Agronesia

L. Frank Baum on his preface for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz wrote:

Yet the old time fairy tale, having served for generations, may now be classed as “historical” in the children’s library; for the time has come for a series of newer “wonder tales” in which the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible and blood-curdling incidents devised by their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale. Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident.

Having this thought in mind, the story of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” was written solely to please children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out.

Reading it, I smiled and really thought that there would be no blood whatsoever on the Wizard of Oz. However, from the very beginning Dorothy accidentally “killed” an evil witch:

… Dorothy said, with hesitation, “You are very kind, but there must be some mistake. I have not killed anything.”

“Your house did, anyway,” replied the little old woman, with a laugh, “and that is the same thing. See!” she continued, pointing to the corner of the house. “There are her two feet, still sticking out from under a block of wood.”

Two feet of a squashed person. Now that’s quite some graphic depiction…

And the story of the Tin Woodman is even more gruesome:

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When I opened the drawers on the kitchen today to search for some random foods, how surprised I was when I found a green grasshopper inside! Only God knows how that poor little insect got caught there.

What was more surprising is the fact that she (yes, a female!) has lost one of her back limbs! She only had one of those large legs for jumping! Well, that’s if she could jump at all in that state.

Of course the only sane thing to do was to pick her up and release her back into the wild. But she wouldn’t let me take her that easily! She hopped and hopped as I tried to catch her. With one jumping leg!

It took some effort before I could finally get hold of her. I just put her near the door and in a few moment she hopped skilfully outside.

Just think of how great that creature was. Losing one important organ but still being able to do so much, still being able to jump that high! Nature does indeed teach us humans a lot…

I just got a stomach problem some days ago, and that made me think about the types of stomach problems that exist, and ones that could possibly exist! The principle that I will use here is the inherent symmetry in the universe. On the large scale, we have day and night, male and female (OK, OK, female and male!). Going deep down we have G with its pair C, and A which loves T (sometimes U comes to wreck their relationship though). We even have the electron and positron pair! Whew…

OK, first we have nausea which causes vomiting:

See, the food goes out from the stomach through your mouth. Do we have its counterpart? Of course, that eating!

(If you can see where where this conversation is heading and doesn’t feel comfortable, please do not continue)

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This shirt contains the Thailand alphabet. I lived in Thailand for around 4 years, but couldn’t read anything at all. What’s interesting is that the Wikipedia articled states that space is generally not used in writing because most words are monosyllabic. Never realized that also.

I sadly couldn’t speak Thai. Well, I probably can speak the two most important expressions for a man: “khong nam ti nai?” (where is the toilet?) and “pom rak kun” (I (male) love you). I’m of course using the never-before-heard Agronesian romanization.

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I’ve heard or read about how listening to music can help enhance your study. They recommend soothing music without vocals like baroque or classical music.

For me, any kind of music is a distraction while studying. Music with vocals are especially so, since I find my brain instinctively try to tune into the voice more than to focus on the task at hand. Music without vocals are just the same, my brain tries to concentrate on the melodies!

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