Pet peeve

I'm often stuck for an answer when asked about my pet peeves, but I think I've recently got one: I hate reading medical journals that are filled with platitudes, non-specific guidelines and cliches. Things like ''everything is poison, there is poison in everything. Only the dose makes a thing not a poison. (Paracelsus)", or "the only certainty is that there is uncertainty", should be reserved for public addresses, philosophical musings or random bloggings where the only responsibility to the audience is to guarantee a wasted time.

If you have to use one, please use sparingly. Just as too much salt causes high blood pressure, too many platitudes aren't doing any wonders for my amygdala.

As a scientist, researcher or medical practitioner, we read journal articles to glean specific information that is applicable to our research or case study. We don't need to know your personal beliefs when we are reviewing pages and pages of literature. Generalisations and conceptual abstracts can be thought-provoking and paradigm-shifting and what-have-you, but in the right context, please.

Don't even get me started on disease aetiology. If I have to reading something along the lines of 'complex interaction of multiple factors', or 'genetic and environmental interplay' one more time...It's either that or it's idiopathic. Yes, we are a load of idiots who don't know what's really going on.

The worst part of it is, as much as we students (or at least, I) complain, I realise that us students do it too. Because we see teachers doing it, we assume it is what they are looking out for (an assumption which is not totally erroneous), and model after it.

The one where Xin wishes she was studying something else

Sometimes the human body just doesn't make any sense. The science of the way biological processes work is almost as incongruent as trying to decipher the varied motives and workings of the human mind.

Case in point, free radical damage causes mitochondrial and cellular damage that leads to aging. Anti-oxidants reduce free radical damage by eliminating free radicals through chemical reactions. Logically speaking, you'd suppose that reducing free radicals by increasing antioxidant levels would reduce free radical damage. However as antioxidants reduce free radicals, hormesis may occur. This is an increased sensitivity as a result of a reduction in the body's natural protection against free radicles that may actually result in an increased mortality.

I suppose it's the frustration of a posteriori acquisition of knowledge and understanding. At best, you can only see one or two steps behind the rationale of the way something has changed, and that means that the fundamental logic of how things work will always remain somehow behind the veil. Just like no matter how well or how long you've known someone, you never really know them.

Sometimes I wonder why I'm motivated to wade through the explosion of theories of why this or that occurs. Science is messy work, and our attempts to explain things we don't even really understand seem so laughable and vain in the wake of reality. Scientific method is hardly what I'd call intelligence at work: trial and error is more what it might be described as. In its attempts to simplify and organise life, it seems to only make things more complicated, particularly at the so-called cutting edge of the field.

Lying on a bed of nails

WTF I hate lying.

People always say that you should tell the truth. It's not exactly in the ten commandments, although there is something about not giving false testimony about your neighbour. But what happens when not lying is bad? What happens when to tell the truth is to contradict other moral values?

It's so easy to say that we should tell the truth, and admire those who are courageous enough to tell the truth and face the consequences. But it's not always that simple. I wish I had the strength of conviction to stand up for myself and my causes and beliefs and tell the truth. But when you threaten me with causing others unnecessary worry or (as cliche and unfashionable as this sounds) disobeying the people you love, and who are supposed to know what's best, I feel like to tell the truth is a bigger sin than to lie (I know it seems insinuating that I'd lie to shield others, but really, I'm not trying to say that. I freely admit I lie for my own gain more than anything else. It's the moral sense of being caught between Scylla and Charybdis I'm trying to emphasize).

But then again, you can't just tell one lie and have done with it. You need to lie again to be self-consistent. And again, and again, and again. You need to create a system in which everything coheres. Your lies need to be consistent with what apparent reality. It's like Ockham's razor, except that instead of the simplest explanation being the truth, the simplest explanation that can best fit certain witnessed points in history.

The easiest on your conscience is to avoid having to tell the truth and let the other person assume an explanation on his own. Usually all you have to do is present the situation in a certain light, such that the points witnessed would tend to fit a certain explanation.

However, it often isn't so simple. In order to present your case in this way, you need to tweak reality a little. Take the case where you've sneaked off to eat ice-cream when you were not supposed to. You might get away with saying that you are going around the vicinity of the ice-cream parlour without actually mentioning you are going for ice-cream. If, for instance, it happens to be near a bookshop, the person you have lied to might assume you've gone to browse books. Once he attempts to confirm it with you, you need to act like you haven't heard him and make your escape ASAP, or you could change the subject. Either way, you need to tweak the reality that you've heard what he said, and be evasive.

It gets worse. You might think that after the one lie, you are home free. As I mentioned, this most certainly isn't the case. The amount you have to lie in order to cover up increases exponentially with the seriousness of the lie. Going back to the ice-cream incident, you might find that the person you lied to (A) might have gone and chatted with B, who was at the bookshop. You would then have to find an explanation for the fact that B didn't see you there. In other words, instead of directing dear old Ockham's razor to cut it's way to the truth, you will have to redirect it to bypass the truth, in favour of a more palatable lie.

Most of the time, you can get away with lies that just graze past the truth, like saying 'we must have missed each other' and being non-specific. Often we have mental caveats that we use to defend the lie as being at least partially true (for instance, you would definitely have missed B if you were never at the bookshop). But there are really only so many silent caveats that we can add to our lies, particularly when people ask questions that are all to close to the mark. In order to keep your lying consistent there will be times when you have to say something that directly contradicts historical events, and those are the worst kind. For instance, suppose C, someone working at the ice-cream parlour, ran into A, and told A about seeing you there. You would have to tell A that C saw the wrong person, or that you were walking across the ice-cream parlour to the toilet.

I confess, I eat too much forbidden fruit. Wait, I mean ice-cream.

Pissed off with dissers

Nowadays it seems to be the fashion to take a very cynical view of life. I opened up the papers and the general tone in every article seems almost blasé. Every reporter seems keen to show just how incredibly stupid and dull everything is to him, whether it's Sarah Palin or the Mona Lisa. Granted, Sarah Palin does seem to have it coming with some of the things she does, but the point I'm trying to make is that journalists seem insist on making every mistake a newsworthy one, just so they can diss it with a yawn.

This could be hasty generalisation based on the fact that I'm only actually exposed to a couple different papers; I don't know. But it seems like journalists' sense of humour lies almost exclusively in criticising other people.

Just today in, well, TODAY, there was an article on the top ten overrated works of art, and the writer references everything from Duchamp's urinal to Hirst's formaldehyde pieces as being so overrated as to not even be worth mentioning. Instead he chooses to attack the likes of Picasso, Vermeer, da Vinci, and van Gogh.

I'll start with his criticism of van Gogh's sunflowers - his problem with them was that he paints 'gazillions' of them in different quantities. Well, I've got a newsflash for you: it's normal. Many painters choose a particular subject and focus on developing their style and technique through the portrayal of that subject. There are just so many things that one can think about in painting still life - the play of light, the composition, the colouring. And if it's the acclaim that's bugging you, then what about Monet's water lilies? Van Gogh's sunflowers aren't even that famous.

As for Picasso not being able to paint properly, well if you want to talk about passe criticism, that has to be it. If his work is overrated, it's because it's been overcritiqued. Part of the point for Picasso was a deliberate shift away from traditional realism to his cubism. It's not like he couldn't paint well if he wanted. And that's the difference between him and the unnamed reporter.

Admittedly, compared to some of the other greats in art, Mona Lisa seems to have had more than her fair share of the limelight, but just because you happened to catch the movie based on The Girl with the Pearl Earring, doesn't mean that it's overrated. It just means you watched a movie about it done in your time. Want to bet that if you were a 60s baby you wouldn't have missed a chance to attack Claudel's Bronze Waltz, just because they did the movie on it? Like van Gogh's sunflowers, I wouldn't say it's more famous than say, Degas' dancers or Botero's fat people. It would seem more likely that the reporter was running out of art that he knew, which really doesn't speak much of his exposure to art, or he wasn't really thinking very much anyway.

Now I don't disagree that a lot of art is simply a way of making money. In fact I wrote something on that some time ago (ok, it wasn't very good, but you definitely aren't reading this blog for quality). But there are more interesting ways to expose that angle on art than dissing famous (or infamous) art pieces.

And while I'm definitely not blind to the irony of dissing dissers, or the value of criticism, I am rather peeved at the self-important way that it seems to be done. In essence, journalists seem to be saying, 'Oh, I'm so terribly unimpressed by the world and amused by its stupidities. Because I'm so terribly important, because I'm bored, you the reader, should be bored too.'

I don't know, but the only thing I get bored of is reading the papers.

Dumbstruck

If there was one ability I wouldn't mind going without, and would sometimes even rather do without, it's the ability to speak.

Why bother with speaking, when there's a superior form of communication - writing? Why choose to voice out sentences that are not even fully formed in your mind? For that is how most people get by when they make conversation - conceptualise the ideas as they communicate them, not before. Why choose such an inferior, unpredictable form of communication when you can plan out and present your idea in a clear, concise manner in the written form? Surely the half-formed garbled sentences can never do you sufficient justice.

True, even in writing, one can ramble on muddleheadedly, as I have just done, but at least, I have the satisfaction of knowing that that is exactly what I want to say at this moment, and that it's in some semblance of good English, and not the occasional broken sentence I manage to ejaculate on occasion. But forgive the digression, if you will, and allow me to continue with my tirade.

Why choose to communicate verbally when it gives you so little time to adequately ponder over your words? When writing, you have to opportunity to decide and filter and dissect your thoughts and only write what you want others to read. When you speak (unless it's a prepared speech), you scarely have time to form a proper sentence before it has escaped your mouth, never to be undone, or deleted, or canceled out with a neat rule and pen mark. Saying things like 'I go with you' instead of 'I will go with you' are slips which are only too easy to make when you speak, but which seldom occur when you write. Sometimes, you let go of a sentence before it's even formed, and your brain doesn't work quickly enough to fill in the blanks, leaving you trailing off with a helpless look in your eyes, and a 'you know what I mean' shrug. When you write however, you can form these wisps of sentences, and yet still fill in the blanks before the reader has a chance to see your weakling of a sentence.

Why choose to communicate verbally when you can actually finish an argument or an idea without someone interrupting, and breaking your flow of thought? Sometimes you never even get a chance to express a point of view, let alone and argument, over the clamour of voices. In writing, however, you can be sure that you've 'said your say', and be content in the knowledge of having made a proper case for your stand. True, you can refute the points other's bring up immediately when you speak, but you can always adress them with additions to and editng of your essay when you write.

But the worst thing about speaking is the way it's all too easy to betray your emotions. You can unintentionally let a bitter word slip that destroys relationships and ruins lives. You can betray your fear and upsetness when you speak. It's much harder to distance yourself. When you write, it's a different story altogether. You may be crying when you write, but in your writing, if you do not intend to show your emtional upheaval, it won't be detected easily by your reader. You can maintain a seemingly calm, collected, logical, unemtional stand, or discuss sensitive issues without revealing that you are het up about them. In fact, you can address more sensitive issues, because when speaking verbally, you may be so choked up with emotion that you cannot dislodge the lump in your throat to talk, but it doesn't mean that you can't think. And what you think can be written down easily enough. It's not likely you can be so choked up you can't move your hand. In no way are your tear ducts related to your hands, at least not in any way that I can see at this moment.

True enough, speaking is faster. Perhaps communicating verbally is also more spontaneous and hence, more exihilarating form of conversation. Verbal slander, if you're into slander at all, is also less "serious" than written slander. So in that sense, the temporal nature of speaking is advantageous to some.

But even though speaking may be convenient, and perhaps I might even go so far as to call is indispensable, I still cannot help but wish sometimes, that I was mute. It would make verbal communication irrelevant.