Take a look at this AP graph of the recent trend in the crude oil prices. Basically, it’s been hitting record high for the past couple of weeks.

But what happened at the pump here in San Jose, CA? It’s been going down!. Usually, the pump price would go up as soon as the “bad” news is up! What’s going on here? Someone must be assuming the cost!

Well, if my “theory” holds up, my guess is that we may not see the pump price until November? :p

Quite a few of my friends, by now, are married and most of them have children. One thing I noticed was that a lot of those children were girls. One would think that the ratio of the sexes should be about equal in nature, but what I saw among my friends weren’t even close to being equal statistically. And since the sex of a baby is genetically determined by the father, I wanted to figure out what made this group of men deviate from the “norm”.

They all work in computer-related businesses or at least in an environment where they have to spend the better part of their day in front of a computer. So, I tried a wild hypothesis that the radiation from the CRT monitors might be the cause (probably it’s from something I read long time ago from an advertisement for screen protectors). It seemed to me (not very scientifically provable, though) like those who “work harder” or rather seem to spend more time in front of computers were likely to have girls than boys.

Then, it was combined with the (seemingly unrelated) fact that men’s life expectancy is shorter than women on average. From just the life expectancy data, it seems to me that men are built “weaker” than women (for whatever the reasons). So, what’s “inherently” (or biologically) different about men and women? It must be the “XY” and “XX” chromosome combinations.

It seems the XY is “weaker” or less “stable”. Maybe, the radiation is killing or making the sperms with the XY less competitive even if the exposure is within the regulated “safe” limits. That can explain why those men working long hours in front of CRT monitors tend to have more girls. (I later began to think that this may also be from deteriorated health conditions from work or other reasons.)

Anyway, then came a weird logic… XX >= XY, so it must be that X >= Y. (Yeah, yeah, I am not considering the possible mutual interactions. :p)

Interesting… Then a logical leap… Two Xs seem to make the species more “stable”. But if one gets too stable, it will become stale and eventually lose its adaptability and perish. So, I am guessing that the Y is an agent that injects “mutation” (or dynamics) into the system. Of course, these changes cannot be all beneficial, but it should throw off the system a bit so that it can re-adjust itself to the changing/new environment. And this seems to fit an observation that for most “living” systems there seem to be cycles of changes/growth and stability.

So my current theory is that the X chromosome is what makes us stable and helps us survive through the minor external changes and that the Y chromosome is what throws off the balance a bit so that the species won’t become stale.

Absurd, you think? I don’t blame you. :p

This is a concept that I’ve been bouncing around in my head for a while. As with any other ideas I have here, it must have been influenced by ideas of others and is utterly incomplete at this stage. However, I think I have a concrete enough picture of it to attempt to write about it.

I think ever since my teen years, I have been a relativist: I believed (and still do in a way) that “everything” is relative. I came to this “conclusion” because I noticed that everyone was interpreting what he/she experienced, relative to their situation at the moment and that these interpretations, or “filters”, are something we cannot remove from the whole equation because of what we, humans or any sentient beings, are.

The obvious problem with advocating “absolute” relativism (you will easily notice an obvious oxymoron) is that this credo, “everything is relative,” itself has to be relative and becomes self-conflicting. It is logically flawed and it will never be more than a incomplete belief.

Not only that, as much as I could not ignore the seemingly pervasive relativity caused by the interpretation filters, I felt uneasy about completely dismissing the idea of the absolute truth (or a god as some would say). Even a relativistic (or cyclic) belief such as Buddhism has an absolute concept such as Nirvana. So for a while, what I’ve often told was that if there was an absolute being, it must be the universe itself…

But recently, I’ve come up with a better explanation (it’s just a rhetoric anyway…): the relative truths/gods as projections of the infinite dimensional absolute truth/god. I really don’t care whether it’s called the truth or a god. I will just say “truth” to refer both from now on.

If you had taken some geometry classes at school, you might remember hearing about dimensions and projections to a lower dimensional space. For example, if you have a cube in a 3-dimensional space and project it onto a 2-dimensional space, you can get a square, a rectangle, or a distorted hexagon, of varying sizes depending on the positions of the object and the projection plane, and the projection methods. Another example… If you have a triangle in a 2-dimensional space and projected onto a 1-dimensional space, you will get lines with various lengths depending on the condition.

The thing I want to stress from the above examples is that although the original objects in their native dimensional spaces might have well-defined, fixed shapes, their projections onto lower dimensional spaces can take various, sometimes drastically different shapes. From the perspectives of the lower dimensional spaces, those objects look that way (nothing wrong with this), but they have no way to know for sure what the higher-dimensional original objects may look like.

So, applying this analogy, I am going to say that there is (probably) an absolute truth, but it’s in a higher dimensional space (actually, in an “infinite” dimensional space as discussed later). The “truths” we understand (or written down, talked about, etc.) are only its projections (or “filters” as I called above) into our lower dimensional spaces. Since our “positions” in these lower dimensional spaces are different from that of each other (and even from one’s own from different time), the projected shapes of the truth may and will differ.

For some groups of people, their positions maybe close enough that the projected shapes are similar. But the point is that these projected truths are relative to the projection planes, i.e., individuals, and that for us the actual shape of the truth in the higher original dimensional space is beyond our understanding.

One thing to note is that when I say a n-dimensional space, I am not just referring to the “popular” dimensional space of x-, y-, and z-axes. I don’t know exactly what each axis measures (it could even be a concept as vague as “love”, “happiness”, etc.) but it is something that will define each individual within its own understanding.

On a similar line, if you actually think of this dimensional spaces as the popular time-space continuum and its extension, we can think about “superhumans” and “gods.” To us, a being that’s bound by a higher dimensional space would be considered as a superhuman or a god since it can overcome the restriction of our time-space continuum. But to them, another being in an even higher dimensional space would be considered as a god. And if you keep following this, you will reach at a concept of a being in an infinite dimensional space, which one can say is the absolute god. And the truth there would be the absolute one.

Anyway, in one respect, the absolute truth may exist (in the infinite dimensional space). However, as far as our understanding goes, everything is still relative (as its projections onto lower dimensional spaces). So, this is how I “resolved” my relativistic beliefs with a concept of the absolute, and felt a bit better. :p

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned before, but one of the things that I really enjoy learning is foreign languages (it’s one of those things-that-are-different-from-my-own categories). And one of the surprising things that I’ve come across from early on is that a lot of the languages (or cultures) have similar sounds for “mother” or “father” in informal forms.

For example, “mom”/”mama” is “umma” in Korean and Hindi. And “dad”/”papa” is “abba” in Korean. Of course, I didn’t do an extensive study on the subject, but it seems the phoneme “m” is associated with “mother” in most languages and the phoneme “bb”, “p” or “d” with “father”. Does this mean all humans somehow share a prehistoric “knowledge” contained in the genes? Or does it mean that we all had a common language?

I don’t know the answers to those questions, but I don’t think we have to go that extreme to come up with a simple one. I call it “the theory of eager parents”.

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed (I am sure you did), but the first articulate “sound” or “consonant” that a baby makes is usually “m” sound. It’s because that’s probably the most simple phoneme to reproduce: you try to blow air out while the lips closed. And when you part the lips, the sound becomes “ma”.

So a baby innocently makes a noise, and who’s most likely to be there to hear it? Its mother, of course! And you already know how proud parents can get about their child (I think it’s quite true that most parents think their children to be the smartest). And what does this “eager” mother think? She, along with all other family members who were present, think the baby was calling out to her.

Besides the “m” phoneme, the next easiest sound you can make are “p” or “bb” (stronger “b”) and “d” (the “d” phoneme is a bit more difficult, I think, because you need some control of your tongue). And when the baby finally (or accidentally) makes that noise, who else is most likely to be there? Of course, its father. And the “eager” parents will gladly accept, without any doubt, that the baby was calling out for its papa. Even if the father wasn’t present at that moment, a very happy mother will inform the father, as soon as possible, that the baby called out for him (if it isn’t “ma”, who else?).

And another thing I would like to mention is that after that, there is a reverse feedback to the baby to associate “ma” with its mother and “pa”/”da” with its father. And this completes the description of the origination of words for mother and father.

So do all of human languages come from a “root” one? I don’t know. However, I can quite confidently say that regardless of the ethnicities and the cultures, all parents are “eagerly” expecting their babies be smart (so that they will have a better chance of surviving the world).

As grand as it might sounds, it’s a very informal analogy of a distribution curve to characteristics of a society, mostly used to compare a homogeneous and a diverse society. You all remember a typical distribution curve that looks like a bell in high school, right? In any distribution, you always talk about a mean and a standard deviation. The mean is a statistical average and the standard deviation is how far away the samples are from the mean. In case of bell-like curves, graphically the mean can be thought of as where the peak is and the standard deviation can be thought of as the “thickness” of the curve.

So, for a homogeneous society, the deviation would be small (the curve will be narrow) and for a diverse one, large. My observation and analogy is that when the deviation is small, there tends to be less samples in the extremities. And in converse, a diverse group will have more extremities. And the important thing to note is the extremities are on the both ends.

I find it quite useful and seems to apply quite well when comparing societies such as Korea and the United States. So, a very homogeneous country like Korea has a very small deviation and slightly higher mean, I guess. The force trying to keep the deviation to a certain limit, is very strong, so it is very stable with little change. It usually has a good base, translated to a slightly higher mean. What this means is that it has a fewer “geniuses”, along with less “sociopaths.” On the other hand, with a very diverse country such as the States, there are more “geniuses,” but as many “sociopaths” (e.g., serial killers).

I often use this to point out that there is no perfect society when people starts to argue about which is better or “advanced.” They are just different and one can be more successful than another in a certain situation, but not always and not for everyone.