Dear Cia Column

Dear Ice,

That's a broader and more complex question that is in dire need of specifics. So let me instead focus on the assertion that people are in a bad mood when they're hungry.

I know full well what you mean since I've had that happen to me as well most of my life. You have a big "standard" breakfast (with cereal, toast, pure fruit juice, etc), you feel bloated and satisfied for a while, then aroun 11am you start feeling hunger pangs. By the time lunch comes around, you're about ready to gnaw your arm off... but thankfully, you gnaw on a nice big sandwich instead (with chips and possibly a soft drink or other sugar beverage). Again, you feel bloated and satisfied, but the feeling wouldn't last, and before you make it home to dinner you feel the need to snack on stuff -- usually more chips or crackers or dried fruit. At last you get to dinner, and whatever is eaten is probably going to be accompanied by bread or pasta or dessert, which you will gladly devour like a wolf after a hunt. And i won't even go into midnight snacking! So insatiable is this unwarranted, unexplainable appetite, you don't even realize how much of a cranky monster you are when you're flirtinf with starvation.

As one of my favorite authors would say...

"Folks! This ain't normal!!!"

What I've described here is a standard sugar high... a peak and trough of blood sugar in your body due to the effects of insulin. When you consume a meal heavy in sugar and grains (which ultimately digest down to... more sugar), that will overload your body with a sea of blood sugar (glucose) and make you hyperenergetic. Glucose is your body's afterbunner: great for quick intense bursts of energy, but not something you should, or can, keep on all the time. Since all that blood sugar is toxic if it sticks around too long, insulin is released to try to take it out of your body and into your liver, where it can safely be converted to fat. During that sugar herding, however, your body is prevented from either using glucose OR its fat reserves, leaving it starved of energy. This is when you begin to get hungry again, as your cells are suddenly cut off from their fuel source

And since your body is suddenly feeling starved, adrenalin kicks in to try and get your blood sugar back up again to escape this invisible danger to your body). That adrenalin is what makes you angry and cranky. And as you can tell from my previous description, this goes on ALL THE TIME, wearing your body out with this sugar rollercoaster ride.

Minus the rollercoaster, being hungry is not unsettling nor does it make you cranky... it simply remains a gentle reminder that you should eat something, while your body patiently burns its normal fat reserves. That's how it "normally" works.


--Cia

ok, makes sense, thanks for taking the time to answer my question.

Dear Cia,

Do you have any ideas for cool dungeons on the server? The last dungeon that we finished was the Barbary sewers and I was thinking you might have anymore ideas  Since you came up with the Tax Collector

And if you have, do you have ideas for the mob names/items too? (Like Tax Collector and his weapon Commission)



-Spookie

Dear Spookie,

I always have tons of ideas, although for best results you'd have to let me know which town or region you'd like a dungeon for. ^^

However, i definitely encourage you to make use of the size changing theme of Gulliver, and for confined areas have a kind of "shrinking" dungeon. Meaning you have something like, say, a hunk of cheese placed inside a shrink machine or apparatus, which then "shrinks" the player to a fictional 1/400th size. In reality they get teleported to an expansive area with a huge recreation of the hunk of cheese, which then assumes the role of a big yellow dungeon with mold and bacteria as enemies. ^^

You can do the same with carpet, a clock, a petri dish, an oven, a stomach, a stuffed turkey, some stale whole wheat bread, you name it. With these micro scenarios, the possibilities become endless... and space won't be a premium either since you can always stick these in some bedrock shell under some ocean. ^^

--Cia

Wow thats really clever.

Dear Cia,

What does magnesium do for our bodies and what are magnesium rich foods?

Dear Ice,

Ah! Magnesium! It's another one of those wonderful minerals so essential to our health that we all happen to be deficient in due to our modern environment and diet. It isn't as much that magnesium is filtered out of our tap waters or softening systems, or that magnesium-rich waters are also too polluted by industrial or agri-business run-off to drink; it's also an issue that a lot of our food we get from agri-business is grown from increasingly magnesium-impoverished soils, so the foods that SHOULD contain some magnesium have it less and less. This is definitely not a mineral you should shy away from supplementing, as it's often times the only alternative we have in our modern life.

[if you do, focus on magnesium citrate or malate as these have more bioavailable magnesium for you to digest... magnesium oxide, the cheapest and most common, is also the poorest to absorb, so you may only get 5-10% of the intake advertised in the bottle. :/ ]

So why is this thing important? Like vitamin D, it is a kind of "renaissance man" of minerals with multiple functions in your body having to do with cell growth, and specifically the creation of ATP energy molecules. Among its many benefits to your body are:

- maintaining your heart muscle
- properly forming your bones and teeth
- relaxing cardiovascular blood vessels, which is very helpful in preventing inflammation and thus arterial plaque, and reducing blood pressure
- regulating blood sugar levels by improving insulin sensitivity (making it harder for you to become diabetic, for instance)
- promoting proper bowel function (this is way you may have heard of "milk of magnesia", or magnesium hydroxide, to combat constipation)
- promoting deep sleep (which is why magnesium supplements are best taken at night) ^^

In the case of blood pressure, for instance, while the western press lambasts sodium as the sole culprit for high blood pressure, the reality is that blood pressure regulation is primarily maintained by a healthy balance of FOUR different but equally important minerals:

- sodium
- magensium
- calcium
- potassium

Just like potassium is the yang to sodium's yin, so too is magnesium to the role of calcium which is used to harden things (including your arteries!), so understandably you'll want to have a balance of these polar opposites which all, in their special way, contribute to the working function of your body. But when a bad mainstream diet makes you deficient in everything but sodium, and only maybe tells you to supplement calcium for "strong healthy bones" (not withstanding the health risks of intaking calcium without magnesium, vitamin D, vitamin K, etc), it's rather disingenious to blame salt when the REAL reason for high blood pressure (aside from a small genetic predisposition) is an inherent mineral imbalance.

But alas, deficiencies will continue to be a problem, and can be manifested by things that few people would associate with a mineral deficiency (and more as a personal defect):

- Headaches
- Nausea
- Vomiting
- Chronic fatigue
- Weakness
- Numbness
- Tingling sensations
- Moodswings
- Muscle cramps or contractions
- Seizures
- Abnormal heart rhythms
- Coronary spasms

As far as foods with magnesium are concerned, remember that their content may vary based on how depleted the soil or water is where their grown; even if you do consume these, it won't hurt to supplement magnesium, even just a little...

- Spinach
- Pumpkin Seeds
- Squash Seeds
- Almonds
- Cashews
- Brazil Nuts
- Pine Nuts
- Peanuts
- Pecans
- Walnuts
- Mackerel
- Tuna
- Polock
- Black Beans
- Pinto Beans
- Kidney Beans
- Garbanzos
- Lentils
- Avocados
- Yoghurt
- Cheese
- Bananas
- Figs
- Apricots
- Dates
- Raisins
- Prunes
- Dark Chocolate

Grains also have some magnesium, but ugh... you know how I feel about those, and besides their phytates would probably impair magnesium absorption anyway, so it's a moot point. ^^


--Cia

Dear Cia,

Can you explain to me what your idea of a healthy diet is? I try to follow your advice, but I find that I haven't the time to worry about it (or I forget it completely). What do you normally eat throughout the day?

Dear cia,
what type of foods are the best for a snack before going to bed.

Dear Avocado,

Hmm, well odd that you of all people would ask me that, given you watched that documentary.  

But okay, although it makes me sound like a broken record, it's worth repeating.  ^^

Let me try to give you an idea of what "I" conceive as a healthy meal for myself, and because I always eat different things, I'll list three different possible meals I've had...

=================================

BREAKFAST:
- Three egg omelette with 6-year aged cheddar, chorizo or sudjuk, spinach, mushrooms and onion, pan-fried in tallow or ghee. Served with a side of homefries and sliced kiwi.
OR
- A grilled almond-butter "bread" sandwich with liverwurst, bacon, cheddar, cilantro pesto, homemade mayonnaise, sliced boiled egg, tomato and basil. Very portable, and nicely accompanied with an orange.
OR
- Sauteed string beans and scrambled eggs, cooked in ghee, with a small serving of black beans, bacon/pancetta/sudjuk, a tiny slice of flour-less cheesecake or coconut cake, and sliced strawberries.


LUNCH:
- Nothing, I'm usually not hungry till later. 
OR
- A roasted half-chicken with a drizzle of olive oil or ghee, salt, pepper, and turmeric
OR
- Steak shawarma with a side of hummus, a spinach salad, onions and lots of olives; accompanied with drizzles of tahini, olive oil, ghee or coconut oil, sea salt, pepper, and turmeric.
OR
- An italian beef sandwich standalone or accompanied with italian sausage, peppers and onions, and drizzled with the aforementioned goodness; ask for the sandwich to be extra dipped so the bread becomes nasty and soggy, and thus easy to peel off and discard, allowing you to eat the real goodness with a fork or your hands.  

DINNER:
- Almond meal-"breaded" chicken pan-fried in tallow or coconut oil, cilantro pesto, homemade seasoned sun-dried tomatoes in olive+macadamia nut oil, lettuce-tomato-spinach-dandelion-daikon salad with olive oil and vinegar, oven-roasted jacket potatoes encrusted with parmesan and coated with butter, and guacamole. 
OR
- Small ribeye steak cooked medium with butter-sauteed mushrooms and onions, butter and garlic brocolli, slice radishes or daikon with salt and lime, and tallow-fried "tostones" (green plantain fritters)
OR
- Dried eggplant "lasagna" (meaning its layered with dried eggplants, not pasta) with homemade marinara sauce, ground beef, mozzerella, ricotta, basil and various herbs and spices, smoked wild salmon with an asparagus butter cream sauce, yellow cauliflower "rice" cooked in ghee, and sliced oven-roasted yam and carrots drizzled in olive oil, sea salt and spices.


SNACK:
- Nothing, typically not hungry to warrant these unless I miss two meals.
OR
- Macadamia nuts, best raw, not roasted. Keep in freezer for best preservation, these do not actually freeze fully.
OR
- Green Plantain "chips" (sliced thin, fried in tallow, salted, and added in baggies like your regular potato chips)
OR
- Almond-butter "bread" madeleines with 90% dark chocolate.


=================================

Hopefully from this list you can ascertain a few facts about what I view as a healthy diet...

#1: There is nary a grain in sight.  I do mention "bread" and "lasagna", but these are recreated using alternative ingredients, such as dried eggplant for lasagna layers, or almond butter as a bread base.  Basically things that are NOT grains and that have a higher nutrient density. Grains aren't welcomed in breakfast either, so no cereal or standard wheat toast.

#2: There is no sugar in sight.  Actually there may be hidden sources of sugar, or I may decide to have ice cream one day, but I certainly don't go out of my way to add sugar into my diet.  Note that this is kind of a redundancy, since grains metabolize down to sugars anyway.  

#3: There is no soya in sight.  Soybeans are not meant to be eaten in such ridiculous quantities as we have here in the West... Traditionally in eastern culture, soya wasn't commonly consumed, and when it was it was always fermented to deactivate some of the anti-nutrients (and paired with other nutrient-rich foods such as fish broth to compensate for the nutrient loss of its remaining anti-nutrients).

#4: I specifically cook with oils that are NOT processed sludge seed oils.  I only trust anything that I could hypothetically make myself if I were stuck in an island with olives, coconuts, avocados, macadamia nuts, ducks, pigs or cows.  I can't squeeze oil out of a corn, soybean or "canola" -- I would need to build a lab, a manufacturing plant, and various other chemical plants to extract the dangerous solvents needed for the extraction, hydrogenation, deodorization and flavoring process.  

#5: There is little processed food.  With the exception of bacon or sausage which may easily come from a manufacturing plant, you won't find no cereals, pop tars, or hot pockets here.  I want my food to be made with pronouncable ingredients. Besides, most processed foods you see in stores have one or all of the items mentioned above.

#6: I don't fear fat.  Especially saturated and monounsaturated fat, the former being purposefully demonized to get us all out of our traditional diets, and enslaved to deceptive diets.  Whereas before I used to eat only one egg a week due to "ZOMGKILLERCHOLESTEROL!", now I can consume 2-5 eggs a day and STILL see my cholesterol markers decreasing rather than increasing as the establishment would have you believe.

#7: I don't eat many high-glycemic carbohydrates -- mainly things that we as humans have eaten for thousands of years, such as fruits, vegetables, nuts and safe starches.  These are foods that don't trigger a blood sugar spike and insulin response as easily as sugar and grains.  Potatoes may be an exception in some cases, but...

#8: I don't fear safe starches and fiber.  Certain carbs DO play a very important role in our diet, particularly in feeding our good bowel flora, so it's important when eliminating sugar and grains not to toss the baby out with the bath water.  It's important to eat foods with prebiotic fiber, insoluble fiber and resistant starch

#9: I like variety.  Variety is the spice of life, and especially once freed from the fear of fat, you're more likely to expand your taste buds ever more than you did before. Today, for instance, I tried my first anchovie... it was horribly salty, but not as disgusting as I imagined, so I'm pretty sure I could eat it again if I had to.

And....

#10: I DONT STARVE MYSELF!!!  XD
While it may be helpful to do the occasional intermittent fasting once your body is equipped to handle it (doesn't get post-blood sugar spike food cravings), outright starving yourself by witholding calories and treating hunger like a challenge to overcome with willpower is BAD. That feeling of starvation is simply your bodies way of saying it is literally starving at the cellular level, and if it's something that happens often, then there is clearly something wrong in the pathways feeding your cells.  Same with obesity and diabetes, two very visible ways your body is telling you that something is very wrong and it needs to stop (not sure how much more clearly the body can spell it out).  XD

On top of this, chronic hunger also forces the body to change its metabolism to respond to this perceived crisis... the more you starve yourself, the more your metabolism is slowed, the harder it is to lose the weight and easier it is to gain as much or more back from a starvation diet regime.  

In short, as long as you eat the "right" foods, you can eat foods that make you happy and satisfied as often as your body needs them, and still gradually lose some weight.  Calorie-counting is also largely irrelevant, in part because the equation changes when counting fat as fuel, and in part because fat is so satiating, you'll get full faster and longer with less food.  

Anyway, that should about cover the basics.  ^^


--Cia

Dear A4,

None. XD

For the sake of your circadian rhythm and proper sleep function, it's best not to bog your body down trying to digest something while it's trying to rest.  I'm pretty sure this is how nightmares are sometimes made... with a late night cookie or something, pairing the disruptive digestion with a massive blood sugar spike and fall to your REM cycles.  XD

However, if you didn't eat anything all day and are starving (poor little guy  ), then I guess you CAN at least eat a little something even if it's very late at night.  If this is the case, read my answer to Avocado's question above, and consider a very high fat snack as your option.  It will fill you up faster and for a much longer duration, and since fat doesn't cause an insulin response, it will not mess with your blood sugar while your body is resting.  


--Cia

Dear Cia,

Do you have any suggestions for people who don't like the taste/texture of eggs?

Dear Cia,

Why do you think humans started eating grain related products in the first place?

Dear Cia,

It's been snowing a bit here lately, in fact we might get a blizzard tonight. I imagine we'll lose power and whatnot if that's really true, maybe some classes will be cancelled... though I won't bargain on that just yet XD

What I find interesting is how negatively we view snow after growing up. I remember loving the snow so much when I was younger. Playing outside with our neighbors, making snowmen, sledding, and of course some hot cocoa at the end to warm us up <3 Now what comes to mind when I think of snow is delays, dangerous roads, shoveling, and the need to snuggle in my blankets to keep warm. It's strange how such a beautiful thing can now be considered a nuisance on certain days, but I guess it depends where you live.

What is your opinion on the snow?

Dear Cia,

How do different colors (like rooms, workspaces, public area schemes) affect people's emotions?

Dear Lom,

Aww, I thought only Guy Fieri didn't like eggs.  XD
As much as I'd love to say "suck it up", the truth is that not everyone has (or should have) the same tastes and interests -- plus it's also true that egg allergies do exist (albeit rarely), so we have to be mindful that there may come a time when eggs are not able to be consumed, or used as part of baked products.  In these cases, substitution is a matter of application....

If you want to substitute consuming eggs straight-up, consider a seed gel using a combination of flax seed and chia seed in warmish water, and cooled for several minutes gelatanize,  It can then be cooked as a kind of "vegan egg", seasoned with salt for flavor and turmeric for color; it can also be used as a fairly-adequate binding agent for baked goods too.

For a feel of scrambled eggs, there is of course tofu eggs which I don't recommend; but if someone REALLY wants to eat imitation eggs regardless of health consequences, that's at least an option available.  Personally, I'd rather suggest a good hearty Indian lentil such as chana dal, mashed and cooked in delicious ghee, and seasoned with turmeric for a bright yellow color.  Then of course there's soft cheeses assuming you can eat them.

Then of course there's plain old omission of eggs entirely -- enjoy a breakfast with everything except eggs or baked goods with alternative binding agents (such as the aforementioned seed gels and/or psyllium husk and/or a gum product if you can stomach it).  If you don't crave it, you won't need it, and you certaily won't have to eat it.  XD


--Cia

Dear Rad,

Oooh, very interesting anthropological question!  I don't get these often. ^^

Based on the evidence available to us, grain consumption (and dairy too!) were not common in the average human diet until around 10,000 years ago, coinciding with the agricultural revolution when many humans transitioned from hunter-gathering to farming crops.  Bear in mind that this was a very drastic change since tilling soil and harvesting crops is VERY hard, and harder still with grains which use up a lot more soil and require greater tillage -- in fact, grain was extremely expensive up until around 150 years ago, and even with the proliferation of agriculture, ruminant meat and fish was still the most accessible food for a large majority of the human population since no tillage is involved.

[Nowadays they have these BS claims that say that raising one cow for one person requires feeding it the equivalent of grain for 40 people, but this assumes that cows eat grain, which of course they don't -- left to eat grass which is their native food (and which continuously grows on its own), cows in fact require no energy expenditure, and can even perform a positive gain to the environment through the action of pruning grass and depositing valuable manure.]

We can't, however, deny that grain DOES have some very unique advantage over meats, fruits and veggies... it can be stored for a LONG period of time.  Whereas a piece of meat can spoil within days if left your countertop, grains can stick around for months, and even years if cooled and stored properly.  In terms of food security, this allows for the creation of valuable granaries that can store emergency food rations for times of famine. For as much as I bash on grain, should you ever find yourself in an emergency situation where the only thing you have to eat is bread or cookies, just eat the damn things.  It's better to survive to fight another day, than to die needlessly with some form of caloric intake available.

Given that 10,000-12,000 years ago is around the time that the last ice age receded and many great glaciers melted (what I would consider the Deluge or Great Flood of many religious texts), a lot of coastal areas once inhabited by humans where no doubt destroyed, as villages, plains and forests became seabeds, and hills and mountains became the new villages, plains and forests, and surely a good deal of dramatic climate change wreaked havoc as well.  Given the transition would not have been been easy for many living things, including humans, and I imagine that for a time hunter gathering was not yielding enough food to sustain the survivors.  Maybe since grass would stilll have been prolific, those humans may have noticed that aurochs (the early ancestors of cows) were doing pretty well eating it, and wondered if perhaps they could eat it too.  And they would try eating grass, and sure enough... they'd totally get sick since no part of it would have been edible.  But they continued to try and get some use out of it, until the winning combination was discovered... if you pulverize the seed head and cook it like a porridge, it becomes edible and nourishing.  And thus grain consumption was born; and whether or not there might have been some addictive property that played a role has yet to be explored, but at least this proposes the interesting scenario that a food of times of famine became the predominant food of our world today.

And it's certainly no wonder... the ability to commodotize a hardy food items would certainly support large growing population centers such as cities, trade opportunities through the exchange of non-perishable food items, and centralized patriarchal leadership hierarchies such as kings and emperors.  This came at a huge cost to health, of course, as tooth decay began to become rampant, average human stature shrunk, and modern diseases like cancer and diabetes began to appear among the wealthiest who could eat grain (and sugar) often, and became increasingly more prolific as these two luxury foods became cheaper and more widely available.  But in the end, so long as it supports the needs of the few, overall human health is secondary -- otherwise, we wouldn't be living in such contradictory times where healthcare is so absurdly expensive for us Americans, food advice seems to lead us towards getting fatter and sicker, kids are imprisoned in school for almost 20 years, debt is treated like wealth except in countries that haven't 'joined the club', and we feel it's okay to pillage and pollute the world for the sake of some fictional economic progress.  Perhaps humanity today suffers from Grain Brain syndrome? XD


--Cia

Dear MiiMii,

Firstly... *hug* ^^

Secondly... what a coincidence, it's snowing here too, ugh.  ^^

I pray for your successful school dodging, hehe. XD

As for your question and observation... actually, after reading a great book called "Folks, This Ain't Normal!", I would have to agree with the author that we, as a society, grow to great lengths to shield our children from reality, whereas in the past children and young adults would often help with a farm or homestead, and share in the responsibility and pain of shoveling snow, putting up with crop death by frost, and traveling in cold icy conditions.  The imagery from Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle' of the child traveling home from work through horribly frigid conditions, and then having his frozen ears fall off after an adult tried to rub them for warmth, certainly wouldn't grow up with fond memories of snowmen, sledding and hot cocoa.  

While I'm certainly not advocating that we regress to having kids lose body parts from frost bite, I certainly do want to point out that in being TOO overprotective of children, we're certainly setting them up for some very unpleasant surprises when they happen to transition over to the "real world".  I often balk at parents who simply dump their moronic, irresponsible teenagers in college, give them a credit card, and expect all the money they're paying in tuition to magically "grow up" their little brats into responsible doctors and lawyers -- and then reel back in shock and horror as those brats max out the credit cards, party hardy all the time, get drunk, and dabble in a little promiscuity.  Really, what are they expecting to happen?!  XD

If the child has no engagement or is denied any proper interaction with the real world, even against his/her own inner desire for a sense of belonging, then of course the youthful "dream" state of snowmen and Santa Claus will seem unnaturally-beautiful and of course the real world is going to seem unnaturally brutal. I don't think this has to be the case, and you can certainly have a more balanced people if a) you let children experience work and responsibilities more, and b) you let adults enjoy life more.

As for snow itself....

I'm of mixed opinion of it.  ^^
Yes, I do think of shoveling, and in fact I've always thought of shoveling since I used to help out with shoveling as a kid.  Yes, I do think of dangerous road and street conditions, an that has always been the case since I used to go to inner city schools, and believe me... you gather a strong disdain for ice and slush, and the cars that drive by splattering you with a tidal wave of filthy black sludge till you look like something that emerged out of a lagoon.  

But I have and continue to admire its beauty, especially when its falling in big gentle flakes; and I dont mind it so much shoveling it if it falls lightly and is easy to shovel along (especially now that I have a Snowwolf and snow pusher, which make short work of it).  I've also always appreciated how it would often force school closures, affording me one of the only few times in my childhood where I had any kind of freedom and relaxation; and while this doesn't always translate to work closures (which I don't mind as much, since I get paid, lol), I still hold to the believe that snow is the Great Emancipator of children.  ^^

And of course I admire snow and winter for the ecological balance it brings to the world, and how there wouldn't be a proper spring without a good winter.  Water Cycle 101, everyone!  ^^

Granted snow isn't the only thing in our modern life that is thought of as a nuisance or liability whereas once it might have been a thing to admire and revere... food and children are two other such examples, where food is now viewed as a liability that "can make us FAT OR KILL US WITH ZOMGKILLERCHOLESTEROL!!!!" and children are viewed as a liability in terms of "having to save up for their daycare, school and college expenses, and ZOMGTHEYPOOPALOT, ARGH!!!".  These are historically beautiful things tainted by the chaos and unnatural-ness of our modern (and possibly Western) way of life that now pits them against modern values of competition, profit, sterility, and convenience.  

Granted, snow CAN be dangerous, just as much as foods CAN be dangerous if you eat the wrong kinds (i.e., grains and sugar) and children CAN be dangerous if you raise them improperly (i.e., Carrie, lol), but nothing in real life is purely beautiful or purely dangerous -- and it's that balance that I feel gives something it's true beauty.  These are dynamic complex things to be respected and related to, not gawked at like porcelain dolls behind the glass case of over-protectionism.


--Cia

Dear Ice,

Ah, you're referring to Colour Psychology.  

While I won't deny that colour can play a huge role in our subconscious interpretation of things (including our mood), I'm not entirely convinced this affects people uniformly.  After all, we all tend to look at colours differently... I may see the green colours of this forum and evoke warm feelings of lima beans, fava beans, kiwis and avocados, and quite another person may see pea soup vomit or gangrene and react accordingly.  Our minds are different so our emotional triggers will deviate as well.  

Still, if you want some kind of guide, there are plenty of those online...

 

Hopefully the fact that I love green might partially explain why I'm often cheery and open, although as SOME people may know, I do have my limits.  >v>


--Cia

Ok, that makes sense, thanks for answering as always.

Dear Cia,

What do you think of this music?

Dear Super,

Ah, this is a surprisingly slow and thoughtful video link, I'm impressed.

The music video has some words, but when it comes to music I generally tune words out. Instead I close my mind and let the melody do all the talking, and indeed when it comes to this song there's a lot that the notes tell you.

Ironically, just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, meaning is often affected by a person's mood. This is the kind of song that, back when I was somewhat manic depressive, would have made me sad and cry for a kind of longing of a happiness I didn't have. Now, though, minus my self-centered hopeless despair, I note a bittersweet hope, an inherent beauty in something so underappreciated as a rainy or cloudy day. Just like you can't have life without death, you can't have sun without rain, or best times without worse times to make them more special. Without despair, there can't be hope; and it's for this reason that you can't be too hard on despair because after all, it's what hopes are made of.

As I sometimes say: "In a world without pain, there is no feeling." ^^


--Cia

Dear Cia,

Do/can peoples tastes in food reflect their personality?

Dear Ice,

Hmmmm, well that again is another very subjective question, as we all react to food a little differently. 

I mean sure there are biochemical implications of food choices that may affect our personalities.  Drink some tea and you may feel calm and composed.  Eat more fat and you may be happy.   Eat less fat and you may be miserable.  Eat grains and sugar and you may feel hyper and angsty at first, then obsessed and depressed later on.  Subsist on nothing but fruits, vegetables and grains forever, with no supplementation, and after a few months you may start getting irritable, forgetful and disconnected from the world.  All the above are scenarios where physical neural pathways in the brain are repaired or disrupted in some way due to the chemical breakdown of certain food, and can definitely shape who we are (as we are what we eat).  

But any further specification beyond that depends on so many other factors beyond food, that it's hard to pinpoint whether eggs make extroverts, nuts breed go-getters, or bugs coax world travelers.  Food is just the putty in this instance; your environment, upbringing, schooling, religion and laws are the hands that sculpt it.

I could most certainly be wrong, but considering we barely know about the BASICS of food, it wouldn't be prudent to assume we could jump straight into the metaphysics of it.  It's like if some dufus developed human AI without a clear understanding of how human beings operate... oh wait.... >v>'


--Cia

Ok, thanks