The Socio/Log

01/07/2016

"My inclination is to believe that never finding love would be a game-changer for most of us. One we’d initially consider to be devastating but may eventually realize is the ultimate liberation. Without the fear of ending up alone, the opportunities open to you would become endless. You could live on every continent. You could scale the corporate ladder. You could go back to school and get that degree you’ve always felt interested in, without worrying about the financial burden your debt may place on somebody else. Love holds us back in an infinite amount of subtle ways that perhaps we do not even realize. And the guarantee of its absence may just be the ultimate sense of liberation."

What if you peered into a fortune ball right now and saw with indisputable clarity that you were never going to meet the love of your life?

22/05/2016

"The conclusion is obvious: we young progressives are hypocrites. We want corporations put in check, except when those corporations provide us a convenient service. We are against the exploitation of workers in theory, but in reality, we couldn’t care less about Uber drivers or about what they have to say about the weather during an awkward 15-minute drive."

Like me, you might be a liberal who loves Uber and Airbnb. But the darker side of the new economy isn’t something we can simply ignore

21/05/2016

"Monogamy is more advanced than polyamory, because monogamy is less natural than polyamory."

We think of monogamy as natural, but it’s actually quite advanced—the trouble is we default to it out of fear instead of choosing it consciously.

20/04/2016

Super Cool.

19/04/2016

Nearly everyone enjoys kissing, but most of us rarely stop to wonder why. The answer is deeply rooted in our biology.

- One of the first physically enjoyable sensations we experience is being nursed by our mothers; the use of our lips comes naturally to us. Nursing is very comforting for a baby. It usually takes place in a safe and calm environment, so the baby grows to associate soft press.

- Also, Do you know why we use the letter “x” to represent kissing? There’s a historical reason behind it.
Throughout history, humans have used kissing for many different purposes. In the Middle Ages, it was often used to seal a contract.
The spot on the contract that was to be kissed by the concerned parties was marked with an “x”, just like we use “x’s” for kisses in online chats today. We’ve been representing kissing in this way for hundreds of years.

- Kissing is healthy and makes you feel high. It decreases our levels of cortisol, the “stress hormone” that increases your blood pressure and weakens your immune system. Chronically high levels of cortisol are dangerous and contribute to problems like heart disease, so anything that lowers your cortisol is good for you.
It also increases the levels of serotonin, and dopamine, the euphoric hormones, and oxytocin, the “love hormone” or “bonding hormone”.

- Different rulers and governments tried to outlaw kissing for health reasons, such as during the Great Plague in London in 1665. In fact, a law in South Africa tried to ban children under 16 from kissing as recently as 2008, in a misguided attempt to curb the spread of HIV.
The Catholic Church tried to ban kissing several times for moral reasons and because it can lead people toward having s*x. None of their attempts were successful, however; kissing is a natural part of who we are.

-The Science of Kissing, by Sheril Kirshenbaum.

13/04/2016

28/03/2016

"Parents are very frustrated because they think they don't have any tools that are effective, so they’re going to use power. And power makes things worse.
We don't change children. We change parents, and parents change their children".

For problem behavior, spanking and even time-out are a waste of time. Try this instead.

28/03/2016

""Even when observed over a long period of time, between 20 and 30 percent of ants don't do anything that you could call work.
You'd think colonies with lots of bums would not thrive. But Hasegawa's study, published last month in Nature, shows that colonies with a significant percentage of do-nothing types are actually more resilient. They have a reserve workforce to replace dead or tired worker ants."
I tend to disagree with alot of points in this article, especially regarding the actual potential of the lazy people to be smart resources or their reasons to slack in the first place (lack of interest/motivation in the type of work they do). But overall, an interesting concept to give a thought to.

A recent Japanese study shows the lazy ants play a critical role in colonies. They contribute when others die or drop out. The researcher says the same is true for humans. But is it?

23/03/2016

Brilliant!

Classic novels can often seem pretty formidable, not least because they're often rather long. But thanks to Cartoonist John Atkinson, they can now be read in a matter of seconds.

23/03/2016

Success takes more than smart ideas.

10/03/2016

It's not.

“I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.” Albert Einstein I also fear the day where we believe that Einstein might have said t…