Ideas Worth Spreading

 How many times can you fold a piece of paper? Assume that one had a piece of paper that was very fine, like the kind they typically use to print the Bible. In reality, it seems like a piece of silk. To qualify the idea, let's say you have a paper that is one thousandth of a centimetre in thickness. That is 10 to the power of minus three centimetres, which equals 0.01 cementers. Let's also assume that you have a big piece of paper, Like a page out of a newspaper. Now we begin to fold it in half. How many times do you think it could be folded like that? And another question, If you could fold the paper over and over, as many times as you wish, say 30 times, what would you imagine the thickness of paper would be then? Before you move on, I encourage you to actually think about a possible answer to this question. After you have folded the paper once, it is now two thousand of centimetre in thickness.. With every fold we make , the paper doubles its thickness. And if we continue to...

 It's an obvious question until you try to answer it, but lets take it seriously. How do you really know you exist? In his "Meditations on First Philosophy," Rene Descartes tried to answer that very question, demolishing all his preconceived notions and opinions to begin again from foundations. All his knowledge had come from his sensory perceptions of the world. Same as you, right? You are reading this blog with your eyes, Your senses show the world as it is.  They aren't deceiving you, but sometimes they do. You might mistake a person far away for someone else, or you're sure about to catch a flyball, and it hits the ground in front of you. But come on, right here and now, you know what's right in front of you is real. Your eyes, your hands, your body: that's you. Only crazy people would deny that, and you know you're not crazy. Anyone who'd doubt that must be dreaming, Oh no, what if you're dreaming? Dreams feel real. You can believe you...

 " Pressure is a privilege ." Your favorite team closes in for a victorious win. The crowd holds it breath, and , at the crucial moment the best striker misses the goal. That player just experienced the phenomenon known as "choking," where despite years of practice a person fails right when it matters the most. Choking is common in sports, where performance often occurs under intense pressure and depends on key moments.. And yet performance anxiety also haunts the public speakers, famous musicians etc. Most people blame it on their nerves but why does being nervous undermine expert performance? It is known that choking under pressure boils down to focus. It is distractions, the worries, doubts, or fears that preoccupied the mind instead of focusing its attention on performing tasks at hand. Pressure can cause people to overanalyze the tasks at hand. Here, the logic goes that once a skill becomes automatic, thinking about its precise mechanics interferes with your ab...

 " Waste isn't waste until we waste it ." You've filled up your cart and made it to front of the grocery line when you are confronted with yet another choice: what kind of bag should you use? If you have seen the image of plastic bags strewn across the ocean, it might seen obvious that plastic is bad for the environment. Surely a paper bag or a cotton tote would be the better option. But is that really true? Each of this three materials has a unique environmental impact that is determined by its carbon footprint, its potential to be reused  and recycled, and its degradability. So to get the full story of these grocery bags we need to look that how they're made, how they are used and where they ultimately go. Let start with plastic. The typical thin and flimsy plastic bag is made of high density polyethylene, commonly known as HDPE. Producing this material requires extracting petroleum from the ground and applying extreme heat alongside additional ingredients like ...