Orthopedic Songs

I had, in earlier posts, talked about horse songs, train, radio, phone songs, piano and dance songs.

This post is about people getting better while listening to songs, typically bhajans.

Two songs come to mind, both by Rafi.

The first song is Khushi Jis Ne Khoji Subah Na Aayi Shaam Na Aayi in the movie with the unimpressive name Cha Cha Cha (1964, MD: Iqbal Quereshi). The song features Helen in bed with a leg problem. She starts walking while listening to the song. Now Iqbal Querishi was one of few muslim MD's in the industry, other names that I remember being Ghulam Mohammad, Sardar Malik, Sajjad Hussein, Khayyam. But Rafi and Quershi take this song to such heights that it is eminently possible to imagine Helen getting better listening to it.

The next song is also a Rafi song. And most of us would have heard of Hari Om Man Tarpath Hari Darshan Ko Aaj in Raag Malkhauns in the movie Baiju Bawra (1952, MD: Naushad). Rafi's song enables an elderly gentleman to start walking. 

Both songs are so alike in the sense of their depth. I cannot just multitask while listening to these songs. They demand my full attention. I recommend watching, not just listening to, both songs. Maybe music will never be a substitute for orthopedic treatment in real life. But  these songs almost make us believe that it may just be possible.

We will not discuss songs such as the one featured on Nirupa Roy in Amar Akbar Anthony where she gets her eyesight back when Rishi Kapoor sings in a Sai Baba Mandir (Shirdi Waale Sai Baba by Rafi). I consider my post to be a temple and I hate to see it being sullied with such songs.

Additional reading:

• http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2010/12/old-indian-movies-songs-and-actors.html
• http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2011/02/music-directors.html

Parent Child Relationship And Independence - Puzzle

No this post is not about interpersonal relationship. It's more about orgasm - actually it is about classification. And if you are not interested in classifying ideas neatly, this post is not for you.

I am going to take this article  http://sarcasm.co/reasons-women-moan-scream-making/ as a reference. The link above is about reasons why women moan and scream louder than men during sex.

The points given in the article show a classic example of someone (author) who is a feeler as against a thinker. I have found quiet a few people who think as the author in the link above.

Anyway let me list the points given in the link as to why some women moan and scream more than men.

1. Moaning and screaming is not linked with climax.
2. 66% said they moan to speed up their partner's climax
3. 87% said they moan to boost up his self esteem
4. Researchers also found that a woman makes noise to when they are bored, tired or not feeling comfortable so you will finish faster 
5. They pretend they’re orgasming just to make you will feel good about yourself 
6. Female vocalization during sex is a good thing for guys. It’s also said that men easily get trapped by a fake orgasm.
7. They totally understand that moaning is a turn-on for guys and loud moan will turn him even more 
8. It doesn’t matter if you fake it. It actually shows how active you are and in sync with each other.
9. Avoiding silence is one of the reasons because silence can be a mood killer.
10. Moaning is an automatic response to pleasure. The pleasure you get from sex can cause an audible and involuntary response.
11. Women might fake it but they also moan when they actually achieve orgasm
12. Because she likes it and feels good.

Now, let's go through the points mentioned. 

Point 1: Is it a reason why women scream / moan more than men?

Point 4: Same as point 2 and talks about speeding up partner's climax, except it adds some more details as to why they want the partner to finish faster. 

Point 5, 6, 7: Same as point 3.

Point 12: Does it explain why women moan louder than men? And is same as point 10.

Point 11: What has this got to with the subject?

Maybe when we (need to) communicate a lot and do not much useful content, we resort this kind of elaborate communication. Good for writing 300 word essays, no?

Let's assume  I ask a question: Why is John a better boy than Fred?
Let's jot down some answers:

1. John behaves better than Fred
2. John's parents inculcate good behavior in John
3. Fred tends to lie and steal.
4. Fred steals money to buy icecream
5. Fred's father comes home drunk often
6. John's grandfather was a parish priest
7. Fred's mother still doesn't know who his father is.
8. Fred tends to bully other boys.

Now the question why John is a better boy has two aspects?

a) How do we say he is better - meaning the symptoms

b) We agree that John is a better boy but we want to delve into why he is a better boy meaning what caused him to be a better boy. And these (what and why) are two different questions altogether. Some people cannot understand this. And they tend to combine the answers to both the questions under one umbrella (as in the list above).

Once we separate what (symptoms) and why (those symptoms) then we have to ensure that one reason listed, say under what, isn't a child of another reason listed under what. For example in the list above No 4 (Fred steals to buy ice-cream) is a child of No 3 (Fred steals money). Here, Child means point no 4 is derived from point no 3. It is not a sibling of point no 3. A sibling would mean that the point is independent. For example, points 3, 8 are siblings - both refer to symptoms relating to Fred not being a good boy. And the two points are independent, one being stealing and the other about bullying.

Separating the what from the why and eliminating parent child points and retaining only the parent or the child point makes an analysis powerful - from the thinker's point of view.

When we aren't very particular about rationality and where the objective is just to overwhelm with verbosity, we might list those 8 points above as to why John is a better boy than Fred.

Empathy And Generosity

A friend of mine raised this question - with respect to my belief expressed in another post that empathy and fairness rarely coexist. 

She pointed out examples of some people she knew where the two qualities seemed to be present in the same person.

Well I disagree with her. First we need to be on the same page with respect to the definition. What you see as empathy and what I see should be the same.

So let me give my definition. Both empathy and generosity are great. We feel good when we see them. When someone feels bad, when we feel share their pain, when we feel their pain, when we reach down to their level and lend them our shoulder we are showing empathy. 

Gandhari, after she got married to a blind man, didn't give him her eyes - that would have made her generous. She blindfolded herself for the rest of her life. She came down to the level of her husband. That was empathy. We will not go into such trivial issues such as that the field of medicine hadn't yet discovered corneal transplant at the time of Mahabharat.

Generosity on the other hand, when faced with the same issue of someone in distress, tries to bring the other person out of their low level and closer to ours. There is a tangible act of giving and pulling the person out and it won't be just with words. A person who lends money (when he need not have lent or where the interest rate is very low or the collateral is substandard to non existent) or donates to charity or he gives up what is his by right, is showing generosity. Ekalaivan, Karna, Bheeshma (characters in Mahabharat) were extremely generous people. Each of them gave up thing(s). They were not known for their empathy. Matter of fact, if you read the story of Amba and Shikandi, Bheeshma's colossal lack of empathy for a woman in distress would become obvious. But when his father's fiance asked him to give up his throne, he did it in a second. 

What made Bheeshma give up his title to the kingdom but also made him very insensitive to the plight of Amba? Herein lies the difference between empathy and generosity. When it came to giving up his throne there was no one else who got adversely affected. His title was his to give up. So he gave it to his step mother and walked out. But when it came to Amba, he had to be fair. His job was to capture her and deliver her - much like Jason Statham in Transporter - to Vichithraviryan. He saw Amba only as an object. He couldn't relate to her plight. Marrying her would have been adharma - from his point of view - because of his vow of celibacy. He could not give himself, in the role of husband, to Amba.

In the movie Thalapathy, Mammootty becomes very attached to Rajinikanth and he asks Rajini to leave the slum where he (Rajini) lived and to come stay with him (Mammootty) in a much bigger house. Rajni rejects the request saying his people are poor and that they do not have anyone else. 

Now, what (empathy or generosity) was Mammootty showing? He was being generous. If he had shown empathy then he would have left his house and gone to stay with Rajini.

Going back to Karna in Mahabharat, when his mother asked him to leave the Kauravas and join their enemies, his Pandava brothers, he refuses his mother's request - based on his sense of right and wrong - because Duryodhan (the head of Kauravas) had helped him when no one else did. Karna did not show empathy towards his mother. But when she asked him not to harm his Pandava brothers other than Arjun, he accedes to her request. And also agrees to not use the Brahmastra more than once on Arjuna. That was generosity.

See the difference?

Women usually are better at showing empathy. Men are more generous. And when women want to open up and share their feelings with a man when they (women) are down, they expect him to listen and show empathy. They do not want him to solve the problem or be generous. Generosity and Fairness can coexist. Empathy and Fairness cannot by definition. Generosity and empathy do not coexist in the same person, not at least at the same time.

When we are down on our luck and we approach a person for help and if that person:

• Lends you money or donates money or stuff (with terms as explained before) he is being generous
• says she feels bad for you and will perform a pooja for you also when she visits Tirupati temple next week or she leaves all her work just to be with you - she is showing empathy.

Which one is better? I do not have an answer. Some situations need empathy to be shown. Some need generosity. The worst thing is that each of us is capable usually of showing one or the other. Not both. 

Finally I have a strange thought. Does Generosity need an absence of empathy as a pre-requisite? Incidentally, when I googled I couldn't find relevant links on difference between empathy and generosity.

A great example of empathy:

One of the most beautiful scenes depicting empathy is the one in the movie Godfather at 2h:01m:20s. Tom tells the Godfather that Sonny has been shot and killed, Godfather's shows extreme anguish and then he goes to Tom and hugs Tom in order to console Tom. 
When does a man who has just learnt that his son has been murdered find the time or the courage or the sympathy to console the man who has just the delivered the bad news? Amazing...

Another example of empathy is shown by the author of the article on death of children in a Bihar government hospital because Pushpa stopped supplying Oxygen Cylinders to the hospital because of non receipt of dues from the hospital: http://www.firstpost.com/india/gorakhpur-is-a-legal-tragedy-too-laws-needed-to-regulate-states-casual-attempts-at-dealing-with-private-vendors-3930677.html - the author states that the government should have mechanism in place to ensure that private suppliers do not get to stop supplying essential stuff such as electricity, oxygen cylinders just because payment has not been received. The author makes a case for the suppliers to have empathy and get down to the same level as the customer. Lot of empathy and F (as in MBTI) in the author. As to how the supplier will run a business in the absence of money is something the author has neglected to ponder upon - perhaps the same way that government hospitals do when they don't get much money from the poor patients. Meaning run a long subsidy chain - I subsidize you, you subsidize someone else, and so on. God will take care of financial issues and P&L etc. Empathy doesn't understand fairness.

Additional reading:

• https://sashadichter.wordpress.com/2011/09/30/generosity-and-empathy/
• http://www.nexthumanproject.com/references/Empathy_Towards_Strangers_Claremont.pdf
• http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_avoid_regret_in_your_social_life?utm_source=Greater+Good+Science+Center&utm_campaign=83dc817c32-GG_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_05_24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5ae73e326e-83dc817c32-51673647 - people who constantly optimize their choices are less happy apparently - unbelievable. Is that why women are less happy than men on the average?

Flight Schedule Puzzle

This is from the newspaper today. Indigo has announced flights to Doha in Oman. Usually flights spend no more an 20 minutes to 2 hours before getting on the air again, otherwise they won't make money.

If you look at the TT (timetable) below, the flight from Chennai arrives at 2:45PM at Doha and leaves Doha  at 14:30 - almost 12 hours later. Does this violate the max 2 hr wait mentioned above?

All times are local times.

Understanding Humans And Animals

I had earlier written about the differences between man and animals. Here is another post on why human being experience so much pain.

There are some posts I have read, especially in thehumanevolutionblog, which are fascinating. 

A friend sent me this interesting post on ants: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/02/shhh-ants-are-talking

He said that with the paucity of smaller animals to feed on as the forests are depleting, there was enough force to trigger an evolution. I felt that lack of food could also end up perishing a species. That raised an interesting question. When does a species perish and when does it evolve and survive? He raised one more question: If Apes evolved into humans, why are Apes still existing?

Human beings's fear of spiders and snakes is not learnt: https://newsstand.google.com/articles/CAIiEISnw8jFqO58PEgZn8bXX78qFggEKg4IACoGCAowl7gmMPL_BTDy-ws

A tree map showing how humans have evolved is lovely here. The image itself is here.

What are animals thinking and feelings: (lovely video on talk by Carl Safina):https://www.ted.com/talks/carl_safina_what_are_animals_thinking_and_feeling?utm_source=whatsapp&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=tedspread--b

Are males (in humans) better than females in logic and maths? An interesting debate:  https://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/debate05_index.html

Sex and the  spotted hyena: http://www.nature.com/news/1999/991019/full/news991021-7.html

Even the earliest humans were largely right handed: https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/2016/12/05/even-homo-habilis-was-right-handed/


Did Neanderthals have gender roles?: https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/2015/04/12/did-neanderthals-have-gender-roles-in-their-division-of-labor/?blogsub=subscribed#subscribe-blog

Bonobos and sex: https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sex-dawn/201202/7-things-bonobos-can-teach-us-about-love-and-sex&source=gmail&ust=1494650273337000&usg=AFQjCNEJJwolYpIuJ59VF6vCEUG3_unBew

Charming personalities of Barbary Macaques: https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/2016/04/04/the-charming-personalities-of-barbary-macaques/ Quote from there: "The next stage of my analysis uses the framework of the social-niche hypothesis to study the relationship between personality and sociality. This hypothesis predicts that individuals should assort themselves based on personality. Evidence for this has recently been demonstrated in great tits, with more shy individuals tending to associate more frequently and form stable social relationships with other shy individuals."

Quite a bit of learning happens socially (in animals also) meaning they learn from others: https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/2017/02/07/social-learning-in-animals-implications-for-the-evolution-of-human-intelligence/

Apparently some species of snakes hunt in packs: http://www.abc15.com/news/national/wait-what-scientist-discovers-snakes-that-hunt-in-packs

Sexual behavior of peahens: https://scroll.in/article/839419/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-peafowl-sex-by-a-researcher-whos-spent-a-decade-studying-it

Marmosets develop regional dialects: https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/2017/11/14/marmosets-regional-dialects/ 

Do not disturb gesture in Mandrills: https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/2015/08/12/the-birth-of-a-cultural-meme-the-do-not-disturb-gesture-in-mandrills/

Sheep recognize human faces (picture of Obama): https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/11/07/sheep-learn-to-recognize-photos-of-obama-and-other-celebrities-neuroscientists-say/?utm_term=.04c35c002dab\

Birds use cigarette  butts to drive parasites away: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2138655-birds-use-cigarette-butts-for-chemical-warfare-against-ticks/?utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=ILC&utm_campaign=webpush&cmpid=ILC%257CNSNS%257C2016-GLOBAL-webpush-cigarette-ticks

Crows are intelligent: http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/the-humble-crow-is-far-smarter-than-we-thought/article19524598.ece

Apes are misunderstood: https://newsstand.google.com/articles/CAIiEMoowKP5rMSe0QNWutjB5zcqFwgEKg8IACoHCAowpbDpAzCm_hwwj9kp

Girl Asked To Remove UI (Upper Innerwear) While Writing NEET

This is the background story. 

CBSE has decided to suspend some staff and asked the principal of a school to apologize to the student who was asked to remove her upper innerwear  (UI) during the recent NEET exam. This incident happened at Kannur in Kerala. 

While we all feel sorry for the ordeal the student went through before an important exam, I am focusing on the aftermath of the incident.. 

Why all this hoopla about metal detectors and hooks in straps to jeans buttons to earrings being taboo?  I guess it was as a result of some previous incident (2015?) when a while lot of cheating happened. This dress code was put in place in order to prevent such incidents of cheating in exams. 

Having decided and communicated to students and parents and to invigilators that certain objects were not allowed inside the exam center (i assume authorities did inform all concerned including students), some students did come wearing objectionable stuff to the exam. What were the invigilators to do? Allow the students inside with metal hooks, buttons and what not?  No,  they frisked and asked the violators to remove the objectionable items.

The girl in question was frisked by women (not by men). She was asked to remove her UI (Upper Innerwear). Did the invigilators do anything wrong? Perhaps the girl was asked to change to something that didn't have metal or other non allowed stuff. Well most people don't carry extra UI to an exam and I guess the girl didn't have a spare, especially one of the kind that would pass muster. 

When CBSE passed this order, did they not envisage such a possibility (re UI)? Were there not any women in the panel?

By taking action on the Kannur school,  CBSE has sent a strong message. Stakeholders (Executive agency) will be held responsible for any ugly incident arising out of carrying out its own (Legislative) orders.. 

United Airlines was in the news recently when it asked some ladies (United Airlines staff traveling as passengers) who were wearing leggings to change their dress because such leggings were in violation of the dress code of the airline. But

Even if the CBSE dress code itself was ill conceived, Instead of taking the blame on itself, CBSE has taken the small people and made them scapegoats. Bravo.