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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

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

If you can't explain it to a 6-year old...

Definitions are the mind's comfort food. Why bother going on a rigorous diet of learning in detail how things work when you can pluck a definition out of a dictionary and ride with it? It's a rhetorical question, definitions never solve the immense task of explaining the world and its various bits to a 6-year old.  Unless the knowledge has been ingurgitated and digested properly, until it's become part of oneself, there is no way any child would accept a packaged explanation. Is that why the best sites on astronomy  topics are those tailored for kids?

Question of the morning

There is a lake of ink, both physical and digital, somewhere, filled by everything that has been written on mind, body and soul and their holistic union.  Empirical observation seems to show that each of the three varies in size as life unfolds. Question: is the sum of the parts kept the same by some inner mysterious workings or can it be influenced by a particular conscious action? An old sarcastic reply to someone boasting of having given up a bad habit was “Remember that the sum of our vices stays the same”. Does this apply to the sum of mind, body and soul?