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Archive for the 'Health' Category

Sep 22 2009

Video games and Purpose of life…

Only to those who enjoy video games and ice cream, though; and in particular, this concept of their purpose pre-supposes that the value of these things is given by their utility to humans.

In this case, because we are the creators of ice cream and video games, this is obvious. But we can still be the arbiters of the “value” of things of which we are not the creators; we can find them laudable or deplorable, useful or useless, etc. We do this all the time even with other living things, from other humans down to species of disease. Especially when we come together to consider things as a society, we always measure the value of things relative to its significance to ourselves.

Life isn’t “building to” anything any more than there’s a punchline at the end of the whole numbers. It’s just the established context of this improv comedy sketch in which we find ourselves wandering on-stage. We get to decide how to use that context to further develop the sketch, and keep the whole gag rolling.

The fact that we are on a small speck of rock in the cosmos need not make us feel insignificant — although it is reasonable to be concerned with having all your eggs in one basket. Why should the mere size of space cow us? It is grandiose and magnificent, to be sure, but it’s just space filled with some stuff: what makes space filled with stuff so tremendously more significant? Nothing makes Betelgeuse or Andromeda more fundamentally “special” than Deimos or Titan, say. Meaningless cuts both ways.

And so, we are only left with the question: what do we care about? What does conscious living (or if you prefer, biological life) mean to us? That is the measure we really care about.

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Sep 19 2009

Short parents, tall child?

As we all know, in genetics we normally use TT for tall homozygous genotype, Tt for tall Heterozygous genotype and tt for short Heterozygous genotype.

Now, Suppose we start from two pure breeds.

TT X TT –> TT, TT.. (all tall children).

If we take two heterozygous breeds then.

Tt X Tt –> TT, Tt, Tt, tt.. (three Tall, one short children).

and if we take two short parents.

tt X tt –> tt, tt.. (All short children).

So how is this possible?

Let’s say, for the sake of simplicity, only three genes control our height. We will call them A, B, and C.

Remember that we have two copies of every gene, one from dad and one from mom. Keeping that in mind, we would have 6 copies of these 3 genes. Our final height is then an average of the number of “tall” and “short” copies we inherit.

For an example, let’s take a father whose genetic makeup is AabbCc and a mother with aaBbCc. With 2 “tall” and 4 “short” copies each, both are of below average height.

Which copy of each gene we inherit from our parents is random. In this family, the children will most likely inherit 2 “tall” and 4 “short” copies. Like their parents, they will be of below average height. But this will not always be the case.

There is a smaller chance that their child could inherit 4 “tall” copies, AbC from dad and aBC from mom. This child will be quite tall. On the other hand, dad could pass down abc and mom could pass down aBc. With five “short” copies, this child would be considerably shorter.

Imagine how many possibilities there would be if twenty genes controlled our height!

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Sep 06 2009

Emotional males ?

What’s wrong if guys are emotional? Why this gender biased straight jacketing as per pre-conceived notions , that guys cant be emotional and girls cannot be macho? motion has many connotations. Principal amonst these are the two prominent facets of male psyche.

a) Excessively affected by emotion: To name a few feelings falling under this head are
i) Aroused.
ii) Excited
iii) Worked Up.
b) Determined or Actuated by Emotions rather than Reason:

If you carefully observe any of the men you know in life,make up a comprehensive part of his personality, and makes him, what he is. Over- Sexed at times, excited enough to fight in public or cry when overwhelmed with emotions- it may be on his favourite team loosing a crucial match of football, or on watching a sappy/mushy movie.
Any thing can turn the taps on. The best tap turner for a man happens to be loosing in love. Believe me, in an all male environment–like a Military Academy or a College Hostel, you witness enough of this drama.

It totally is a different ball game altogether, that MOST males will hate to admit this soft streak running through their psyche. It helps as a lady, to know this about the men in your lives–whether that man happens to be your dad, your brother, your husband or your son. They all are prone to this, I guess.
why men go to war, join the army or even love and marry the woman, that they eventually do. No set pattern, nothing predictable, here!!
happens to be totally uncharted territory. NO SET RULES! !. Now you ladies out there tell us, ok to be emotional or not?As for me, HELL, Yes! Men are emotional—always were,always will be!! Come to think of it, what’s wrong in it?

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Aug 29 2009

Ayurveda a propaganda ?

The market is flooded with cosmetic, slimming, brain power increasing, memory enhancer, with exaggerated claims, there is no control on what the claim, and there is no testing on the products. They loot people out of money. Chavanprash’s composition is not liable to test, there are numerous companies which intend to use people’s blind faith on Ayurveda to deliver almost nothing.

You may see thousands of quacks sitting roadside, they have medicines which will make you superman! again all bogus claims, and all they sell is some mixture of leaves and shit.

Here are some facts about Aurveda that you fancy about

1. Ayurveda had no knowledge of microbes, their types, and pathology
2. Ayurveda didnt knew anything about genes
3. Ayurveda has no procedure, to perform heart, brain, renal, abdomen surgeries, and even simple eye surgeries like cataract
4. Ayurveda had no knowledge of metabolism ( and i dont mean digestion ) there was no knowledge of any metabolism cycle or enzyme or anything like that
5. Heck, it didnt even knew what gas in the air we use and which gas we expire
6. Ayurveda could never knew what cause heart to beat- SA node, Areas in brain
7. Ayurveda never came up with any vaccine
8. Ayurveda had no knowledge of nutrients in the food such as carbs, proteins, fats, vitamins and minerals

Its very basic and primitive. Now they know all this, and physiology and anatomy and biochemistry etc, but nothing came out from Ayurveda.

I don’t deny that herbs cant have ingredients with therapeutic effect, after all ginsengis also a herb, which is now in the multi vitamin capsules and supplement. And many products like atropine, digoxin etc were found from tribal people or plants but it was a science back then, when they can give herbs and see if they work or not, and they might knew the basic anatomy too.

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Jun 12 2009

Human Behaviour

Published by Maien under Biology, General, Health, Resources Edit This

The human population has grown a lot faster than has our ability to form ever larger communities. Small communities can work. Large communities might also work better than they do today, but not without an understanding about how our social nature evolved to become what it is today.

Natural human behavior is social. Selfish behavior is not naturally human, it is aberrant human behavior which arises under stressful conditions. Modern societies are more stressful conditions than humans are naturally adapted to living in.

Libertarianism and anarchy are dysfunctional maladaptive to stress.

Over and over, studies of where people enjoy the highest quality of life, it is in societies with strong social bonds, places like scandanavia. Democratic socialism as found in scandanavia (not full-on communism) is the most natural form of human government yet found, but it is not clear at what scales it is possible to make it work. Something the size of Denmark, Sweden or The Netherlands can work fairly well, it’s not clear that a country the size of the USA can work as well. And countries the size of India and China are even more questionable.

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