Love Actually

Nope, its not a review of the film, but rather a review of an article recently picked out by Zhang Yi designed to scientifically answer

"What IS love, actually?"

Scientists have been studying brain activities and chemical levels in all kinds of animals to try and answer this very question. In summary, they've discovered its basically oxytocin and vasopressin.

Glad thats cleared up...

...

... what? You wanted more details?.. FINE.

Many mammals have a connection between parent and child. In evolutionary terms, such a connection improves the odds the child will survive and thus is better for the species. This connection, in females at least, is produced by a large amount of oxy released during childbirth. In simple terms it produces a kind of addiction, in a similar way as cocaine or heroine, and associates it with the child.

Long term connections between lovers is far less common in mammals, and serves much less purpose in terms of survival. Studies in humans show that the chemical reactions and brain activities that take place when lovers see each other is in fact disturbingly similar to those that take place when a mother sees their child. Love between partners is basically a mutation of the bond of a mother.

Sexual activities release more of these chemicals and may, therefore, improve relationships.

OK, thats oxy, what about vas?

Well vas is the male equivalent. Similar to oxy, it promotes bonding and paternal instincts. Unlike oxy, it also encourages violent tendencies towards potential rivals. Interestingly, the effect of vas on males is NOT always guaranteed. Some males seem to have a certain gene which seems to greatly reduce the chances of them being happy in a long term relationship with anyone.

Some males are actually, physically and mentally, not able to feel "true" love. Ever.

The other interesting (aka worryingly scary) fact is that since scientists are learning more about the chemicals responsible for love, it suggests the mystical "love potion" may not stay so mythical. Theorectically, it may be possible to drug someone to love you, and weirdly they might not even get upset about it.

In fact, they'd probably love you for it...

South of the Border, West of the Sun.

South of the Border, West of the Sun was another novel from the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, this time translated by Philip Gabriel.

Unfortunately, it lacked both the quality and quantity of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

In terms of length, it wa only 187 pages long. That was less than half the length of Dave's Thesis, with smaller pages and bigger font.

In terms of storyline, it lacked any kind of magical quality found in Murakami's other book. Although a few slightly strange pages towards the end, which did nothing to add to the book though subtly suggest things may not be quite as they seem, it was generally a predictable tale from start to finish.

It follows the life of Hajime, who seems destined to fudge up his love life. He falls in love with a girl at the age of 12, although not in a physical way, but moves away after elementary school and despite thinking about her constantly fails to keep in touch.

He cheats on his first real girlfriend, with her cousin, to whom the girl is very very close. The girl never gets over it and her entire life is ruined. He feels deeply sorry, but apparently just couldn't help himself.

After bouncing around from girl to girl for a few years, he finally settles in with a wife, has two little girls and a great business. All is well. Until the love of his life from when he was 12 pops back onto the sceen. Needless to say, he's learnt nothing, and goes about ruining another fine relationship.

And that's pretty much the entire book from start to finish.

Throughout, Hajime trys to come across not so much as the "good guy," but certainly as blameless as possible. It's never really his fault. He just can't help it.

And it's true. None of us can truly control how we feel towards any other person. But we can all control what we do. Falling for someone new might happen to the best of us, no matter what our intentions. But the decent thing to do is to talk first with your current partner. Let them know exactly where they stand. Choose either or. In a relationship all anyone can do is treat their partner with respect and honesty. If the love dies down, no one might be to blame.

Hajime's actions are therefore packed full of blame and the book basically just feels depressing, with the main character being an unlikable tw*t, leaving pain and misery wherever he goes.

"I'm not blaming you for falling in love with another woman. I'm not angry, either. I should be, but I'm not. I just feel pain. A lot of pain. I thought I could imagine how much this would hurt, but I was wrong."

You can probably give this one a miss, unless u really like this kind of thing.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

"It's like when you put instant rice pudding mix in a bowl in the microwave and push the button, and you take the cover off when it rings, and there you've got rice pudding. I mean, what happens in between the time when you push the switch and when the microwave rings? You can't tell what's going on under the cover. Maybe the instant rice pudding first turns into macaroni cheese in the darkness when nobody's looking and only then turns back into rice pudding... I would be kind of relieved if, every once in a while, after you put rice pudding mix in the microwave and it rang and you opened the top, you got macaroni cheese."

The Wind-up bird Chronicle, written in Japanese by Haruki Murakami and translated to English by Jay Rubin, begins like a bag of instant rice pudding mix and ends up with delicious macaroni cheese. It's strange, it's illogical, but it's a damn fine read.

It tells the story of Toru Okada, a happily married individual who has recently quit the job he was unhappy with and is now living the good life, cooking, cleaning, reading and enjoying jazz. The early chapters biggest worry is the disappearance of the couple's cat. Things take a turn for the worse, however, when Toru's wife also does a disappearing act, ending their life together without even saying goodbye.

Where has she gone? Why has she left? Will they ever get back together? Will the cat come back? The quest to answer these questions bumps into several more along the way, the answers to most being far from straight forward, the answers to many being non-existant.

So, how does Toru go about finding his answers? He does what any loving husband would. He climbs down a dried up well and sits there for a few days...

..mmm.... macaroni cheese....

If you still need further encouragement to read the book, turn to page 11, 4 lines down, start reading from "I'm in bed. I've just come out of the shower, and I'm not wearing a thing."

And there's plenty more where that comes from.

Enjoy.

The God Delusion.

In "The God Delusion", Richard Dawkins puts forward various arguements as to why he believes there is no God. The most compelling, most mentioned reason for his belief is the difficulty he sees in answering the question,

"Where did God come from?"

It's a tricky one to be sure. He goes on further to point out the silliness of saying humans are too complex to be created without a creator, without stopping to ask isn't the creator infinitely more complex?

But his main arguement isn't with God. Few people really have an arguement with the Big Guy. The believers usually love him, the non-believers don't sit around arguing with something they don't believe in.

The main arguement is against religion, of every shape and size.

He models religion as a disease, spreading from one generation to the next. Symptoms of this disease include:

Mindless hatred towards the none infected.
Superiority complex.
Inabilty to question and seek out truth.

Most worryingly, he points out that religion can and does be used as an "acceptable" form of child abuse. Images of Hell, for example, are burnt into children at a very early age and can emotionally scar them for the rest of there lives.

For all these reasons and several more, Richard Dawkins asks for an end to religion and prayers for a more peaceful enlightened age of science and logic.

What he doesn't seem to really approach is how he thinks anything like that would be remotely possible.

Imagine a law passed that anything not scientifically proven to be true should not be mentioned to children. Madness. Religious outrage obviously, a complete loss of the freedom of speech and an assination of Superman, faeries and Santa.

There is no possible way to word a law to crack down on religion without it being too strong or too soft. Even if such a law where possible, there would be no practical way to uphold it. Theres also no garuntees that religion won't be replaced by something else, something new and something that could be just as terrible.

There is no "cure" for religion. Indeed, one isn't really needed. Religion has it's dark side, but it also does much good. The trick is to remove only the unwanted slag.

Perhaps, a "vacination" in childhood could help?

Teaching children that hatred based on "us and them" mentality is wrong.
Teaching children we are all equal.
Teaching children to always, always ask questions.

Any questions?

The Solitaire Mystery

Friday night, Dave opened a new book. Monday morning, he closed it again, finished.

The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder.

A strange little book, with a plot that was truely bizarre.

The book is writen from the view of Hans Thomas, a boy whose mother left him 8 years ago. Hans and his father discover the mother is now a famous model in Athens and they decide to drive across Europe to find her and bring her back.

Along the way, they ask a dwarf for directions. He gives Hans a magnifying glass and points the pair in the direction of the village Dorf. There the magnifying glass comes in handy, when a nice old baker gives Hans an incredibly small book, which he conceals in a sticky-bun. For the remainder of the journey, Hans reads the small book whenever possible. It contains a wonderous story of a magical Island, filled with a pack of cards that had come alive in dwarf form, goldfish and the greatest drink ever created, Rainbow Fizz. It also contains a prophecy from 150 years ago which predicts the life of Hans with frightening accuracy.

Unlike most novels, however, the plot itself was of little real importance. Jostein Gaarder, before becoming a world famous novellist, taught high school philosophy and contributed to several textbooks on philosophy and theology. Not surprisingly therefore, the real focus of the book was it's philosophic discussions. The plot was simply a pleasent background to which to set the discussions around. It discussed everything from the meaning of life to the dangers of drugs and alcohol. Dave couldn't get enough.

Hans father tells Hans to imagine a planet filled with intelligent life forms. Life forms who could walk, talk, build houses, create complex machinary. Undoubtibly, the discovery of such a planet would be the most sensational scientific discovery the world had ever known. But such a planet HAS been discovered. It's called "Earth".

Why do we fail to amaze ourselves?

The Conjuror's Bird

Historical Fact: In an expedition to the South Seas in 1774 a new type of bird was found in Ulieta. One speciman of this bird was collected. It was described in some notes, drawn in detail and taken to England. Since it was a rather plain looking bird it was given little further interest.
It became interesting later, because no other speciman of this bird was ever found anywhere, living or dead. To add to this, the original speciman disappeared without a trace. Only the notes and the picture, along with other accounts of people who saw the speciman back then, remain to prove it had ever existed.

Given this fact, The Conjuror's Bird almost writes itself. Indeed, although it follows a fictional character, John Fitzgerald, and his quest to discover what has happened to the bird, being helped and hampered by other fictional character's, this fictional John actually does all the things the real life author Martin Davies had to do to find out as much as he could about this bird.

Only the ending of the book really deviates from real life, although even this is subtle enough to leave the reader thinking maybe, just maybe.

A well researched, well written all round pleasent read.

Well done Martin.

I Capture The Castle

3:30am, Dave finally closed the book and yawned, "Finished."

'I Capture The Castle', by Dodie Smith. Probably not quite as famous as her later novel, 101 Dalmatians, but famous enough to have been made into a movie 3 years ago.

4:00am, Dave lay in bed, still trying to decide what he thought of it. The overall plot was a very done to death poor family with no hope meet rich kind family and everything works out. The book is written as if the journal of the main heroine, Cassandra, a 17 year old, although with the nice twist that she is a wannabe writer so it can still present much more detail than the average person would usually put in their journals.

On beginning the book, Cassandra seems like an innocent enough, "consiously naive" girl and it makes for a good read. Unfortuantely, as the characters develop, Dave found himself liking the majority of them less and less, Cassandra included. The only characters who still had Dave's favour by the end where Thomas and Stepthen, the outcome for both of whom is left as unimportant.

He found himself wondering how the majority of readers felt. Would they be more understanding? Would they forgive Cassandra more easily?

Who knew?

Maybe he should go and watch the film.