Twisted Alphabets

I had an alphabet wallpaper in the room that I slept in as a little kid, and I was completely fascinated by it. It only had majuscules, the capital letters, and my mother told me that all the words in the English language could be made out of those twenty-six letters. I just didn't believe her and I would lie there at night trying to think of words that couldn't be spelled with those letters. I would put myself to sleep thinking it just isn't possible that the infinity of language could be contained within this set of twenty-six letters.

There are only two writing systems in existence today, Chinese characters and the alphabet. People often say, well what do you mean by that? There’s Arabic letters, there’s Indian scripts, there’s Ethiopic letters, there’s all of these various kinds of letter-forms. Most people don’t understand that the alphabet is actually a synthesis of two early writing systems.

I actually put my interest in the alphabet down to that early history. I also think I was just fascinated by the visual forms. I've always loved the visual shape of the letters. Well, I think there are two histories when we talk about the history of the alphabet.  There’s the history of letter-forms and how they came into being.

The other history is the history of ideas about the way we think about the alphabet, and all of the properties that we project onto these letters, whether for magical or religious or interpretive purposes. So that’s another entire history, and I think that the history of literacy, reading, and of spelling reform and of shorthand notation, and of phonetic systems, and all of these various variants on the alphabet are also a part of that history of ideas. 

There are really two parallel histories. But, more and more the other history, which is the history of ideas about the alphabet got forgotten.

In fact, if you look at it at a micro level, the range of periods of which these writing systems come into being stretches over almost 2000 years back - which is not trivial when you think about it. The inception of writings is traced down from Egypt than evolved slowly by making everybody a part of it, in a way could never fit as one person’s legacy. It started with pictorial writings where they took A to be an ox…if u rotate it you can actually catch an image of an ox with horns, than similarly the B was taken to be a house where if twisted from the right can make you see through. The alphabets always had a deeper reflection than was made to see, creativity has always been a part of us not apart of us.

I reflected to the current 26 Alphabets still could draw the same learning, which we all have forgotten or refuse to realize. Rotate…Twist…See it upright & discover it in the below list…

A...Arms
B...Bridge
C...Crescent Moon
D...Door Handle
E...Emergency
F...Fishing Rod
G...Gun Trigger
H...Hammock
I...Injection
J...Jump
K...Kiss
L...Link
M...Mirror
N...Neck to Neck
O...Orange
P...Pond
Q...Quantify
R...Rays
S...Snake
T...Tree
U...Upside Down Rainbow
V...Vessel
W...Waves
X...Xerox
Y...Yawn
Z...ZigZag 

My thought on the whole thing is telling a child A means Apple which cannot be found in the image is better or A means Arms where the upright view of it makes u see slanting lines as arms stretched of a person. I strongly feel a change is required the way teaching is done, creativity needs to be injected in the right way from the grass root level.

Intelligence Quotient

Intelligence is something which I feel is never static it keeps growing, varying. Than circumstances add a lot in the whole play making a person sound justified or an unheard story to all. I could never seal a person with a tag of being intelligent or unintelligent. As I know the same person can be the wisest of the lot on another topic.

The term IQ, or Intelligence Quotient, generally describes a score on a test that rates the subject's cognitive ability as compared to the general population. Most people perform better on one type of question than on others, but experts have determined that for the most part people who excel in one category do similarly well in the other categories, and if someone does poorly in any one category, he also does poorly in the others. Based on this, these experts theorize there is one general element of intellectual ability that determines other specific cognitive abilities.

Because IQ tests measure your ability to understand ideas and not the quantity of your knowledge, learning new information does not automatically increase your IQ as per them. Learning may exercise your mind, however, which could help you to develop greater cognitive skills, but scientists do not fully understand this relationship. The connection between learning and mental ability is still largely unknown. Intellectual ability does seem to depend more on genetic factors than on environmental factors, but most experts agree that environment plays some significant role in its development too.

Dictionary defines IQ: a number representing a person's reasoning ability (measured using problem-solving tests) as compared to the statistical norm or average for their age, taken as 100.

One's IQ score can vary—either decrease or increase—as one grows.
So, it comes to innuendo that it is not reliably the best method. It changes by factors of social surrounding, education system or aging process?

Success is today realized to be reached by determination, not by one's level of IQ. It also involves the play of EQ (Emotional Quotient) and for some cases, SQ (Spiritual Quotient) too.

There are many people who never went to high school nor college that have wonderful intelligence levels. The testing for I.Q. levels seems out dated, due in part to having people learn throughout their lives. Does it make a person better then the next person just because they have a high I.Q.? No! It's what you do with your knowledge & common sense that stands you out from the crowd.

Old habits die hard

This blog may initially tickle, but later you may realize it was all the way worth. Staring at gods creations realized the behavior of dogs with lot of aah moment to myself. Where dangling from one thought to another was left with gamut of knowledge on the same.

First of all, dogs urinate far beyond the boundaries or limits of their so-called territory. Secondly, males aren't the only ones who lift their legs; some females (usually the anxious type) do this as well. Thirdly, dogs don't just urinate on large objects, but on vertical objects (trees, posts), unfamiliar or inorganic objects (tires, plastic bags, fire hydrants), and on anything carrying a scent that the dog wants to cover (such as another animal's urine).

Of course if a biologist who witnessed the African wild dogs madly scrabbling up the tree trunks did so with the belief that dogs urinate to send a message to other dogs, their behavior would, no doubt, confirm this hypothesis.  But if we approach this behavior with a clearer mind we might ask, how could these dogs possibly know the "nose height" of another, purely hypothetical dog who might (or might not) come along at some undetermined point in the future? 

Offhand re-telling of it, as if it were a scientific certainty, merely highlights a general tendency in science: in attempting to dissect how an animal's behavior might serve an adaptive purpose -- in this case marking would be a hypothetical means of limiting competition within a niche or habitat -- most scientists blur the line between what makes sense in terms of the grand arc of evolution, and what an individual animal is capable of in terms of its cognitive abilities.

Roger Caras, whose voice used to be heard each year at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in New York, was fond of saying that when a dog sniffs a fire hydrant he's "reading his mail". This is highly anthropomorphic, yet it's hard to dispute that a dog does get information from the scent of other dogs this way. The only question is, did the dog who left the scent do so with the intention of "sending a message" to the one who comes along later?

Territory is defined by biologists as an area which an animal will defend against intruders of the same species. But how is such an area delineated in the animal's mind? Are its boundaries visible and concrete or imaginary and abstract? Is a dog capable of forming a mental image of where his territory begins and ends? And if animals have no sense of self and other, how could they think of a territory as "mine" or "belonging to me?"

So it seems far more likely that when one dog detects the scent of another dog, (particularly an unknown), it could cause a perhaps low-level stress reaction, which would then increase his need to urinate. As he does he would feel the pleasure of releasing some of the tension and pressure in his body? And thus, over time, his body would self-reinforce the behavior of peeing on top of another dog's scent. It would be a purely emotional and perhaps Pavlovian response, not based on intellect or other mental faculties.

This explanation is simple, whole, and complete. It requires no complicated thinking on the dog's part. It obeys the rules of parsimony and logic. And it only requires that a dog have the ability to experience tension and pleasure, and to form simple physical and emotional associations.

Light - Darkness

Speed of Light 299792.458 km/se

Frankly speaking I had to look back in the records to be accurate & I’m sure you would have done the same. As this was always more of a theoretical learning, where did we actually use it in our life, in instances I can fail to see? The mockery is we keep looking for light, still feel this quantified figure could never be a help. I’m on the same page with you & will still not make an extra effort in learning through.

This definition only fits right for scientific theories & evidences. Which was further described by Einstein's theory of General Relativity in the presence of gravity. If I am at a different location than yours then I could measure the speed of light at your location to be any value smaller than or greater than 299792.458 km/sec. So in the presence of gravity the speed of light becomes relative.

In my quest I realized that not only the Speed of Light, but the Speed of Darkness has also to be searched. The one with which we can connect, don’t have to fall back for references. If we have do that, than that defeats the purpose makes us stand from where we had started.

After scratching & straining my head the best was my blink defined it to me. A real blink of an eye takes 300 to 400 milliseconds. Since there’s 1000 milliseconds in each second, a blink of an eye takes around 1/3 of a second. Irrespective of the outer condition you sitting in a dark or a lighted place. The Speed of Light & Speed of Darkness is measured as per your blink. Which equally divides the dark & light time.

 Speed of Darkness = Speed of Light = One Blink

Finally with the blinks your vision is formed towards what you are trying to perceive. A definition which a lay man can also understand. Broadening the word Vision not just to the ability to see but also the power to sense it more deeply to your understandings.

If mathematically we want to be more precise, the availability of records with the number of blinks taken in a minute/hour can be calculated it to the time taken by an individual to reach to his vision. On a serious note would like to leave it on the former, as we are again directing ourselves to another numerical figure making us lost to another game.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is - infinite.” ― William Blake 

Amend to Mend

Why do we hope people will change their goals, habits, and values to better align with ours when they haven’t given us any indication they’d be happier for doing it?

Sometimes we think we know what’s best for others, but if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll likely realize we want people to change when we simply don’t feel satisfied being in a relationship with them as they are.

We all want to be loved and accepted, just as we are. We want people to honor our interests, value our needs, and respect our choices in life.

People don’t want to be changed & we can’t force them to change. This causes no end of frustration, for us and the person who we’re trying to change. The people we want to change, there are others out there who’d accept and even value them, just as they are. 

If it’s not easy for you to change, why should we expect everyone else to change, and get frustrated when they don’t? Why not change to adapt to the reality of the world around you, instead of expecting the world to bend to your desires?

To change other people, you must change yourself. It is the only thing we have power over. If the flaws appear to be a big part of you that others also dislike, then change this part about you to the best of your ability.

Everything that we see outside of ourselves is a reflection of what is inside of us. The environment, the people, the economy, everything because we, as a collective whole, see these things jumbled into our world. If we did not have these qualities present within ourselves somewhere, we would not recognize them in our world.

If you want to change a mirror’s reflection, you must change. Once you have adjusted your emotions and beliefs, you will find that the reflection in your environment will have adjusted to match your new inner reality.

Rubik Cube

No one’s childhood would have passed without being fancied to the Rubik Cube. I would not be surprised that the generation who did not see its inception during their childhood, ended up playing in their adulthood. For whatever reason, nobody reads instruction manuals. If you buy a new Rubik’s Cube, there’s usually a set of instructions that come with it, explaining the algorithms that you need to use to solve the cube.

What do we do when we encounter something- be it a personal, business or academic struggle- that seems completely over our current level of competence? How do we evolve as a person, learn new skills and accomplish increasingly harder goals without losing confidence in ourselves.

I think the answer is in learning ‘What’ & ‘How’ to learn.

In the context of the Rubik’s cube, this began with me researching how the cube was constructed and learning that it wasn't just a random combination of colored squares. There are actually ‘Algorithms’ which help to solve the maze.

Self-coaching to give yourself immediate feedback is just as effective. The first step to the process is having an end result in mind, then using deliberate practice to get there. For me this meant learning all the 8 sequential algorithms to the Rubik’s cube one-by-one and repeating them individually until I was proficient at solving that specific piece of the cube. My focus at this point was not solving the cube, but mastering the one specific algorithm I was working on which was, incidentally, a step in the overall big picture.

It’s all about filling in the gaps, the first stage is about figuring out what you don’t know. But once you know what you don’t know…then you need a specific strategy for filling in these gaps. Most people would make the mistake of trying to do more generalized study or practice harder here. The main way to fill in gaps is to attempt to actually teach what you've learned to someone else and see if you’re able to transmit the information in a logical pattern. You’ll usually find that the things you think you understand by grasping in the dark, guessing and checking, assuming the whole time. While communicating they are much harder to explain & transmit to others.

For me, this really broke down to trying to teach someone else how to solve the cube. Once I learned how to actually teach and transmit the information, I became much more competent in the skill. There’s a big difference between knowing how to do something yourself and knowing how to teach somebody else the same thing.

Motor Skills

‘Motor Skills’ I have been ambushed with this term several times. Yes & I vividly remember has no connection with my pristine car driving skills. A recap only makes me feel guilty as always thought was wise on the whole thing. Abandoning it to best of my ability with starting & closing it to body movements. Where deep & vast as an ocean it has still to give you more.

A fine motor skill is any skill that involves the use of the small muscles in the hands, in accordance with what the eyes see. Which requires the strength, coordination and precise movements of the hand muscles. Every fine motor skill requires that you are able to interpret your visual perceptions into corresponding physical movements. With practice, it’s possible to increase the ability of the fine motor muscles to work more efficiently together in a singular task. 

The research work I ended up doing in this only led me to a point where kids or old age were given the focus. Believe prior is balancing to the new & the latter is losing the balance to it. Where the age group of middle disappeared made me also disappear to it.

Gross motor skills generally refer to movements involving larger muscles, like those in the arms, legs, feet or the entire body (used for walking, jumping and so on). Furthermore Fine motor skills generally refer to movements involving smaller muscles, like those in hands, wrists and fingers (such as those used for holding a crayon or toy). However, as one thinks about these two groups of skills, it is easy to see how they overlap.

Our brain is not fully developed at birth. The brain grows very rapidly during the first several years of life. We, being highly conscious of our motor skills--our potential and abilities-- are greatly influenced by them. Our language betrays our need for motor excellence.  From birth, we judge the development of a child by whether he is rolling over yet, sitting up. But what if they can't "DO" like someone else?  What if the natural ability isn't there, or the skill hasn't been developed?  How does this child feel?  How is he seen by others in his world? What kind of feedback does he receive?

Our initial perception of self is an interpretation of how we think others perceive us.  So what can we do, to enhance the self-esteem? The point here is - this thing does not finish till the child level it goes on throughout our life. We are throughout our journey only busy magnifying our motor skills at no age do I see we have left it behind.

“I rate enthusiasm even above professional skill”