Stuck in Paste?

I think that one of the hardest things to imagine is being inside of a tube of toothpaste. Try imagining it. It's not as easy as it first sounds. Let's got through all the five senses and see what we can come up with.

• SMELL: This is one sense you can forget about. Yes, I know that toothpaste has a minty smell but there is no air in there for you to breathe. Its 50% solid, 50% liquid and 100% gooey mixture that is pretty dense.
  

• TASTE: Probably the simplest feeling to imagine, taste can be felt if you open your mouth. It will be like brushing your teeth with a giant brush minus the brush part.
  

• SOUND: I don't think you'll hear anything because of all the toothpaste clogging your ear.
  

• SIGHT: Inside the tube, I don't think it will matter much if you close your eyes or open them because it will be pitch black either way. There is no light inside the tube of toothpaste.
  

• TOUCH: The feel of the toothpaste will be the worst feeling out of the five. First off, it will get inside all your clothes. Also, I'm not sure whether it will be fluidy or more solid. I think the most accurate adjective to describe it would be pasty. Duh. I don't know if you will be able to swim in it or what.
  

Now let's combine them all. You will be inside a mushy place, not being able to breathe or see anything. On top of that, there will probably be some toothpaste in unwanted places in your body. If a country really wanted to torture POWs, they should build a pit, fill it with Colgate, and throw the prisoners in there. Five minutes inside will make anyone want to talk.

Anger = tool of destruction

We've all felt angry at one point in our lives. When most of us do, we generally want to hurt or destroy someone or something. Why is that?

Usually, we fell angry because we feel that we have been demoted or made to look bad in someway, or when we believe that another person is taking advantage of us. Anger is triggered inside us to instigate a response. If someone didn't have any emotion, then he wouldn't respond to insults, defeats etc. This would result in that person being "lowered" in society and then wouldn't have as great of a chance to survive or do well in society.

As humans, we value bravery and under certain conditions, revenge. When someone get their property, people expect him to fight to get it back, not sit around and mope. Anger enables us to go out and restore our place in the world.

But the big question is, why destroy things in anger when it doesn't do anyone any good? I think to find the answer to this, we have to look back to pre-homo sapien days.

If an animal feels threatened, it will try to make itself look bigger and tougher to ward of the threat. This can be done in many different ways such as opening body parts to look bigger or make a very loud noise. Breaking stuff could be our way of warning others to say away. When we break a vase or thump the wall in anger, we are saying, "I'm a very dangerous person capable of violence. You better undo the wrong you've done or else....." Of course most of us are able to control the impulse to break stuff because we know it will get us into even more trouble. Thumping the table or the wall is a much more common thing to do because first of all, it doesn't destroy anything, and secondly, is almost as effective because it makes a loud sound and involves the violent act of punching or slapping.

These types of acts, promoted by anger, are supposed to instill fear into those who harm us and tries to ensure that they don't happen again.

Human Categories

We all believe that we are unique and I do think that this is the case. However, when we socialize with others, especially when dealing with people who we haven't met before or don't really know much about, we tend to categorize people and judge them on their various traits, both internal and external. These traits can be the person's profession, race, looks, etc.

I don't think that we categorize people consciously. Instead I think that it is something we do that has allowed humans to flourish in society. If you think about it, we have soooo many interactions with new humans every single day, unless you live in a cave that is. These interactions can range from just looking at a person and thinking about something they have done to holding long conversations with him/her.

If we didn't categorize humans, then we would have to remember each and every single characteristic for each and every person, which too much, even for geniuses like Einstein. Hmmm Maybe not Da Vince though, he had an IQ of around 240 and wasn't very social as far as I can tell, and so wouldn't have all that much to remember.

Anyway, the categorization also helps to determine and predict what a person might do next. For example, if you have a professor that is very strict, you will learn from him to do your homework on time and study, even though you are a lazy person, like me. Now, let's say that next year, you get a professor that has a lot of the same characteristics as your last year's professor. Now, if you categorize this new prof with the old one, you will realize tht you have to work hard again. If you didn't categorize, you will have to go through the same process that will jepordize your grade.

We don't realize how much we do this, and if you can consciesly can become aware of it, you will see that it will be impossible to continue to meet people regularly. I'm not saying that all people of a certain type are the same. I mean there is probably some model out there who likes to eat at McDonald's out there or an Indian who isn't not obsessed with cricket. Ok, maybe not the model, but I think you know what I'm getting at.

They say you can never judge a book by its cover but I think that a cover is what makes a book what it is and to judge them by their outside is what allows us to really understand the plot of the story*


*That was supposed to be my last sentence but I had to add this. Have you guys ever noticed how school books always have the same boring hard cover. I don't think I have ever seen a school book that's not bound like that and now, after reading 11 years worth of those books, everytime I see it, my mind goes, "Great, another boring book that has won some pointless award and has no interesting story whatsoever." Here is a hint to publishers. If you want your book to be popular, don't bind them in cheap card board and display some random award that has no one has heard of on the front cover.*

Family Tree

Even though a lot of cultures have developed their own methods of taking care of the dead, there has never been a culture that has had a family tree of ancestors. I'm not talking about the trees that people have to keep track of lineage but rather, of a literal tree.

This family tree would be planted in one central area, near the tribe or community. The tribe would bury all of their dead around the tree. The nutrients from the dead body would be absorbed by the tree, and that could be like a part of the family is in the tree. This could go on for generations. There could be problems like the bones and stuff crowding the place but I think that they would be ale to accommodate. I would like to see this being used in a book, because I think that it incorporates ancestral worship with burying hence combining East and West.

Imagination in Artificial Intelligence

Lately, there has been a lot of talk about making robots that can behave like humans and movies like iRobot show Robots taking over the world

I believe that there is only one thing that will allow this to happen, imagination. Imagination is what makes humans who they are. Out of all the animals, we probably have the most active imagination but that is not to say that other animals don't have imagination.

The reason why I believe that imagination is so vital is because of the flexibility it provides us. For example, when we look at a car, we can generally "imagine" the car and how it will look from various angles. However, if you provide the same image to a computer, it won't be able to recognize the same car shown from other sides.

This proves to be a hassle when we search for images on Google. Instead of recognizing the image, it looks for key words in the same web page. Sometimes, when you search for 'car' it gives you an apple. Any human will be able to tell that thats not a car but a computer can't. It has to be fed the image of every single car from every angle to be able to recognize them itself. If they were given imagination somehow, they would see one car and then be able to identify other objects as cars.

Of course there are softwares that can identify basic shapes and colors, but those are pre-programmed into the computer. If instead, we can provide imagination, it woud make computing a lot more efficient.

Nevertheless, there is a risk that imagination will cause robots taking over the world as they will be able to develop their own ideas with it. I am getting ahead of myself though. No one ahs been able to figure out exactly how imagination works and it will be decades before we will be able to unlock its secrets and be able to produce this technology

Religion: Origins

So I addressed that people such as Jesus, Muhammed, the Brahmins, Buddha etc. is to "control" other people. They want to guide others people lives and help them improve the world. mean u never see a religion saying to start killing everyone, no not even Islam.

So does this make a religion a religion or just another philosophy? Each religion, at its core is a philosophy on how to live ur lofe and behave. The gods, heven and hell, etc. are just ways of spicing up the philosophy to make it appealing to regular folks who can't/couldn't think at the level of the philosophers. They help people relate to the ideas, especially the stories.

Now not all of the religions are philosophy. Take the Greek religion for example. It has a lot of gods and stories, but most of them are just there for entertainment and fail to teach a person a lotof things on how to run his/her life. Infact, the religion was created as a reason for people's sins. If the gods act bad, then so can we. Perhaps that's why there were so many greek "philosophers". They didn't have any moral support and published their own individual ideas as a kind of replacement religion. There were philosopphers in all the other religins but they ended up beeing seen as saints, etc. bcause of their involvement in religion.

Also, I believe that all of those , words form god etc. were just people going off and THINKING. I have had a lot of similar thoughts to the prophets and maybe a God put the idea in my head, but it came about from thinking. I mean, it is said that Muhammed had contacted God in the cave where he usually went to think Buddhism says that the way to god s through meditation. Meditation is t clear your mind. When I do that, many new ideas and thoughts like these come into my head so it was meditation which lead to the thinking that lead buddha to his 8 fold path.

Religion: Controller

Religion is a controler

In my opinion the original purpose of all religions was to "control" people's lives in order to make it and the world a better lace. One of my favorite examples of this is hinduism (probably because being hindu, i know the most about it) There is a common misconception that hindu's don't eat cows because of some random god. Of course that is the religious reason but for me there is a much better reason. Back when hinduism was still developing, cows were a very important farm animal and provided people with many things such as power to plow the farms, pull the waterwheel, the cow chips were used for fuel and making huts. Also, the cows provided milk. All of this added up to a lot from one cow. The problem was that when people ate the cows, they lost all of these things that a cow could offer in exchange for only meat. That's where hinduism stepped in and decided to stop killing its cows. Of course they couldn't just say these facts and expect people to follow it. I mean how many of us follow what the facts tell us from science. Instead, they used religious stories as propaganda for not eating beef. People were more concerned about the religious aspect and so they didn't eat cows.

There are countless examples of this in a lot of religions. For example, all of the rayers in Hinduism are to involve all of the lower class in religion and learning, I have already talked about the caste system, also the meditation and the yoga, especially those to the sun gods, are to keep people in shape and make them exercise before breakfast as they are supposed to be done 1st thing. The mass religious events are social gatherings and used as oppurtunities to meet up with other people.

Even in christianity Islam and Judaism there are many examples of control. All three holy books help promote literacy among everyone. the Adam and Eve story is to encourage women not to have have sex......(think about the snake). THe mass at church is to socialize again. Islam ≠ idols becuase bedouin farmers couldn't really afford them (still rough theory). The list goes on and on. I will add to it as I think of new ones.

Brain = Superfast thinking

I was sitting in our school bus the other day when A kid who was coming up along the aisle. He is a list of all the thoughts that occurred to me as he came along the aisle and sat down in the seat behind me in the order I think they occurred

1. The bus is pretty full, I wonder where he is going to sit
2. I think he might sit in th back row He has sat there before
3. Ok here he comes
4. Wait, why the heck did he touch me?
5. Maybe it was an accident
6. He probably did it by accident
7. man this kid smells
8. smell = indian food / did he put on deo?
9. Why did I think the smell=indian food. I'm Indian!
10. maybe the kid ate indian food ast night

I'm pretty sure there were a lot more and a lot of them happened simultaneously. This whole thought process took not more than 4 or 5 seconds.

The brain really thinks fast and I think that the thoughts were in english but I can't be too sure. Maybe the memory is i english...... or not. Like I know that a lot of things like site taste and smell are often not in a language but I wonder of these types of thouhts are as well.

Anyway, it took me around 12 secs to say the thoguht process out loud so i guess that proves that my brain can multi/think or think thoughts very fast. The funny thing is that I remeber ech though in the same speed as I say it out loud although it was much faster. Interesting thing to think about.....

How to talk to men and women

I have noticed a couple of things when talking to men and women. When talking to each, one has to use different types of language and ways of talking here is how you should talk to each

Men: Men are usually more logical than women. They follow their head instead of their heart. If someone tries to explain them something and talks about cause and effect, they will succeed.

Women: Women are very emotional. If you try to explain why killing a thousand people will save the world, they will not listen. They will just feel sad about those 1000. When talking to women, use a lot of emotion. For example, if someone isn't able to come for family reasons, then u should tell a woman what those are and they wll understand better.

more to follow

Double Earphones

A lot of times, on the bus, at home, etc. people want to share their ipods and other listening sources. They often have one earphone each and listen using one ear. Instead of doing this, why not make an earphone adapter that converts one ear phone input into two separate ones. That way, both people can share a listening source and use their own headphones. The device should be small and the double input part should be wide so it can accomidate all types of earphones. ANother alternative is to have it branching out so the two inputs have their own cords that adjoin into one. This gives more freedom and flexibility but the wires can get tangled.

Rusted Weapons Outside a City

For art, a really cool painting will be one of a modern city, filled with white building of cool design with blue windows as a background. You know, like those cool modern ones. In the front will be a field of brown rusty old medieval weapons and armor. Between the buildings and the rust field will be a grass field.

In the Rusty field, everything will be the same brownish rust color with some variation. ex add black and stuff. The outline of the weapons will be black. A prominent thing in the field will be a helmet . Also there should be a spear/pike with a pennant on it.

The city will be all skyline and there will be no square buildings. The whole painting is meant to represent change. I think that the best medium for this would be paint although don't know what type. Definitely not watercolor.

Towel Heater

It is really great when you come out of the bath and have a nice warm towel to dry yourself with. If this is so great, then why not have a towel heater in your bathroom. The heater can be kept under your sink and will switch on at the same time as the water geiser. The temperature should be controlable. In order to warm towels evenly, each towel will be kept on its own "hot plate".