God’s Inbox

This showed up on Digg. I have to re- post it here.

With a universe like this, who needs a paradise?

Most living cells last for a month or so, but there are exceptions. Liver cells last for years and neurons last a life time. It is weird. It is as if they are violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In fact, this can be said about life as a whole. How does life do it? It seems life keeps itself from being devoured by entropy by continually exchanging matter with its environment. The new matter obtained from food, has less entropy and the process (a.k.a life) borrows itself time. Life feeds on negative entropy. It doesn’t violate the Second Law. It slows the Second Law down, until when it can’t done no more, when it inevitably dies.A sad thought. But I am happy that it happens at all, and I am also incredibly grateful to the governing dynamics of this universe, to have allowed me to have abstractions of reality in my brain which engage in processes found by evolution to aid survival, but as a side effect, gives me a heightened sense of existence when I need it.So back to cells; liver cells and neurons delay death by continually renewing individual components that make them. New brain cells don’t get made after birth, but there are exceptions. Usually one gets stuck with a few, which one uses his/her entire life. But in case of other cells, many die all the time. The rate at which other cells die is so much that, when I recollect 9 year old memories of the girl I have a crush on, there isn’t much of her left now. She has been entirely renewed into a new person physically. So am I.In that case, it is truly amazing that the abstractions of reality in my brain, still represents extremely detailed memories of her, regards her as important and worth infatuating! HAHA!

Hmm.. she is a typical girl

I’ve been talking to her. From what she has to say, she doesn’t even know to cook rice and I had to tell her the water to rice ratios. She seems to spending a lot of her dad’s money in shopping for clothes. I guess that is usual with girls with equal rights.Hmm.. I should get myself the financial caliber to get her. But I need to end human suffering too, and do a lot of good for mankind. Is it possible to get everything I want? It is definitely going to be hard.. But what else is this one chance at this intoxicating existence for? It should definitely be spent trying to achieve the impossible… It is the process of achieving things, that I am addicted to. I have been a failure most of my life, and have enjoyed the humility of being one. I wouldn’t mind doing it again.What if I end up in a situation in which, I have chose to adhere to the truth about the universe and be disliked by her family in doing so, OR delude myself with fallacies and be liked by her family in return? In other words, if I have to pick between adhering to truth OR falling in love, what would I pick?

I know her height.

This post is for my own information. I asked her height. She asked me to reveal mine first, and after I did that, she revealed hers in feet with a certain quantity appearing after the decimal point. I asked her whether she had really meant the fractional quantity or was she thinking about inches, because 1 feet was 12 inches. After I explained the probable error, she does seem to think that she had made an error in thinking that inches could be put with feet after the decimal point. Anyways in either case (with the error or without the error) I am taller than her by more than a couple of inches. In fact, it is probable that I may be taller than most of her immediate relatives. A bit of competition seems to be from her younger brother, who seems to be as tall as I am by her accounts.I need to work on my nerdy appearance though. Hopefully the gym at NUS will help.

Love

People have been asking me what is it like being in love. Despite all the bollywood fairy tales, it is interesting to note that love is often underated and seldom pursued.Life has been fortunate for me, I have been in love. For people who need a definition, I’d like to steal what the Bible says: To love means to give, and not to take a.k.a unconditional non-reciprocative altruism. It is one of the few things Bible got right.I think everyone should fall in love. It is an experience worth experiencing in this intoxicating dream called life, no matter whatever the final outcome be.Once you are in love, there is nothing that will end it. It is constant. Even if you never end up being loved by your lover, you will still be happy that she is happy with the one she loves. No one, not even you lover can make you feel bad about it.And believe me, there are plenty of A-holes that do just that. Perhaps there is a yet unexplored realm of pleasure in my life in making other people feel bad about themselves. I haven’t quite understood it. Hopefully I never will.Unconditional, non-reciprocative altruism does seem counter intuitive from an evolutionary standpoint. The more religious out there, has an explaination that love exists in us as an analogue to how some higher being feels about us.I think the more scientific explanation is that, in a stable and predictable environment like ours K-selection predominates. Love is a K-selected trait that leads to fewer offsprings that are well nurtured. It is interesting to note that human beings owing to their social behaviours, higher analytical powers, higher self-awareness, and the resulting fear and depression, use love as a means to make life less lonely, worth appreciating and living.

Christian right activists disrupts first Hindu prayer in the Senate.

I had always wanted to identify myself as a Christian, although it was well known among many that I was being a hypocrite in doing so. But this event has changed it all. I feel ashamed to be known as one. To people who still think those activists weren’t loco, listen to what the Bible has to say:

Therefore submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake, whether to the king as supreme, or to governors, as to those who are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men— as free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants of God. Honor all people. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king. 1 Peter 2:13-17 

Life

Life is a manifestation of matter, that is bound to exist, given the conditions are right. Life wants to be; Life doesn’t always want to be much; Life from time to time goes extinct.It is easy to overlook this thought that life just is. As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have a point. We have plans, aspirations and desires. We want to take constant advantage of all the intoxicating existence we’ve been endowed with. But what is life to a lichen? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours – arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on. Lichen’s don’t. Like virtually all living things, they will suffer any hardship, endure any insult, for a moment’s additional existence. Life, in short just wants to be.

Death

An aedes mosquito bit me today, and I’ve been thinking about death since then. People think about death with fear. I do not fear death. But do not get me wrong, I do not believe an life after death either; I value life as rare, precious and something that is worth doing till it can’t done no more.How should an atheist die? The fear of death is so strong among many that it is single most powerful reason that prevents many from rationally analyzing the impossibility of a God.Death is no different from not to have existed at all. Are you afraid of the times you were never conceived in the womb of your mother? Are you afraid of sleeping? Fear of death, is a trick to make you want to survive. The sooner you let go of your ego; the idea that you are important, you will overcome this fear and learn to live. The world doesn’t need you to save it. There are many heroes who can do it better than you. The sooner you know that every morning you wake up to new life with only a memory of your past, you will stop fearing death. If you do believe in a God, the sooner you let go of idea of a God that is quick to punish, but requires hours of prayer to bless you, you will stop fearing death. But remember this, there is no point faking a faith in the God and the life after death. Even a bit of doubt can make the end of your days a misery.I am reminded of some quotes from the Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy:

What to do if you find yourself stuck with no hope of rescue: Consider yourself lucky that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn’t been good to you so far, which given your present circumstances seems more likely, consider yourself lucky that it won’t be troubling you much longer. 

The Narrator: It is important to note that suddenly, and against all probability, a Sperm Whale had been called into existence, several miles above the surface of an alien planet and since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity. This is what it thought, as it fell:The Whale: Ahhh! Woooh! What’s happening? Who am I? Why am I here? What’s my purpose in life? What do I mean by who am I? Okay okay, calm down calm down get a grip now. Ooh, this is an interesting sensation. What is it? Its a sort of tingling in my… well I suppose I better start finding names for things. Lets call it a… tail! Yeah! Tail! And hey, what’s this roaring sound, whooshing past what I’m suddenly gonna call my head? Wind! Is that a good name? It’ll do. Yeah, this is really exciting. I’m dizzy with anticipation! Or is it the wind? There’s an awful lot of that now isn’t it? And what’s this thing coming toward me very fast? So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like ‘Ow’, ‘Ownge’, ‘Round’, ‘Ground’! That’s it! Ground! Ha! I wonder if it’ll be friends with me? Hello Ground![dies]The Narrator: Curiously the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias, as it fell, was, ‘Oh no, not again.’ Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly *why* the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now. 

Grapefruit amplifies drug potency

My dad used to tell me grapefruit juice can potentiate some prescription drugs. Although I did not take him seriously then, it seems to be true, in an evil sort of way.OK. So the story of how this works, begins with a class of enzymes called the Cytochrome p450 (see pictures), which removes foreign molecules (e.g. drugs) from your body by adding oxygen atoms to them. Most of the time this makes the foreign molecule soluble in water and thus “flushable” from the body.Some unknown Chemical X (think power puff girls), present in grapefruit inhibits the ability of this enzyme to oxidate foreign chemicals. This increases the biological half-life (i.e. the time required for half of that substance to be removed from an organism by either a physical or a chemical process) and hence increases the drug potency.Sadly for anthropocentric creationists (SFAC) Cytochrome p450 enzymes are found in all organisms. Bacteria have 20 types of p450 and human beings have around 60. Plants, SFAC have a hundred of them. This is because plants make exotic toxins and pigments to protect them.References: here. here.

Being Human

I was looking out at lunch and I was surprised. It was people! It took nine months to each of those blobs. But when they start “living”, they can potentially change the fate of the universe. They can be happy or sad, have dreams and nightmares. They can love or hate. They move around. They like to be in company of their own kind. It was just amazing!They have a thing called brain to make them feel they exist and help them make complicated abstractions about their universe. It continually selects changes in its environment that helps its survival, continuously uses those changes to update its memories and continuously retrieves them, all of that in parallel.Their ability to select stimuli is so subtle and tuned for survival by evolution, that they are unable to feel their undergarments until they are told about it!