather than original production or reading. Corollary, there is an evolution of swearing that grows with age. A ten year old cannot fully grasp the depths of “fuck the fucking fuckers” with the same wisdom and comprehension of an adult. Similarly, the higher the SES, the more sophisticated and complex and maybe innovative, the swearing.
However, I would like to point out the evident double standard aspect perpetuated by people who think that while swearing is immoral, capital punishment is not. Sadly, history shows that the punishment is not always directly proportional with the dimension of the crime and one can be excessively punished by death for robbery or by detention, suspension, and expulsion for cursing in school. Is punishment effective when came to swearing on educational premises? Not really, 94% of college students continued to curse throughout adult life even if they had vibrant memories when came to curse punishment.
Nonetheless, we cannot bring “morality” into discussion without mentioning the moral codes, moral behavior and religion. In general, a religious person is considered to be a morally predictable person. This, of course, can vary from culture to culture and from cult to cult. Apostasy in Islam, for instance, is punishable by death; therefore we cannot claim that religion implies morality since death punishment is foreseen by that particular religion. Under no circumstances, an action can or has to be above the price of human life. Christians, as well, have instituted the punishment of death for apostasy with the help of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (the very first law of the Corpus Juris Civilis). An instigation to murder as punishment for cursing is also found in The Bible, “Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death” (Matthew 15:1-9; Exodus 21:17).
However, if swearing erodes the moral values and moral values are acts that are judged within their context instead of by categorical principles, how can swearing do that? It can not, of course. So since there's no evidence that a word in and of itself has a negative effect on anyone, say it loud, say it proud! Fuck that!
So, what makes us curse and swear? When it is appropriate to use a sexual reference curse (fuck) of just a blasphemous one (goddamn, bloody hell, fucking heavens)? When is it acceptable to use a sordid miasma one (oh, shit! holy crap!) or just a simple yet effective stereotyping slam (faggot)? Do we always curse when we are upset or angry? (eg: bloody bastard!) Or to simply express joy and happiness? (Fuck, I won the lottery!). Do we use it to express trouble and release anxiety? (I am fucked!) or to simply show consternation? (Fuck it!). Is it a natural form of human curiosity to hungry grasp the world’s knowledge (what the fuck is that?) or just a way to show repulsion and contempt? (fuck off!).
Among the curse words the sexual “fuck” seems to be the most versatile. It can express a whole palette of emotions depending on the context. It is used to express pain, pleasure, joy or anger. It is also used equally and indiscriminately by individuals with low or high SES. I personally know a couple of cognitive psychology professors that “f this and f that” every other Freud phrase (obviously as a sign of non-appreciation for an obsolete cigar smoker, and not necessarily to release frustration or anger). Or maybe…
Fuck, as a word, not deed, is obviously considered profane and gives a mouthful of satisfaction to the user. It can be said in various ways (snapping the teeth off of the lower lip to give the word emphasis or a powerfully rendered click of the CK in the back of the throat - as advised by psychologist Lawrence Rubin) and used in various contexts. It can stand alone or be inserted in the middle of other words (eg: absofuckinglutely! or infuckingcredible!, neurofuckingscientist)
Etymologically speaking, its origins are highly controversial and while some linguists claim it was recorded in English since the 15th century, with cognates in other Germanic languages (Middle Dutch fokken “to thrust, copulate with"; ) others say it is of Latin origin (futuere). M.E. Buck cites proper name John le Fucker from 1278. The word apparently is hinted in the poem "Flen flyys," written in Latinum vulgare: “Non sunt in celi/quia fuccant uuiuys of heli” (The monks are not in heaven because they fuck the wives of Ely). Johnson excluded the word, and fuck wasn't in any English language dictionary from 1795 to 1965. Once The Penguin Dictionary officially defined it in 1966, all the fucking hell broke lose.
Now, some psychologists claim that polluted language is a sign of aggression which can lead to violent acts. Hence, the repeated beeps we can all hear in “The Sopranos”. The moralists persist that tainted words show a decline in civility and an erosion of moral values. So, what the fuck is morality?
Philosophy steps in for this particular definition of morality and describes it as a system of conduct that is righteous. Now, morality itself can hold three ethical nuances: moral standards (with regard to behavior); moral responsibility (with regard to conscience) and moral identity (capacity for right or wrong action).
Modern psychology and neurocognitive scientists in particular reckon that capacity to recognize what another individual is undergoing is a progress in understand morality (the mirror neurons that fire in imitation when another person is observed doing a certain action are thought to have a role in empathy or other conducts believed to be exclusively moral). So empathy and, by extension, morality could have a biological basis.
Others even go further and claim that swearing is a way to relieve anger and frustration in a nonphysical way. According to De Klerk (1991), the use of expletives by men may be related to the assertion of power, while Daly, Holmes, Newton and Stubbe (2004) claimed that the word fuck has a complex sociopragmatic functions and is rather related to solidarity and friendship. A more recent study at Keele University found that cursing may actually relieve the perception of physical pain and when swearing, the volunteers reported less pain and on average endured about 40 seconds longer. Now, the curses would seem less powerful with a decreased linguistic resonance if they were used repeatedly (prolonged subjection) in order to habituate the potential undesirable effects of the words (what psychologists call desensitization or inurement).
Unfortunately (or fortunately), the debate concerning the harmful effect of the (fetid) words is going on. Some say that those who curse are in fact verbal abusers. To counter act on the potential harmful effect of foul language, some restrict the speech within legal frames (calumny and insult are punishable by law in most countries and rely on the psychological aspect that words are harmful). However, since speech is emblematic, how problematic can it be?
So, why is swearing considered immoral? Well, let’s see. The making of moral right and wrong judgments links to activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, while as the intuitive reactions to situations containing implicit moral issues activates the temporoparietal junction area. And this is not where the language (even the foul one) happens. The language happens in the left hemispheric cortex in most adults (from childhood until about age 25, language capacity in right-handers grows stronger in the left hemisphere of the brain) and there are three precise regions involved in speech production, reading and naming. Now, swearing and cursing are rather learnt processes that mostly involves the naming (hence name calling) rather than original production or reading. Corollary, there is an evolution of swearing that grows with age. A ten year old cannot fully grasp the depths of “fuck the fucking fuckers” with the same wisdom and comprehension of an adult. Similarly, the higher the SES, the more sophisticated and complex and maybe innovative, the swearing.
However, I would like to point out the evident double standard aspect perpetuated by people who think that while swearing is immoral, capital punishment is not. Sadly, history shows that the punishment is not always directly proportional with the dimension of the crime and one can be excessively punished by death for robbery or by detention, suspension, and expulsion for cursing in school. Is punishment effective when came to swearing on educational premises? Not really, 94% of college students continued to curse throughout adult life even if they had vibrant memories when came to curse punishment.
Nonetheless, we cannot bring “morality” into discussion without mentioning the moral codes, moral behavior and religion. In general, a religious person is considered to be a morally predictable person. This, of course, can vary from culture to culture and from cult to cult. Apostasy in Islam, for instance, is punishable by death; therefore we cannot claim that religion implies morality since death punishment is foreseen by that particular religion. Under no circumstances, an action can or has to be above the price of human life. Christians, as well, have instituted the punishment of death for apostasy with the help of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (the very first law of the Corpus Juris Civilis). An instigation to murder as punishment for cursing is also found in The Bible, “Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death” (Matthew 15:1-9; Exodus 21:17).
However, if swearing erodes the moral values and moral values are acts that are judged within their context instead of by categorical principles, how can swearing do that? It can not, of course. So since there's no evidence that a word in and of itself has a negative effect on anyone, say it loud, say it proud! Fuck that!
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