Eric Tian

Last week, my sister bought me a grey beanie. I’d never worn a beanie before so while it felt warm and looked pretty nice, I didn’t really know what to make of it. A few nights ago however, I was feeling quite cold so I decided to try it on. What happened next was amazing – within five minutes of wearing the beanie, my body was feeling super toasty. Naturally, the following thought came to me: “Beanies are a superior source of cosiness than tops and bottoms.” And as a graduate from a Biomedical degree, I knew I had to test this hypothesis.

So over the next few hours, I ran some extremely reliable experiments (N=1). These were the results:

Table 1. Cosy ratings under various clothing combinations. Heavy tops + bottoms defined by >3 layers of clothing. “–” = not wearing item, “+” = wearing item.

Trial	Beanie	Heavy tops + bottoms	Cosy rating (1 – 10)
1	–	–	1
2	–	+	5
3	+	–	8
4	+	+	10

As seen in Table 1, the results of the controls were as expected. Trial 1 (neg. control) demonstrated that in the absence of a beanie, heavy tops and bottoms, one feels cold. Trial 4 (pos. control) showed that when wearing a beanie, heavy tops and bottoms, one feels cosy. Given beanies and clothes provide insulation, these results are unsurprising.

Interestingly, the results further demonstrated that beanies alone (trial 3) give an increased cosiness rating compared to heavy tops + bottoms alone (trial 2). This supports the hypothesis that beanies are a superior source of cosiness.

But why? Well, despite the external environment typically varying between 0^oC to 40^oC, our bodies do a pretty good job at keeping our internal environment somewhere around 37^oC regardless of the outside temperature – a process called thermoregulation. However, thermoregulation is more effective in some parts of the body over others. For instance, the head doesn’t regulate its internal temperature very well compared to, say, the abdominal area. This observation is explained in an article from Harvard Health:

“But we’re not as thermostatically sensitive above the neck as we are below it. Blood vessels in the surface of the head constrict very little in response to cold, which is a good thing because the brain needs a steady supply of blood. There’s little subcutaneous fat for insulation. As a result, even if the rest of your body is nicely wrapped up, if your head is uncovered you’ll lose lots of body heat — potentially up to 50% of it — in certain cold-weather conditions. What’s more, a cold head can trigger blood vessel constriction in the other parts of the body, so it can make your hands and feet feel cold even if you are wearing mittens and warm socks and shoes.”

The solution? Wear a beanie to keep the outside of your head at a cozy temperature – this way, the head doesn’t need to work as hard to keep the internal environment at 37^oC. I was wondering how to make this realisation more profound but I can’t think of anything… so yeah, beanies!

During undergrad, my journals were filled with uplifting phrases such as:

• “Nothing worth having comes easy” (also my phone background for a year)
• “Work hard in the silence, let success be your noise”
• “Be stronger than your strongest excuse”

These ideas served a simple purpose: to motivate. And I must admit, they did their jobs well. When faced with an impossible challenge, I’d often turn to these quotes to boost my willingness to get things done. Without them, activities such as studying under fatigue, training for a marathon or writing when it was hard would’ve taken more effort to complete, more than I might’ve been willing to give.

It seems intuitive that doing more > doing less, which is what productivity is: output per unit of input. But why? Part of the reason is probably cultural, illustrated by the stereotypical Asian kid that unknowingly finds themselves playing Mozart, attending weekend tuition and participating in team sports before the age of seven. To do any less would be wasting time. In addition, ideologies from the Industrial Revolution might’ve fuelled this productivity obsession. 50 units/hour beats 20 units/hr no matter how you look at it, right?

Reasons aside, I sometimes wonder what one can miss in the quest for productivity. There’s a certain short-sightedness – a myopia that comes with getting stuck in the fast lane, for when one moves quickly, the surroundings become a blur. Usually, sights in the periphery are distracting to the highly productive driver’s goal, so ignoring them is fine. But if something important or fantastic pops up outside – say, a crucial warning or a flying turtle – missing such moments can be costly.

It pains me to admit that during my highly neurotic periods, where every hour of my day was planned to optimise for productivity, I ignored many surrounding scenes involving family, relationships and world events. And for what, H1s, running PBs? It’s sadly ironic that in the egocentric pursuit for self-improvement, you risk losing yourself in the process.

Of course, this isn’t to say that high productivity should be eliminated: getting things done is a necessary component of any functioning system. Without those motivational phrases, I might not be writing this today. But I wonder what would happen if us drivers in the fast lane would notice our surroundings more, occasionally moving to the slow lane and even stepping out to observe the complex world around us. Slowing down in an increasingly speedy world – how many great insights could we uncover?

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Dear reader, one headline that many are slowing down for is the Black Lives Matter movement. Yet, it’s important to acknowledge that injustices occur all across the world and have been for a long time, before means of extensive media coverage. The issue is greater than what meets the eye. One idea I’d like to put forward is to slow down to a deeper level: one to the point of empathy, for if we suspend our egos and step into another’s world, great acts can occur. So whether you decide to donate to a charity, share your voice on social media or simply read up on other news, please do so with another person in mind.

Learning to stand in somebody else’s shoes, to see through their eyes, that’s how peace begins. And it’s up to you to make that happen. Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world.

Barack Obama

I’ve always been fascinated by the notion of grabbing one’s attention. What makes certain book titles or 1-minute commercials stand out? In the golden age of content, combined with a systemic dwindling of attention spans, the task of immediately capturing an audience and drawing them in is more difficult than ever before.

I mean, think about television advertisements. Often, these are rude interruptions to the flow of a show, such that viewers are often hostile when presented with an ad. The task of a commercial to capture the minds of the grumpy viewer and inspire them then, is a huge ask. And if that wasn’t enough, to do it within a minute? Sounds almost impossible.

Yet, it happens. Music, actors and transitions are powerful tools that can be manipulated to push an audience towards accepting a message. Take this Nike commercial with Rafael Nadal, for instance. Different time shots (=persistence), upbeat and accelerating music (=relentlessness) and a sweaty athlete (=overcoming difficulty) all work together to illustrate the Nike message: Just Do It.

However, less visual forms of content such as books, have it harder. A writer must distil all their research, ideas and storylines into a few words to catch a consumer’s attention without the wonders of video editing to help. So then, we have a question: What makes a brilliant title?

The answer to this question is undoubtedly multifactorial, but I’ve noticed that one trend in titles that personally grab my attention is the idea of creating tension. In my experience, a title with 2 or more words that are in conflict with one another are highly effective in stimulating curiosity. Take, for instance:

• Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. ‘Silent’ connotates a lack of noise, whereas ‘spring’ connotates liveliness relating to nature.
• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. ‘Breath’ connotates effortlessness, governed by our autonomic nervous system, whereas ‘air’ connotates a sense of preciousness and necessity: humans need air to survive.

I find these oxymorons brilliant. As well as stimulating curiosity, these tensions also foreshadow the contents of the book. Silent Spring is a book on the adverse effects of pesticides on the environment and When Breath Becomes Air is a memoir of a neurosurgeon as he receives a Stage IV Lung Cancer diagnosis: ideas you can guess from the themes in the title.

So, titles are essentially ads. It seems obvious writing it here, but the idea that 2 words on a book, or a 1 minute video can transform a person from being hostile to motivated, curious and willing to buy your content, is one which I still find incredible.

A few days ago, I was catching up with a friend and we came across a second hand bookstore. Since we’re both fairly keen readers, we decided to go inside and have a browse. The store itself was tiny – perhaps no more than 30m² – but it was filled with books. Tables, bookshelves and baskets did their best to order the vast collection, but there simply wasn’t enough room. Baskets were like boulders on the floor and each step threatened to topple the books within them, like water in a cup. To say it was like walking through a jungle wouldn’t be an exaggeration.

Despite its cramped nature, there was a certain reverence about this bookstore which gave me the shivers. Recently, I’ve begun to read more and if there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s that books are powerful. For the first time in history, the ability for people and ideas to connect through the written word aren’t limited by the shackles of time or place. That’s pretty extraordinary. Want to discover the basis of the Jewish faith? Read the Torah. Want to learn a new skill? Read a guide. Want to discover how someone thought? Read their autobiography. And with the rise of audiobooks and eBooks, the accessibility of these ideas is greater than ever.

As the scientist, astronomer and author, Carl Sagan put it:

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”

As I was standing in the cramped bookstore, this realisation hit me hard. How many hours has someone out there someone spent writing these books? How many ideas were hidden within these funny dark squiggles? The magic pulsing from these worn out pages were palpable, shaking me to my very core. There is so much to discover, but so little time.

For these ideas expressed more eloquently, I highly recommend watching this YouTube movie: BOOKSTORES: How to Read More Books in the Golden Age of Content. Probably the best YouTube video I’ve seen this year.

The following is inspired by a post on Austin Kleon’s blog. I liked it a lot and thought I’d share the idea as well.

A few days ago, I came across this piece from the New York Times called The Truth About Cocoons. While the article goes in many directions, one idea I found fascinating was what happens inside a cocoon. Here’s an excerpt:

“It turns out that the inside of a cocoon is – at least by outside-of-a-cocoon standards – pretty bleak. Terrible things happen in there: a campaign of grisly desolation that would put most horror movies to shame. What a caterpillar is doing, in its self-imposed quarantine, is basically digesting itself. It is using enzymes to reduce its body to goo, turning itself into a soup of ex-caterpillar – a nearly formless sludge oozing around a couple of leftover essential organs (tracheal tubes, gut).

Only after this near-total self-annihilation can the new growth begin. Inside that gruesome mush are special clusters of cells called ‘‘imaginal discs,’’ which sounds like something from a Disney movie but which I have been assured is actual biology. Imaginal discs are basically the seeds of crucial butterfly structures: eyes, wings, genitalia and so on. These parts gorge themselves on the protein of the deconstructed caterpillar, growing exponentially, taking form, becoming real. That’s how you get a butterfly: out of the horrid meltdown of a modest caterpillar.”

Reading this reminded me of a scene in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

“Who are you?” said the Caterpillar.

Alice replied, rather shyly, “I – I hardly know, sir, just at present – at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”

Alice is confused, seeming to change with every minute inside the rabbit hole, and is looking to the caterpillar for some sympathy.

“When you have to turn into a chrysalis – you will some day, you know – and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, won’t you?”

“Not a bit,” said the Caterpillar.

Not a bit. What an amazing reaction. While the basis for the caterpillar’s nonchalance remains a mystery, I wonder if there is some wisdom in this outlook – that when the world seems to implode and ‘digest’ itself, there is something extraordinary happening. And so while the current events worldwide go far beyond my comprehension, perhaps there is something after all this enzymatic chaos, something extraordinary, like a beautiful butterfly emerging from the horrid meltdown of a modest caterpillar.

With George Floyd’s recent death catalysing a stream of turbulent events across the globe, not to mention amidst a coronavirus pandemic, I feel it’s inappropriate for me to carry on with my usual, self-centred musings. The events over the last few days have troubled me and have left me with little heart and energy to reflect on these matters in a public arena. As a result, while I’ll share some resources on Black Lives Matter, today’s post will be a bit of an intermission on my part.

Some resources:

• YouTube video containing tons of ads, with ad revenue going towards the Black Lives Matter movement (easy to passively run in the background): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCgLa25fDHM
• World class journalism presenting the latest news: https://www.newyorker.com/
• Article outlining various charities and petitions available from Australia: https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2020/06/how-to-donate-support-black-lives-matter-movement-australia

Instead, I’d like to share a short story by Ernest Hemingway called The Old Man at the Bridge. It describes a tale of tragedy and mortality written in Hemingway’s typical unadorned writing style and is one of my favourite short stories. Recently, I re-read this and the messages underlying this story hit me hard, with a strong relevance during these trying times.

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The Old Man at the Bridge by Ernest Hemingway

An old man with steel rimmed spectacles and very dusty clothes sat by the side of the road. There was a pontoon bridge across the river and carts, trucks, and men, women and children were crossing it. The mule-drawn carts staggered up the steep bank from the bridge with soldiers helping push against the spokes of the wheels. The trucks ground up and away heading out of it all and the peasants plodded along in the ankle deep dust. But the old man sat there without moving. He was too tired to go any farther.

It was my business to cross the bridge, explore the bridgehead beyond and find out to what point the enemy had advanced. I did this and returned over the bridge. There were not so many carts now and very few people on foot, but the old man was still there.

“Where do you come from?” I asked him.

“From San Carlos,” he said, and smiled.

That was his native town and so it gave him pleasure to mention it and he smiled.

“I was taking care of animals,” he explained. “Oh,” I said, not quite understanding.

“Yes,” he said, “I stayed, you see, taking care of animals. I was the last one to leave the town of San Carlos.”

He did not look like a shepherd nor a herdsman and I looked at his black dusty clothes and his gray dusty face and his steel rimmed spectacles and said, “What animals were they?”

“Various animals,” he said, and shook his head. “I had to leave them.”

I was watching the bridge and the African looking country of the Ebro Delta and wondering how long now it would be before we would see the enemy, and listening all the while for the first noises that would signal that ever mysterious event called contact, and the old man still sat there.

“What animals were they?” I asked.

“There were three animals altogether,” he explained. “There were two goats and a cat and then there were four pairs of pigeons.”

“And you had to leave them?” I asked.

“Yes. Because of the artillery. The captain told me to go because of the artillery.”

“And you have no family?” I asked, watching the far end of the bridge where a few last carts were hurrying down the slope of the bank.

“No,” he said, “only the animals I stated. The cat, of course, will be all right. A cat can look out for itself, but I cannot think what will become of the others.”

“What politics have you?” I asked.

“I am without politics,” he said. “I am seventy-six years old. I have come twelve kilometers now and I think now I can go no further.” “This is not a good place to stop,” I said. “If you can make it, there are trucks up the road where it forks for Tortosa.”

“I will wait a while,” he said, “and then I will go. Where do the trucks go?”

“Towards Barcelona,” I told him.

“I know no one in that direction,” he said, “but thank you very much. Thank you again very much.”

He looked at me very blankly and tiredly, then said, having to share his worry with some one, “The cat will be all right, I am sure. There is no need to be unquiet about the cat. But the others. Now what do you think about the others?”

“Why they’ll probably come through it all right.” “You think so?”

“Why not,” I said, watching the far bank where now there were no carts.

“But what will they do under the artillery when I was told to leave because of the artillery?”

“Did you leave the dove cage unlocked?” I asked. “Yes.”

“Then they’ll fly.”

“Yes, certainly they’ll fly. But the others. It’s better not to think about the others,” he said.

“If you are rested I would go,” I urged. “Get up and try to walk now.”

“Thank you,” he said and got to his feet, swayed from side to side and then sat down backwards in the dust.

“I was taking care of animals,” he said dully, but no longer to me. “I was only taking care of animals.”

There was nothing to do about him. It was Easter Sunday and the Fascists were advancing toward the Ebro. It was a gray overcast day with a low ceiling so their planes were not up. That and the fact that cats know how to look after themselves was all the good luck that old man would ever have.