I was sitting outside at the table the other morning smoking a cigarette when I happened to notice the gross picture on the top section of the cigarette pack. Of course, it was not the first time I had seen the picture, but what struck me most about it was how good our brains get at simply ignoring something. It is as if the brain clicks on a little minus sign, as with a computer screen, and minimizes a window in the field of vision, relegating it to a small file on the task bar. What I generally see when I look at the pack is just the yellow color itself with the word Camel emblazoned on it and a little picture of a camel below the word. For this reason, as it seems to me, graphic pictures of cancerous lungs and so forth will never deter one from smoking, for smoking has nothing to do with awareness of the health dangers and everything to do with being an addiction to nicotine. Perhaps a better method of deterrence would be the removal of all addictive properties of tobacco. I suppose there are those who just like the presence of the smoke, although I'm not one of them. For this reason, I am not attracted to vaping. The smoke smells kind of good, but I have no addictive attraction to being surrounded by smoke, whether it smells good or not.
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I am currently reading a book called Homo Deus. This is a sort of sequel to an earlier book by the same author entitled Sapiens. The latter is a scientific and sociologic description of man's rise from the earliest stages and the erection of the various social orders and so on, all in accordance with the logic of evolution, of course. Homo Deus attempts to trace the present state of mankind's progress into a future of very different realities than those that exist at this time, or indeed for ages in the past, as we become homo Deus, the man god. There will soon be, according to the author, no hunger to speak of, no disease, no war, and, apparently, no work (for robots will have superseded us in these needful tasks).
Frankly, I'm not convinced. Nor am I impressed by the author's appraisal of religion in all this--first getting the salient point of religion all wrong, and then proposing the coming of simple humanism as the new religion. In short, scientists ought never to venture outside the realm of science because religion itself cannot be reduced to scientific formulas or even to the patterns of social science.
What I do find interesting however are some of the scientific observations he mentions. For instance, experiments have been conducted wherein two mice are put together, one with room to run about, the other in a small cage. As it turns out, the mouse that is free will apply itself to efforts to free the mouse that is caged. It is theorized that the free mouse seeks to free the caged mouse because the situation makes him feel stressed and uneasy. In a further variation, a chocolate is put into the area containing the free mouse, and it is found that the free mouse will most often still try to free the caged mouse before eating the chocolate, which he will then share with the caged mouse once freed. From all this, it is determined that mice have emotions and are powerfully affected by the same. They will act to resolve stress so that they may feel at ease.
Of course, I always kinda figured that mice have emotions, just intuitively, you know. But science is about "proving" such things.
Another interesting story is of a famous German horse (I've forgotten the critter's name). This horse was said to be able to do math problems--addition, subtraction, division, multiplication. A mathematical problem would be posed, and the horse would tap out the numeric answer with its front hoof, very rarely failing to tap out the correct answer. This horse was paraded about Germany, attracting large crowds with its amazing mathematical skill. Moreover, the horse could perform the correct math no matter who asked the question and no matter whether his owner was present or not.
Well, what the horse was doing turns out to have been actually rather more amazing than solving simple math questions, for the horse was not solving math equations but reading the physical and emotional attitude of his audience and thereby intuiting when he had reached the proper number of hoof taps--a talent generally beyond that of human beings.
In any case, I am finding the book worthwhile at least as a learning vehicle, for I am reading it in Indonesian and there are, of course, many unfamiliar words of a scientific/technical type.
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At the same time, I have also finally received my Bible in English from Lazada (Indonesia's version of Amazon) and have begun to read from page one. For the last ten years, I have had to read the Bible either on the laptop screen, a method that I don't like, or in Indonesian hard copy. The amazing thing, no matter how many times one reads the Bible, is how you find something new every time, or something that you see a little differently than the time before. Most interesting in the first chapters of Genesis is the various uses of the single word 'Adam', which can mean man, men, mankind, humanity, and so on. It makes a huge difference in comprehension of what scripture is saying.
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