tokiokobayas's blog

Male manakins are most popularly known for the “moonwalk” dance in order to attract potential female partners. The behaviors and actions of male manakins play a crucial role in attracting a female manakins. The red capped manakins have a unique and amusing type of dance. It mainly consists of movement and sounds which include: fast movement up and down the branch (“moonwalk”), snapping his wings to make noise, shooting between his perch and his surroundings, flying in circles around then swooping, and also spinning to reveal their bright yellow legs. By utilizing this behavior, they attract potential mating partners, and their variations in the mating dance is what attracts females. These variations can be observed and recorded, and then behavioral flow charts can be constructed in order to better understand what specific variations causes female attraction, as well as what causes attention retention in females.

    It’s interesting to note that society views different relationships as “odd” compared to others that seem “normal”. For example, a relationship between a 28 year old and a 16 year old seems odd to a lot of people, while a relationship between a 48 year old and a 36 year old does not seem as weird. But why is that the case? The two relationships are the same ages apart, yet the former seems more “odd”. Another example is an 18 year old and a 38 year old, compared to a 52 year old and a 32 year old. Again the former seems a lot more odd compared to the latter. You can even compare a 14 year old dating an 18 year old, versus a 21 year old dating a 25 year old. Of course this last one is illegal due to things such as grooming, but the same age difference applies. The reason why some of these relationships seem odd compared to others is due to the point in life each person is at. When two people are in similar points in life, for them to date does not seem odd from the viewer. A 14 year old and an 18 year old are two very different points of life. One is about to leave middle school, while the other is about to enter university or is working. A 52 year old and a 32 year old are both adults most likely working on their careers looking to settle down if they haven’t already. To pair two people who are at two different stages of life, causes dissonance that can make us uncomfortable.

    As of right now, the current minimum wage is 11 dollars per hour. This means that if someone were to work at a minimum wage job for 50 hours a week, 10 hours a day, they would be making 550 dollars a week, not including taxes and social security. This brings their total annual salary to 28,600 dollars a year, again not including taxes and social security. Taxes and social security (in the united states) takes roughly 22% of your paycheck. In total, $22308 is all that remains for a minimum wage worker annually. Even if the person working manages to find a cheap place to live (let’s say 500$ per month) and cooks every meal every year (let’s estimate 30$/week on groceries), that’s already $7560 of their paycheck gone to living arrangements, assuming they walk to and from work. This leaves about a little less than 14000 dollars for the person in this hypothetical to survive. This includes health bills, insurance, car costs (assuming they can even afford to own a car), and more. 14000 dollars sounds like a lot for a year, but the small things add up. Traveling to see family, buying soap, home repairs, clothing, electricity and water bills, etc. The minimum wage that currently exists is unsuitable for a person living in a 1st world country, and must be raised in order to combat the rise in living costs in America.

            Due to the need to categorize and label everything that exists around us, small variations to something causes it to become something new and to be relabeled. For example, cacio e pepe is a pasta dish that is made up of only three key ingredients; black pepper, cheese (typically pecorino), and pasta. The sauce itself is simply an emulsification of the cheese with water, with the starch from the cooked pasta acting as an emulsifier. Yet if the dish were to be slightly altered and egg is to be added at the end, now you have a carbonara dish. By adding slight variations new dishes are formed and labeled. This applies to various situations, but there comes a point where we ask ourselves “why are we still labeling things?”. When does it get to a point where we say “this is cacio e pepe with egg”, versus “this is carbonera”. What lies the reason as to why we have to shorten and categorize things and when is that line drawn? This leads to the reason why majors like Biology or Chemistry, require so much time to understand and become qualified to lead in these kinds of fields, because it becomes a point where everything is labeled and categorized, and these take time to learn and memorize. I think it’s interesting that as time goes on, we will continue to categorize and relabel certain things, to a point where colleges may need an extra year or two in the future to finish a degree, because we’ve come a long way with our labels.

    About 4 to 5 years ago, there was a passionate debate between the necessity of changing the study of STEM to STEAM. STEM as of right now, stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. It’s often used to refer to the general studies of science, generalizing all 4 fields and grouping it together. Yet the debate was to include an A, and change STEM to STEAM. The A stands for the Arts. The reason why this was proposed was because by studying science alone, we draw very little inspiration from the outside world besides what we’re concentrated on studying. By encompassing the arts and appreciating it, we are able to draw new ideas and become more innovative as we pursuit our fields. There’s a very interesting team of NASA engineers based in Pasadena, California who study origami in order to understand how to confine space better. The North Face also utilizes their team of scientists in order to study very hydrophobic leaves to better understand how to make water-proof clothing better. By utilizing the arts and the nature around them, we’re able to further pursuit these new ideas and engineer better items for consumer use, that may have been a lot more difficult to conclude to had we confined ourselves in our own fields alone. I personally like the idea of changing STEM to STEAM, and allowing the arts to play a role in our need of inspiration to create and innovate new ideas for the future.

    Correct parenting is one of the most subjective topics around. Everybody has their own unique approaches to parenting, and we’re only recently able to slowly have a better grasp as to what “correct” parenting looks like. We’ve only recently moved past negative reinforcement, and learning to utilize positive reinforcement as the benefits have recently under studies show to be a lot more positive. Yet this research and this knowledge is not always exposed to upcoming parents, and sometimes parents never learn such vital information ever. Instead, it’s heavily believed in most communities that listening to those who have parented before, are the experts. This causes a problem where methods that are scientifically proven to be problematic (such as hitting your children), are still utilized to this day because old methods and word of mouth tends to be the main source of information parents rely on. In places such as Osaka Japan, it’s culturally understood that the parents there are severely strict and very violent. Under western views, the parenting methods there are severe, but under Eastern views this is considered the norm. It’s important to be able to get the correct information out there so mentally (and even physically) speaking, our future generations are healthier in comparison to the generation before them.

    The complexity that exists when learning music theory formally is abundant. When a child learns how to play a note on the piano or on any instrument, they are taught to hear that specific sound and to associate it with a note name, such as F. Yet when learning music theory from a college student’s perspective, the idea behind “what is a note” and “what is a sharp”, are all asked. The importance behind such ideas are important to be formally addressed, but is it entirely necessary to be taught in order to understand music theory? At the end of the day, a child who has been playing the piano for half a year, can most likely tell an introductory music theory student what simple concepts are, such as what is a half note is, or what is a sharp. The way they express it might not be formal or coherent, but they still able to understand what these relatively simple concepts. It’s important to note that an understanding of music theory is not necessary in order to create music as well. For example, those who have been considered “musical legends” such as John Lennon, did not know how to read music until he was well into his career as a well-established musician. Thus, the idea that music theory is a necessity and must be as complex as it is in order to create music is incorrect, and albeit most likely unnecessary in a fair amount of cases.

    For everyone, the meaning of home changes as they get older. As a child, home is where your parents and siblings are. As a young adult, it becomes the place where your significant other lies--and when you get older, the definition can lie basically anywhere. It doesn’t matter where or who or what, but inevitably we all have a place we can go back to. Yet what dictates the feeling of home? Why is it that we have that saying, but there isn’t a single word emotionally that can describe what that feeling of home is? Sure it’s warm, it’s happy, it’s safe, but most importantly none of these words completely encompass its feeling. Its location changes as we get older, and the people or person that it involves changes over time as well. Is it possible to have a home that doesn’t change, to the point where it’s stable and no matter who it is, can look at this said hypothetical thing and say “yes that is a home”.

    Food science is an interesting field that studies the molecular activity that is occurring at our food, and why our perceptions towards certain foods exists. This includes why we enjoy french fries so much, why the crunch of an apple tastes better than an apple without a crunch, or why we love it when a dorito is the perfect orange. Fast food and certain snack companies actually pay a significant amount in order to have scientists test their food products, and compare it to scientific theory in order to improve consumer revenue. For example, the reason why doritos are always crunchy is not an accident, neither is the reason why a bag of lays is always almost half full of air. When a person opens a bag of Lays chips, the air that gets escaped keeps the chips fresh, but also has a specific synthetically created “potato” smell that is supposed to make the eater a little more hungry and crave the chips a little more. That puff of air that hits your face is almost similar to pavlov’s experiment, where the end goal is to make the consumer used to that puff of air hitting their face whenever they crave a snack, and that will induce a behavior of grabbing (specifically) a bag of Lays.

    It’s interesting to realize the amount of complexity that exists when learning music theory formally. When a child learns how to play a note on the piano or on any instrument, we are taught to hear that specific sound and to associate it with a note name (such as F). Yet when learning music theory as a college student, the idea behind “what is a note” and “what is a sharp”, are all asked. The importance behind such ideas are important to be formally addressed, but is it entirely necessary in order to teach music theory? At the end of the day, a child who has been playing the piano for half a year, can most likely tell an introductory music theory student what simple concepts are, like what a half note is, or what a sharp is. The way they express it might not be formal or coherent, but they still understand what it is. It’s ridiculous to think that an understanding of music theory is necessary in order to make or create music. As an example, those who have been considered “musical legends” such as John Lennon, did not know how to read music until he was well into his career as a well-established musician.