Under a Sea of Thoughts

You learn a lot about a person based on what they say. When speaking, what the person focuses on, how they treat the other end, and how they respond reveals how open or close minded they are, how empathetic they are, and the manner in which they speak also establishes the relationship with the other person. Politically correct language has its perks as being fair and aware of all affected groups in society, but after a certain extent, prioritization of PC language above observance of the actual message one is trying to get across. As Kakutani puts it, it "tends to distract attention from the real problems of prejudice and injustice that exist in society at large", which serves as a reminder to be aware of when PC language is taken too far. The problem with the status quo of PC language, however, is that it's already been taken to the hyperbolic extents, where it's absurd what some people are fighting about (peoplekind vs. mankind), where it's sad and hilarious at ...

Whenever you go to an ethnically foreign place, such as a restaurant or a market, you'll notice how the environment that surrounds you is contained within a very finite area - a bubble. The moment you walk in through a door, smells, sounds, sights, and all your senses are struck with the ruminated cultures of centuries of history, often from thousands of miles away. Specifically, the way people speak, the manner in which people address each other, the language that permeates the bubble, is subtly yet vastly different. What I mean is, unlike the very apparent "role playing, side-step, shilly-shally, and vagueness and innuendo" in the English language, my Chinese speaking family is one that does not partake in such mannerisms. English is  peculiar distinct distinctive idiosyncratic particular personal special specific  unique in that there are hundreds of substitutes or complimentary words that mean basically the same thing. Chinese, on the other hand is more direct, requir...

This past week I learned in my Genetics/Bacteria/Biotech/Embryology class about bacteria and the fact that they harbor every conceivable and inconceivable surface to the eye. No matter where you go, you will always be surrounded in and covered by bacteria. A Chinese study found that a single elevator button is home to more than 1,200 types of germs. As a graded activity for the class, I participated in a lab that aimed to identify a certain type of bacteria based on its colonial characteristics, using microscopic morphology and chemical tests (phenol test using dextrose, sucrose, and lactose, gram-staining). Through the microscope, I observed, objectively, through the objective lens and the oil-immersion lens, hundreds of strains of bacteria, all in the area of a 10 micrometer field of vision. Science is everywhere. We live in a world where the only absolute certainties are our immediate bodies and our conscious minds. However, even the former item is sometimes an uncertainty. In f...

Call it what you want - totting, skipping, skip diving, skip salvage, curb shopping, trash picking or street scavenging - dumpster diving is just one of the names in that trash pile of labels. It’s not only a means of survival, but also a “way of life.” The show Extreme Cheapskates on TLC highlights some of the most frugal people in the world, who stop at nothing to save money. Sometimes these people aren’t even poor; they are just very tight penny-pinchers. Creating reusuable toilet paper, reusing dental floss, finding gifts in garbage cans, washing clothes while showering, flushing the toilet only once a week, making their own toothpaste, not spending money on telephones, television or new clothes for their kids is just some of the ludicrous extents people go to to conserve their bank accounts. So I ask you. At what point does extreme frugality become near-dumpster-diving conditions? Just because you don’t throw something away and reuse it, for example toilet paper, is it st...