HOW TO SPOT A SRI LANKAN...!!!!

This is so true and so funny. You know that you are definitely a Sri
Lankan if:

          * Everything you eat is flavored with garlic, onion and
            Chilies.

          *You  try  and  re-use  gift  wrappers  ,  gift boxes,
            aluminum foil  and of course disposable cups & plates.

            *You  try to eject food particles from between your teeth
            by  pressing  your  tongue  against  them  and  making a
            peculiar noise like, tshick, tshick!

            * You are standing next to the two largest size suitcases
              at the Airport.

          * You  arrive  one or two hours late to a party, and think
            it's normal.

            * Your toilet has a plastic bowl next to the commode.

            * You  name  your  children  in  rhythms (example, Honey &
            Money, Sita & Gita, thunga & --singhe, Nimal & Vimal)

            * All  your  children  have pet names, which sound nowhere
             close to their real names.

            * You  take  Sri  Lankan  snacks anywhere it says 'No Food
            Allowed'  

            * You  talk  for an hour at the front door when
              leaving someone's house.

            * You  load  up  the  family  car  with  as many people as
                 possible.

            * You  use  plastic  to  cover  anything new in your house
              whether  it's  the  remote  control,  VCR, carpet or new
              couch.

            * Your  parents  tell  you  to  not  care  about what your
              friends  think, but they won't let you do certain things
              because  of  what  the  other  Uncles And Aunties' will
              think.

            * You  teach  you  kids  to say uncle and auntie to anyone
              older related or not.

            * Owning a rice cooker is a top priority.

            * Use  the  dishwasher  to  store dishes - use it only for
              special occasions.

            * Say  'NO'  after  every  sentence. i.e . that's good NO,
              very expensive NO...etc

            * Men use the word 'PUT' frequently i.e PUT a drink, PUT a
              Jump !


            * You live with your parents even if you are 40 years old.
              (And they like it  that way).

            * If she is NOT your daughter, you always take interest in 
               knowing whose daughter  has run with whose son and feel it's your duty
              to spread the word.

            *  If  you don't live at home, when your parents call, they
              ask if you've eaten, even if it's midnight

            * When  your parents meets a Sri Lankan for the first time
              and  talk for a few  minutes, you soon discover they are
              your relatives..

          * Your  parents don't realize phone connections to foreign
            countries  have  improved  in  the last two decades, and
              still  scream  at  the top of their lungs while talking.

          * You  have  bed  sheets  on your sofas so as to keep them
             away  from  getting  dirty but the sheet on your bed has
              not seen water for months!

            * It  is  embarrassing  if  your wedding has less than 500
            people. (How abt ur wedding... hehe)

            * You  list  your  daughter  as  'fair  and  slim'  in the
              matrimonial    no    matter  What  she  looks  like.

            * You  have a big cabinet in your hall to keep glass wares
                & ceramic  utensils  (you  have  never  used)

            * You  have  really  enjoyed reading this mail because you
              know some, or most of  them apply to you.

A human bias against creativity is hindering science, research claims

Special to World Science

 

  

Most us us profess to love creativity. But we recoil when it stares us in the face, according to a new study that seems to seems lodge a quiet indictment against the whole human race.

Jennifer S. Mueller of the University of Pennsylvania and colleagues, who conducted the work, say their study both demonstrates and helps explain the phenomenon. The problem that perhaps most interferes with our recognition and appreciation for real-life creativity, they claim, is that creativity usually comes with a side dish of uncertainty: Will this new idea actually work? What will people think of me if I accept it?

Our love of creativity is what we profess in public-but our dread of it is what we tend to hide from the world, and often even from ourselves, they add.

The study is important, they continue, because society lovingly expends resources to foster creativity in each new generation-then often turns around and squashes the new ideas that result. It's time to figure out ways to put a stop to this, they say.

"Robert Goddard, the father of modern rocket propulsion, endured ridicule and derision from his contemporary scientific peers who stated his ideas were ludicrous and impossible," they noted as an example, in a report on their findings. The paper appears in the Nov. 29 advance online issue of the journal Psychological Science.

Scientists in every generation from Galileo to Daniel Shechtman-2011 Nobel laureate in chemistry-were initially ridiculed for now-famous work. The same can be said of a legion of artists.

"The field of creativity may need to shift its current focus from identifying how to generate more creative ideas to identifying how to help innovative institutions recognize and accept creativity," Mueller and colleagues wrote. "If people hold an implicit bias against creativity, then we cannot assume that organizations, institutions or even scientific endeavors will desire and recognize creative ideas even when they explicitly state they want them."

Mueller and colleagues paid a group of participants to take a series of tests designed to reveal both conscious and unconscious attitudes toward creativity. 

In one test that took the form of a word-association game, they found that participants seemed to display an unconscious negative attitude toward creativity if the experimenters had made an attempt to plant thoughts of uncertainty in their heads. They tried to seed this uncertainty by promising that some participants would later receive an additional payment based on a lottery. In the word game-similar to a type of test previously used to reveal unconscious racial attitudes-researchers sought to measure whether participants took a little longer to associate words related to creativity with positive things than with negatives ones, or vice-versa.

In a second experiment, the researchers found that negative feelings about creativity also disrupted the ability to recognize that quality. In this part, they presented participants with an idea for an invention that had been judged creative by a group of college students. It involved a sneaker with a nanotechnology that supposedly adjusted fabric thickness to cool the foot and reduce blisters.

Mueller and colleagues pointed to one possible route through which scientific institutions are stifling their own ability to recognize creativity.

"When journals extol creative research, universities train scientists to promote creative solutions, R&D companies commend the development of new products, pharmaceutical companies praise creative medical breakthroughs, they may do so in ways that promote uncertainty by requiring gate-keepers to identify the single 'best' and most 'accurate' idea thereby creating an unacknowledged aversion to creativity," they wrote.

"Future research should identify factors which mitigate or reverse the bias against creativity."

 

Source: World Science
http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/111212_creativity

 

 

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Monkeys pick up local "accents"

Courtesy of BioMed Central

and World Science

 

 staff

Apes and monkeys have regional "accents"-and as with people, this behaviour is learnt rather than genetically programmed, a study suggests.

To what extent animal communication is learnt rather than inborn is hotly debated. Monkeys and apes, some of the closest evolutionary relatives to humans, are born with various calls and sounds specific to the species. But overlying this there is some flexibility: for example, you can tell where a gibbon, a type of ape, is from by its accent.

In the new research published in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, scientists studied free-living monkeys of the species Cercopithecus campbelli campbelli, also known as Campbell's monkeys. They observed social interactions, particularly in mutual grooming, and recorded "contact calls" made by females to stay in touch with other monkeys while travelling, foraging or resting.

The investigators used DNA tests from monkey droppings to determine how closely related different individuals were. Their social structure and family groups were well known because they have lived near a research station at Taï National Park, Ivory Coast, for over a decade. Groups comprised one male, four or six females, and their offspring.

"Each female has its own distinctive vocalisation but they appear to pick up habits from each other," said Alban Lemasson of the University of Rennes in France, who led the research.

Similarities between "contact calls" depended on the length of time adult females spent grooming each other and who their grooming partner was, rather than genetic relatedness, he observed. He explained that while the general call repertoire depends on genes, "the fine structure within this is influenced by the company they kept."

"This behaviour also fits with the theory that human speech has evolved gradually from ancestral primate vocalisations and social patterns," he added. Primates are the evolutionary lineage of animals comprising humans and their close relatives, such as apes.

Source: World Science

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/111216_accents

  

 

Posted by

Robert Karl Stonjek