Wiser As We Age

People believe that the brain slows down as age adds up. The aging group thinks they’re losing memory acuity, believing it is normal to be forgetful. It is true that their memory may be narrowing a bit and their reaction time not as responsive as before; but they underestimated the experience they gathered growing up.

Years of living banks wisdom onto the brain. Older people not only have more knowledge and intelligence, but they have superior judgment, emotional resiliency and a better understanding of human nature. These things are picked up in a lifetime of existing.

Older people are wiser than younger people. The Berlin Wisdom Project investigated numerous studies on intelligence and wisdom. They found that “a plateau of optimal wisdom performance” happens in the middle and old age. The fading of memory and cognitive functioning only dramatizes at around age 75.

The net gain in their brain surmounts the loses. A study in the University of Toronto compares the brains of young and middle age subjects when matching faces with names. It shows that the middle age is as competent as the young, but the scans reveal how their brains work. The older pool accesses the prefrontal cortex. They used a powerful section in their brain to compensate on the weakened parts.

“Being able to run fast does not always win the race – you have to know how to best use your abilities”, said Dr. Oury Monchi of the Institute of Geriatrics at the University of Montreal. Her study validated that while young people decide in an instant, they make more mistakes. Older people take more time deciding but are more efficient. Neuro-imaging scans reveal that older brains are better in designating its resources.

Younger men are impulsive while the older men are thoughtful. And since there is less dopamine in an elderly brain, emotions have a faint contribution in the decisions. Slowing down is not entirely a weakness, but a wise strategy.

Do you think you’re wiser now than before?

Public Nudity Nearing Acceptance?

Walking in public with your nude body is embarrassing. Clothes are almost a necessity to us. It feels secured – everything is put into proper places. But public nudity is like fashion, and it seems that the trend is coming back.

For the longest time in man’s existence, he is nude. Most civilizations have history of public nudity. The ancient Greece advocate freedom from clothes. Indians have the naked holy men. A nude God is worshipped in early Egypt. Even Christians used to approve nudism as acceptance of the human body without shame. In the more recent times, Japanese, Turkish, and Scandinavian cultures plunge in nude community bathing. Until now, we co-exist with tribes like the Yanomamis who are not patrons of covering up.

And then issues like decency, health and chastity surfaced. Nudity is often only approved in art. Laws are passed that ban public nudity.

Humans never have a standing in unison about nudity. Naked protests rally to embrace our humanity. We all entered the world nude. Yet, putting on garments is claimed to be human as it makes our behavior indistinguishable from animals. Whether nude or not, it can be justified as human.

Political philosopher Joel Feinberg discussed that while the harm of nudity is not immediate, it may “produce an unpleasant mental state such as shame, disgust, or anxiety in observers”. Not for many, apparently.

Nudity sells anything. Movies, TV shows and games all have nudity that entices watchers. Front pages of magazines bear models a shy away from revealing it all. Porn industry is in billions of dollars and seems to be unstoppable. And now, people come to live shows with nudity elements – no, not the clubs but in Broadway’s The Pied Pipers of the Lower East Side.

Some people don’t even need money to show off. How many known people have tweeted a nude photo of themselves? And what message are they sending to the followers, especially to the minors?

Europe has always been open to nudity. Their naked beaches are now allowing men and women together. Parts of the continent will show frontal nudity without censors. And now, America is slowly transitioning. Social nudity is becoming a fad – Vegas won’t be the same without naked posters.

Nudity is becoming an expression. It certainly will spoil the children’s innocent minds and give the church a headache but it made a statement that it’s here to stay.

Would you accept public nudity?

Exploring and Extracting Resources from Space

The planet we live in can suffice our necessities. There are enough animals to hunt and plants to cultivate. There’s enough room to fill everybody’s space. We even find rocks to collect for luxurious desires.

But there’s not enough abundance of resources in Earth for us. And we know that there’s more out in the space.

There is a plan to mine precious metals from asteroids. Scientists believe that these entreating minerals, including platinum, iron and gold, came from asteroids showering earth millions of years back. Now they wanted to contact directly the source. According to Astronomer John S. Lewis, “a relatively small metallic asteroid with a diameter of one mile contained more than $20 trillion worth of industrial and precious metals”.

Planetary Resources Inc. headed the project with high-profile investors and supporters from director James Cameron, Google executives Larry Page and Eric Schmidt and the former US Presidential Candidate Ross Perot.

Fossil fuels are expensive economically and environmentally. There’s no major movement to deviate from it and our electricity demands are even more insistent. One proposal is to extract helium-3 from the moon’s soil to power our lights. It is more efficient that hydrocarbons and nuclear plants.

The pioneer of space exploration, National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA also hopes to extract lunar water. The search continues for other resources discovery from the US government agency.

The question is, who owns the space?

China is set to launch a lunar rover this 2013. The robot explores the surface and extracts nuclear fuel along the way. Russia hopes to revive its Russian robotic space program. They are landing robots to the Moon, Venus and Mercury as early as 2014. The European Space Agency awaits approval to send a robotic space plane that will soar in the orbit. Japan launches a cargo craft to space station. India celebrates the 101^st mission to space.

Now everybody’s into it.

Is it a race to space?

Climate Change is Proved, Disapproved, Harmful and Beneficial

Scientists hustle to prove or disapprove climate change. They cite benefits and others add to the list of harmful effects to our planet. It does not only affect humans, but every species on Earth will show how the warming affects their living. It’s such a controversy that lay people and notorious researchers won’t agree collectively.

Proved

Statistical data proves that climate change is happening. Since the late 19^th century, the global temperature increased by 0.6° C. Glaciers thaw and 10% of the snow cover decreased since 1966. The sea-ice’s thickness is narrowing in a rate of 1.57 inches annually. Since the ice is losing its mass, the sea-level is rising in a rate of 0.06 inches yearly.

This peremptory consensus already used up $106.7 billion of US taxes trying to amend the problem of global warming.

Disapproved

16 scientists tagged their names in a Wall Street Journal article discrediting global warming. While records in the past 50 years or so indicates increasing temperature on earth, it is not consistent. There has been no warming in the last 15 years.

Global Warming is natural in Earth’s climatic cycle. It happens before humans are born and even before the debate started. The glaciers in Asia’s Karakoram Mountains are getting bulkier. 2008 has been the coldest since 2000, averaging on 14.3° C. Dr Mojib Latif predicts that it’ll be colder in the next two decades while other scientists claim that Earth a century from now will be 4° C colder.

Harmful

Climate change exalted the catastrophes – fiercer storms, more prominent wildfires and longer heat waves. Flash floods are counted in Europe. Freshwater ran out in Asia and Africa. Forests disappear in Latin America. These issues keep on breaking previous records.

There is an estimated six million species on earth and 20% of them are endangered due to global warming. In 2012, newly found species include gorgeous primates, smallest known frog and 24 different skinks in the Carribean. With the rate of extinction, their disappearance will run faster than discovery.

What does species’ demise meant for humans? Russell Mittermeier answers: “without species diversity, we wouldn’t have the healthy ecosystems that supply our food, cleanse our air and water, provide sources of life-saving medicines and help stabilize our climate.”

Beneficial

The typical news reported how humans suffer from climate change, but not all organisms are contested. Plants from drylands can adapt to warming of climate. It is logical that extended and intensified draught will lead to demise of these plants, but these species are used to the hot climate. Ecologist Roberto Salguero-Gómez, who investigated the plants during the research, claims that they also benefit from the climate change. Higher temperature at night will induce the growth of plants.

Increased temperature in the North Sea boosted its food web, according to Dr. Richard Kirby of Plymouth University. Since the 1° C rise, swimming crabs actually swam longer in the sea. Adult crabs will then increase in the next year. It makes it easier for lesser black-backed gulls to hunt them, which will also increase their numbers in the next three to four years.

Killer whales, wandering albatrosses, mosquitoes, jellyfish, and trumpeter swans are thriving in the warming condition. Even polar bears, according to researchers from Umea University in Sweden, benefit from climate change as species migrate towards the north promoting biodiversity and arctic ecosystem.

Economically, climate change will increase production in agriculture. Olivier Deschênes and Michael Greenstone’s study in 2007 believed that the “changes in temperatures and precipitation” will modestly enhance the yields and profits of American agriculture.

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Any side you take on climate change, there will be a community supporting it. Which do you believe in?

He’s Male, She’s Female

It doesn’t take us more than a split second to determine whether the people we see around us are male or female. It happens automatically, like a reflex. But reflexes can be suppressed, like the awkward and unavoidable moment when you say sir to a woman. How do our brains know what gender our eyes see?

It’s strange that when you’re born, you don’t understand a word, literally. Only when you’re told that he is your father and that she is your mother, it becomes clear that there is a difference between them. Or did you already know that? We understand the word ‘male’ when it is explained to us. But once we know what that word means, we automatically know that he does fit the description, and she doesn’t. The description itself, however, is pre-programmed in our brains. There is a logical explanation for this because in order to reproduce this, information is necessary. But it is a mystery how our brains seamlessly connect the word to the description.

What exactly is the description then? Men are more muscled, but woman can train their muscles as well. The chin and cheekbones of men are more prominent, also because the faces of women hold more fat. Women’s eyebrows are high arched, and men have more facial hair and their skin is thicker. This is only a fraction of the checklist. Brains process faces almost too fast. Are they very fast, or is there something else, something our brains can perceive, but we can’t?

The only moment you start wondering what makes a man a man and a woman a woman is when your brains hesitate. We are challenging them, for example, by wearing clothes. As we grow up our brains might get used to, maybe an outdated assumption, women having longer hair than men. Or to the difference between clothes, to women’s tight jeans, to men’s boring t-shirts. But women wear clothes originally designed for men all the time. This really will get our brains confused, especially when they already have trouble determining the gender by facial characteristics. If plastic surgery becomes even more widespread, will our brains keep up, or is the 21^st century too much to handle?

The Stinking Human and the Invention of Body Odor

If you are beside a person who stinks, you cleared as much space in between in fear of acquiring the displeasing odor. If you are the foul one, you exchanged stares at those who grunt discomfort while they cover their noses, like you’re proud of it. You know that offensive pungence; you’ve had it, you’ve smelled it.

There was a time when body odor is acceptable. They don’t even care it exists! Historically, this concentrated flavor is a celebration. Young men in certain parts of Austrian Tyrol will dance with a handkerchief under their armpits and “wave it under the nose of a woman in whom they were interested”.

Now, it’s something we should be ashamed about. Everybody’s anxious to control it. You can’t even leave the house without pasting a deodorant on both armpits.

In the 1910s and 1920s, advertising agencies invented problems. They wanted humans to be dissatisfied and self-conscious with their current life. One of them is body odor. And to eradicate it, people have to buy their product. Wise.

In 1919, a deodorant for women called Odo-Ro-No used B.O. for the first time. They promised a sweet smell which will lead to social success.

The creation-of-problem approach also worked for mouthwash company, Listerine. Their pitch? “Unpleasant breath”. It peaked their sales from $100,000 in 1921 to $4 million in 1927.

The human stink is underrated. For instance, it can be used for identification. Newborns find comfort in the smell of their mothers. Parents can precisely identify their children by sniffing their clothes. Scientists call this an ‘odorprint’, and everyone has its own distinct scent like a fingerprint.

Sniffing other people’s odor is an opportunity to find a mate. Men are more attracted to women with good fertility; and women are more attracted to men with high testosterone. This information is acquired through the smell.

Odor can be a predictor of personality. Polish researchers in the University of Wroclaw conducted a study where a group of people were tasked to sleep in the same shirt for three days, and another group of people will smell it (poor participants..). To a certain degree, people can guess personality types based on their odor. And predicting personality has the same accuracy as watching a video clip of the person!

My odor smells like a vinegar from the time of pharaohs packed with punches but has the addicting aroma of a gasoline.

How would you describe your body odor?

Tag Archives: Humanity