Category: society

are you a hero?

Brave bystanders lift a burning car and save a man trapped beneath.

Flight passenger leaps onto a burning man to prevent him from detonating explosives.

As the train arrives, a 50-year-old man jumps on subway tracks to save a youth.

These men/women were ordinary people who decided in an instant to do something heroic.

Dr. Zimbardo thinks everyone can be a hero.

Hero:

  • chooses not to watch-and-wait in face of crisis.
  • puts compassion into action by helping someone in need.
  • decides to speak against injustice, instead of assuming someone else will.
  • supports the causes that matter to him/her, without expecting rewards.

random about modern america and historic china

Modern America looks as below:

  • 4 million cups/day on airline flights (not reused/recycled).
  • 40 million papers cups/day for hot beverages.
  • Has the largest percentage of population in prisons (2.3 million in 2005).
  • >400.000 (1.100/day) Americans die of smoking annually.
  • 384.000 American women (vast majority <21) opted for breast augmentation surgery (the most popular high-school graduation gift).

Historic China personifies:

  • Fortune cookies (considered Chinese) invented in 1920 by a noodle-factory worker in SF.
  • Kites (1000 BC, to frighten enemies), soccer  (1000 BC), natural gas (used as heat source by 4th century BC), parachute (4th century AD), ice-cream (Marco Polo).
  • Stamp collecting (#1 hobby).
  • Red (happiness) and white (sadness).

freedom according to camus, adler, gandhi, buddhism and modernity

Since Protagoras’ famous “man is the measure of all things,” declaring human freedom as an unlimited absolute, philosophers have been fascinated with the idea of freedom.

Philosopher/scholar Adler categorized freedom as:

  1. self-realization
  2. acquired state of mind
  3. self-determination: to determine — not necessarily carry-out — wishes/actions in life

Gandhi thought, “freedom isn’t worth having if it doesn’t connote freedom to err.”

Hindu/Buddhist freedom is embedded in moksha; to Chuang Tzu freedom meant “free yourself from the world.”

In modern China/world, freedom is “fusion of personal, national, social, civic, and moral freedoms” or “liberation, self-development, independent personality/responsibility, democracy/human-rights, spiritual-cultural necessity, privacy, autonomy/self-mastery.

fungi can save the world

Humans are more closely related to fungi than other kingdoms. Humans share same pathogens with fungi. Fungi don’t like rot from bacteria – our best antibiotics come from fungi. Fungi don’t need light, using radiation as energy source.

Fungi were first (1.3 billion years) organisms on Earth. Plants followed few hundred million years later.

Mycelium reduces oxalic acids/enzymes that pockmark rocks, forming calcium oxalates from minerals and CO2. First step to soil creation. Mycelium also converts cellulose into fungal sugar (ethanol).

Agarikon is essential for human health; it’s highly efficient against pox viruses and  flu viruses. Entomopathogenic fungi kill insects (ants/termites).

every 14 days a language dies

Did you know that:

Every 14 days a language dies. By 2100, more than half of the more than 7,000 languages spoken on Earth—many not yet recorded—may disappear.

According to Ethnologue, 473 languages currently are close to extinction. In Americas alone, 182 are endangered.

Rosetta Project aims to create a global library of human languages. Its Rosetta Disk contains 14,000 pages (each page an image) etched onto its surface – to be read using 500x microscope.

According to one research, when two languages compete, only one survives while the other declines exponentially. Policies, education and advertising can slow this process.

10 things you didn’t know about orgasm

main points:

  1. you don’t need genitals to stimulate orgasm (stroke of eyebrow; knee orgasm; one woman had orgasm (from Greek οργασμός orgasmos, organ to mature/swell) each time brushing her teeth)
  2. you can have orgasm when you are dead (brain-dead, kept alive on respirator)
  3. orgasm can cause bad breath (a slight semenal odor can be detected on a breadth of a woman an hour after an intercourse)
  4. orgasms cure hiccups
  5. doctors once prescribed orgasm for fertility (Hippocrates believed orgasm was essential for conception)
  6.  pig farmers still do (upsuck theory)

More orgasm jazz here.

honey, pinocembrin and explosives

Honey is the only food including all substances necessary to sustain life, including enzymes, vitamins, minerals, and water; and it’s the only food, containing pinocembrin, an antioxidant associated with improved brain functioning.

Bees are the only insects that produce food that humans eat.

Like ants, honey bees communicate with one another by “dancing.”

Like rats, bees use their advanced olfactory, stamina and flying abilities to detect explosives. A hive of 40,000-65,000 bees costs USD $100 and can be trained in two hours. Bees can also signal environmental anomalies, and bee-hive samples (wax, honey, pollen) can highlight environmental contaminants in an area.

professionals vs amateurs – who innovates better in 21st century

Pro-Ams – term coined by Charles Leadbeater – are people pursuing amateur activities to professional standards.

Since the industrial age of 18th century, there was a steady rise of professionals and narrow specialization in medicine/science/education/etc.. Amateurism was driven out.

Pro-Am Revolution argues that in 21st century this historic trend is reversing.

Passionate amateurs who have vast knowledge/skills in a certain domain(s), often driven by confusion/lack of sought solutions, come up with new inventions gradually improving their quality, eventually ushering into high-quality products/services.