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

Pygmalion

An unscheduled update for the purpose of venting a little.

Have you ever been chatting with a friend, having fun and all, and then they go and make some joke or reference that you don't get or misinterpret?
Anyway, when people don't just laugh it off and behave in a sociable fashion there's that awkward silence that follows. I hate that awkward silence - it is extremely effective of killing all the fun you were having. Especially if said conversation is online and then they disappear after the awkward silence - note that, while difficult, I do know people who can disappear almost as effecively in face-to-face conversations.

The thing is, the very act of disappearing can make the other person feel like they did something wrong. Now, let's face it - no-one was wrong here, just crossed wires... not even that. And maybe they feel like an idiot (who knows) but the fact is I don't know and if we had just continued chatting it's possible that we both could have left in a good mood. I don't know, maybe they did leave in a good mood - the point is that the disappearing is annoying.
Well, maybe annoying isn't the right word - I tend to feel really tired and irritated in a I-need-rest way when people annoy me unintentionally.

(Of course said friend won't see this seeing as you don't know about this blog and if you do see this it will probably be so far in the future that you will have forgotten.
Stupid boy.
[Note: The friend is not stupid because he is a boy - he is a friend who is at this current moment stupid and just happens to be a boy. Just clearing that up - most of my friends are boys. Actually for the most part this friend is awesome - I've just had too many people pull this to not have a small tantrum at my computer screen.])

(And no, I don't know what could have been said afterwards... just not disappearing. ._.)

Funnily enough this friend doesn't seem to think I have a temper - probably because they've never seen me mad at people and disappear when I'm mad at them before they are alerted to that fact. -_-

In my opinion one should never assume that someone is happy all the time or never gets mad - it will only lead to trouble. Think about it: if you honestly think that someone hasn't got a temper then your behaviour will be different. Hell, even if you think so jokingly - these things still have a subtle effect on your mind. You become less careful - I mean, you know what annoys your friends, yes? So you don't approach those subjects for the most part. If you act as though said friend doesn't have a temper then you don't have any reason to not approach the subjects. Eventually they won't take it anymore.
Society discourages showing your temper, and a lot of people have reasons to hide it. For instance I have a very bad temper - when I'm mad stuff flies. So, naturally, I don't want people to see that side of me. I don't want to accidentally hurt my friends or scare them off. So, it's hidden beneath a goodly amount of smiles and snark. I'd imagine that a few other people do this. It's like... poking at a pet cat - yeah, for the most part she'll ignore you and try to sleep but one day she'll turn around and try to scratch your face off. Also, it's bloody insensitive to your friend. I'm not saying "thread on eggshells", just that when you do know a person's hang-ups don't press them. You may see this as logical but I know plenty of people who cannot grasp this simple comment.

On a similar note (related to the "don't assume a person doesn't have a temper" thought), just don't put people up on pedestals. A human is a human - they have their good points, and they have their flaws. It makes them... them.

I have been put on at least pedestal twice that I can think of - people aren't meant to be on them. We can't balance.
The first example is a guy who had a crush on me - he was really sweet but he didn't know me very well and he refused the idea that I could have flaws. No matter what I said or did, it was taken as Gospel or in the most flattering light. His self-esteem suffered because he was comparing everything he did to this fantasy girl he had built up. Occasionally it'd become obvious that I didn't measure up, even in a couple of simple things - like not knowing about a famous failed acquisition. He was quite disappointed that I didn't know.
The second example is an old friend of mine because I was one of their nicer friends. It got to the point that any mistake I made, no matter how small, was a great betrayal. No matter how many promises I kept or favours I did, it wouldn't measure up to the few I forgot. This is because my failings proved that I didn't fit the role they had chosen for me. And because of how mad and sad they'd get I'd try to change - not just small things, like remembering they don't like some meme, but the bigger things too. You can only change so much before you lose you.

"I'm a snapshot of the person that you think I ought to be."

Putting people on pedestals does quite a few things: it can damage your self-esteem (as in the first example), it sets you up for disappointment, it puts undeserved pressure on the other person, and, most importantly, it doesn't make them a person anymore. It makes them a statue, a painting, a snapshot, some other appropriate metaphor. You're no longer dealing with a person whom you could be friends or lovers with - you're dealing with a fantasy.
You're Pygmalion and you've fallen in love with your statue - the person in front of you is just something you're trying to carve to fit it.

Actually, that metaphor is quite a good one - it shows how wrong the situation is. The person should be the model on which you base your statue - not the other way around. Even in real life cases of art, where the masterpiece is more aesthetically pleasing than the model is, the artist never tries to make the model live up to the statue - he found a model to suit his idea. In terms of people, you don't find just anyone and try to fit them to what you want them to be - you find a person who fills that need just the way they are. And sometimes you find someone a person who fills a place you didn't know needed filling. I like it when that happens. :)

Anyway, I think when you meet people you shouldn't look at them through rose-tinted glasses. When you do so, you're just looking at an illusion. I'm not saying actively look for their flaws, but just... keep an eye out for them. A person's flaws explains their personality and behaviour as much as their strengths do and it is only by getting to know both that you will get to know the person. Assumption of anything means that you're not looking at something anymore.

"People should be doubted. Trust is giving up on trying to understand others."

This quote comes from the Liar Game - it was told to me by the friend I was mad at when I started this post... who, incidentally, I'm not mad at anymore. Realizing that I may have put them on a small pedestal... at least for the day - it was a pretty annoying day. And yeah, I was probably a bit irrational at the beginning - but I'm lucid now and that's good. Funny how venting does that - much better than bottling it up until it becomes an actual problem.

Also, just because you acknowledge the flaws it doesn't mean you have to like them - just that you have friends with flaws you don't mind or can at least tolerate. No-one's perfect.

Huh... this post actually ended up kinda informative after all.

... I don't have to give my friend indirect credit for the part of this post that was actually useful, do I? :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.

Battle of the Sex Hormones

No, this isn't about fighting hormones - this about the two main sex hormones: testosterone and oestrogen (or estrogen) - the "male" and "female" hormones respectively.

Now, I know that not everyone knows that these hormones are not restricted by gender - one episode of Charmed made the mistake of having two coroners shocked that the female "corpse" had testerone in its system [facepalm]- so I'll give a quick summary here:

Testosterone - male body produces 10 times more than the female, but the female body is more sensitive to it.
Effect in males: Developes testis and prostate; promotes increased muscle, bone mass, deeper voice, and body hair; too much results in aggressive behaviour and atropy of the testes; lowers during fatherhood; makes organs like the heart and liver bigger.
Effect in females: Regulates menstrual cycle.
Effect in both: Essential overall health, and prevents oesteoporosis. Too much in females will produce some of the male results. Mental affects include higher risk tolerance, and higher levels are speculated to ward off dementia and Alzheimer's Disease. There are also suggestions of a "curvilinear or even quadratic relationship between spatial performance", as well as relations to attention-span and memory.

Oestrogen - there are three main types (estrone (E1), estradiol (E2), and estriol (E3)) which are active during menopause, non-pregnant/non-menopasusal stages, and pregnancy. So, the big one is estradiol.
Effect in males: Low levels are speculated to cause OCD, too much will give men breasts and lower libido; increases in sympathetic pregnancy; used to treat prostrate cancer in certain situations.
Effect in females: Develops breasts, hips, regulates fertility (ovulation); promotes finer hair and smoother skin; low levels lead to poor mental health; once breast cancer is established, high levels feed it; increase fat stores; accelerate metabolism; reduce muscle mass;
Effect in both: Helps wound healing. Too much in males will produce some of the female results.

Admittedly oestrogen doesn't appear to play that great a part in male bodies but it's there.
I could stop here but the actual reason I wanted to bring this up was because I was rewatching a couple of my favourite episodes of House: Skin Deep and Act Your Age. In these two episodes the hormones of oestrogen and testosterone feature as the central players. I rather like House as it accurately portrays medical disorders and I get to watch an intelligent jerkass prove why he's the best doctor.

Every fetus is a girl to begin with and then depending on if it is XY or XX, it will then change internally - the male/female hormones of testerone/oestrogen will then give the fetus secondary sexual characteristics, like the testes dropping in males.

In Act You Age the two child patients are suffering from "Precocious puberty" due to too much testosterone from a certain, ahem, "medication" their father is taking. The symtoms in the boy are extreme aggression and a heightened libido - which results in the rather amusing incident of an 8 year old pinching the female doctor's bottom and tackling (and biting) the male doctor out of jealousy.
The little girl, 6 years old, I think, gets her period, hair in places, double vision, hot flashes, and a stroke - basically the symptoms of an old woman.

What can be said for the girl is that she got puberty with none of the femininity and then proceeded to get all the symptoms of a post-menopausal woman - because there is no oestrogen here. In the boy's case he is now "macho", kind of like an animal when you think about it - territorial towards "his" females to the point of violence. It's okay, I talk about oestrogen bad points next.

In Skin Deep the patient is a 15 year old female model, who is revealed to have cancer on her left testes. Yep, she is in fact a male - one who suffers from pseudo-male-hermaphroditism due to Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. I mentioned that everyone is born as a girl and then they change; in this case the child is insensitive to testosterone and hence doesn't make the big changes. They still get testes but they don't drop and they don't develop in a male way. Instead they are entirely oestrogen, even more feminine than women. Perfect skin and shape and they never get a period.
However, just like testosterone, there are mental effects - in the case of too much oestrogen while the patient was docile, she was as manipulative as hell. This sort of figure appears in literature as the femme fatale, or the "seductress" in the Three Faces of Eve.

I'm not entirely sure why I wrote up this note but I find it amusing on how the extreme effects of each sex hormone on their main gender results in the undesirable literary archetypes of the possessive violent male and the manipulative vamp, who, traditionally, always lose to the main character or never get the boy/girl.

I dunno, maybe it's everything in moderation making its way to the surface in a strange way - funny since these archetypes appeared before people even knew about these hormones and their effects.

Fear versus Actuality

I just thought this was funny and sad at the same time - it's a list of fears and the realistic chance of them eventuating. Found in a book published in 2006.

Deadly shark attack: 1 in 280 million
Deadly antrax attack: 1 in 57 million
Deadly airplane accident: 3 million
Shot by a sniper: 1 in 517,000
Losing your job: 1 in 252 (this is pre-GFC though)
Home burglary at night: 1 in 181
Developing cancer: 1 in 7
Catching foodborne illness this year: 1 in 4
Cathing a sexually transmitted disease: 1 in 4
Developing heart disease: 1 in 4
Dying five to ten years earlier if you're overweight: 1 in 4
Death from tobacco-related illnesses: 1 in 2

Funny: Not only are you more likely to catch a deadly case of anthrax than get killed by a shark, even more likely to get shot by a sniper than die in an airplane crash. It's amusing to think that we should all be more worried about little red lights being directed at our heads over giant fish with multiple teeth.

Sad: Why do people spend so much time worrying about the improbabilities in life, when there are real things to be afraid of that can actually be prevented by healthier living and regular medical check-ups?
Instead we're hearing the Jaws soundtrack play in our heads everytime we go to the beach.

Self Fulfilling Prophecy

When one hears the phrase "self fulfilling prophecy" most mythology buffs will immediately think of the story of Oedipus - the boy who heard that he will kill is father and marry his mother, prompting him to leave town to spare his parents who were actually his adoptive parents and thus actually end up killing his biological father and marrying his biological mother. There is also the fact that the whole reason he was left on that hillside was because his father heard a prophecy that he would be killed by his son.

Actually come to think of it an awful lot of kings get that prophecy thrown at them.

Another example is Paris of Troy - Paris was a shephard after his parents abandoned him to the wilderness because the queen dreamt that she gave birth to a firebrand who would bring Troy to ashes. Zeus chose Paris to judge the the beauty contest that the goddesses were having because he was a humble shepherd. If not for that prophecy Troy wouldn't have burned. (Actually, the Trojan war can be traced back to a curse many generations prior on another household but suffice it to say that that the stars were not aligned favourably. :P)

One final example is actually from Norse mytholgy - Odin was told that Loki and his children would bring about the end of the world. So what did he do? Lock up all of Loki's kids and have everyone shun the guy. Gee, I wonder why the god of Mischief slowly got evil and at least three of his kids grow to hate Odin. (Fun fact: Loki was actually benevolent - one myth I stumbled across actually had a poor couple ask Tyr and Odin for help in saving their sons from giants only to have those two give up after failing once. When they prayed to Loki, he actually fixed the problem permanently.)

Anyway, you are probably wondering why I related these tales to you. It's because these "prophecies" aren't just restricted to mythology or fantasy - they are very much applicable to real life.
If you look at each of the above examples the prophecies aren't predicting happy dreams of fluffy bunnies and spiders - they're all about destruction, death, and general negativity. They're about fear. We may as well call them "self fulfilling fears", which is actually what I wish to talk about.

Now, a lot of us have a fear of some sort: I, myself, have a fear of falling. (No, not a fear of heights - that would be irrational...) However, the fears I wish to discuss are the psychological ones (yes, I know all fears are psychological but I mean the ones that aren't a fear of a physical thing... or lack of thing). For instance a fear of heights falling is hardly self fulfilling.

This is hardly a new concept - it's all over the place in sociology (and time travel). I'm just putting it in one place and chatting about it. (It is also in economics but I will cover that subject in more depth in a later post.)

Since most people are familiar with the Pygmalion effect (treat someone one way, or expect someone to do something and they will meet your expectations - e.g. Loki) we won't dwell on it, mainly because it's the Reflexivity Theory that is most relevant here. It's where you believe something will happen, so you react in accordance to that belief thus bringing about that belief (also present in the Loki myth). (Economics example is that if you believe prices will fall you will sell - this causes supply to increase and demand to either decrease or remain unchanged, either way the prices will fall.)

I will use three examples of fear to explain:

Fear 1: Abandonment.
Now someone thinks that their friends or family members will eventually leave them - perhaps this belief is founded, perhaps not but that's not the point. Depending on the individual there would be two more common reactions - clinginess (must hold onto them while I can) or distance (mustn't get attached because they'll go away). Blah blah clinginess makes people want to have their space blah blah - discussed to death. In the case of distance this makes the people around that person wonder what is wrong but the fact that they keep getting stonewalled will make them think that they are not wanted and so the will eventually leave. There we go, "abandonment".

Fear 2: Not Good Enough
This is one I saw recently. Now, keep in mind that the idea of "good enough" is subjective. The person believes that they "ruin good people" or "don't deserve good people" - good being their own definition. So, they settle for what they believe are "bad people" because it's what they think they deserve and further indulge in "bad behaviour" - rending thing unworthy (in their minds) of said "good people". Eventually they may actually become unappealing to the "good people" if these behaviours are that opposite those of the "good people" (not saying the "good people will look down on them but just that they don't want to date them - there's a difference). Self-fulfilling.
(The main thing in this one is that they really believe this and that nothing they can do will ever make them worthy - that is their fear.)

Fear 3: Crushing Rejection (pun!)
Suppose you have a crush on a friend, maybe a new friend. Now, obviously you really like them and you don't want to scare them off by declaring it. You want to be sure first. So you wait a while and guess what? You really do like them. But you also like them as a friend and, just like before, you don't want to ruin the friendship. At the same time you don't want to be stuck in the "friend zone" for eternity but the "ruin the friendship" fear is greater. So you don't say anything and the crush gets worse as you get more and more attached and hence more and more afraid to confess. This one isn't so much self fulfilling as it is self stagnanting. A vicious cycle where the fear feeds itself.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't be wary of these things, but being afraid of them results in more harm than good... such as the fear itself or stagnation. A wariness would be much better served - so that the first prson doesn't push people away, so that the second seeks to correct what they see as "bad behaviour" rather than fall into it, and so that the third isn't so paralyzed.

The last thing I said about Fear 3 was that the fear feeds itself - the same goes for them all. Fear 1 gets more rejection, and Fear 2 becomes more "unworthy". They all dig themselves into a deeper pit from which it becomes very difficult to emerge from.

Fear... it's pointless. Wariness isn't - you should be cautious. Fear for your life is ok - that's instinct. But these other fears feed themselves and grow. Even "fear of failure" results in a crash and burn scenario from overwork, or failure at something they neglected (usually a personal life). But yeah - fear is self fulfilling, so don't give it the satisfaction. As you can see with the above examples, it's very difficult to get out once you're in.

(P.S. It's Monday here so... I'm still adhering to my schedule.)

Addendum: Fear 3 is not a bad thing so long as it's weariness and not fear. Not confessing because you're scared is silly; not confessing for other reasons is not. For instance, if you know your friend doesn't feel the same way (duh), if you're not sure how they feel (this is not a "scared" thing - the fact is that they may feel pressured into reciprocating those feelings or it could get awkward for them. It should be more about how your news will effect them.), or, and this is a nice one, you are happy being "just" friends with them and value that over the possibility of a romantic relationship. There is nothing wrong with friendship after all.

I just felt I had to clarify that.

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?