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Showing posts from May 10, 2020

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It is never personal, you're not the protagonist

It's so easy to become offended. It actually comes pretty natural. Someone says something.  You feel it's directed at you Strong reaction follows No need to react, it's got nothing to do with you as a person Imagine some remarks about academic work versus manual one, a bit dismissive about the latter. You don't have a degree and never wanted one. You know very well it takes years of experience and training to do what you're doing. Talent is involved too, as some people do have "two left hands".  You still feel you should add something to the conversation, but not sure if it is going to be well-received. No need to enlighten the other party right now Most people think in terms of opposites. If it's not this, it's that and it can't be anything else. Certainty of one's convictions is also a form of self-reassurance that everything is stable in one's world. Other points of view cannot be allowed because they are disruptive. Cognitive disrup

Black and White

Lockdown reflections 1.2 It's not easy to spell the adjective "manichaean". The word that has ended up meaning "black and white thinking" has its origin 17 centuries ago.  At the time, it was not that simplistic. I think it is definitely worth looking into Manichaeism, the religion founded in the 3rd century AD by a Persian prophet and the idea of a battle between light and darkness. Modern use of "manichaean" is pretty much divorced from the ancient belief system. Rarely employed in writing, it has the undertone of a rebuke. These days, it is not exactly a compliment. Could it be that we are so in love with nuances? There's always a "but..." dangling from the end tail of a sentence. To be more precise, there used to be a "but", before all nuanced conversations went out of the window. Or were rather locked down. Duality in its strictest, most dogmatic form is reigning supreme. It's an either/or situation,  no mid

The new normal is the old normal

Lockdown reflections 1.1. It started with the frequency of phone calls and messages. Everyone was worried. Interest in other people's welfare took on an unexpected turn. "Are you alright"?  became a magic phrase. The speed of sharing immunity tips increased. There was a definite fervour around any bit of new information. Some became suspicious that others may know something and hide it. The spurt of activity on various channels was matched by what happened in the media and to a more significant degree on the internet. The two spheres, the personal and the public one, were in synch up to a point only. Then some sort of fatigue started gnawing away at individual hyper-communication. Phone calls became less frequent. Text messages turned into forwarding funny videos and memes, mostly. Family members and friends, let alone acquaintances, settled back into their usual routine. The new normal, under lockdown, reverted to the old normal, and it's a comforti

Crowdsourcing the Virus

CROWDSOURCING THE VIRUS QUESTION The Virus does not deserve a photo. Just words, mainly arranged in questions. As signing up for an online course in virus genetic sequencing is not a priority right now, let's first stick to popular science.  Even better, to what every possible outlet has written about its appearance: spherical, with leech-like tentacles.  No idea how the crown analogy came about. I looked long and hard to find any connection or identify the spiky crown that gave it its name. That blob we all now recognise is full of spikes, true, but that's about it. Anyway, it has a name which is not necessarily its important feature, IMHO. The package is far far more important.  It is made of fat, "an envelope", as it's called. Have all similar viruses a layer of fat?  Apparently yes, but why fat and not something else? Is it because fat is such a good preservative (think of meat kept for months in lard) ? Is it then a survival techn