Understanding other people's opinions

In my opinion attempting to understand someone else's opinion, I mean really giving it a fair chance, is one of the most important abilities for any human being to have.  Much of our lives are spent interacting with other people and we will run into people that don't share the same opinions as us which is where this ability comes in.  I think that the willingness to have an open mind allows you to learn from and get along with others much better.

Although it may not be fair to paint people with a single brush, I've found that there are some who seem to think that they are always right, some people that are willing to discuss and some who will agree with anything.  Although I think that at times it's beneficial to be decisive, people need to do their best to not be closed minded and not think that there is no value in other's opinions.

It's important to remember that people have opinions for a reason, however stupid they may seem to you.  If you honestly step back for a second and think about someone else's opinion you disagree with, you may find that there are certain situations that they would be correct or there may be some things that you actually do agree on.  Finding that common ground and then working at the hidden assumptions and reasoning people have is often enough to turn an argument into a discussion.

The difficult part about this is that our emotions often take over and for best results this procedure requires both people involved in the disagreement to act more rationally.  I think that we often have an emotional reaction and slightly later a rational reaction and it's important that our immediate emotional reaction does not overpower the rational one.  If you can start a sentence with "I think, but I may be wrong" then it shows that you're willing to discuss and I think that the other party will often attempt to match your fairness.

According to my haphazard musings you might believe that if we could all do this all the time we would live in a utopia, holding hands and singing kumbaya.  Maybe that's not too far off the mark, however nobody's perfect.  We can only strive to be a bit better at skills like this day after day and I think it's important to make a concerted effort to understand (and maybe sometimes agree with) other people's opinions.

PS This is the 52nd blog post after starting one year ago to get donations for the Relay for Life. I may continue at the once a week pace or I may not, but it was fun learning about many random things this year.

Why do birds fly in a V formation?

I'll sometimes notice birds flying overhead and like most people that have seen them in a V formation, I've wondered why they fly like that.  Apparently there are a couple different reasons that have been theorized and tested.

The main reason seems to be that when a bird is flapping it generates an upwash and downwash which benefits the bird behind it.  It helps to support the weight of this bird which means it doesn't have to flap as hard and can use less energy.  This can be especially helpful on very long duration flights.  Since the front bird isn't receiving any benefit they will often switch positions midflight.  One study was done that attached heart rate monitors to pelicans and found that the heart rates of the birds in a V formation were lower than when flying alone, which lends some credence to this belief.  I also found a site that challenges the commonly repeated energy savings a bird will get and is an interesting read.

The other benefit of the formation is that it's likely easier to keep visual track of the other birds.  Studies that have taken into account the optimal positions based on energy efficiency and the optimal positions based on birds' blind spots seem to suggest that the birds are not always in the "best" positions.  Some tend toward energy or visual efficiency and some neither, so it's likely that there are other factors at play.  Naturally it's a bit difficult to continuously view a flock over large distances.

Salt water and sore throats

A couple weeks ago I was coughing and had a sore throat.  I was told to try gargling salt water and it actually helped quite a bit!  My throat felt much better afterwards.  However I was curious why this worked as it seemed so simple.

Sore throats are inflamed because of bacteria in the tissues.  Apparently the bad bacteria like a wet environment and salt makes the environment less hospitable, though it doesn't actually directly kill the bacteria.  The inflammations are filled with water and because of osmosis the salt water dehydrates them, making the environment less suitable for bacteria.  Since this doesn't kill them it's recommended that you do this several times a day to keep the bacteria at bay.

Why are basketball dunks such a big deal?

I don't watch basketball that much, but I do watch sports highlights and they often feature basketball players dunking the ball.  Now some of the dunks I think are pretty impressive.  If they dunk over someone taller than them or if they have to extend far then I think they deserve the reactions they get.  Alley-oops are usually pretty impressive as well.  However some of the dunks they show in the highlight reels or that people cheer loudly about really don't seem that great to me.  If a 6'9" player runs up and slams the ball in the net it really doesn't seem that exciting.

Here's a link to someone asking this same question.  The conclusion seems to be that usually people won't be excited about a really tall guy doing an easy dunk, but regardless, dunking is hard for the average person and it can be exciting to see someone do something that you'll never be able to do.  Especially if it's a shorter player dunking than it's a big deal.  Well I suppose I agree with those statements, I still think that some of the dunks in the highlights aren't that impressive looking.

The funniest thing I read while searching around about this was this article on dunk reactions.  I think I agree that some of the reactions are better than the dunks.

Should you breed animals?

When I was a kid I had always wanted to have a zoo of animals that I would run.  Maybe because I wanted to charge admission and make money (I was a bit of a businessman as a kid) but I really liked the idea of taking care of animals.  My first "pets" were slugs and snails in transparent containers with plastic wrap on top, poked with air holes.  I even had some snail babies; tiny translucent little things.  Later on I had fish, a hamster, cats and a dog.  I would look through pet stores in envy at the reptiles and other interesting animals (hedgehogs, chinchillas, ferrets!) though I didn't quite have the income to support them.  Now that I have the money (though with less time) I was thinking about whether it might be fun to have some animals and potentially breed them to make some money on the side.  My cousin actually breeds reptiles so I knew this wasn't completely insane.

Doing some preliminary research I found that there was no shortage of people with the same questions about breeding and there many different options for the types of animals.  I live in the city so livestock is out and I was thinking I wanted to keep the animals on the smaller side as space is at somewhat of a premium.  Guinea pigs, geckos, turtles, mice, fish, hedgehogs.  All seemed like potentially interesting candidates.

One of the common things I found is that if you are wanting to breed animals you'll need multiple enclosures to separate the different animals at certain stages of the process.  You'll often want to separate the female after she's pregnant and the young after they're born.  You may want to have the males separate from each other as they may get territorial as well.  It's important to separate animals that are about to give birth because it's possible for a female to get pregnant again shortly after giving birth which isn't good for her health.  The females should often have several months rest before breeding again, which emphasizes the patience you'll need to have in breeding animals.

Common things that I seemed to keep finding in my searches was that for some animals it just doesn't make sense to breed more of them.  There are apparently many guinea pigs without homes already so you're going to be hard pressed to give them to good homes.  Pet stores usually don't give great prices from the animals or won't even take them at all.  I also found that people are very wary of other people wanting to start breeding animals purely for profit.  They know about the "puppy mills" and people in it only for the profit may take shortcuts and not treat the animals with respect.  What I often found repeated is that you are probably not going to make much if any money from breeding animals.  Most people do it as a hobby and they do it because they enjoy it.

In the end I came to the conclusion that I don't really have the time at the moment, but I may consider it for fun in the future.  Hens can be kept in backyards in Vancouver now, so that could be a future source of my eggs...  However if you're going into pet breeding thinking that there is a profit to be made, remember it's probably not the case.

Is bacon "bad" for you?

"Everyone knows" that bacon is bad for you but I had remembered reading some things in the past that seemed to suggest bacon has been unfairly vilified.  Also like many people I enjoy bacon and in that sense there was some confirmation bias involved in my searches into this topic.  I was hoping whatever I found would make me feel better about consuming bacon.

What I found is that it seems to be sodium, saturated fats and nitrates in bacon that people are citing as detrimental.  It seems like everyone agrees that the nitrates and sodium are bad, however there is some debate on the saturated fats.  Saturated fats can increase the levels of cholesterol which can increase your risk of heart disease and stroke.  Other sources state that saturated fats from natural sources are not bad for your health and are much better than "polyunsaturated and hydrogenated substitutes".  With a diet that is low in sugar and processed carbs and high in vegetables, the natural saturated fats found in bacon can fit into that just fine.

As I mentioned before, the nitrates or nitrites that are often included in processed meats can be detrimental to your health.  I'm not going to claim to understand the science behind it, but apparently researchers have found carcinogenic compounds in many types of store bought bacon.  However "nitrite-free" bacon is not necessarily the answer.  Some of the methods used to produce this type of bacon can actually produce more nitrite content than just normal processing with nitrite salts.  A source suggests that traditionally cured bacon with herbs, sugars, salt and sodium nitrite is much better than the "uncured" bacon.

My favourite quote out of all this was "But aside from this potential, sodium nitrate is actually dangerous when it come in contact with other substances possibly causing a fire, inhaling it can cause problems with your respiratory system and exposure directly to your skin can cause severe irritation.  Now granted, most are not inhaling bacon, rubbing it on their body (although I have heard a few stories)..."

Overall the conclusion seems to be that as part of a healthy diet, bacon can be a good addition provided that it's "naturally cured".  Bacon should probably not be eaten all the time, especially some of the lower quality nitrate preserved brands.  Some studies have shown that eating more processed meats can increase the risks of some diseases, though the people that ate more meats also smoked more and in general had less healthy diets, so it's hard to say which way the arrow of causality points.

Why do football players put black lines under their eyes?

Watching parts of the football games this weekend reminded me of the black lines or smudges that many of the players put under their eyes.  I had always "known" that this helped to reduce glare in the eyes but I wanted to check and see if this was true and how much it actually helped.

I found that this grease is called eye black and players in baseball and football have been wearing it for some time.  In football it dates back to at least 1942, it goes even farther back in baseball and was originally made from burned cork ashes.  The glare reducing effects hadn't really been tested over the years and over time eye black has been used for the intimidation factor and even as a message board.  Advertisements and other messages can be seen on some players with commercial eye black stickers.

A couple of studies were done within the last ten years and it was found that eye black gives a "small, but statistically significant" increase in glare reduction and contrast sensitivity.  Interestingly commercial stickers were found to have no advantage over petroleum jelly, the control.  One of the studies found that eye black was less effective on blue-eyed people, likely because they have less pigment to block out the light.

So it may give some benefit, but it seems like most players simply do it for the ritual and the "fashion".  And if it could possibly give a small competitive advantage then why not?

Battery charging

With all of the smartphones, tablets and laptops around, most people have a device with a battery and have heard advice from other people on how to get the most out that battery.  The main thing I've heard is that you should let your battery drain all the way and then charge it back up to increase the battery life.  Curious if this was true I set out on a journey through the internet.

I found a bit of conflicting information and learned a few things about the different types of batteries, though I'm nowhere near an expert now.  Basically there are a few main types of batteries used.  The older ones are NiCd (nickel cadmium) and NiMH (nickel-metal hydride).  They aren't very widely used anymore because of environmental concerns surrounding their disposal.  Apparently with these types of batteries it is a good idea to completely discharge and then recharge them to ensure maximum capacity.  They're also said to have a "memory effect" that can result from not following this procedure.

Newer Lithium-Ion or Lithium-Polymer batteries are commonly found in smartphones and the latest electronic devices.  These don't suffer from the memory effect and the batteries can be shaped to different sizes allowing flexibility in the design of the devices they'll power.  From the Apple website on batteries they say that "you can recharge a lithium-ion polymer battery whenever convenient, without requiring a full charge or discharge cycle."  Although on their iPhone battery page they say "Be sure to go through at least one charge cycle per month (charging the battery to 100% and then completely running it down)."  It can also be important to calibrate your battery to make sure that any battery stats that are reported are correct.

Other sources seem to support the occasional full discharge and recharge every so often.  Apparently it's also not necessarily a good idea to keep your phone plugged in all the time as it can stress the battery.  Extreme temperatures (hot or cold) are also bad, pretty obvious.

Safely remove hardware?

You plug in a USB flash drive, transfer some files and then get ready to unplug it.  If you're like me then sometimes you decide to "safely remove hardware" and sometimes you don't.  I figured that if there weren't any file transfers going on then I should probably be fine, though I wasn't completely confident that was the case.  If you remove it while files are being transferred then yeah you can probably expect data loss or corruption, but I wanted to know about other cases.

According to anecdotal reports it seems like some people "haven't experienced any problems" while others have had data loss or worse when not safely removing hardware.  It depends on the hardware that is being removed though I'm mostly interesting in flash drives.  So it turns out there is an option in Windows for flash drives to optimize for quick removal or better performance.  You can open "Device Manager", expand the "Disk Drives" section, right click a USB drive and select Properties.  If you select the Policies tab you can switch between "Quick Removal" which is the default and "Better Performance".

It says that if you use Quick Removal you don't have to use safely remove hardware!  Obviously you don't want to remove a flash drive while files are being transferred, but this is probably why many people never see any problems.  However you may have to be careful if there is a program in the background that is writing to it.  Many flash drives have blinking lights that will notify you if the device is in use, so that can be another indicator.  If you have Better Performance enabled it says that you must use safely remove hardware.  This is because "write caching" will be enabled.  Basically this means that Windows may not write the data to your drive immediately which can improve performance in some cases.  When you safely remove hardware it will force Windows to write all of the data to the drive to make sure that you don't lose any of it.

There is also a feature called ReadyBoost that if it's enabled then you should probably use safely remove hardware to make sure that there aren't any problems.  I believe this is disabled by default though.  In conclusion if you're just transferring files and the transfer has completed it's most likely safe to just remove the drive.  However if you have "Better Performance" enabled, are using ReadyBoost or just want to be completely safe then use safely remove hardware.

Why is waterboarding so bad?

Over the last decade you've probably heard the term "waterboarding" or seen it in a movie at least once or twice.  Here's the wikipedia definition because it's succinct, "Waterboarding is a form of torture in which water is poured over the face of an immobilized captive, thus causing the individual to experience the sensation of drowning."  Often it's shown to be done with a cloth over the person's face.  After doing a little reading on this I found that it was often reported that CIA officers or other trained individuals would last less than 20 seconds before giving up.  One of my first thoughts was is it that quick, can't they just hold their breath for 20 seconds?  Obviously they could, so obviously I was missing something.

After doing some reading it seemed like that number may or may not be true for trained individuals but there have been public demonstrations where it is about right.  There were also some things I learned that weren't obvious to me when I first heard about waterboarding.  One of the key things seems to be that the head of the person is set at a position below their lungs.  This way the water can get into their respiratory system in the mouth and nose but not straight into their lungs, simulating drowning.  So if done right the person is not at a large risk of dying, although it may feel like it to them.

From what I've read it seems like as long as a person can stay in control and hold they're breath they will be ok, but as soon as they lose control of their breathing they're in big trouble.  Some people are better at staying in control than others.  One of the most interesting (and a bit chilling) experiences to read is here.  He talks about testing out waterboarding on himself in a controlled situation.  After his final test he says "It took me ten minutes to recover my senses once I tried this. I was shuddering in a corner, convinced I narrowly escaped killing myself."  Obviously this is anecdotal, but the entire post was very interesting to read.  The conclusion seems to be that at some point our instincts take over and there is nothing we can do to stop the panic.

In an uncontrolled test an interrogator could easily force down a person's chest so that they couldn't hold their breath and combined with the stress of the situation I'm sure that would make it much more difficult.  On top of that this could be done repeatedly and could probably cause severe psychological damage.  So basically you're not going to outlast an interrogator, you will break at some point and holding your breath is not going to help you.

Besides being very cruel, one of the reasons this technique may not be that effective is that it can often bring about false confessions.  If it's anywhere near as terrifying as people have reported you could make anyone confess to anything.