What I've Been Up To

It's been a busy week, and Christmas and work has kept me away from the computer. Along with my ambidexterity practice I've been working on one of my favorite skills - drawing naked ladies. The human figure is by far my favorite thing to draw and I believe the female figure is of particular beauty.



This is nowhere near finished, and is the third draft of this drawing so I'm hopeful that this is the final one. Once I finish it I'll be sure to post the results.

I'm hopeful that soon I will be skilled enough to sell my own oil paintings. Who knows, maybe hundreds of years from now I'll have my paintings displayed in the Louvre. I can hope, can't I?

Ambidexterity

My first vanquished foe on my path to polymathy is ambidexterity (to a degree). I can now write as well with my left hand as with my right.


left hand


right hand

Studies have shown that ambidextrous people have a larger corpus callosum (the wiring between the left and right hemisphere of your brain) which could mean improved memory and learning abilities.

Interesting Ambidexterity Facts

Just being able to write ambidextrously isn't an exciting feat by any stretch of the imagination, but I am just getting started. Here are some examples to follow:

• Michelangelo Buonarotti could paint just as well with both hands


• Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, a British artist, could draw simultaneously with both hands.


• Benjamin Franklin was ambidextrous and signed the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution left handed.


• James Garfield, the 20th president, could write Greek with his left hand and Latin with his right hand simultaneously.
  

This isn't me. Yet.

A Fun Alliteration

Taken from the film"V for Vendetta".


Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is it vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished, as the once vital voice of the verisimilitude now venerates what they once vilified. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose vis-à-vis an introduction, and so it is my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.

Seriously, what's a polymath?

Here is the definition of polymath as seen in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

Polymath (pali-math) n: A person of encyclopedic learning.
syn. renaissance man, homo universalis uomo universale, universal man, jack of all
trades.



I don't like this definition; it's wrong. How many people who have ever existed have had an "encyclopedic knowledge"? More specifically, how many famous polymaths can claim one? Take Leonardo Da Vinci as an example. He is regarded as a master painter, inventor, anatomist, and sculptor, but if you asked him about the famous emperors of the Q'in dynasty, he would be clueless.

I will present to you a more precise definition of my own creation. (My sincerest apologies to the staff member of Merriam-Webster who apparently did not do their research).


Polymath (pali-math) n: A person who has achieved mastery in more than one field of study.


Much better. Encyclopedic implies breadth; mastery implies depth. Now how do I get there? There is no special formula to certify myself as a polymath. Being a polymath is a perpetual process. It is a process similar to being a Buddhist, being a scholar, or being a Jedi. There is, however that basic criteria to fulfill. So, in order to call myself a polymath, I will need to be considered a master in more than one field of study. Which fields of study? More on this later, I need some sleep.

Why we Age (and how to postpone it) Part 2

This is part of a series. If you would like to see the entire series click here.

In the first part I explained the process of aging as a whole, so in this part I will focus in on one specific mechanism that degrades our bodies and offer speculation as to how to slow it down.

Intracellular Aggregates

Our cells are constantly changing. They are always repairing parts of themselves, or breaking down parts that are broken or superfluous. Anything that needs to be broken down by a cell goes to the lysosome where enzymes and chemicals break it down. Sometimes a cell won't have the proper enzymes to break down these structures because their composition has been altered. When a cell cannot export these parts they remain in the lysosome until it can be broken down, which is usually never. After many years of this process, this junk buildup can inhibit functions of the cell. This is bad news for cells that are permanent (never divide) such as the cells in your retina, heart, and nerve cells.

Related Pathology:

• Arteriosclerosis
• Macular Degeneration
• Alzheimer's
• Decreased Heart Function (increased cardiological risk)
• Decreased Motor Function

Prevention

There is not yet any therapy for the removal of intracellular aggregates but there are things you can do to prevent some of the damage that accumulates in your cells.

Let's talk about free radicals. Free radicals are simply atoms that are missing electrons. Atoms really like electrons and would do anything to get them back, so they take them from other atoms. The atoms that just lost their electrons want their electrons back so they get them from other atoms and so on until you have a chain reaction. When this process occurs in a cell it can damage structures within the cell thus forming intracellular aggregates. In order to avoid too many free radicals in your body there are a few things you can do.

Meat can contain alot of free radicals simply due to the possibility that the animal you are eating may already have accumulated free radicals over the course of it's life. Cooked meat has even more because cooking meat speeds up chemical reactions within the meat and denatures the meat's proteins.

Cigarette smoke has many free radicals. If you think about all of the chemicals that go into the processing of cigarettes and then the implication of cooking these chemicals (lighting the cigarette) and catalyzing any reactions that may be taking place and then inhaling these chemicals; you can imagine just how many free radicals you are putting into your body.

Now let's talk about antioxidants. Antioxidants are "benevolent" chemicals that have electrons to spare. When a free radical comes in contact with an antioxidant, the antioxidant gives it's electron to the free radical. The free radical is now happy with it's extra electron and the antioxidant is eventually secreted in your urine.

If you are going to eat cooked meat or smoke; include a lot of antioxidant foods in your diet to help counter the amount of free radicals you are taking in. Also be sure to eat antioxidant rich foods before you work out because the chemical reactions that take place when your body is under stress can produce free radicals as well.

Antioxidant rich foods:

• Blueberries
• Red Beans
• Pinto Beans
• Cranberries
• Strawberries
• Red Delicious Apples
• Granny Smith Apples
• Cherries
• Pecans
• Plums
• Many More

Stay Tuned!

This is part of a series and I will be posting more about causes of aging and possible prevention later on. If you would like to read more posts in this series click here.

Why A Polymath?

Why not? Human beings have considerable control over the configuration of their minds (knowledge) and the configuration of their bodies (health). I am only on this earth for a limited amount of time so why not put my best foot forward?

It is often said that ignorance is bliss, but I would like to assert that ignorance is only bliss to an ignorant mind. I care too much about spending every precious second I have left appreciating and fully understanding what exactly it is I have as a living breathing being, so why would I ignore it? I want to create beautiful works of art. I want to invent things that would have never existed without me. I want to make a mark on this world; to make it a better place.

I have a lot of work ahead of me. I better get started.

Why We Age (and how to postpone it) Part 1

After many years of coming to terms with the inevitability of aging, few of us actually strive to find out what drives it. So in this blog series I will do my best to explain the causes of aging (and possible techniques to postpone it) so that you don't have to be a biochemistry major to understand why we must age. "Why an entire series?!" you ask. Well, in order to convey a full understanding of this subject, it will take some explaining. Okay, a lot of explaining. So for the readers' convenience I am dividing my posts up into four parts in case you would like to take a break between posts. How nifty! To view the whole series click here.


An Overview of the Mechanisms That Cause Aging

One of the best analogies to aging I have seen to date was presented by Dr. Aubry de Grey. He likens aging to owning a car. When you first buy a car it runs better than it ever will (in most cases). Unless of course you bought your car from a used car salesman who may or may not smelled like Doritos and peppermint schnapps. Your car will last you on average 12 years. Over the course of its lifespan you may notice the older your car gets the more you will have to service it, especially near the end of it's life. This is because many parts in the car have been accumulating junk, wearing down, becoming too hard or too soft, changing their shape that alters their function, and generally accumulating wear and tear that is not repaired by the changing of fluids or parts. Even worse is that when one system starts to go bad, it speeds up the degradation of all other systems it comes in contact with forming a positive feedback loop. One part will go bad here, another there, and before you know it you will be in the taco bell drive through loading up on gorditas, when your engine explodes taking out several innocent bystanders and road signs. Well maybe not that dramatic, but you get the point.

For the purpose of this explanation, the processes of aging within humans is much the same as a the deterioration of a car. Like a car, we have systems that keep us "running". All of these systems working continuously and unison in an organism is called metabolism. The good news is that we also have systems in place to make sure that metabolism runs as smoothly as evolution has so far allowed, and (no thanks to our own advances in health care) are one of the longest lived species of mammals. The bad news is that there are chinks in our evolutionary armor and these systems get gunked up, messed up, and distorted. Also similar to a car, once one of these systems becomes less efficient, it effects other systems causing a downward spiral (positive feedback loop). This is the reason that for the first half of our lives we look and feel relatively healthy, but towards the second half, our health declines seemingly exponentially. The more messed up our systems are, the more likely it is that a part will break. When a part does break and something goes wrong in our body, this is referred to as pathology.

Why hasn't evolution taken care of this problem already?
Or: Come on evolution, get with the program!

An understandable question. Logically if we were able to pass on our genes forever, they would certainly survive much longer, so why hasn't evolution solved this problem yet? Well life outside of civilization isn't exactly easy, there is always something trying to kill you. Even primitive humans had this problem. Heck, you couldn't even pop a squat in the woods without a hungry predator eyeing your tender loins. This is a time when the leading causes of death were likely predators, disease, and starvation, and the average life expectancy was somewhere between 15 and 30. You were very lucky if you even lived long enough to contract cancer. So the simple answer is that species in mother nature's violent realm seldom live long enough to select against aging. Evolution just hasn't gotten around to it.

Stay Tuned!

So there you have it. A relatively simple explanation to why we age. I was fairly ambiguous about some things over the course of the explanation for simplicity's sake, such as my liberal use of the word "systems" when referring to metabolism, but seriously, when your systems look like this, ambiguity is best. It is widely agreed that science has boiled down the system to seven distinct causes. Those are:

• Mitochondrial Mutations
• Nuclear Mutations
• Intracellular Aggregates
• Extracellular Aggregates
• Permanent Cell Loss
• Cell Senescence
  
• Protein Cross Linking

For most of the rest of the series I will explain what each of these are, how they affect aging, and most importantly, what steps you can take to postpone degradation of these systems. Thanks for reading!