Revisitation

I've come to realise that a part of growing up is to revisit childhood memories. You see, as a child we tend to be fascinated by every little thing, and our memories are glossed over, filtered through the rose-tinted spectacles. When you have grown up then, to those fond memories do revisitations, or as Kierkegaard put it, Repetition.
I'll give you an example. My mother makes really mean croquettes, and as far the child me was concerned, Mom's croquette was the damnedest thing ever to touch his palate. My father used to work out of town and occasionally brought a durian or two home. Again to the child me it was the most delectable thing ever. And I can tell you, the croquettes or durians I have since devoured can never compare to those I had, simply because I have associated Mom's croquette as the mark of a happy ocassion and Dad's durian as a sign of his coming home.

What I'm saying is you may need to peel off the extraneous layers of gloss on your memories, but then again maybe not -- why bother with that which has become the ideal, the unattainable? Maybe if factual information is important to glean, then you need to. But at least you need to recognise them as they are, and when you revisit the memories again, no need to suffer unnecessarily because the scenery isn't as magnificent as you remembered, the food isn't as delicious, the people aren't as kind, and so on; and chase after that which have become etched shadows in your mind. Because growing up includes an acknowledgement that you will never catch them.

The Captain and the Ship Analogy

When explaining about why emission spectrometry is more sensitive than absorption spectrometry, my professor shared this analogy:

Imagine a ship and its captain. If we were to measure the weight of the captain, how would we go about doing that?
Well, we can weigh the ship with the captain onboard. Then weigh the ship sans the captain. Substract.
Otherwise, we can just extract the captain from his ship, then weigh him.

Silly as it sounds, the former is actually what we are doing in absorption spectrometry. Shine light onto sample. Measure the light coming out. Subtract to get the amount absorbed by the sample. This results in a lot of background noise because the difference between what comes in and out is very little, like the weight of the captain.

In emission spectrometry, the source of photons is essentially the sample itself, so background noise is essentially zero. (Not exactly zero, because there may be scattering of the incident light used to excite the sample, e.g. fluorospectrometry. If excitation is by high energy electrons, then noise is probably zero, but there may be other factors)

I think this analogy does not only apply to analytical chemistry but also a lot of other things. There is a concept of big and small here. The ship is big, the captain is small. The presence of the big distorts the measurement of the small. Big and small is kind of a motif in chemistry. You see that in HSAB theory and of course, in regioselectivity explanation of Diels-Alder reaction in terms of coefficients.

Also, relativeness. The ship with or without the captain weigh roughly the same. So the weight of the captain is only negligible because it is being juxtaposed with the weight of the ship.

Chemistry being one perspective on the inner workings of the universe, you can expect the same principle to be applicable in real life. The other day another lecturer found that the computer in the lecture hall has problem with connection to the projector. His solution? Switch to another hall. While he can just borrow a laptop, from a student or the IT office down the corridor, to connect to the projector.

It's like being aboard on a ship, finding that the captain not unable to do this job, then you proceed to find another set of ship and captain. Why not just replace the captain?

Bed of Roses

Utopia (again)

Utopia should be this place of impeccability, of manifested ideals. Based on previous argument, where I said that dystopias lack something, then utopia must be this place of completeness, all things in a harmonious gestalt. But what is 'complete', really? Gandhi said that "[t]here is enough for every man's need but not greed". We always desire for something more. And there's another question: after the state of completeness is attained, what next?

Let's answer the latter first. Atwood has this to say:

Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's now way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.
-- Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

Her view is a morbid one. After we are in paradisum, that's it. The story stops. This is difficult for me to imagine. After all, they always say that the only thing that is constant is change. Or maybe there is another kind of perfectness where it is more dynamic, changing from perfection to perfection? I imagine it to be so because by definition, there is no such thing as 'boring' in a utopia, isn't there? So are we doomed to never reach there?

Moving on: What is 'complete'?

My picture of 'completeness' would be the Oneness that the Hindus are trying to find paths of enlightenment to. And that wouldn't be too far-off -- we can relate spiritual enlightenment here to the utopian state of perfection. This idea of Oneness as the highest state has also pervaded sci-fi. I have encountered a few stories whereby there is a running thread: the highest state of evolution is where we would abandon our physical bodies and spiritually become one single consciousness.

Summing up: Will we ever reach 'completeness' then?

Let's reword 'completeness' as 'fullness' here. In Avatar, Mo'at, Neytiri's mother and the shaman of the Omaticaya, mentioned a metaphor about empty and full cups. I'm borrowing that metaphor here: a cup fully filled is our 'completeness'. To be full, then, the cup has to be emptied first. And you can see how this fits very nicely with what Khalil Gibran said:

The deeper that sorrow carves onto your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
 -- Khalil Gibran

And William Blake echoes:

And when this we rightly know
Thro' the World we safely go.
Joy & Woe are woven fine,
A Clothing for the Soul divine;
Under every grief & pine
Runs a joy with silken twine
-- Auguries of Innocence, William Blake

I talked about this before under Dualism Paradox, so read the details there. So the first way to achieve utopia: suffer through dystopia first. Like Pandora's box, Hope tends to come the last, after the evils.

The second way -- and I have already dropped the hints -- is to follow the Hindus. Now, topos in Greek means 'place'. It doesn't mean that we've got to take it literally. Then we can interpret a utopia not as a place but a state instead. The Eastern spirituality seeks inward journey (compared to outward one in Western spirituality). So it's change-your-paradigm thing. Again I invoke William Blake, from the same poem no less:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
-- Auguries of Innocence, William Blake

The journey inward, besides exploring the Self, also includes exploring other Beings. To see the perfections in the imperfections.

Final thought: If you see the Wikipedia entry on utopia, you would find an uncited reference to the humorous coinage of the word 'utopia' (probably factual, albeit uncited, since one of TED speakers mentioned that, too). It goes something like this: the etymology of 'utopia' is from Greek, as I already mentioned. This presumably comes from eu (good) + topos (place). But there is another Greek prefix which in English transliterates to the same spelling: ou (no) + topos (place). It is said that the coiner intentionally keeps the ambiguity as a joke. Good place; no place.

In conclusion: I think it is really your choice to attain 'the good place' or 'the no place'. We can strive towards the 'goodness', not necessarily perfection, or at least not the idealised one, by looking inwards and getting up stronger every time we fall down. Or we can keep it as an ideal, intellectual projection that can never be. 

Connections

Since words are containers of meaning, it is not difficult to imagine that some containers are bigger than others and some containers are small enough to fit inside others. That's right, in other words, some words are subsets of others. This hierarchy is usually referred to as hypernymy/hyponymy. For example; maroon, vermillion, crimson, scarlet, magenta are hyponyms of 'red'. Conversely, 'red' is a hypernym to them. Moving up the hierarchy, 'red' is a hyponym of 'colour'. Note that hypernym/hyponym doesn't mean anything if a word is not viewed relative to another.
Now, imagine this colossal tree of word hierarchy, its branches numerous, branching to finer branches still down and below. I always wonder, what is at the top of this tree? In other words, the ultimate hypernym, the word that include every possible meaning?
The answer is probably different for every person, but to me almost everything can be summarised as 'connections' and 'information':
Language is a means of transmitting information, connecting a person with another.
Science is the study of the laws governing observed systems. Information gathering; connecting hypotheses and observations.
( Basically all -ologies are all about 'information' or more appropriately, knowledge, since the etymology itself suggests logos [λόγος] )
Philosophy is literally 'love of wisdom', which means it is about, again, 'information'. It goes without saying that epistemology, which is a subset of philosophy, is also all about 'information' or knowledge.
Love is all about relationships, people say. Love itself is already a massive hypernym, considering its vast meaning. But then, 'connections' is still a bigger one.
Metaphors are all about drawing parallels; making connections. More about that here.
If you think about it, it is only natural for everything to be distilled into knowledge and relationships. Our brains themselves are networks of information, linked in numerous permutations. Our memory is triggered by things associated to that particular memory.
The worldwide web itself has garnered the current level of success because it's all about connections and information, acting like a global brain, each of us its neuron. Note all the hyperlinks on this page, enabling you to view related pages with a click.
Update: There is a really nice diagram to see: The Internet. It is also good to depict the aforementioned colossal tree of the word hierarchy.
And now, when the world is more interconnected than ever, it is important to make use of it. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown talked about confronting "the challenges of poverty, security, climate change and the economy" in the recent TEDGlobal2009. Watch it; and be aware of what we can do that was impossible only several years back.

Dualism Paradox

The deeper that sorrow carves onto your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

 -- Khalil Gibran

"If we want have an utopia, we have to have a dystopia first". This thought occurred to me in passing although I didn't pursue it further. To my knowledge, this kind of notion doesn't have a name, so let's call it dualism paradox for convenience.

It is a paradox because the ideas are contradictory; and it is dualism (not Plato's dualism) because, well, it involves binary oppositions. Enough with the difficult words. I think Jason Mraz sings it quite succinctly:

It takes some good to make it hurt
It takes some bad for satisfaction

It takes a night to make it dawn
And it takes a day to make you yawn, brother
And it takes some old to make you young
It takes some cold to know the sun
It takes the one to have the other

And it takes no time to fall in love
But it takes you years to know what love is
And it takes some fears before I trust
It takes those tears to make it rust
It takes the rust to have it polished

Ah la la la la la life is wonderful
Ah la la la la la life goes full circle
Ah la la la la la life is wonderful
Ah la la la la

It takes some silence to make sound
And it takes a loss before you found it
And it takes a road to go nowhere
It takes a toll to show you care
It takes a hole to see a mountain

-- Jason Mraz, Life is Wonderful (abridged)

I think not many people understand this blatant thing: it takes pain to gain; it takes hardship to know happiness; and so forth. This is what I mean by "there is no utopia without dystopia". You have to know what are lacking, what are corrupt, what needs to be rectified, to build a utopia -- dystopia is the means to the utopian end.

Of course, picking from the vast expanse on the meaning of love, tough love is a good example. This is the kind of love that is strict and disciplined, which may not appear as loving, but is ultimately for the good of the person being loved.

It is really no wonder that Pandora found Hope at the bottom of the jar. It takes all those evils to have hope, doesn't it?
Update: In retrospect, antonymic paradox sounds more awesome.

The Art of Kissing

Do you ever wonder why we kiss? What is it that causes us to pucker and lock lips, exchange saliva (and colonies of bacteria), and intertwine tongues (sometimes).
A little search in the Net reveals a few hypotheses: social conditioning, instinct -- remnant from when mothers feed chewed food to the young, pheromone sensing, etc.
Social conditioning means that the behaviour passes from generation to generation. Considering that there are indigenous tribes not known to have kissing culture, this may be true. But then again, kissing may be too private to talk about or to be observed -- so it is not final that the behaviour is non-existent. Also, some animals, specifically primates, are also known to exhibit osculation (that's the technical term for kissing).
The pheromone sensing is an interesting theory. When we are talking about pheromone in humans, usually we don't mean it literally, since there is no specific hormone in us attracting the opposite sex to mate -- unlike insects, where pheromones mean just that. Some research papers suggest that somehow women can distinguish men with better genes. From the evolution point of view, this of course means that the offspring is more likely to be fit. Now, this obscure sensing may be the sum of the experience -- the man's height, his symmetrical face, his way of talking reflecting good education, his toned muscles -- the sum of it all may be the said metaphorical pheromone, the attraction, physically or otherwise. I believe that intuition can be reasoned out in a similar way. There are numerous little circumstances that you consider subconsciously -- the sum of it all, the conclusion, is what we call intuition. But I digress.
Since we are talking about "sensing the good genes" here, it is worth-noting that kissing involves a great deal of our senses. All our five senses -- visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, gustatory -- are hosted on our heads, so isn't it logical that we keep our heads close to each other when decrypting each other's pheromone signalling?
Why the lips, though? Well, if you have ever seen the picture of a sensory homunculus, it is obvious that a lot of sensory nerve endings are located on the lips and the tongue (about 21%). A significant portion is also located, of course, on the fingertips.
Indeed "why the mouth?" is a good question. Consider that a lot of metaphors of copulation are related to eating -- consummation, devour, eat you up. Also consider why cunnilingus and fellatio and a plethora of similar activities are practised.
To answer this question we have to consider symbolic significance of the mouth. The mouth is a passage to let something in; that something will be a part of the self. Considering this, it is not that far-fetched to describe kissing as letting the other party have a taste of ourselves, making a little of ourselves to be a part of somebody else's. This is a little bit different from copulation, since here, both parties are equal in the give-and-take.
So: a kiss is a complex exchange of information. Even enlightenment can be transmitted.
Deep.

Likening

Association, parallelism, metaphor, analogy, parable.
I guess the appropriate hypernym would be 'likening'.
(Even the concept of hypernymity can also be considered as one, but never mind.)
I always wonder at the sheer number of literary devices that uses 'likening'. Perhaps the keyword here is 'connection'. Human brains like to connect, to associate. Conditioned reflex, for example, associate a certain stimulus with a certain response.
Other examples. Visual learning associate images with concepts and this actually makes recalling more effective. Others may find it easier to memorise a song than a paragraph of the same length. On physical level, intelligence is said to rely upon the number of connections that neurones make. Is it not evident that the brain makes connection?
Association can be made on more or less equal level or different ones.
Generalisation, for instance, is associating a certain common characteristics of a member of a body with that body itself. Contextualisation can also be seen as one since a concept resides in larger body called the context. Of course these two sound more distant than association of things at more or less equal level.
Parallelism juxtaposes a certain event with another event, for instance.
But actually the degree of equality of the levels of things being likened does not matter.
The impact does.
Take Personification which likens dead objects to living things. The matter lies in the impact on the mind. If a pencil is said to dance on the paper, the mind recalls not only writing but also the concept of beauty, of grace, of efficiency, of nimbleness.
Metaphors achieve similar impact. When time is likened to a river, the mind recalls the quality of a river and try to attach it to time. How it is a flow, how it is continuous series of events, and so on.
There is also another kind of impact. Understanding. Take analogies. Analogies may not be full representations of the concepts being analogised but they help in understanding the concepts. The concept of the Trinity, for example, can be analogised to a triangle. The mind recalls the understanding that a triangle is not a triangle without three sides. So the concept of Three-but-One can somewhat be better understood. The metaphor example above also shows that time that is abstract can be partly explained using river that is non-abstract, thus is understood better.
Isn't it interesting? We all are familiar about this, aren't we, since the brain is all about connections anyway, so this knowledge is at the back of our minds but not really thought or spoken deliberately. It is kind of learning epistemology. When I first learned about the knowledge of knowledge, I feel familiar and I had thought about it or kept it at the back of my mind before but now it has form. It is written in words, it is conveyed in language. I feel overjoyed.

Masochists

mas·och·ism /ˈmæsəˌkɪzəm, ˈmæz-/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[mas-uh-kiz-uhm, maz-] –noun

1.	Psychiatry. the condition in which sexual gratification depends on suffering, physical pain, and humiliation.

2.	gratification gained from pain, deprivation, degradation, etc., inflicted or imposed on oneself, either as a result of one's own actions or the actions of others, esp. the tendency to seek this form of gratification.

3.	the act of turning one's destructive tendencies inward or upon oneself.

4.	the tendency to find pleasure in self-denial, submissiveness, etc.

I believe that many of us are. No, no, not that kind. Not a psychology lecture on self-destructive tendency of humans either. It is just a mockery for my dear friends who like chilli and horror movies.
I believe what capsaicin molecules, substantially chilli, does is to bind to pain and 'hot' nerve receptors. And that horror flicks also causes some mental damage. The problem is that some certain people like to inflict these damages upon themselves.
Of course there are other self-inflicting activities like exercising. No, no, I'm not excusing my laziness to exercise. I agree that exercising is healthy. It is destructive because it accelerates oxidation rate. That means that more radicals are produced and the body ages faster. Well this is true, but the health resulted outweighs this price. Another one would be dangerous ventures like extreme sports. Again, the sense of adventure gained surpasses the dangers.
On the other hand, I don't see any outweighing results from chilli and horror flicks. Chilli first. Healthy? Nope. Sense of adventure? Where got? Makes your food more tasty? I'm sure... Horrors then. Thrill? Sure, but you got high blood pressure so you got more chance to get cardio-related diseases. That means higher chance dying from heart attack you know.
I won't venture too much and refer to my philosophy lecture about duality. If there is no 'bad', will there be good? If there is no hate there will be no love. If there are not two extremes but one, it won't be an extreme at all. Oops, I said it.
So you say there will be no pleasure without pain? Whatever. If there are no chilli-hating people, there won't be chilli loving people. Ha! Beat that!

On Anthropocentrism

Man is the measure of all things.
-- Protagoras

I came across the term 'anthropocentrism' a while back when I was reading a Physics book titled 'Constant of the Universe' or something of the like. Very interesting book. No sarcasm.
Its etymology explains what it is. Anthropo would be humans, centrism would be, well, centre. So humans at the centre.
I think this term really describe us well. It applies universally a bit like how Aristotle's golden mean can be applied to almost everything. Well all our actions can be described as anthropocentric I guess.
Take the area of science. There was a period where people believed in Ptolemian geocentrism - humans are thought to be at the centre of the universe. Literally anthropocentric. Units also reflect anthropocentric bias. We conveniently use pound, feet, meters and all common units because they suit OUR needs. Well, imagine using Angstrom to measure the length of your arm (or try Planck's units - even more absurd).
Recently, I attended a lecture about Morality and Ethics in my philosophy class. It was always at the back of my mind but the lecture put this concept about 'everything eventually goes to our end' into words. Surely we would not want to commit crimes since we do not want to go to jail. But this is true for the opposite as well. We make friends because it puts us to greater advantage to have many friends. We invest for connection in business world later on in the future. They will give us presents during our birthdays. They can help us when we are in a pinch. Basically they are USEFUL. That sounds awful, really - but if you think of everyone doing it and everyone is using everyone else and creating a win-win situation, it does not sound as bad. But it still does - because the seemingly purest intentions can be called selfish. The lecturer gave the example of Mother Teresa and her noble social work. Applying the above concept, Mother Teresa is seen to making herself feel good by doing the social work. Of course I disagree at this point since her work, while perhaps made her feel good, it also made many many more people feel good. So let me repeat: even the purest intentions can be called selfish.
On the same note, blogging can be viewed as anthropocentric, too. There are various motives of writing a blog. Some 'exhibit' their lives, some just threw thoughts, intending to pour their hearts out. But the question is: 'Why write in the Internet?' Since the Internet is an open network, people are bound to see your blog. It is like laying your diaries in the open: do you deny that you are hoping for people to see it by laying it in the open? Of course I'm guilty of this as well. I remain anonymous and do not reveal too much in my blog so that people would not know me, but somewhere inside I am hoping that people I know stumble upon my blog, recognise that it is me, then come up to me to say something like:'I was reading your blog yesterday. I don't know you can think of such good ideas and you write well, too!' Vanity is part of anthropocentrism, I think, since it makes us feel good in a way. So on the same note, people dressing up and acting cool are anthropocentric since it is kind of vanity. Not that I mind seeing cool people. I may envy them but certainly there is nothing wrong with looking good and cool.
So is anthropocentrism good or bad? In a way it is bad since we are all acting according to our self interests; and self interests often conflict. But I tend to think that it is neutral. It is part of being human. There is nothing wrong with making things convenient for ourselves, as long as we are not assuming, as in the case of geocentrism; and as long as, as Aristotle would say, it is 'in moderation' meaning that we don't exploit our anthropocentrism. Certainly our friends are useful but appreciate that it works the opposite way as well: we are useful to our friends. Use but be used as well. As long as we are humans, we cannot help but be anthropocentric. But appreciate that you are not the only human in the world; there are others and since they are humans, they are anthropocentric too. We have to compromise, or to sound more Aristotelian: take the 'moderation'.
We humans are ugly, aren't we? But that's what we are.

Beauty: Appreciation of Effort?

I had a philosophy lecture on beauty a while ago.
Well, Beauty was still left undefined then. I had this idea for a while that beauty is not just 'looking good'. There is another dimension of our perception of Beauty. My proposition was beauty is our appreciation of effort. Let me explain.
Dance performances. We are fascinated not only (I hope) by the dancers' flashy costumes or their attractive faces but also their elaborate, patterned movements. Why? Because we know that they have done rehearsals to achieve that. We know because there is no way that such feat can be done without a lot of practice. A lot of effort has been put in to achieve that. Same reasoning follows for drama performances
Another example. My Biology teacher catchphrase is: 'Isn't it beautiful?' every time she sees nature-related (duh...) pictures. We, her naughty students, of course often make fun of that because even pictures of worms, reptiles and insects that most people think are gross; she will still say they're beautiful.
I somehow can relate to that. I believe in God, so I say that the way God design nature is beautiful. I'm not only talking about appearance here, your classic dimension of beauty. I'm talking about complexity and organisation. How cells can have such elaborate mechanisms. From their plasma membranes down to their organelles and nucleus; all are orchestrated so incredibly. We're only talking about a single cell here. Your Amoeba maybe. We haven't considered something more complex: animals, plants, humans. If you do not believe in God you can say that the work of evolution is so great to finally achieve current level. A lot of effort has been put in, be it God's or evolution's, take your pick. We who witness that can but agree 'Isn't it beautiful?'
People often say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. True, because there are many dimensions of beauty, one of which I spent hundreds of of words explaining, so people's perception of the dimensions varies. Some value appearance over the 'appreciation of effort' put in, some vice versa, some value even another dimension.
Beauty is a complex thing. Well, since complexity is a dimension of beauty, Beauty is beautiful. That is the beauty of Beauty.