Black, Grey & White World

There is no color in our world. You and I live in a black, grey, and white world. This thought may seem counterintuitive, if not absurd. In reality, all color you see, the green grass, the blue sky, the red book in front of you, is only an idea (more technically, a perception) in your head. You go about your day believing that color exists outside of you, that color is a property of the natural world. However, this is not true.

Above you see what looks like a green tree among some green grass and other green trees. However, the tree is not green. The color green is not a property of the tree. Green is only an idea in your head.

Think back to high school physics. The sun's light rays hit the tree. Molecular configuration of the atoms in the leaves results in all color being absorbed minus the green wavelength, which is reflected back to us. Our eye senses this green wavelength which stimulates the rods and cones in the retina. The information is converted to electrisent down the optic nerve to the occipital lobe. The information is processed in our brain. As a result, we perceive green.

Imagine yourself in your bedroom during the day. The only light you have is the light coming in through your window. You see all objects in your room and their associated colors. Fast forward to early evening. The room begins to darken. Notice that the colors in the room have decreased in intensity. Fast forward several hours. The room is dark, but you can still make out objects if you squint your eyes. Colors will have faded into almost a black. This occurs because there is very little light to reflect color to you. If your room was pitch black you would experience a complete absence of color because there is no light.

Achromatopsia is a condition in which people cannot see color due to structural abnormalities to either their retina or their brain. These people have total colorblindness. Say you are standing at road intersection. You see the light as green, shift to yellow, then red. People with achromatopsia would see the light as grey, shift to grey, then grey. Green, yellow and red are properties of the traffic light. The color is in your mind.

Imagine yourself in a park on an autumn day. You're surrounded by reds, yellows, oranges, browns, and greens. What you are looking at is not a park full of color, but a park full of all different shades of grey. Light from the sun is reflected from all the leaves. Due to the atom configuration of the leaves, it causes the wavelengths of red, yellow, orange, brown, and green to reflect to you. Assuming that your biological hardware is properly working, you will only perceive all the beautiful colors of autumn.

Rodent

It never gets old!!!!

The Blackening

Mental Illness and Stigma

The statistics are alarming. Leahy and Holland (2000) found that in a given year 30-40% of the general population will have a panic attack and 2-6% will go on to develop panic disorder. In 2001, the Canadian Psychiatric Association found that 7.9%-8.6% of Canadians over the age of 18 will meet the criteria for major depression at some point in their lifetime.

Attitudes towards mental conditions are disconcerting. Ignorance of mental illness leads the general public to believe that those who have a mental disorder can just "snap out of it" or that it's "all in their head". If a person with depression or anxiety could snap out of it, I believe they would. No one would tell a paraplegic to "just walk". No one would tell a person having a seizure to just "snap out of it". Why are people sympathetic to latter rather than the former? I believe that it is due to the fact that they're physical disabilities. People can't see mental disorders, but they can see physical conditions.

Though invisible to the human eye, a mental condition is a very real thing. It is hard for people who have not experienced depression on a personal level to understand its emotional impact and severity. For example, depression is easily disregarded as "having the blues" or "feeling down". Depression is a serious illness that has consequences for function and survival well beyond sad or painful feelings. Here is the DSM-IV-TR criteria for depression:

• Depressed mood
• Anhedonia (inability to experience pleasure from normally pleasurable life events)
• Feelings of overwhelming sadness and/or fear. Inability to feel emotion (emptiness)
• Change in appetite and marked weight gain or loss.
  
• Disturbed sleep patterns, such as insomnia, loss of REM sleep or excessive sleep (hypersomnia)
• Psychomotor agitation or retardation nearly every day.
• Intense feelings of guilt, helplessness, hopelessness, worthlessness, isolation, loneliness, or anxiety
• Trouble concentrating, keeping focus or making decisions or a generalized slowing of mental ability.
• Recurrent thoughts of death, recurrent suicidal ideation.
• Feeling and/or fear of being abandoned by those close to one.

This post started out talking about panic attacks. The most common panic attack symptoms include:

• Sweating, shortness of breath, racing or pounding heartbeat or palpitations, dizziness or vertigo, hyperventilation, choking or smothering sensations, tingling or numbness, trembling or shaking
• Racing and intrusive thoughts, loud internal dialogue, feeling of impending doom, feeling of "going crazy"
• Terror, or a sense that something is about to occur and one is powerless to prevent it, fear of death, fear of going crazy
• A distressing dreamlike sensation or perceptual distortion (derealization)
• Dissociation or a distressing perception that one is not connected to the body or is disconnected from space and time (depersonalization).
  

The stigma against individuals with mental illness affects whether or not they will seek treatment, either psychiatric medication or psychotherapy. Stigma also influences their psychosocial adjustment by hindering re-integration into the community. Knowledge is the key to knowing that mental illness, whether is it depression, anxiety, bipolar, or schizophrenia, is a very real phenomenon.

Astrology

Most people do not understand the difference between astrology and astronomy, and often talk about them as if they're synonymous with each other. Astrology is a pseudoscience, a group of beliefs that asserts that the relative positions of celestial bodies is useful in understanding, interpreting, and affecting personality, human affairs, and other terrestrial matters. Astronomy is the scientific study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the earth's atmosphere. It is concerned with the evolution, physics, chemistry, meteorology, and motion of celestial objects, as well as the formation and development of the universe.

One assumption of astrology is that stars and planets influence our lives. Stars are celestial bodies consisting of gas, which create energy by the process of nuclear fission, held together by its own gravity. After the sun, the nearest star is Proxima Centauri which is 40 trillion kilometers away. One would have to travel at the speed of light (300,000 km per second) for approximately 4 years and 75 days to reach it. Planets are celestial bodies that orbit a star, have sufficient mass to create enough gravity to assume a nearly round shape, and have become gravitationally dominant so that they are not under the gravitational pull of another body (except a star; thus, a planet can have moons under its orbit but the planet itself is not another planet's moon). I ask you, could it be true that the positions and motions of the stars and planets reveal information about financial or relationship matters? This is a scientific question and to date, there is no verified scientific basis for these beliefs. In fact, there is strong disconfirmatory evidence. Research conducted has reported no evidence that celestial objects can influence affairs here on Earth.


The doctrine of astrology began to be compiled around 2000 BC and played a significant role in shaping culture for the next 3500 years. Skepticism of astrology was never absent. During the European Renaissance with the emergence of the scientific revolution, astrology and astronomy diverged. Astronomy became a science while astrology was demoted to a superstition or pseudoscience.

Evidence continues to refute the validity of astrology, but most notably for its lack of predictive validity, absence of empirical evidence, and its unscientific methodology. Under controlled studies, astrologers cannot demonstrate consensus. For example, a double-blind study from the University of California found that the astrologers in their study could not solve their clients' personal problems and had no special ability to interpret personality from astrological readings. Another study conducted in 1997 concluded that a group of astrologers failed to predict objective facts about people and failed to agree with another astrologer's interpretations.

Palm reading, magic crystals, auras, tarot cards, psychics - why do people believe in such utter nonsense? If you are a horoscope enthusiast, try a simple experiment. Ask someone to read all the daily horoscopes in a random order to you and try to decide which one is yours. Another easy little test is to take one horoscope, and read it to several different people, claiming that the description is for their sign. You'd be surprised to see how most people readily agree with the description. You may even notice that horoscopes are so blatantly vague and broad that anyone can attach any possible meaning to any statement.

If someone is willing and eager to believe, their tendency to confirm will cause them to remember and focus on those descriptions that seem accurate (the "hits") rather than the inaccurate ones (the "misses"). The irrelevant or wrong descriptions will most likely be ignored but anything that seems partially true will automatically confirm their beliefs. They will tend to over exaggerate all the "hits" and overlook whatever does not fit.

An Ode to Metal

Metal is characterized by a strong guitar-drum dominated sound with complex rhythms. There are two key elements that define metal. First is the guitar power that is projected through amplification and distortion, which is used to create a more powerful, 'heavy' sound. The second element is the tritone, a musical dissonant interval consisting of a root note and an augmented fourth/diminished fifth which ostensibly results in a "heavy," or "evil" sound. In medieval composition, its use was regarded as "Diabolus in Musica" (i.e., the devil in music) and forbidden to play. The evocative tritone experienced a resurgence by Romantic composers who wanted to achieve a dark and somber sound. Many do not know that the tritone is definitive to the blues scale, fundamental to its solos and riffs. For a clear example of the tritone in metal, listen to the beginning of Black Sabbath's self-titled song "Black Sabbath".

Mainstream music usually follows a standard format to allow for radio and TV play. Song duration is usually around 4 minutes, songs follow simple verse-chorus-verse structures, and the focus is on melody and hooks. Metal is usually not confined to the limitations imposed by commercialization and thus, much of metal music is progressive and experimental in nature. This allows for different rhythms and tempos, non-traditional song structures, and songs of great length. For example, Reflection by the band TOOL is almost entirely verse, the only changing element is the intensity of the song. Clenching the Fists of Dissent by Machine Head and The Frayed Ends of Sanity by Metallica have over a dozen different sections. Depending on the band, songs can reach an average of 6 minutes in length with a 10+ minute standard for bands such as Opeth and Dream Theater. At one extreme is Meshuggah's 21 minute long opus, I.

In its infancy, metal music drew from many sources, from Jimi Hendrix to Cream to Led Zeppelin. However, many have christened Black Sabbath as the first official metal band. Interestingly, Black Sabbath was once a blues band called "Earth". As the story goes, their transformation came after Ozzy Osbourne (vocalist) and Tony Iommi (guitarist) watched a horror movie at a theater. They were amazed that people pay to get scared. They had their epiphany and decided to write scary music. They achieved a dark sound by experimenting with the tritone, dark lyrics, different rhythms, and down tuning their instruments. In an era of Beatlemania, they released their self-titled debut "Black Sabbath". Their originality and creativity propelled them to fame and metal was born.

Visuals and images are part of metal, most notably images depicting death and anti-religious themes. When bands are asked about the satanic images they use on their album covers, they claim to use them to maintain the band's image. These confrontational aspects of metal have led to friction between fans and mainstream society in many countries. Public perception, especially in conservative societies, sees metal subculture as a promoter of hedonism and anti-religious sentiments. In Jordan, all Metallica albums, past, present and future were banned in 2001. The death metal band Cannibal Corpse, is banned from playing certain songs in many countries due to their violent nature.


Though it's made and listened to primarily by the young, as a genre, metal is far more sophisticated than it's given credit for. If anything, it's one of the only places in rock and roll music where innovation and creativity are flourishing. The musicianship is top-notch, the writing get better all the time, and music is the focus, not production techniques.