Lifestyles

Letter to the Experts

– Science will save your Life, but it may forget about your Soul – Dear Experts, Congratulations, you have scared the world senseless. Has it been worth it, turning the whole globe over its head and back, and then shaking it around a bit more? And if it has, who do you think it’s been worth it for the most? The lone, isolated and “plugged-away” individual perhaps? Or the businessman that is making that individual’s life convenient, entertained and distracted? 

You have convinced us that we are born to be sickly for as long as we breathe, and that you also happen to have the perfect cure. You have convinced us that we, yet again, seem to take a liking to the idea of living in a world of segregation and that we can use our own democracy to vote it in. And while people distract themselves in arguing, our governments, politicians and everyone else supporting this world-wide movement are just like any true war profiteer, cashing in – cashing in so they can build us an even better future. So the claim goes. Of course, we used to have wars in trenches with fingers pulling triggers, now they are in people’s bedrooms, with fingers trolling social threads. All the while, the world is being promoted to be in some form of perpetual state of emergency.

Damages of Subtle Workspace Misalignment

I am currently treating an injury which, it turns out, was caused by a prolonged, repetitive posture misalignment at my workspace.  I had already done substantial efforts to try and properly align my computer set up, but this incident demonstrates how even a very small misalignment can sneak up on us even when we are trying to be very diligent and careful.

Through accumulation of exercise and work, I had developed pain in my right chest muscle (the pectoralis major). After a thorough examination,  a very skilled physiotherapist worked on releasing the knots caused by too much tension from the muscles: he then described precisely how the pain was coming from a very specific right-twisting movement (torsion) I had supposedly been doing consistently during the preceding days/months/years. I needed to find out what this movement was!

Computer MisalignmentHe told me to watch for any gesture that would resemble that twist and mainly to notice when the sore muscle (which was even more sore now that he worked on it) would get engaged. That would be an indicator that I am doing it again. Some of my guesses included guitar playing or often wearing a bag on the same shoulder, but things didn’t get fully clear until I got back to my computer’s work desk. Continue reading

Can the Moon ever appear as a frownie in the night sky?

Frownie MoonThe Moon scenes in the picture are from two popular Hollywood movies. The lower one is from the movie “Joe Versus the Volcano” with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan and the second one is from the classic “Lawrence of Arabia”.

My OCD with geometry and astronomy made me unable to ignore the fact that the Moon was “frowning” in both scenes. When shooting movies, it is usually easier to add a Moon into a starry night scene rather than to wait for it to come out and align itself perfectly for the screenshot. It made me think about how careful the CGI team were (or not) with their implementation of the positioning of the Moon when the producers asked them to provide them with a night scene and the crescent Moon in it. Is it possible the CGI team would have just placed the Moon in the shot without thinking about which way it would be facing? I think they very likely they did.

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Is Don Jon really into “her”?

Don John and HerWhat does Jon’s girlfriend Barbara in the movie Don Jon have in common with Theodore’s girlfriend Samantha in the movie “her”? Nothing really. Except that Scarlet Johanson plays the girlfriend role in both movies. These two female characters are in fact, total polar opposites of one another.

Jon is an outgoing, confident “good old fashioned guy” who, after “pulling” a different woman every weekend attempts to create a relationship with Barbara who had been waiting to ride off into the sunset with her “Prince Charming”. On the other hand, complex, heartbroken and likely depressed Theodore, after separating from his wife Catherine (a divorce that he still resists), starts falling in love with an unusual, smart and personalized futuristic operating system called Samantha.

Both movies show how personal and unique every connection is. No relationship can ever be shaped from the outside-in, and whenever people do that, things just seem to go badly. Jon was in love with Barbara because she was “the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life”. Meanwhile, Theodore was in love with Samantha who had no physical body at all. Where does one start when it comes to attraction?

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Exploring the complexities of Human bonding

This article examines our understanding of how humans bond emotionally, romantically and sexually. Most of the data in this article are estimates and guesses. I leave the actual data gathering part to the experts, and the development of the overall conversation to all of us.

Humans seem to be wired to (autonomously and simultaneously) bond with each other in three different ways: purely sexually, romantically and by forming long term emotional partnerships. For more information on these brain circuits, check out Helen Fisher’s TED talk:

With that in mind, let us look at the way humans are attracted to each other, and in what numbers. Continue reading

Why can’t villains in kids’ movies ever find love?

Villains never find LoveOnce we label someone evil, we are very easily prone to conclude that all that’s left for them is to be punished. When we decide they have wronged us, they don’t deserve love, nor any kind of understanding. Because, when someone is “evil”, no amount of kindness and empathy will work on them, so they must be either penalized, locked away or killed. But if we like someone or they are close to us in some way, they seem to often get leave-way on this, even if they end up doing similarly “bad” acts. Classic Disney movies tend to especially perpetuate this way of thinking and behaving. Here are some movies I’d like to explore, especially since I just recently finally saw some of these cartoon classics:

The Little Mermaid

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The Art of balancing Love and Work

The Art of Balancing Love and WorkI fully enjoyed going through Richard Templar’s simple list of love rules in his book “The Rules of Love” and when I found out that he wrote other books with similar topics I wanted to see what he had to say about work in his book “The Rules of Work”. I was curious about the differences and similarities between these two worlds that are such a big part of everyone’s life and how one can learn to balance the two and know which rules not to mix up and which to apply in both circumstances.

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Somebody That I Continue To Know

Somebody that I continue to knowI hear Gotye and Kibra’s song “Somebody that I used to know” everywhere, any time I’m around a radio, public places, at yoga studios, people sing it all around, a grand-hit masterpiece with great singers, awesome arrangement, twinkle-twinkle-little-star intro and of course, great lyrics, plus  300 million hits on youtube. Even my friends’ five year old daughter knows all the lyrics in and out and she’d asked them to explain to her what the song is about.

And what is this song really about? What is it that people relate to in this song so much? Why is a song with a message like this so viral? How does it end up going from “feeling so happy one could die”, to believing that one person is “screwing the other over”? Pretty much everyone has experienced this sort of disconnect at some point.

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Fit for Love – Got any Missing Pieces?

Fit for Love - Olga SheeanIt has been a while since I have read a book that made as much impact on me as Olga Sheean’s “Fit for Love” has. It also came at the right time and place in my life and from the right person. If you are really willing to take on a serious journey within and do a healthy, strenuous emotional workout, I highly recommend this read. The book is short, to the point, and allows the reader to go through its concise chapters quickly and spend more time reflecting on things rather than get distracted with a large amount of writing that most books tend to have.

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