Music: Lift

Evaluation final:

• illusionist;
• dreamer;
• menace to society.

 Poets of the Fall - Lift












Times when I just can't
Bring myself to say it loud
'Fraid that what I'll say comes out somehow awry

That is when it seems
We move in circles day to day
Twist the drama of the play to get us by

And it feels like fear
Like I'll disappear
Gets so hard to steer
Yet I go on
Do we need debate
When it seems too late
Like I bleed but wait
Like nothing's wrong

You lift my spirit, take me higher, make me fly,
Touch the moon up in the sky, when you are mine
You lift me higher, take my spirit, make it fly,
Where all new wonders will appear

Like the other day
I thought you won't be coming back
I came to realize my lackluster dreams

And among the schemes
And all the tricks we try to play
Only dreams will hold their sway and defy

And it feels like fear
Like I'll disappear
Gets so hard to steer
Yet I go on
Do we need debate
When it seems too late
Like I bleed but wait
Like nothing's wrong

You lift my spirit, take me higher, make me fly,
Touch the moon up in the sky, when you are mine
You lift me higher, take my spirit, make it fly,
Where all new wonders will appear

What's Your Sign?

Astrology - many people like this pseudoscience and believe in it's ability to predict the future and a person's personality. I admit that occasionally you can even see shared personality traits within a group, but then that may have something to do with those I socialize with (I'm sure all Libra's aren't bossy little know-it-alls - funnily enough I've never seen that written in an astrology book).

I was just going to say that there are many different versions of astrology, all taking the planets and constellations into account. So, I was thinking why not see how many star signs there actually are?

For the sake of simplicity, I won't go into numerology and such and stick just to those that depend on the stars.

This leaves us with 4 kinds: the Western Zodiac, the Chinese Zodiac, planetary influences outside of your Western Sign, and the Lunar cycle.

The Western/Roman Zodiac is the one most of us are familiar with and varies between the months: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces.

The Chinese Zodiac depends on one's year of birth in accordance to the Lunar Calender: Rooster, Dog, Boar/Pig, Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep/Goat, and Monkey. I will mention that like the Western Zodiac begins with Aries, the Chinese actually begins with the Rat but I was listing them in order of which of the WZ signs they should be associated: e.g. Aries = Rooster. (This is the correlation I was taught but I have read many different versions.)
However, these guys have a couple of additional factors: firstly, depending on which "Year of the ANIMAL" you were born in, your element will be different from someone born in another year. The possible elements are Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water.
The second factor is "Yin" or "Yang" - this varies between what a sign is naturally, and whether you are male or female. For instance the Rooster is naturally Yang, but the Sheep is Yin - once again your gender/year will change this.

Next up we have planetary influences - these correspond to the Western Zodiac with Aries and Scorpio being ruled by Mars (the latter also getting Pluto in recent years), Taurus and Libra getting Venus, Gemini and Virgo going to Mercury, Cancer going to the Moon, Leo to the Sun, Sagittarius and Pisces getting Jupiter (the latter also Neptune), and finally Capricorn and Aquarius being ruled by Saturn (the latter being joined with Uranus).
However depending on where in the sky these planets are you will get the influence of yet another sign. Except the sun... in that case it matters what time of day you're born... which also matters to everyone else according to other books.

And that's not even getting into those who are born on the cusp of two signs.

Next the lunar cycle - it has approximately 29 days in it and, depending on who you ask, are all very important. I, however, would prefer to just say that there are 9 main parts: new moon, waxing cresent, first quarter, waxing gibbous, full moon, waning gibbous, last quarter, waning cresent, new moon, and somewhere in there there can be a lunar eclipse.

So, now we will have MATHS! Yay! My favourite subject! To simplify the formulas I will include what time of day you're born (separated into 12 houses), directly link Yin/Yang to gender, and also assume that for the signs with two ruling planets that they are in the same segment of the sky at the same time (slightly justified as during the Scorpio month Mars is in the same sign as Pluto... supposedly.)
For the lunar cycle calculations we will only include new moon, waxing cresent, waxing gibbous, full moon, waning gibbous, waning cresent, and the lunar eclipse for the sake of fairness. So 6.

First, just helping your vocabulary:
A combination is when you have a set of events/numbers/etc where the order does not matter. A permutation is where the order does matter.
"My fruit bowl has a combination of bananas, oranges, apples, and grapes."
"The combination to the safe is 593".
In the first instance it is a combination - we really don't care what order the fruits come in. So it only calculates "one" order.
In the second instance we do care what the order is as 395 or 935 certainly wouldn't work. We often call it a combination but it is in fact a permutation. So it calculates every possible order.

Let's go through all the combinations and permutations, shall we?
The sign of Leo shall be calculated separately as it doesn't have the "outside" factors. In order to find a combination, we must multiply put all the factors.

Here are the functions.

So, there are 1,149,120 star signs according to this.

Now, the world's population as at 2010 was 6,840,507,000. So divide that by 1,149,120 and we get 5,952.82216 people for each starsign.

What I'd really love to see is if someone actually did individual predictions for each of these signs and then published it! X) Then I'd have a better measure of it's accuracy. :P

Blood Calls For Blood

Well, not really. But kinda. Allow me to explain.

Okay, for some reason my posts have been sort of turning into me dumping all my thoughts on a particular matter together, even if it is a collection of links and explanations. I guess it's because it helps me clarify things in my own mind. Nevertheless, we continue.

Now, anyone who has read a "trashy romance novel", watched a soap opera, the odd crime drama, or picked up a mythology book knows that siblings or other relatives "hooking up" is no rare thing in fiction. However, none of these things tend to go into the psychology of it - or at least explaining that there is psychology behind it. I'm going to spend this post explaining that there are in fact theories behind this behaviour and siting examples to prove my point. I've actually found works of fiction that work this into the story in an interesting way because the author actually understands the psychology behind it.

The first effect is called Genetic Sexual Attraction, which is exactly what it says on the tin - attraction to those one is genetically related to... who they first meet as adults. Often this happens as the result of adoption, infidelity, etc - basically circumstances that stop the siblings/relatives from meeting before adulthood or, in many cases, even knowing of their relationship.

There are a couple of theories behind why this happens. Surveys find that people commonly find that faces similar to their own are more attractive - usally such things are hereditary. In 2004 Bereczkei argued that children "imprint" on the opposite sex parent and hence go after people with similar interests and personality traits. However there is a great deal of debate over this as we don't know if such traits are inheritable and to what extent. Anyway, if inheritable they will likely stick to close relatives.
Truth be told, I'm very divided on that particular issue (whether or not personalities/interests are inheritable) and am likely to go into detail in another post.

Now, you're probably wondering what I meant by "imprinting" and if you've read/watched Twilight you will recognize it from Breaking Dawn (whether or not you are smiling or cringing at the reference is subjective), however the term "describe[s] situations in which an animal or person learns the characteristics of some stimulus". The most common version is filial imprinting where the child!animal takes on the characteristics/behaviours of the parent!animal. Such situations include those were an animal of one species spends it's "childhood" with animals of another so it grows to act like them - for instance I owned a cat which thought it was a dog. Next type is sexual imprinting, which is where child!animals learn to be attracted to traits that the animals that raised them possess - a contributor to Bereczkei's theory.

Finally we take on the other side of this argument - the Westermarck Effect. This is reverse sexual imprinting, and why children don't normally feel sexual attraction to siblings, parents, and other close relatives. It works on the basis that where two people who live in close proximinity during the first few years of life they will become sexually desensitized to each other. This has been observed in many situations, such as the Israeli kibbutzim, such that basically where children are raised in groups there is a very small number of marriages between members of that group in the long run. In the mentioned example, of nearly 3,000 marriages only 14 happened in the same group, and none of them were raised together during the first 6 years of life. Therefore children who are raised together in the first 6 years of life are unlikely to become sexually attracted to each other at a later point.

What I like about these theories combined is that they debunk other theories... like Freud's (dude, not everything comes down to sex). While Freud argued that all children lust after family members based on his having an "erotic reaction" on seeing his mother dress, Westermarck pointed out that Freud was raised by a wetnurse and thus never desensitized to her.

Anyway, many historical accounts of this can be seen. In ancient Egypt, in order to preserve the royal blood (which was carried through the women) royalty used to raise boys and girls separately before marrying the next Pharoah to his (half)sister - since they never met in the first 6 years, the Westermarck effect was avoided. However in Europe at some point they attemped the same thing only to have the King and Queen refuse to breed because they saw each other as brother and sister due to being raised together.
This is also why marriages between cousins were so much more popular as a combined affect of both effects - not being raised together during the critical phase and being genetically similar enough to cause GSA.

For the sake of fairness I will mention that the genetic side-effects of inbreeding between cousins have been mostly exaggerated the likelihood of birth defects is only 4% compared to the usual 2%. However, as you can see in the British royal family Haemophilia has been concentrated due to a long history of inbreeding.

Actually, Fridge Brilliance in that the Greek Pantheon's notorious inbreeding actually makes sense since none of them were raised together, since of the first six gods Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus all but the youngest were devoured by Chronos and Zeus was raised by nympths on Crete. Therefore none of them were technically raised together so it would be natural for Zeus to be attracted to his sisters (having married Hera, having Persephone with Demeter, and Hestia was apparently so desired that she pledged herself to chastity). Depending on the "being eaten by Daddy" situation, Poseidon's attraction to Demeter may or may not be justified, but Hades's attraction to Persephone would certainly fall under here due to this effect since nobody ever visited him (as well as the fact that he lived a dull existence and she was just the perfect ray of sunshine).

What, ironically, makes less sense is the Egyptian Pantheon unless their gods were raised the same way as their royalty - I haven't read anything to specify so.

Anyway, hopefully this has proved enlightening in some way or at least gave you something weird to think about... which, let's face it, is clearly my main intention.

A Late Halloween Note

Ah-ha! I wasn’t late – I said Monday or Wednesday. Today is Wednesday.

Now, had my brain actually processed the fact that it was Halloween while I was writing last week’s post, I probably would have posted this one to be thematic. However, my brain did not.
Partially because I am still researching my other drafts and partially because I am procrastinating exam study I present to you an observation I made when I was around 11 or 12 on vampires after attending a science talk. See how this would have been fitting last week?

Firstly I shall state that this is my musing on an unrealistic topic – I occasionally like to dissect myths and then consider reconstructing them. Now, setting sparklepires aside, I shall list the "facts" about vampires (the typical ones anyway – not going into every mythology):
• They are undead, a.k.a. they have no pulse and don’t breathe yet can move around and talk and apparently think.
• They never age.
• They can be killed either by a wooden stake to the heart, a rod of hot iron to the heart, or decapitation.
• They drink blood.
• They are typically created by the body of the deceased being possessed by some sort of demon. (This is supported by the belief that warlocks and some murderers would become vampires after death as they were in league with demons.)
•• (Also babies who were born with hair, an extra/missing toe/finger, or teeth were also destined to be vampires.)
••• (So according to folklore I should be a shape-changing vampire. Man do I feel cheated.)

Now, 11 year old me came up with this idea: vampires don’t age because they don’t breathe. Note that we mention nothing of decay – that’s clearly magic. (Or the chemical anomaly that occurs in some bodies causing the body not to decay, like the “Incorruptible Saints” in Catholic religion but does sometimes occur outside of recognized sainthood.)
Back on track! Now, the vampire, being dead, does not breathe nor have a heartbeat. As humans we need to breathe in order for our bodies to absorb oxygen into our blood for our hearts to then pump to our muscles and organs. However, oxygen is both our necessity and our killer – oxygen free radicals (all free radicals) destroy cells. The cell destruction causes us to age.

(For those of you who don’t know what a free radical is, it is a molecule that rips off parts of other cells to complete itself. So eating certain foods "complete" the radical so it won't need your cells. Read up on oxygen free radicals here - it's more scientiffic.)

In short, oxygen free radicals cause us to age, thus breathing causes us to age. It causes us to live, but it also causes us to age. Vampires however don’t need that pesky oxygen in order to “live” so they don’t need to age.

Now, I’ll drag garlic into this – garlic is an anti-oxidant like green tea and coffee. Except vampires don’t hate green tea and coffee. So why we eat garlic because (a) yummy!, (b) we’re Italian, (c) we like to take care of ourselves and eliminate those nasty oxygen free radicals, or (d) we are a male who wants to increase our fertility [which links in nicely with the second half of this post], vampires don’t need to do any of the above. They only drink our blood, they’re probably Romanian (I jest on both this comment and (b) of course), they don’t need to take care of themselves – they’re freaking immortal, and it’s highly unlikely that they want kids in the traditional sense. So, the only reason they would eat garlic is if they wanted bad breath.

Clearly vampires are so vain that even bringing the vile food near them would cause panic. :P
(For all the benefits of garlic see here - it's an awesome food.)


And now, in a surprise twist (not), I reveal that the idea of the Dhamphyr or “half-vampire” has mythological –and not Hollywood-squealing-fangirl- grounds. Now while it is so much fun to make fun of the fact that Edward could never have bedded Bella due to the lack a heartbeat thus no blood flow thus no erection, this idea of vampires going around and bedding people is rooted in mythology. In Slavic mythology was believed that if a man became a vampire, his first act as a member of the undead would be to seek out his wife/girlfriend/love-interest and, well, do the deed. Now, someone funny may insert a rigor mortis joke here but they may actually be on to something.
(The Roma had female vampires instead, I will mention.)

The myths do generally agree that this was the first act a male vampire would perform and rigor mortis sticks around for 24 hours. However this would assume one becomes a vampire immediately after death, and not two or three days later as stated in other myths. We would also be assuming that every other muscle in the body is unaffected. So that’s just dumb – vampires cannot have sex, let alone have children. (Hence it would be pointless for them to eat garlic.)

Not that this logical gem has stopped people from thinking this, and I don’t just mean in fiction.

Now, there are actually documented cases (mainly in Romania) of men tricking/scaring women into going to bed with them by pretending to be a vampire and later getting caught out for it, so (assuming that all these girls weren’t complete idiots) there were cultures that stated that this myth was indeed true. (Like the aforementioned Slavs and Roma.)
The likely cause of this myth were (grieving) widows being “consoled” by male friends and finding themselves in awkward positions when the baby bump presented – saying that one’s vampire husband came back from the cemetery and left them a parting gift is a nice easy solution. It would also explain why the “vampires” don't usually make a return visit in the reports, while in the myths their fidelity varies. It could also be used as an "explanation" for girls losing their virginity before marriage while saving their virtue.

... Hmmmm, I should mention that the sex-education part of my post was a realization I had at 16 rather than 12. Also that I did not intend for it to last that long. And no, I won’t be going into the possible causes of the vampire myth – that’s what Wikipedia is for. I just wanted to point how it made weird sense for a myth that predated that medical discovery.
And so the myth lies dissected, the student too lazy to sew it back up...

And, after that bout of weirdness, I shall disappear again until next week – most likely Wednesday. Perhaps I’ll study in the meantime... or maybe work on the next post. Ah, procrastination, what would I do without you?