Illusion

Two weeks ago, we discovered in class Julian Beever and his incredible talent to create illusions and to make us see the world in a different way for a second. This reminded me a movie a watched last summer called “Life Is Beautiful”. This is the story of a Jewish Italian person who had been deported to a concentration camp with his five-year-old son. To protect and help this latter survive their internment, he use his imagination to “create” a better and imaginary world for his son.

These two elements brought me to think and question myself about illusion and the impact it can have on your life. I started my reasoning by trying to find other field where illusion comes to play. The most relevant I thought about was magic. We all know that there is nothing magic in this world. However, we all enjoy magic tricks? Why? Why do we like so much to be fooled? The explanation I came up with might create some disagreement so I apologize to my reader if my opinion differs from yours. I think that illusions allow us to think that everything is possible and that our lives might improve after all and it comforts us just to think that it is possible. To come back to my previous example, at the end of a magic trick, you look for the secret. But you won't find it... Because of course, you're not really looking...you don't really want to know. You want to stay with this perception that every thing can happen.

I did some research about illusion and found that scholars usually separate illusion into two categories: affective illusions and perceptive illusions. Perceptive illusions are well represented by Julian Beever’s drawing while affective illusion is a little bit more complex. Affective illusion is more an ultimate solution human being has to escape the reality when the latter becomes unbearable. This is perfectly well expressed “Life Is Beautiful”. At some point, it is comparable to psychosomatic diseases, where the illusion is the way used by the mind to express something that would be unbearable otherwise. Affective illusion can protect for a certain time if it remains under control. The risk is to become insane.

Halloween

My attention has been caught these past few weeks by the general and strong effort people put to be well prepared for Halloween. Houses are decorated and people will have fun in costume party on the D Day of October 31st.

In France this feast is not officially celebrated. Only young children like to go in costume from house in house to ask candy, but without any sort of idea of the reason of why they do that that day.

So I was curious to understand the origin of this celebration so present in the United States and try to figure out how marketing had taken the opportunity (again) to harness a tradition into a making-money product.

I did some researches about Halloween to better understand the origin of this celebration.

I learned that this feast was a pagan holiday originally celebrated in Ireland, Great Britain, Scotland and Northern Europe originating from the Celtic tradition.

Celebrated during the night of October 31^st, it corresponds to Samhain day – meaning End of the Summer -. This was the last day of the Celtic calendar, the end of the harvests and the occasion for great festivals in villages. Because Celt people were very superstitious, they feared that the soul of dead could roamed in the village and throw a bad fate on their house. To keep the souls quiet, the tradition was to put gifts at the entrance of the village to keep them far enough and to make sure next year will be a good year.

It is interesting to know that Halloween is the shortened wording for All Hallow’s Even – Hallow meaning Holy and Even meaning Evening in old English- which is the abbreviation of All Hallow Evening.

This pagan holiday was turned into a Christian day known as All Saint’s day celebrated on November 1^st.

It is good to see people perpetuating the tradition with the most famous symbols like the carved pumpkin, the lintel nailed to the door and other symbols. However, this special day seems to have more and more turned into a fun and costume party day. Children wear costume and go from door to door with the ‘’Trick-or-treating ‘’, other watch horror movies, and elder going in haunting attractions. These activities are of course well prepared by marketing, always in the lockout to make business, with adds arriving in your mail box by mid August and stores entirely dedicated to Halloween derived products.

I have nothing against to use tradition to support and develop business. However, I think traditions should remain traditions with their context, history and symbols explained and perpetuated over the generations and not limited to a marketing product.

Cellular phones: technological progress or danger for health?

Two days ago, I read a very interesting article about the harmful impact of cellular phones on health. This article talk about a study performed on tomatoes. That experiment showed that after being exposed only ten minutes to the electromagnetic waves of a cell-phone, the tomatoes began to spoil. Another observation but this time made on humans showed that, while using a cell-phone, the part of the brain around the ear was excessively stimulated by the electromagnetic waves emitted by the cell-phone. After years of studies, scientists concluded that a constant use of a cell-phone cause salivary glands and brain cancers. These conclusions lead to an international study which purpose will be to consolidate data collected on the human and to try to find a relation between brain tumors and the use of cellular phones. Of course, cellular phone is a wonderful advance in technology and I am not trying to tell you not to use it but an excessive use of it (as any excess) can have harmful and irreversible consequences on health. So use it whit moderation.

Casino

I was reading the local newspaper this morning, while drinking my orange juice and I found an article about a project to open casinos in Colombus, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo. Supporters of this project assert that the casinos will create more than 34 000 jobs and that it will provide $650 million in tax revenues for the state, counties, cities and school districts. Opponents say that construction of casinos will hurt businesses of the area and lead to a great job loss in those communities.

Here is my opinion about the project. The region of Cleveland as well as other areas of Ohio is stricken by the economic crisis. Would it be very beneficial to open a casino in an area with such economic conditions? Would not it be better to spend the state money in more productive projects that would help Ohio during these hard times? Moreover, it had been proved that where a casino was present the divorce, bankruptcy and gambling addiction rates were much higher than in areas without. Personally, I oppose casinos as well as other things that create addictions. Moreover, I am not sure that casinos can resolve or at least help to resolve the problems related to the economic crisis but instead cause much more damage by making local businesses go bankrupt. We need to keep in mind that casinos are not like we can see on television: the are not places where you can break in the safe and robe the money bur instead places where a lot of people see their lives being ruined by addiction and loans. The project will be voted on November 3^rd and I hope voters will realize the impact casinos can have on the region as well as on people’s lives and will take the right decision.

GMO

Last week, I heard an interesting debate on TV5 about pros and cons of Genetically Modified Organisms – more widely known as GMO.

I spent some time to look at this topic and try to make my own opinion on this subject.

I like the concept to use the progress of Science to improve the quality of the product.

However it becomes more frightening when you know the worldwide controversies about GMO and the unlit areas still existing concerning the potential impacts on human health.

Even if Health Organizations officials conclude of no impact on the heath, it remains questionable to know how they can come to this conclusion.

Are tests on animal sufficient to conclude on effect on human being? What is the reliability of these tests? Are these tests and results under control?

Monsanto, American Biotechnological and Agricultural leader remains silent when questioned on this topic and some prooves had been accumulated that showed that Monsanto has falsified some results that showed the negative effects on rat organism.

We may feel nervous as we know that Worldwide producer of GMO and growth hormone is Monsanto. Everybody has in mind the Agent Orange, a highly carcinogenic component produced by Monsanto and used during Vietnam war, which caused the death of more than 500 000 people and caused thousands children to be born with disabilities.

Another question to be asked is if Biotechnological and Agricultural companies considered long term trials to evaluate the potential long-term effect on health.

I am concerned by the fact that the number of cancers has significantly increased as GMO products were introduced in the food chain. A simple and well known example concerns the recent change of the omega3/omega6 in our plate and its effects on our health.

Did any study evaluate the consequences on human health when it was decided to change cattle feeding from grass - well balanced in omega3/omega6 - to industrial corn and soya feeding depleted in omega3 – in order to increase milk, and beef production and make more money?

Probably not as such trials would have taken too much time, would have cost too much money and delayed the introduction of the product for a long period of time. It is probable that economic reasons have prevailed on safety considerations. If it is the case, I wonder how decision makers can consider money in first place before thinking the health of the worldwide population.

On this debate, a specialist said that the United States was the only country that does not require the agro alimentary industry to indicate clearly on the labels if the product is genetically modified. This debate dates from 6 months so decisions might have been taken to resolve this problem.

Saying that and considering the complexity of the topic, I think that everybody should at least have the possibility to make his own choice. An international regulation making mandatory the labeling on packaging on GMO content would be a first step toward a significant improvement.

Freedom of expression

I was in the waiting room of my maxillo-facial doctor to treat a TMJ problem, when a brochure praising the effect of BOTOX cosmetic treatment for people between 18 and 65 years has caught my attention. The motto used was ‘’BOTOX – The Freedom of Expression’’.

I felt uncomfortable and sad to see how this recent finding has been turned into a lucrative business exploiting personal uneasiness ,and above to see that there are so many people paying thousands dollars per year to receive this treatment.

I think this is symptomatic to the society we are living in where you have to perform well, to have the right look, without any sign of weakness…

To me frowns and wrinkles are richness like our memory. They are the expression of our life, who we are, the bad and good things we have had in our life. They are the final stage of expression of things we have perhaps not expressed with words, like resentment, anger, love….

I agree that this treatment is a great help for people who have had a cancer for example and for which the therapy has let strong marks difficult to accept. In that case, it can be a real help and should be proposed.

But how explain BOTOX treatment for young people of 18 years old?

What are they looking for? Do they need to look perfect to be loved?

I really think that we should start again from the beginning and learn to express our emotions, be more peaceful with others and ourselves and accept us as we are.

Appearance is just an envelope. What counts is inside.

Is obesity a fatality?

I read an interesting article in NewsWeek –September 21st – about recent findings that will certainly change our perception on the increasing problem of obesity.

While it is widely known that about 60% of Americans are overweight or obese, recent studies from Scientist of Harvard School of Public Health pointed out a new tendency observed in infants under 6 months. Obesity in this segment of the population has risen by 73% since 1980. It is clear that conventional explanations like bad eaten practices and inactivity cannot be applied to babies!!

Indeed, it has been found that pollutants in the food chain could modify some genes that will generate more fat cells which stay for life and altering metabolic rate which results in the accumulation of calories rather than burning them.

This article has had a great impact on me and I took time to think about it.

First I think we have to remain very tolerant with people concerned by obesity. There are various reasons that can lead to obesity. Most of them are said to be due to personal choices but some are not under personal control, like hormonal disease or consequence of heavy medications. The new findings explored in the article show that nobody is sheltered from being concerned by this epidemic phenomenon far beyond individual control.

Overweight people are often marginalized and caricaturized. Marginalized because they are different, because they require more medical support to treat diabete, heart disease related to the obesity increasing health-care costs at a time politics try to reduce health care bill. Caricaturized as indolent people responsible of their condition as a result of personal choices. I think we should be more open-minded and try to see how much they probably suffer from their condition.

Then I was a little bit frightened by the article as it demonstrates once again how we can be exposed to risks without any knowledge of the consequences on our health and on the health of future generations.

I hope that NIH and FDA’s scientists’ determination will be strong enough to alarm politics and that appropriate decisions will be made to protect us and future generations.