Tag: thoughts

Yesterday, some of my classmates and I were having a post-exams dinner at Gerry’s Libis when the question of why we were all drained, tired, and famished after the exams. I mentioned that I read somewhere that the brain consumes a lot of energy. But how much exactly I didn’t know. So I did a quick look up and found the following (from Power Of A Human Brain):

The brain makes up 2% of a person’s weight. Despite this, even at rest, the brain consumes 20% of the body’s energy. The brain consumes energy at 10 times the rate of the rest of the body per gram of tissue. The average power consumption of a typical adult is 100 Watts and the brain consumes 20% of this making the power of the brain 20 W.Glucose is the main energy source for the brain. As the size and complexity of the brain increases, energy requirements increase.

The human brain is one of the most energy hungry organs in the body thereby increasing its vulnerability. If the energy supply is cut off for 10 minutes, there is permanent brain damage. There is no other organ nearly as sensitive to changes in its energy supply.

Incidentally, the question why some people get chubby at MBA also popped up. My theory is that people usually eat a lot after brainwork. Thus they tend to eat more but the energy is no longer needed so it gets stored as fat. The solution, I think, would be to eat a bit before doing anything majorly cerebral :D

I’m a clutter person but I call it organized chaos. Or so I thought. This morning I woke up extraordinarily early. I got up and went over to my work desk and, in the dim light of dawn, surveyed the clutter. I thought to myself “Ah but I know where each and every thing is.” Myself replied “Yeah right. You don’t know where your ID is.” Smugly I returned “Oh but I know where it is!” A few days back I thought I had lost my UP ID but after some thinking I’ve decided I’ve left it at the gate of a friend’s village. So that’s that. I head over to the kitchen table to check out the revel bars I am going to take to the office. I counted them, checked them, and lo and behold! There’s my ID just sitting there on the table. Myself laughed at me.

It’s the season for giving. Now here’s an interesting thought: Potentially, giving is a negative economic benefit activity. And that’s no good. But if there’s giving, there is also receiving, a positive economic benefit activity. Considering both together, we get a zero-sum economic benefit situation which is not so bad anymore. But we haven’t yet considered goodwill which is generated by the two activities. And it gets even better, we can just give again what we received and so on and we could potentially have unlimited goodwill! Cool huh?

Darn! I think I’ve been studying too much :P

While hanging out at a friend’s pad, I caught a glimpse of some of those lunchtime variety shows while channel surfing. I couldn’t help but marvel at how retarded the shows are (there goes any possible points with a starlet :P). I wonder if this is what the producers think the audience wants or if this is really what the audience wants. I really hope the producers are just misinformed because if they aren’t it would be a poor reflection of the audience.

No, not December 7, 1941 which was the date of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. I’m referring to September 11, 2001. The date a group of Islamic extremists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

I remember it so clearly. My officemates and I were playing Starcraft when we heard the news over the phone. We checked the news websites and they were all unreachable. Overloaded. SMS messages soon came pouring in. One said: “The World Trade Center is no more”. I didn’t believe it.

Only when I got home and watched the replay of the planes hitting the towers and their crashing down did it finally dawned on me that the World Trade Center was really gone. And that these events has just changed the world greatly. This attack awakened the United States to a new, previously ignored, threat.

Five years hence and we wonder if the awakening has really done much. Osama Bin Laden is still on the loose. Afghanistan is still in turmoil. It can even be argued that the Middle East is more strife-torn than ever. All because of the United States’ War on Terror.

But does this mean the United States should have done nothing? No. It just means that it needs to do more and that the rest of the world has to join in. Not doing anything is just letting the threat grow to eventually come out again more destructive than ever. This threat is not just against the United States. It is a threat against the whole world. Or at least the part that wants freedom.