Why Do Human Mothers Feel So Much Pain During Child Birth

This is another post on the Man and Animal series. I had earlier written about rape in man and animals and the cause of difference between man and animals.

The current one is about the excruciating pain that human mothers feel during child birth. The question is: do all mothers feel roughly the same pain or do human being feel and / or express a lot more.

Here are some nice articles on the subject:

1. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/explainer/2012/09/animals_giving_birth_dolphins_bear_newborns_easily_but_hyenas_risk_death_.html: The ratio of the size of the new born (say 3kg baby in humans) in relation to the size of the mother (say 60kg) can be compared across species. The higher the ratio the more difficult the child birth can be. Nice analysis isn't it?
2. https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-human-birth-seemingly-more-painful-than-other-mammals: This one again is lovely. Bipeds have a narrower hip and human heads are larger than heads in other species with the result that getting the human baby out is much more arduous.
3. http://community.babycenter.com/post/a24011163/are_we_the_only_animals_with_painful_births: This brings out the point that expression of pain in other species is likely to result in danger from predators to the mother and new borns and hence the mother does not express the pain. Extrapolate (from my earlier article that surmised that human beings think and emote much more than other species) and we can possibly explain why human being cry out a lot more. A quote from the link: "Animals have limited ways to express their feelings and my guess is that birth is painful for many animals, just like it is for many women. There are some women who have experienced pain free and even orgasmic births, but they are a rarity. The majority of women do experience pain and I think likely so do most animals, they just don't have the ability to express it the way we do."
4. http://psychologyofwellbeing.com/201005/why-is-childbirth-so-freakin-painful.html:  I have included this article because it discusses the issue while providing no answer to the question (had this article been submitted in response to my question, I would have rated it "F"). 

Additional reading:

• Inbreeding: https://davidcavill.wordpress.com/a-beginners-guide-to-inbreeding-and-line-breeding/
• Pain in animals (a nice instructive video): https://video.scroll.in/827043/watch-this-is-how-animals-experience-pain-which-they-cannot-always-convey
• http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2016/08/difference-between-man-and-other-animals.html

Rape: Why Are Humans Perpetrating It While Animals Apparently Don't

As I was walking I suddenly had this thought. Why is it that the institution of rape exists only in human beings and rarely / never in animals? If Man evolved from animals then Man has gotten this unique habit recently. Why does he do it - more importantly why did he start raping only after having become Man? 

As I was discussing with a friend while walking.. We came up few ideas in relation to the question raised above.

1. Animals strictly adhere to the "(Female's) No means NO" rule
2. Perhaps females in the human species have a higher expectation from the males than do females in other lower species with the result that more human males are prevented from mating resulting in "need" for giving an outlet to sexual urge
3. Animal kingdoms have a (alpha) male mating with multiple females and hence fewer unattached females are available for copulation and rape by males. Among humans, all males are treated as equals and no one man can have more than one woman at a time. Note that rape can be eliminated by removing all females from the scene.
4. A strict punishment enforced for transgressing males in animals

My friend and I thought that one or more of the points above could have caused human beings to coerce a woman into sex.

At this point in time I am still very confused. My initial belief that rape was a truly human invention is itself wrong. Of course many of the articles say that the term "rape" is inappropriate when used in the context of animals and that the right term is forced copulation. Whatever... A rape by any other name... is still rape.

Additional reading:

1. http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/jkywrmQMip9SG6QVYDoe0H/Rape-in-the-animal-kingdom.html
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiological_theories_of_rape
3. I was fairly sure that gang rape was unique to humans until I read this article (read under bottlenose dolphins and also in the para on ducks): http://english.mathrubhumi.com/news/columns/faunaforum/rape-happens-in-animal-kingdom-too-maneka-sanjay-gandhi-animals-1.1435307
4. Why rape is supposedly high in Sweden - lovely article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_Sweden
5. Nice series of answers to  a similar question: https://www.quora.com/Is-there-really-any-such-thing-as-rape-All-animals-mate-without-incident-of-rape-except-human-beings-What-makes-rape-real-with-men-but-not-apes
6. Another nice article showing how apes do "rape" but is not as bad as human rapes: http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/10/03/228809153/why-gorillas-arent-sexist-and-orangutans-dont-rape
7. Rapes by animals: http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/columns/straight-dope/article/13045860/can-dolphins-rape-humans-when-animals-attack-sexually
8. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2896628-when-fathers-rape: This book seems to be interesting, unfortunately there is no online version available as of Nov 5, 2016.

Free Willing In Madurai and Pandyan Express

I happened to be at Madurai recently. I visited Modern Restaurant near Meenakshi Amman temple. The chutney and sambar that they serve is delicious. Apparently the restaurant has been in existence for at least 40 years, actually closer to 100 years as per my cousin who accompanied me. The food is also reasonably priced - see menu below.

Photo of Meenakshi Amman At the restaurant

Menu Card at a lovely restaurant, great chutney and sambar- must visit

Incidentally this is a nice Rajasthani restaurant in Madurai: http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/food/rice-vs-roti-in-madurai/article20698951.ece

Outside the station

Outside the Station. Looks quite nice.

Gentleman Operating Self Service Railway Machine / Counter

That's Pandyan Express. Rake looked absolutely new. Just 2 months old I was to find out later.

Spanking New Compartments. 

Chargers at each bay

And reached Chennai right on time. Not much else was interesting in Madurai.

In the train my cousin and I happened to discuss about free will. He mentioned a song நான் அசைத்தால் அகிலமும் அசையும். While the actual translation is more like "If I move even the world will shake" we both took the saying to mean that God moved everything in the world and nothing moves without His intervention. My cousin agreed that this was the intended meaning. 

I had earlier written about free will. I told my cousin that if nothing moved without Him, then Man had no free will. He agreed. In which case, I continued, it is useless to hold man to be responsible for anything in the world - good or bad. My cousin agreed. Here is where the fun started.

He said while it was true that God moved everything, it was within each of us to make ourselves Good which meant to exercise control, to avoid selfishness, arrogance etc. I asked my cousin how this was possible. He said we have to meditate... Granted that we were given or not given certain skills when we were created but it was within the best of us to rid ourselves of what is bad in us, my cousin said. And when I asked him, if nothing moved without God's will then how could we change ourselves, he insisted it was so. That practice makes a man perfect. Is it not then true that to attain perfection all that was needed was practice? And what prevents each of us from practicing, he said? I asked, can Man decide to practice all on his own - since nothing moves without God deciding to do so. So how could we practice without God willing. And this went on back and forth for half an hour.

Now he, my cousin, was very sure that he was right. And I was sure that he was violating the basic premise we had agreed on (that nothing moves without God).

The surprising thing is that I have had the same kind of response with whoever I had spoken with. What am I missing? How can one hold the basic premise and yet aver that we have the wherewithal to be good and rid ourselves of all things negative. And yes, they do concede that not many of us can do it.. That only the Gnanis and sages do. 

Another friend explained. That my cousin (and perhaps others I had discussed with) were strongly rooted to two premises from childhood - that God's will pervaded everything and second, that we had to and could change ourselves to be better. These two contradictory thoughts are perhaps entrenched in their minds from childhood. The very strong parent state prevents them from using the adult state and see the contradiction. Hmmm.

Incidentally a friend told me about Vidyarthi Bhavan in Basavangudi Bangalore. https://www.zomato.com/bangalore/vidyarthi-bhavan-basavanagudi/menu and http://www.vidyarthibhavan.in/. Very good place for masala dosa.

Entrance to Vidyarthi Bhavan

Seating Inside - Quite Old Fashioned - Definitely worth visiting

A place in Valparai  I have been hearing a lot (positively) about is Sabari Mess (Tel; +919489181602 and +918903951996).

And today I read about Bharat Coffee House in Kochi: http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/food/a-home-away-from-home/article18383776.ece. India Coffee House in Kannur is worth visiting. There are many branches in the city.

Additional reading:
Food for thought: http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2015/11/tirth-yatra-by-train.html

Whales - Math Puzzles

Quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale:

Males typically mate with multiple females every year, but females only mate every two to three years

How is that possible? If there are 100 males and 100 females and let's say 40 of the males mate each year (other 60 are either too old or too young or sick or gay or weird ones that mate with sharks).

Each of the 40 males mates with 2 or more females from among the same pack of 40 females (rest 60 females which again will have some that are old too old, too young etc).

In this scenario, how can we have females that mate only every 2 or 3 years? This can happen if few females mate with most of the males but then they abstain for the next couple of years. 

Is there any other interpretation possible?

Who Is The ISIS Winner

A friend of mine gave me this puzzle.

N (could be 25, 10, 100 or 2: any positive integer) number of people stand in a circle. They are numbered from 1 to N. Each is armed with a dagger. Shown below is an example with N=9.

All of them perform an activity which is this: 

The first in the circle (whom we identify as number 1) kills the second one. Then the next (3rd) kills the 4th one. The next (5th) kills the 6th and so on. This continues until only one person is alive. 

Essentially every person kills the next person alive. Then the next person alive kills the person next to him that is alive. Only one person is killed at a time.

If there are 100 people in the circle initially (1,2,3,...100) which of them remains alive at the end?

Abstracting it, if there are N people, which person is the winner?

Solution:
If there are 2^n people (meaning 1, 2, 4, 8 etc), if we work out the solution, we will always find the winner to be the person number 1. Let's assume there were 8 people in the circle.

After the 1st "round", persons 2,4,6,8 would have been killed leaving 1,3,5,7 standing with the dagger in the hands of the 1st person. In the 2nd round, 1 will kill 3 and 5 will kill 7 and dagger is back in the hands of the 1st guy with number 5 as the only other person still standing. In the 3rd round, 1 will kill 5. Thus 1 will become the winner.

Now if the number of people is 100 initially, we let the activity or game proceed until the number of players alive reaches 2 to the power of some integer. Here we will wait until 100 reaches 64. Once it reaches 64, we know that the person whose turn it is to kill will win.

Now, the question is: whose turn is it when the number of people alive is 64.
Since 100 became 64, 36 people have died. These are numbers 2,4,6,8 etc till 72. And it's the turn of the 73rd person now. The number of people alive are all those from 73 to 100 (total 28) and those from 1,3,5,7 till 71 (total 36). 28+36=64. 
Person number 73 will be the winner.

Interestingly if there are 2^n - 1 people in the circle, the last one will be the winner. If you are the 1st one, make sure there are 2^n people in the circle. If you are the last, make sure there are 2^n - 1 people. n is some positive integer.

Maths Puzzle - School Timetable (TT)

You have to make a TT for a school.  Here are the constraints / requirements.  

There are 13 Physics periods, 8 Maths and 4 Chemistry periods per week. There are 5 periods daily.  The physics teacher comes only on Mon, Fri, Sat. Chemistry teacher comes only on Tue. Maths teacher comes on Wed, Fri and Sat. School works 6 days a week.

Other periods will be for other subjects such as English, Biology etc.

Making Sambar And Rasam Powder And Vethakozhambu Podi And Other Indian Dishes

Since Picasa seems to be gone (Damn, I miss it), I am writing down some of the crucial recipes for south Indian / Tamil menu items here. Recipes were so nice to maintain in Picasa.

Read this in landscape mode if browsing from a mobile phone.
Rasam and Sambar powder:   Rasam      Sambar

Dhaniya (glassful):                 2                 2 

Red chili (glassful):               2.25           2.25

Tuvar dal (glassful):               0.5             0.5 

Chana dal (glassful):         Very Little        0.5 

Methi (Karandi = 50gm):       None           0.5 

Jeera (Karandi):                   0.5             None 

Pepper (Karandi):                   1              None

Haldi sticks:                           2                 2

All ingredients for rasam powder (on the left) and sambar powder on right should be roasted and left to cool. Rasam to be ground rough (once in mill) and sambar fine (twice). Chana dal needs a longer time to roast. Haldi to be roasted for 2 min. Rest for rasam powder can be roasted together, for 4min. 1 glass:200ml. Karandi:big size.

Roast chana dal and haldi together. Rest can be roasted together.

Incidentally, while making Jeera rasam if one were to grind dhaniya seeds also along with other stuff, it turns out pretty good.

Jeera rasam powder:

See picture below. Tuvar dal, red chilli, pepper, jeera to be roasted and ground.

Vethakozhambu Podi:  Take equal measures (1 karandi) of Tuvar dal, Chana dal, Urad dal, Pepper.  Also need a little Haldi (ideally Sticks of Haldi. But if you dont have it then, use haldi powder), curry leaves. Roast each of them separately, stir constantly while roasting. Be careful with chana dal, it might become over roasted if not stirred carefully. Roast other dals until they become a little reddish. Roast pepper until you hear crackling sound. Break haldi into small pieces and roast a little (a minute or so). Curry leaves to be roasted until they becomes dry (remove the stem and roast only the leaf). Mix roasted stuff, then grind them. Mix the ground powder with chili powder-ratio 2:1. Result is Milagu podi. This is used in Vetha Kothambu, Perungayam Vitta Poricha Kozhambu. 

Milagai Podi (for idli, dosa)
Fry all dal (except moong dal), solid hing and red chilies, pepper and white ellu (preferred over black ellu) in til oil. 

Note:

1. Til is to be roasted (meaning without oil) and not fried
2. Fry chilies separately because of its higher volume.. Mix all the stuff and grind them.

Potato Podimas:
Urulaikizhangu (podimas) Podimas: Cut green chilies, ginger add curry leaves, Chana dal, urad dal, red chili, mustard and fry the same. Mix with boiled, mashed potato. Boiled potato can be replaced with boiled (and peeled) raw banana to make a nice side dish.

Pattani Chandam (Peas Rice / Pulao)
Roast a little grated coconut and then add Dhaniya, Chana Dal + urad dal, Red chili, hing, salt. You can add green chili and jeera also while frying (and subsequently grind). Grind the roasted stuff. Break raw Cashewnut into smaller pieces. Fry it in refined oil. Mix the ground powder, rice, ghee dhaniya leaves, fried cashewnuts. (Good idea to add boiled peas also). You can add a little fried coconut.

Vazhakkai Podi:

1. Boil Raw banana in a pressure cooker along with rice. And then grate it
2. Fry all dal, hing, red chili and salt. Then grind this. Mix grated raw banana with grated coconut. Mix grated stuff and ground stuff.  All dal means tuvar, chana, urad, and moong

Tomato Kozhambu

1. Boil cut tomato (Retain the hot water). Boil dal (tuvar dal or moong dal) Take the tomatoes out, cool them in cold water and peel the skin and mash the peeled tomato well.  Put the mashed tomato back into the boiled water. Add salt and haldi powder.
2. Add roasted and ground mixture of red chili, dhaniya, methi, jeera, hing and pepper
3. Add the ground mixture in water and let it boil for some time. Sautee mustard and green chili. Then add dhaniya leaves. Difference from sambar: no sambar powder but roast and ground dhaniya, jeera, pepper (no imli because of tomato). Almost same stuff to be ground as Pattani chadam, methi also needed in addition.

Mor Kozhambu
Wet grind Grated coconut, green chilies, rice, salt, then mix with buttermilk (on the side) and heat less than 5 mins.. Add fried red chilies, mustard, methi.


Varuththu Araicha Mor Kozhambu (VAMK): Add longitudinally cut eggplant, potato. Fry and then grind urad dal, red chili, rice, methi then grind with coconut. Add this and cut vegetables to boiling water (no imli, no hing), add salt and buttermilk. (Imli can be added instead of buttermilk.) Eruvali kozhambu: Same as VAMK except use chana dal instead of urad dal.

Aviyal:

Coconut Rice and Lemon Rice - Usually made on Kanu (Day after pongal and for Adi Perukku); 

Seasoning for both: Mustard, red chili, green chili, curry leaves in til oil for all rice. 

In addition: Lemon rice: Chana dal seasoning. Lemon rice: Mix lemon juice, haldi, salt. Then add seasoning with rice to make lemon rice.  
Coconut rice: Urad dal, grated coconut, cashew nuts, coconut must each be fried separately (and then added with seasoning and rice). Coconut must be roasted until it becomes red.  Add salt. Mix with rice. 
Tomato rice: Cut tomato into small pieces. Sautee Mustard, jeera, chana dal, curry leaves, onion. Add sambar powder (and garam masala powder or my suggestion: garlic and ginger paste). Add cut tomato, salt. Mix this with rice. Add curry and dhaniya leaves.

Tarka, Ghooghni, Aludam, Khichdi, Dal Makhni:

Lemon pickle:

1. Cut lemon (remove the seeds) and mix with salt and haldi for a couple of days
2. Roast methi then powder
3. Fry solid hing then powder (or use hing powder)
4. Add Red chili powder (1:1.25 by volume of lemon: chili powder), methi and hing powders from above.
5. Heat oil, fry mustard seeds, add above ingredients
6. Only til oil to be used for all pickles

Inji Jeeram
Peel ginger, add jeera, methi, dhaniya. Grind this mixture and then add jaggery and grind. Take the ground stuff and stir in ghee. This is good for indigestion. This is to be eaten like a medicine 1-2 tsp.

Stir Until Very Thick

Inji Char:
Optionally inji, jeeram, pepper, haldi can be wet ground adding sufficient amount of hot water. Then squeeze the ground ingredients and retain the liquid (throw away the solids). Add sugar and squeeze lemon.

Puli Molagai (Milagai): 

Kozhukkattai:

Grate coconut. Make paagu by adding a little water to jaggery. Filter it and remove the solids (dust, stone etc). Heat the liquid, then add grated coconut and keep stirring. It will become sticky after it dries. Add elaichi powder. This is the poornam.

Soak raw rice in water for an hour. Remove the water, and powder the rice fine (not coarse) in mixie. Boil water (the volume of water  to be same as volume of rice powder), add til oil, a little salt and switch off the stove. Then slowly add rice powder and keep stirring and make it homogeneous until it become like roti dough. Then use til oil to ensure the dough doesn't stick.. And then make a choppu (semicircular) shape and then fill the poornam and close the choppu. Make a few such. Then steam the batch for 5-8 minutes. Kozhakkattai ready. You may have to steam them in batches depending on the quantity you plan to make.

• Badam Halwa:
• Keerai (Spinach) Masiyal
• Homemade Butter And Ghee
• Rava Upma And Coconut (Thengai) Chutney
• Chakkarai Pongal
• Paruppu Usili And Paruppu Urundai Kozhambu

Note that fried dal mixture, red chilli, hing, coconut are used in VAMK (varuthu araicha mor kozhambu), coconut rice, vazhakkai podi and vaazhakkai koottu.

A friend sent me this: use at your peril - https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1xQDlpMnLKxd0RqMnhzRzBuTzg/view?usp=sharing



Additional reading:

• http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/01/recipe-chakkarai-pongal.html: Chakkarai Pongal
• http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/01/making-ghee-from-home-made-butter.html: Making Home made ghee
• http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2015/08/a-list-of-indian-mostly-tamil-lunch-and.html

Difference Between Man And Other Animals

A thought arose in me: What is the difference between man and other animals:

Any primitive culture of man seemed to only procreate and eat (and conquer more lands), not much different from animals except in the rituals they followed. Come to think of it, don't animals have rituals?

In trying to answer the question above, I have quoted from sources widely. All quotes are numbered or bulleted and indented (and without permission).

While all animals and men have a need for more food and sex, perhaps man is the only one that could do something to make his life easier. Maybe that's why he learned to talk, then to store the communication on paper and so on.

I thought a basic difference was man's tendency to control the environment around him for his betterment. This is something that animals don't seem to do. The need to improve his own life perhaps led to discovery of stone, invention of fire, agriculture and then on to internet. 

The question then is: why don't animals want to control the environment? What is it in man that made him want to control or make life easier for himself?

Why couldn't predators in the Amazon forest arrange things so that specialist predators killed a whole lot of deer, buffaloes etc and set up shop (maybe call it amazon.eat) where others of the species could buy. Maybe others of the species who were not good hunters could specialize in poacher detection techniques which the specialist hunters of the species could hire / buy and prevent themselves from being shot at or killed by human poachers or by other animals higher up in the food chain. 

Apparently animals do something of this sort. Quote from article by Nathan Lants: "Some species engage in even more complex social behaviors. Think about cooperative hunting, predator alarm calls, and prey-predator signaling, those are highly complicated phenomena and require an animal to deeply analyze the world around her and then communicate to conspecifics about that."

Why couldn't the lions organize a service industry? Why are all the lions actively indulging in only sex and food? Why don't they have sports? Why don't they play tennis? Why is there no Lionder Paes among them? 

An important difference is that a basic economy is highly decentralized. You have to find your own food, have your own baby, take care of your own sickness and find your vacation spot and go there alone (or with your spouse). It's only in an advanced society that you have people to grow food or sperms in a bank or Thomas Cooks or doctors etc whose products or services you can purchase.

Maybe the original man who was very different from the current man and who was more like an animal, who never had a dress...the man had perhaps got enough food and he had extra emotions or thoughts which propelled him to do something more. "More" being to make life easier. 

Does it mean that if lions and tigers had more thoughts and emotions, more in excess of what is required for food and procreation, they might go the same direction as man did? The decision to centralize... that not every member of the species do ALL the things.. That some members should specialize in acquiring food, some handle protection etc... I think this was the most important factor which led to man taking the path he did. Animals use minimal centralization. Females give birth and raise the little ones. And males get food and take care of females and the young ones. Centralization is being done (in the sense males don't give birth too and females usually don't take up security jobs within their species) but to a very limited extent. 

Thus man, because of his extra thoughts and emotions, perhaps decided to centralize his activities, specialize in them. And may be this was the basic reason why man is where he is and animals, not having centralized stuff, are where they are.

God help us if Cobras or Lions or Mosquitoes decide to specialize / centralize their activities.

One more related question: Did man's ability to talk cause the extra thoughts or emotions? Or did he start talking because of this extra thoughts and emotions? Meaning which came first? 

I found a relevant link on the same subject: 

A question from the link:

In asking about the origins of human language, we first have to make clear what the question is. The question is not how languages gradually developed over time into the languages of the world today. Rather, it is how the human species developed over time so that we — and not our closest relatives, the chimpanzees and bonobos — became capable of using language. 

Other quotes from the link: 

• According to current thinking, the changes crucial for language were not just in the size of the brain, but in its character: the kinds of tasks it is suited to do — as it were, the 'software' it comes furnished with.

• About the only definitive evidence we have is the shape of the vocal tract (the mouth, tongue, and throat): Until anatomically modern humans, about 100,000 years ago, the shape of hominid vocal tracts didn't permit the modern range of speech sounds. But that doesn't mean that language necessarily began then. Earlier hominids could have had a sort of language that used a more restricted range of consonants and vowels, and the changes in the vocal tract may only have had the effect of making speech faster and more expressive. Some researchers even propose that language began as sign language, then (gradually or suddenly) switched to the vocal modality, leaving modern gesture as a residue.  See this article on body language and gestures. Quote from the same article: "The study of the rich gestural repertoire of bonobos adds further weight to the theory that humans first found our voice through body language. "

• We do know that something important happened in the human line between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago: This is when we start to find cultural artifacts such as art and ritual objects, evidence of what we would call civilization. What changed in the species at that point? Did they just get smarter (even if their brains didn't suddenly get larger)? Did they develop language all of a sudden? Did they become smarter because of the intellectual advantages that language affords (such as the ability to maintain an oral history over generations)? If this is when they developed language, were they changing from no language to modern language, or perhaps from 'protolanguage' to modern language? And if the latter, when did 'protolanguage' emerge? Did our cousins the Neanderthals speak a protolanguage? At the moment, we don't know.

These seem to indicate that man started to talk about 100,000 years ago. So something must have caused him to talk. Once he talked and started expressing, his memory became useful. He could recall from memory and express stuff. He could carve his thoughts on walls and leave it for next generations to read. 

That brings me to the next question: What were human beings like before they started to talk? Were they more or less like other animals? 

1. If yes, then communication and language is the fundamental difference between man and animals. What then caused human beings to talk?
2. If no, then what is the basic difference between man and other animals?

I now quote from Wiki on Human Evolution to answer the question.

• The earliest documented representative of the genus Homo is Homo habilis, which evolved around 2.8 million years ago, and is arguably the earliest species for which there is positive evidence of the use of stone tools. The brains of these early hominins were about the same size as that of a chimpanzee, although it has been suggested that this was the time in which the human SRGAP2 gene doubled, producing a more rapid wiring of the frontal cortex. During the next million years a process of rapid encephalization occurred, and with the arrival of Homo erectus and Homo ergaster in the fossil record, cranial capacity had doubled to 850 cm3. (Such an increase in human brain size is equivalent to each generation having 125,000 more neurons than their parents.) It is believed that Homo erectus and Homo ergaster were the first to use fire and complex tools, and were the first of the hominin line to leave Africa, spreading throughout Africa, Asia, and Europe between 1.3 to 1.8 million years ago.
• ... which suggests the human divergence from chimps occurred between 7 and 13 million years ago. 

That we had stone tools a million years ago and that we learned to talk about a 100,000 years ago and that other animals don't make tools seem to indicate that man was not like other animals even before he started to talk. (Option 2 above). 

So now we have the question: What is the basic difference between man and other animals? What caused man to diverge from chimps between 7 and 13 million years ago?

And here is a quote from an article by Nathan Lants:  "Natural selection would thus favor individuals with bigger and smarter brains that can navigate the social interactions (assuming that there is a benefit to survival and/or reproduction for those who perform well in these social interactions)." Another quote from the same link: "As I’ve written previously, the tenuous balance between cooperation and competition, was likely a major driving force in the evolution of the human intellect." Nathan Lants' book (mentioned in Additional reading at the end of this blog) and his blog have tremendous content. Another blog of his talks about why humans are smarter than other animals.

Quote from this article: "Indeed, the social intelligence hypothesis (3) states that intelligence evolved not to solve physical problems, but to process and use social information, such as who is allied with whom and who is related to whom, and to use this information for deception."

Incidentally as per this article, the human brain is shrinking probably because we have become more social and we don't need so much effort to fight or compete to survive. In this blog post http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/06/relation-between-nt-sf-natural.html I have written about the shrinking size and which gender in human beings is likely to survive.

Is it the surplus thought / emotion in excess of what was needed for food and sex which in turn caused the brain size to be larger which created the need to control the environment which in turn led to other changes including acquiring ability to speak? 

This quote from the same Wiki article seems to explain...

• The use of tools has been interpreted as a sign of intelligence, and it has been theorized that tool use may have stimulated certain aspects of human evolution, especially the continued expansion of the human brain. Paleontology has yet to explain the expansion of this organ over millions of years despite being extremely demanding in terms of energy consumption. The brain of a modern human consumes about 13 watts (260 kilocalories per day), a fifth of the body's resting power consumption. Increased tool use would allow hunting for energy-rich meat products, and would enable processing more energy-rich plant products. Researchers have suggested that early hominins were thus under evolutionary pressure to increase their capacity to create and use tools. This article is on crows' usage of tools.

More interesting quotes from the Wiki article:

• It should be noted that many species make and use tools, but it is the human genus that dominates the areas of making and using more complex tools. The oldest known tools are the Oldowan stone tools from Ethiopia, 2.5–2.6 million years old.
• Among concrete examples of modern human behavior, anthropologists include specialization of tools, use of jewellery and images (such as cave drawings), organization of living space, rituals (for example, burials with grave gifts), specialized hunting techniques, exploration of less hospitable geographical areas, and barter trade networks. 

It seems the answer is yes to the question in the para in italics above.

More interesting stuff about animals:

Quotes from http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/03/animal-minds/virginia-morell-text:

Certain skills are considered key signs of higher mental abilities: good memory, a grasp of grammar and symbols, self-awareness, understanding others’ motives, imitating others, and being creative. 

They gave Betty [a crow] other tests, each requiring a slightly different solution, such as making a hook out of a flat piece of aluminum rather than a wire. Each time, Betty invented a new tool and solved the problem. “It means she had a mental representation of what it was she wanted to make. Now that,” Kacelnik said, “is a major kind of cognitive sophistication.”

This is the larger lesson of animal cognition research: It humbles us. We are not alone in our ability to invent or plan or to contemplate ourselves—or even to plot and lie.

Deceptive acts require a complicated form of thinking, since you must be able to attribute intentions to the other person and predict that person’s behavior. One school of thought argues that human intelligence evolved partly because of the pressure of living in a complex society of calculating beings. Chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, and bonobos share this capacity with us. In the wild, primatologists have seen apes hide food from the alpha male or have sex behind his back.

Birds, too, can cheat. Laboratory studies show that western scrub jays can know another bird’s intentions and act on that knowledge. A jay that has stolen food itself, for example, knows that if another jay watches it hide a nut, there’s a chance the nut will be stolen. So the first jay will return to move the nut when the other jay is gone. 

This study, by Clayton and her colleague Nathan Emery, is the first to show the kind of ecological pressures, such as the need to hide food for winter use, that would lead to the evolution of such mental abilities. Most provocatively, her research demonstrates that some birds possess what is often considered another uniquely human skill: the ability to recall a specific past event. Scrub jays, for example, seem to know how long ago they cached a particular kind of food, and they manage to retrieve it before it spoils. Quote from page 1904 in this article "When jays were allowed to cache perishable and nonperishable foods, they were able to remember not only which foods they cached where, but also how long ago they had cached them."

 “Animals are stuck in time,” explained Sara Shettleworth, a comparative psychologist at the University of Toronto in Canada, meaning that they don’t distinguish among past, present, and future the way humans do. Since animals lack language, she said, they probably also lack “the extra layer of imagination and explanation” that provides the running mental narrative accompanying our actions. 

Additional reading:

1. System 1 and System 2 thinking by Daniel Kahnemann - as discussed here (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_process_theory) seems to contradict what is mentioned in this blog post (for example that animals do not have system 2)
2. The book "Not So Different" by Nathan Lents - seems lovely. So is this presentation by him: https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/2016/08/25/book-talk-not-so-different-at-the-san-francisco-public-library/
3. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/08/dogs-words-speech-people-brains/: Dogs are more like humans Quote from this article: "Wallis then observed the dogs' reactions as she gazed toward a door. Surprisingly, only the untrained border collies followed her gaze—the trained animals ignored it. That may be because trained dogs learn to focus on a person's face, and not where the person is looking." 
4. Need for a sense of control: http://changingminds.org/explanations/needs/control.htm
5. Nice articles on when humans start speaking - maybe 100,000 to 1 million years ago: http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/09/05/219236801/when-did-human-speech-evolve and www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2656465/Did-learn-speak-mimicking-apes-Early-language-formed-combining-noises-primates-birds.html and http://blog.dictionary.com/origin/
6. Speech in primates: https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/2014/10/21/other-primates-use-speech-and-vocabulary/ Quote: "The point here is that humans most certainly did not invent the concept of words. Primates have been using vocal communication, with precise vocabulary, for millions of years."
7. Speech of prairie dogs: https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/2015/08/18/a-career-studying-the-sophisticated-vocabulary-of-prairie-dogs/
8. Life span of various animals: https://propelsteps.wordpress.com/2013/08/29/know-life-span-of-animals-list/
9. https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/2017/06/19/waist-hip-ratio-number-of-offspring/comment-page-1/#comment-2508

Largest And Smallest Area - Puzzle

A triangle has a parameter of 50cm.

What is the maximum and minimum area of such a triangle..

Neerja Bhanot flight 73 Pan Am - Horoscope

I  was looking at the horoscope of Neerja. She had 

• Sun in own house
• Mars vargottama in own nakshatra
• Mercury retrograde in exaltation
• Jupiter retrograde in own house
• Saturn retrograde in own house

And yet she died at the age of 23. How does one account for this?

Review of the movie here.

The next similar one is that of Qandeel Baloch - real name Fauzia Azeem, a Pakistani model who was "honor killed" by her brother at the age of 25.

This lady had:

• Saturn and Mars in vargottama in Sagittarius
• Moon vargottama in Aries
• Sun vargottama in Aquarius
• Sun and Jupiter in Rahu's nakshatra
• Powerful Venus in Capricorn in rasi (Aquarius amsa)

Display The Heights

Let's imagine the scenario of a man jumping from a plane from an altitude of 10,000m and determined how long it would take him to reach sea level.

Now, assume two men are jumping at the same time (one in earth and one in moon) from 10,000m altitude one in earth and one in moon.

They will reach sea level (0m) at different times because the gravitational acceleration is different in the two planets. At any point in time (during their “flight”) their heights over the respective planet’s sea level will be different.

Display this difference in heights over the earth’s and moon’s surface in a graph. (distance from earth as X axis and from moon as Y axis)

Buy One Get One Free

What is the difference between "buy one get one free" and "buy two get two free" (you would have seen such offers in shops)?

The Fraud

A friend and I were discussing about Krishna (Hindu God) when she asked me why I think Krishna is a fraud.

I explained. If the CFO of a listed company plays the stock market before public announcement of the company's results we call it insider trading - a fraud.

Krishna knew everything that was going to happen upfront and guided things to happen that way. imagine if Perry Mason, the successful lawyer, won because he was also the judge. Krishna was like that.

Krishna made it seem that Mahabharat was a war between good and evil. And that the rules were fair and that he was only a charioteer and not an active participant (not a judge but only, say, a bailiff in the court), He wanted to show that good triumphs in a fair war against evil.

But he participated...and how...He was David Warner for the Pandavas.

If you play a game where you (and only you) largely control the outcome also through means that aren't kosher then you are a fraud. Reminds me of the owner of Chennai SuperKings. And the team was dissolved...

Additional reading: 

• http://vbala99.blogspot.in/2015/03/krishna-and-kalyavan.html
• http://calmisc.blogspot.com/2014/10/krishna-villain.html