Communicating Sociology
I woke up this morning in bed with a mild back ache–the sort that signals to me that I have officially breached the midway point of my thirties. For many months now I started working from home, I’ve sat on a four-legged plastic chair in my office-room. The ergonomic police would arrest me if they ever step foot into my room. Still, I plonked a blanket to cushion my bottom; That has to account for something, right?
Continue readingIn March 2018, I purchased a Bosch 12 volt brushless impact driver. I must have harboured thoughts of busting it out to perform reparations and upgrades around the home then. It however laid dormant in my toolbox until just days ago when my mum purchased two sets of new wall mounts.
The task then was to replace our rusted mounts in the kitchen and inside the toilet that each held aluminium poles to hang clothes. The driver made little work of driving out the rusted screws and installing new ones. I could use a manual screwdriver. But hey, I had a cordless tool and I had to use it.
Looking back over the years, I replaced ceiling lights, rusty water pipes, shower heads, upgraded my computers and laptops, and performed general repairs and restoration. Knowing how to do these things sometimes came from pure observation on how things connected to one another. Other times, I turn to YouTube.
Continue readingTenet is a film for Christopher Nolan fans. And for people who love movies that delve into time travel, time manipulation, and time distortion. However, this time, it’s really about time. Though, Tenet is not so much about time travel as it is about experiencing timelines in parallel: Forwards and backwards, at the same time. It’s high time someone made a film about not-time travel but time itself. Time and again, we see the tropes fleshed out on the screen. This time, it’s different. Or is it more of the same?
Continue reading3 books appear time and again on reading lists:
1) Iris Chang: The Rape of Nanking
2) Viktor Frankl: Man’s Search for Meaning
3) Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Gulag Archipelago
Some time back, I decided that I had to start reading them. If not then, then when? I finished the first two, but am still deliberating my way through the third. These books were enlightening yet difficult to comprehend at times for me. On one hand, they contain accounts of things that happened in real life. On the other hand, they seem to reflect lessons in psychology and sociology. I read them while trying to understand the madness through the lens of science. Let me tell you that it is no easy task.
Continue readingCitizens worldwide are experiencing a biological event like no other. Termed Covid-19, this coronavirus claimed over ten million lives worldwide. Well before the World Health Organisation classed Covid-19 as a pandemic, scientists were already racing to triangulate its symptoms and determine its transmissibility (World Health Organization, 2020). Today, science and technology equip biologists and virologists in tackling a seemingly invisible foe able to bring potentially deleterious and unforeseen consequences to human beings and societies.
To complicate things, nations also contend with social issues such as unrest, genocide, eroding freedoms, and uncooperative citizens refusing to wear masks. Governments can exercise their authority in quelling social issues. However, the world must turn to science in tackling a virological entity.
Continue readingAs I get ready to study gender issues this term, psychologist Susan Pinker is on hand to inform us that males are fragile. If the slides and data are any indication, men are on track to being extinct in some far future.
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