Post- Holiday Blues:Reality

Returning from holiday always makes me a bit blue.

That freedom, excitement with good company and laughs, suddenly is over, in a glance.

The washing machine and the energy-efficient machines are waiting for their turn, yet I am not energy efficient...

The tasks - small ones, and the big ones are waiting.

Coming back to reality reminds me of the things I was hoping to escape from, just for one day.

So, I googled it, what should I do?

What should you do with those emotions?

Well, acknowledge them. Take a deep breath, relax, and rest.

Yes, rest.

Anyway, the forecaster said that spring will be late this year.

Love, intimacy and closseness

 It is hard to explain the meaning of love because it is a very subjective experience, yet universal.

So many books, music, films, and thoughts are occupied with the theme. There are many interpretations, feelings, and beliefs

So,  nobody can tell what love is, until he experiences it.

Every experience is different, though.

There are many trials and errors, many miscommunications, and, ultimately disappointments.

Lots of wasted time.

But, that time, doesn't have to be wasted, if somebody, grows, and learns what he doesn't want.

And, unfortunately, that's the process of learning, through trial and error.

Knowing what you don't want, not the other way around- I learned the hard way.

And it was worth it.

Not Bad for a human

 Soooo...We have all heard by now about this mighty tool.
When my colleague from work told me about it, I was thrilled to try it out. And it was awesome!
Most of the time.
It solved my daily problems:Grammar checking, best anti-aging products, math discoveries, for my daughter's homework that needed to be done asap, in a Word document, at midnight, and solutions for a hernia.
I even asked him what I never asked anyone, and he calmed me, with a very reasonable answer.
Just.Wow.Looks like they outperformed us, using our data and knowledge.

So It opened many fears and questions:Will robots replace humans? In many aspects, probably.
And can we coexist with them?

I certainly would love to.

If they are like Bishop.

Today mood :nostalgia shapes our music taste

   Recent studies have shown that music that catered to our tastes and preferences as adolescents has greater power over our emotions than music we listen to at any other point in our lives.  This is because our auditory system “binds” us to the music we hear as teenagers, a connection that stays with us throughout the remainder of our life.  This means that the cultural phenomenon of nostalgia has clear neurological roots—other music just doesn’t please our ears as much as the sounds heard during the development stages of adolescence.

          It is obvious that listening to music can elicit powerful emotions, mixed feelings, and memories by engaging our auditory, premotor, parietal, and prefrontal cortex.  PET and fMRI brain imaging techniques show that the release of chemicals that make us feel good after music-listening depends largely on our personal preference.  Listening to our favourite music (versus listening to music we are impartial to) releases a greater amount of dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin.  But how do we come to prefer certain kinds of music over others in the first place?  The most rapid neurological development to our brains happens between the ages of 12 and 22.  When listening to songs at that age that we like, our brains make strong neural connections to it, consequently creating strong memories about the events associated with those songs.  Due to an excessive amount of pubertal growth hormones the memories are also full of heightened emotion, and those songs/events are perceived to be overly important.

          The author also notes that musical preference developed in our teenage years is closely tied with our social lives.  Adolescence is often a time for establishing one’s identity, and music is one way of discovering and expressing it.  This, in combination with a phenomenon where autobiographical memories are disproportionately remembered for events in adolescence and early adulthood called the “reminiscence bump” (Rathbone et al. 2008; Krumhansl & Zupnick 2013), causes music that we are drawn to as teenagers to become a part of our self-image for life. 

Reference:

This is an article written recently for the “Science” section of Slate.com, an online magazine also featuring stories on current affairs, business, and the arts.