Milk and Hormones

We are always buying the chepest milk. Common milk is cheap, organic milk is expensive. There were concerns of price and health. The former we are clearly aware of, yet the latter remains to be a hypothesis, at least to us. We and some of our friends went into an argument of whether we should buy organic milk from now on. I wasn't in a position to argue much, so here I am collecting some knowledge.

Hormone is a chemical messenger that regulates target cells activity.

Estrogens are a group os steroid compounds functioning as the primary female sex hormone.

Present in both men and women, estrogens are usually present at significantly higher levels in women of reproductive age.

Birth control pills is a combination of an estrogen and a progestogen. High doese of estrogen inhibites ovulation.

33 times more of a signature estrogen compound (estrone sulfate) is contained in mild from modern dairy farms than milk from a non-pregnant cow.

Skim milk contains less hormones.

Homogenization breaks up fat molecules and become capsules for proteins that bypass digestion.

Organic milk, as opposed to so-called hormone free milk, is produced from organic dairies that go through a rigorous certification process with the Department of Agriculture. Absent this certification process, the claim that milk is "hormone free" is absolutely meaningless.

Energy Future

Read: http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/10/06/small-is-useless/

So no matter how futuristics and responsible or conscious we are, curb our crave for solar pannels and micro wind turbines. Rather, write letters to politicitions. :)

However, all reports and essays are building on the assumption that our energe use won't decreas in developed country and certainly will grow in third world country. In fact, I am quite certain, our habit of use of energe will change, if we don't have a good solution in time (looks more like it).

I am actually quite optimistic about the future when we run out of earth's stock energy and we can't come up geneious solution fast enough and we are forced to shrink our demand of energy. We are going to walk more, we are going to take bath in cool water, and we are going to stand the cold winter and hot summer. Nothing that our ancestors haven't been go through and I am looking forward to a much healthier life styles.

My only concern is would us have enough food in the future? We are wasting food all the time and complaining on extra food input all the time, and although micro solution is not enough to sustain our current style of energy use, it seems promising to be enough for our future revolutionized life style.

I can hardly wait :)

Be Nice and To Forgive in a Long Term Battle

I usually only gets one point from one book, but a seemingly second point in "Selfish Gene" has been very sticking in my mind.

The essense of it is: in a long term relationship, the seemingly optimum strategy is like a tic-for-tac strategy -- it starts with a "nice" behavior toward an "opponent", then repeats the behavior of its opponents (toward it). The author summarize 3 properties of tic-for-tac strategy: 1. Be nice. we start being nice to others. 2. Be forgivable. We don't remember others "bad" for long. As soon as other start being nice to us, we are nice to others. 3. There is no end to the relationship. We don't see when we will never see the others.

As a result, the majority of the people on earth are nice. And as a result, I should be nice and forgivable to ultimately win our life.

Conscious

Conscious is very intersting to think about :).

On one hand, conscious is a result of biological evolution. Down the path of evolution, it just came to the conclusion that, an entity with conscious is more likely to survive than one without.

On the other hand, conscious is the origin to the cultural evolution. Culture is a conscious product. We creates culture just like the way God creates biology evolution :).

I am not quite sure what cultural evolution will do to our biological forms, but it is interesting to think that the impact of curltural evolution to us probably is very similar to the impact of biological evolution to God. :)

Cultural Evolution and Biological Evolution

Since I now recoginze both cultural evolution and biological evolution as "evolution", certainly they share some properties, such as the property of reprecations. But apparently, they are very different.

Biological evolution is more like a hardware programing for us. It gives us natural feelings, such as craving for food, appeal from opposite sex, and curiosity in exploring unknowns. Cultural evolution is more like a software programing for us. It gives us experience and much of emotions. We love peace and hate the war, isn't that an example of cultural programming?

Software programing are based on hardwares. Cultural evolution only took off after the hardware for it -- human beings -- took shape. Curltural evolution requires its carrier the ability of learning and the desire of learning. Then, once the hardware achieves this fundmental ability to certain degree, the software part matters significantly more. Surely a pentium 4 runs faster than pentium III, but an algorithm difference can easily offset the performance by orders!

Given the same software environment, the hardware matters. So within a cultural locale, the biological evolution may be in charge. And as a end result of evolution,, the resulting survived individules more or less are inheriting the same hardware ability.

Give the same hardware environment, the software matters. So even all the humans in the world have the exact same hardware capability, their could be extremely powerful nations due to their cultural advantages.

The selection of hardware is about the same regardless of what level of software it runs. With windows 3.1 or windows XP, pentium IV always performs better than pentium III. So no matter which software the ensemble runs, the evolution selects the best hardware. Does it conclude -- all humans around the globe, as long as their life style is dominated by a culture -- roudimentaly culture or futuristic civilization -- they are the equaly smart people ( or equally dumn :).

But it may be possible that a vast different form of culture may have great impact on biological hardwares. So far, our culture in 21century doesn't fundmentally differ from the culture 5 thousand years ago in that, I expect a man from 5 thousand year ago can live well in 21st century if he were exposed to 21st century from birth. But maybe, in the future, there will be a culture that can be learned much faster with a different lifeform, say the one that communicates with electro-magnetic waves rather than voices, then may our biological evolution slowly change our hardware toward that?

I think the cultural evolution has already changed our natural hardware feelings in examples such as caring for poor nations on the opposite side of the globe, and caring for the global warming; Will the cultural evolution eventually shut off our feeling for food and opposite sex. It is amusing to imagine how the nowadays love theory would sound if that happens :).

Biological evolution favors those genes that ensures greater probabiliy of inheriting onto next generations. Does cultural evolution favors those genes that have a greater probablity of carrying on the piece of culture? We sometime favour deciples of our belief more than our own blood, is that cultural evolution in working?

The Evolution of Memes

Alas, there is little probablity that an expert hadn't considered the conclusion a non-expert does. Richard Dawkins, now I know he is a famous scholar, concluded the culturral evolution as well, and have give it a name, Memes. Why I didn't think of this name? :)

I guess I need buy his book at some point.

The Gene Evolution and Knowledge Evolution

I browsed through the new book shelf in my local public library and picked a book -- Richard Dawkins's "The Selfish Gene". I am currently half way through the book.

The book basicaly says that evolution is on the individual gene level, rather on the species level. The gene is in fact "immortal" via the way of replication, and the long path of evolution is essentially a survival competition of individual genes. Say there is two genes, one gives you blue eyes and one gives you green eyes. They are deadly competing with each other since one would have either blue eyes or green eyes. If always the green-eye gene get replicated at higher probablity, the blue eye gene will quickly reduce its "population" to extinction, at which point, the "immortal" gene "dies".

We, human, at the end of evolution path, did not win the evolution by beating other species. In fact, some of the genes in our dna is likely the exact gene exists at the very beginning of life. Those genes suvives the evolution and keeps "living".

The book is celebrating its 30 years anniversary and I wish I had picked up this book sooner.

I agree with the book's view. So apparently there is a will of the genes, and the will of the gene is selfish. The gene doesn't care the survival of your other species member. The survival of other species member that carries the competing genes are in fact, lowers the survivalship of this gene iteself. Interesting.

Now I think about it, apparently, we, human species, created a new era of biology evolution. Before human, genes essentially dictates the behaviors, life patterns, most aspects of the animal body -- gene's survival machine. Try this thought experiment: given two group of baby animals, one group grows with their parents and their elder societies, and the other group was raised up on their own. If they eventually were live in a very similar environment, they would pretty much live their life, mate and raise their second generation about the same way, and it may be difficult to tell two animals apart that which was grown with their parents and which was not. If that is so, then the genes pretty much determins every thing.

Now the remarkable new phoenomena for human is, we created languages and created way of documenting ideas. So given two babies, one grown up in one culture (say African Tribe), and the other one grown up in another very difficult culture (say American Family), they will have a quite different life patterns, even if they are facing the same environment. If that is so, then we human, creates another line of evolution besides the gene evolution, the evolution of knowledge and philosophy. I think this evolution is often called civilization.

In this new era, genes only has so much role to play. As long a body built by the genes have the capability to grasp the new knowledge and have the ability to explore new knowledge at a favorable rate, this gene will survive. Now the evolution of knowledges will take over the path of gene evolution, and start controling the major part of our life pattern.

Birth contronl, for example, there is no way in gene evolution can reach a state that the body want to limit its own replication oppotunity and thus increasing the rivals suvivalships. But knowledge will achieve this. When the idea of limiting births become as established knowledge as 1+1=2, people will do that. Since this knowldege is irrelavant to which exact genes one is holding as long as the gene as a whole is capable grasping the knowledge and implement the knowledge, this knowledge evolves.

There is no way the evolution of our genes can stop the global warming before we go over the cliff, but our knowledge evolution will make that happen. Have that faith! :)

How to get hold of my motivations

When I wrote my resumes, motivated is often the first word jumps into my mind and always lands on the paper. I thought of the jobs I was applying, and imagined how I would perform in the new company, or even in the new field, then I felt nothing but motivation. Then someone's blog hits me -- it is not wise to list motivated as a quality to be seeked in writing a job requirement. People are always motivated when he starts the job, and that motivation is always going to slide as time goes on, and at some point, one will gets filled with all but motivation.

So what happened?

What happened is the drop of one's expectation. When one first steps into a new company or a new field, one holds many expectaions -- the expectaion that he will do well. Where do the expectaions come from? Expectations come from the many plans he had for his new job and new career. These plans, or sometime strategies are often very coarse, and often very naive. When you don't have much experience in a new field, you can't have much realistic plans. However, these simplistic plans pumps up our expectations and motivations. Then, as time goes by, our experience grows, and we run out of plans, and our expectations drops, so away goes our motivation.

So here is some tips on how to get hold of our emotions.

1. Change career. Change into a new career that you don't have much experience yet, and still you can formulate a rich plan during your 5 minute day-dreaming.

2. Changing career needs much of cowboy sprit, and may not be able to afford the 10-year experience build-up time, so rather than changing career, we can change jobs. Formulate a rich plan to dominate the company based on the experience minus the limit of your current job.

3. Well, finding a new job may be quite chanllenging, so one more thing we can play is to mentally change your job. From all the possible functions that your current job involves and tring to move your focus to a different set of functions than you currently has. Of course, you need formulate plans and pump up expectaions, naturally.

4. Even we are stuck in the same old same old, we still can change our views. My approach is zoom out and zoom in. Every object in this world is as rich as the world itself; and as a matter, we often only see one smalle portion of it, then our mind plays trick tells us what we see is the whole thing. By zoom out, the object become atom, and is very simplistic, thus we can formulate all kinds of naive plans to attack it, thus pumps up our expectations. Then by zoom in again, chances are, because the object itself is so vast in reality, we often can't zoom back into the spot where we used to see. Thus, by zooming out and zooming in, we created a totaly new meaning of the old job, along with the new motivation.

5. Forget all the above rubbish, we just need simplify the problem, formulate naive plans, and pumps up our expectations. Our motivations will follow. :)

How to improve my eyesight

I have been prooud of my vision for quite some time. All my parents have good visions. My brother has a good vision. And all my grandma and grandpa's have good visions. And as I count them, all my close relatives have good vision too. I have believed I have good genes that renders good vision for me, even though I have been reading more than my peers when I was young.

But I can't help noticing my vision is getting worse last a few months, since I start working at home mostly infront of a computer. I am ready to accept that I have developed a myopia. I even tried to imagine I wearing glasses whole day and watched some friends wearing lenses. It kind of looking cool :). Yet, I am not ready to visit my doctor and get a pair of glasses yet.

So when I see this "Natural Vision Improvement Kit" by Meir Schneider, I bought it. As usual, I am not beliving it when I read its claims on the cover. I am not believing its true and not believing it is false either. However, by reading a few pages, it does make a lot of sense to me.

Let me cite one most impressive priciple from this book: Never, under any circumstances, strain to see anything.

Hopefully, I will have a blog entry demonstrate its effectiveness in the near future. But I will happily blog the the day I wear glasses as well if that doesn't work out.

Should we care about next generation?

If nothing matters after death, then should we care about others' lives after our death? Should we care about the golbal warming 100 years later?

Well, the point is not wheter we care about it after our life, it is about the current life we are in at this instance.

Would you enjoy your life now if I can show you enough evidence that your children will suffer? Would you enjoy your life if the images of diasters upon our next generation keeps coming to your mind now?

If you don't know what will happen to next generations 100 years later, you have nothing to care. If you believe what diaster will happen to our next generations and you still enjoy your current life to the fullest, then by all means, do not care about it.

But chances are, you will find joy NOW by caring about our next generations. It is the nature just as we like to taste sweets. Even if you know you will die the next second, caring for the dearest fills that last second of life with "life".

Follow your instincts.

Life is Long

Cathy writes a blog titled Life is Short. I suddenly find it fun to write this blog and name it "Life is Long" :).

How long is an individual's life? As long as we can imagin.

"I think, so I am". As long as we are thinking, seeking, and imaginning, our life is here, and extends to an infinity. How do you measure the length of life? Isn't it measured by the amount of thoughts you are having? If I put you in hibernate for a million years, you don't have a million years of life. But if I told you have one more day to live, you will have infinity of things and thoughts to fill that day. Life is not measured by hours, it is measured by the length of your conscious. Is it rare to you that you can fill a second with infinity thoughts?

Death is so dreadful only because we think about it. And the fact we are thinking about death is the very sign of life. For sure, once you are dead, you wouldn't care about how you died or at which point of time you died. You will just have peace, absolute peace. Does it really matter you died yesterday or you died 2000 years ago?

Every one has infinity life. But you have to enjoy it to realize it.

(yeah, you are right, I don't know what I am talking about :)