Quote #64

"Language is the human gateway to reality." - Klinsman Hinjaya

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Why Evidence Matters

It is an unspecified situation coming from today's zeitgeist that constitutes the grounds for the creation of this article. The title itself is attributed to my neural maneuver towards the sensational book Why Dinosaurs Matter by Kenneth Lacovara, my honest review of which can be read here. The content of this post is, I believe, of utmost importance, and I do hope my readers will feel enlightened by the time they finish perusing this piece of text. Let's get started!

It was a dreary, cold night last November. I was tossing and turning on my bed, perspiring all over my body and constantly gritting my teeth. The culprit turned out to be a nightmare which I would never forget afterwards.

The disturbing dream began with me seeing flashing scenes of countless diabolical acts committed by humans – those included atrocious and brutish crimes such as genocides and rapes. All of a sudden, what I could see turned black and I found myself in complete silence. Then, a very old man with a grizzled beard appeared from afar. He introduced himself as Karz (I hope I spelled it correctly) and addressed me by my nickname "Q-Man". I was certainly flabbergasted and thought to myself, "How does he know my nickname? I've never met him before... Who is this old man?" I instantly got goosebumps, but it seems that he fully understood how anxious I was. He told me, "Don't be afraid. I know everything about you." As a reaction, I gaped and thought, "What does that mean? I don't get it..." The old man carried on talking about me, trying to prove the statement that he had just made. Eerily, every single thing he mentioned about me was correct – my family, my career, my hobbies, my love life, what I did the day before, my deepest secrets. Every. Single. Thing. My jaw automatically dropped as I couldn't make head or tail of what was going on.

What happened next was shocking. He claimed that he had come to tell me that I had one task to accomplish. "You have just seen how humanity can be so cruel that the world now is so wretched. All the potential for evil in the future will be completely erased if you succeed in doing this task," he explained. "Wha-what is it?" I asked nervously. He replied, "Kill yourself." I was directly stunned and didn't know what to say. The old man grinned and continued, "Don't worry. As soon as you do that, you will live forever in everlasting bliss. I guarantee that." I was still processing what he had just said when he continued, "But if you do not do that, maledictions will befall your descendants, forevermore. They will get acutely sick, die in horrific accidents, or otherwise dreadfully suffer from misfortunes." Before I could say anything, he vanished into thin air and suddenly I woke up with a distressed face, panting heavily on my flooded bed.

After thinking about it over and over for more than a month, I finally made up my mind: I will take my own life. Dear reader, could you please suggest the best way to do so? You can write it in the comment section below. Thank you very much in advance. :-)

You may realize that the whole story was completely made up and none of it happened to me. However, there might be people who have experienced this kind of thing and did what sane people would think is fatuous and irrational. And this brings us to my point in this article: evidence matters.

The events unfolding in my hypothetical dream should not, in any way, lead me to do what Karz said. That is simply because there is no evidence whatsoever that those things he said would really happen. It is pathetic that people can do such loco acts in real life and I suspect this has to do with our survival instinct. Imagination is our forte as a species and it certainly helps us in our survival. However, this "superpower" is a double-edged sword. The biggest problem occurs when, fueled by the "wrong" imagination, our push to survive overrides our rationality and takes a harmful route. Our species has now invented science and it indeed works for the success of our survival. And to do good science, what we need is evidence. Without evidence, people can do crazy things with devastating or grave consequences (such as what I would do if I believed what Karz had said). It is no wonder that British scientist Richard Dawkins writes the following in his book which I am currently reading, The Magic of Reality: "We should be open-minded, but the only good reason to believe that something exists is if there is real evidence that it does."

Through this article, I would like to invite my readers (including you) to adopt, foster, and champion scientific thinking & skepticism, without which our world would be in absolute chaos. I hope I got the message across to you and since we are at the outset of 2021, I wish you a Happy New Year! Let's beat this insufferable pandemic together by means of, again, science. ;-)

Related article: My Thoughts on Religious Terrorist Bombings

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Return to Your Embrace

The morning shower is blurring your seraphic figure

Yet I can see you wholly, crystal-clear

Our first encounter on the sidewalk

Was an inexhaustible spring of fond memories

I savored every utterance from your cherry-red lips

I delightfully took in every bit of your emanating beauty

This exclusive felicity

Was all I could ever ask for

Out of the blue, a ferocious storm was brewing

It then pummeled our romantic chain, splintering it into millions

My incredulity engulfed the whole of me

The elation had to be shattered in an absolute instant

It has been forever

But let me be completely honest

I cannot fathom the word "love" without you in my mind

Can I return to your embrace?

Together with you picking up the abandoned crochet and carrying on our lovework?

The creation of this poem was inspired by Hui Dao Guo Qu - The One Concert (回到過去 - The One 演唱會) by Jay Chou. To watch the original MV, click here.

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Quote #63

"To speak another language is to see the world in a different way." - Klinsman Hinjaya

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Dinosaurs Without Bones – Book Review

Dinosaurs Without Bones

by Anthony J. Martin

Fossils. What does this paleontological word conjure up when you read or hear it? You may instantaneously get a vision of the humongous skeleton of Brontosaurus, the spine-tingling skull of T. rex, or something non-dinosaurian but memorable, such as the beautiful, coiled shells of ammonites. These are genuine fossils and there is nothing wrong with that. However, it seems that there is this strong tendency in the public mind to associate this term only with such relics of ancient life. We do need to realize it is not only body fossils (teeth, vertebrae, spikes, etc.) but also trace fossils which constitute the fossil record, the latter unfortunately appearing to be overlooked by a significant portion of the hoi polloi. Dinosaurs Without Bones by Anthony J. Martin is a book with a hugely important role to endow dinosaurian trace fossils with their well-deserved glory.

Ichnology is a branch of science that deals with traces and trace fossils, and Dinosaurs Without Bones, written by an ichnologist, covers this academic discipline with a focus on the traces that dinosaurs left in their lifetimes; a few examples of these behavioral remnants are tracks, nests, burrows, and gastroliths. With his comprehensive coverage of the subject, the author has done a great job in making the case that this dinosaurian legacy is massively important to our understanding of this incredible group of animals and that we would be indigent without the knowledge acquired from studying these prehistoric clues. Although Dinosaurs Without Bones is intended as an ichnological discussion of non-avian dinosaurs, extant dinosaurs, namely birds, have their share as well, and this book ends with a commentary of the future of dinosaurian ichnology. Dr. Martin has also suffused this book with a good sprinkling of fresh humor, which has successfully made me burst out laughing now and then. In short, this volume on ichnology is a must-read if you want to see a more complete picture of the world of dinosaurs.

There are two other points I'd like to raise before I conclude this review. Firstly, I noticed that Dinosaurs Without Bones is special in respect of science education that it can impart to its readers. I have gained valuable insight into how science works, including the process scientific papers need to undergo in order to be published in a scientific journal. Secondly (and lastly), in my opinion, Dinosaurs Without Bones is the best book I have ever read in terms of sentence complexity. So *calling out to my EFL students*, if you badly need to prepare for the IELTS Writing test, you may want to consider perusing this superlative read.

Have you read Dinosaurs Without Bones? What are your thoughts on this book? Share your opinion in the comment section below!

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Quote #62

"Imagine how stupendously more advanced & civilized humanity would be if all the constituents were free from the hampering manacles of mumbo-jumbo." - Klinsman Hinjaya

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Ins(t)an(t)ity

This is a special day for me! Not only has my new bookrack come to my home and been neatly assembled (get ready for a second batch of multiple orders, Better World Books and Book Depository!), but my superbly cute, beloved nephew is also celebrating his 8th birthday today! Like avian dinosaurs, time does fly indeed – especially in these pandemic-stricken times. Nevertheless, this global health crisis should not hobble our precious productivity; therefore, since I have a sufficient amount of time available this day off of mine, I thought I would write an article to address a notion which is perhaps commonly propagated by those working in the marketing field.

I feel uneasy about an advertisement I saw one day, probably on Facebook although I'm not entirely sure (not about instant noodles though). It said something along the lines of "Speak English like a native speaker in 3 months!" or "Be fluent in English in 3 months with a money-back guarantee!" This sounds like a heaven on earth, doesn't it? Nevertheless, however enticing this language improvement offer is, how much truth actually lies in this sort of claim?

Despite the dubious legitimacy of the fully expressed form of the title of this post, I reckon that it is no sweat to work out the meaning which I would like to get across to my readership. For me, it seems to be a far-fetched idea that someone can accomplish such a linguistic goal in such a smidgen of time. The next couple of  paragraphs will detail my argument explaining why this is very likely unrealistic and unachievable.

Firstly, let's investigate this matter by taking a look at the most responsible organ for the learning activity: the brain. While I completely agree that the capacity of this jelly-like asset of ours is absolutely wonderful, we need to keep in mind that it is not "perfect" and does possess limitations. The evolution of humans has allowed such a remarkable contraption to equip us in 21st-century life, but it is not an über-powerful tool that we can employ to do anything we want. Think about the speed at which we process information and how much our brain can really retain. Think about the fact that our education system involves a good number of stages that we have to pass step by step, with the lower levels being prerequisites for the higher ones. Just like evolution itself, it is observable that graduality is a huge norm in our day-to-day life.

Now let's turn to our role models in regard to language abilities: native speakers. Did it take them only a couple of months to master their mother tongue from when they were born? Well, one could argue that the brain was not fully developed when they were babies, but if you think about it, it is the numerous years an adult native speaker has spent which imparted to them a whole armamentarium for native-level communication (lexical resource, grammatical range and awareness, etc.). A significant amount of exposure is definitely important to language acquisition and, admittedly, it is a privilege that native speakers automatically have – this should not discourage us from improving our proficiency in the target language, however.

I think it is safe to say that the same concept can be applied to not only language learning, but other areas as well. Promotional messages such as "Be the next Ade Rai in 6 months!" or "Master piano skills and outdo Jay Chou in 3 months!" sound alluring indeed although I probably have (almost) never heard such arresting utterances.

Of course, notwithstanding what I have laid out, I could be wrong. Probably those kinds of companies have devised super methods that enable their customers/clients to acquire a certain set of skills at lightning speed, as if defying the laws of nature. Could this involve some sort of lobotomy or otherwise advanced body modifications? If true, then it is very interesting and I would certainly love to know the mechanisms that make such mind-blowing attainment possible. I am also aware that humans are born with different innate traits and qualities, with a handful of them being extraordinarily quick at mastering skills. Thus, there is a caveat indeed.

That being said, rather than actively seeking for seemingly implausible ways to instantly crank up my English proficiency, I myself would prefer to stick with what I have always believed to be the fundamental values in learning – love, enjoyment, curiosity, and the like.

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