Strange Behaviors: part 1

I've been always interested in weird things (maybe I've watched too much "Tales From The Crypt" or Alfred Hitchcock's movies). I'm especially interested in weird/strange people. For me normal people and strange people are in something like yin-yang relationship. If there would be no “crazy” people there would be no normal people – we wouldn’t categorize anyone. And of course the boundary of normality is liquid and changes through times. Don't treat everything I've wrote too seriously because I tried to choose only more “entertaining” information (of course there are some serious exceptions).

• Evidence in the history and how those strange behaviors were treated

  Strange people and their strange behaviors always existed. The methods of trying to help them were sometimes as weird as the patients (or even weirder).

• Prehistoric times

  

  
  There is very little data on mental illnesses in the prehistoric times but scientists found many skulls after trepanation “treatment”. (Trepanation is cutting holes in the skull). Scientists speculate that this was the treatment for mentally ill individuals.

• Ancient times

  • Egypt and Mesopotamia
    Archaeologists found some papyrus that mentions basic mental illnesses like hysteria, melancholy. People affected by this were treated with bodily fluids and magic spells. To improve effect they sometimes ate hallucinogenic foods.

  • Greece and Rome
    Socrates and Pythagoras had probably “command hallucinations”. (They heard voices and sometimes they obeyed voice's commands, thinking that they're possessed by a daemon). Celsus – the famous roman physician – described healing of mental illnesses by bloodletting, drugs, incubation in temple, exorcisms , incantation/enchantment (charm or spell created using words). Those were “civilized” methods of therapy. The not so civilized methods of therapy were: tortures and starvation till individual restores rationality, and if nothing else helps the unlucky fellow would be beat and/or stoned.

• Middle ages

  • Persia, Arabia, Muslim Empire
    According to Islam's believes people with mental disorder are considered incapable (yet) to deserve human treatment and protection. Another thing is that first psychiatric hospital ward was founded in Baghdad in 705.

  • Christian Europe
    Most popular forms of treatment: purges (killing people with different opinions), bloodletting (as we see this was standard since ancient times), and whipping. Of course if there were suspicion of demonic/devil possession the individuals had to pray, receive exorcism and if it didn't work he was purged (killed). One of the most bizarre phenomena was dance mania. In wikipedia it is described as “a social phenomenon that occurred in mainland Europe. (…) It involved groups of people, sometimes thousands at a time, who danced uncontrollably and bizarrely” (Is it only me or it sounds like some form of flashmob?).

• Modern times

  • 16^th - 18^th centuries
    Victims of witch-hunts were admitted to local workhouses, poorhouses and jails (so does it mean that being mental was illegal?) . If you were homeless person you would also be qualified as mentally ill.
    In city of Bedalm people paid penny for watching the mental ill in madhouses (Could it be the foundation of entertainment of our times?).
    The naming of somebody mentally ill was straight-forward, you just call the individual crazy or insane (crazy means cracked in old English, insane means unhealthy).

  • 19^th century
    First laws were introduced to compel authorities to deal with those who were judged insane by family and/or hospital specialists.
    In the USA it was proposed that black slaves who tried to escape were suffering from a mental illness and (theory) was called “drapetomania” (nowadays the theory is described as pseudoscience and racism).

  • 20^th century
    In Nazi Germany, the institutionalized mentally ill were among the earliest targets of sterilization and attendees of euthanasia programs. It has been estimated that over 200 000 individuals with mental disorders were put to death. Later on they were joined by Jews and homosexuals in the Holocaust.
    Tools of 20^th century science were:

    • lobotomies - when doctor cuts the connection between your two brain halves; often victims of this procedure can't control one side of their body.

    • Insulin shock therapies – patients were repeatedly injected with large doses of insulin in order to produce comas over several weeks. The procedure was introduced by Polish-Austrian-American psychiatrist. And as usual the therapy had very small percent of curing the patients.

    • Electroconvulsive therapy – treatment with high voltage.

    It's worth mentioning that in 20^th century homosexuality was no longer treated as mental illness.

• Causes of mental disorders

  The causes of mental disorders are complex and vary according to the particular disorder and individual. But there some patterns and similarities between them:

  • Genes
    Genetics often plays important part in tendency to have mental problems. But scientists till this day haven't found an evidence for it although they believe it is true and say that finding the genes responsible for it it is just a matter of time.

  • Pregnancy and birth
    Environmental events surrounding pregnancy and birth have been identified as one of the factors of developing mental illnesses in the offspring. This includes future mother's exposure to serious stress or trauma, famine, birth complications, infections, drinking alcohol or doing cocaine during pregnancy.

  • Diseases, injuries and infections
    Higher rates of mood, psychotic and substance (alcohol/other drugs) abusing are observed in people who had traumatic brain injury but the data is not enough consistent enough to draw a direct link between it.
    There are also some very bold theories that people infected by parasite “Toxoplasma gondii” tend to have schizophrenia. But as usual in psychology there is lack of solid evidence.

  • Individual features
    Hormones and bio-balance in the brain are very important factor because it can change in what way we see and receive information using our senses.
    Basically if you are unlucky you belong to the mentally ill side of the society. You can't even blame anyone because it is just pure (bad) luck.

  • Life events, stress and relationships
    Maltreatment in childhood and in adulthood has been linked to the development of mental disorders through complex interactions of other factors. Too much stress can even cause serious mental disorder.
    Parental divorce appears to increase risk of mental problems.

  Sources:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mental_disorders

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_mental_disorders

• http://google.com

• I've linked photos with sources of them
  

  Questions:

• Would you pay to see patients of mental houses as a form of entertainment? Do you think that such practices are moral/immoral if this money would be used for food for the patients or overhaul those institutions buildings?

• Did you ever seen any examples of mentally ill? Do you pity them or laugh at them? Maybe you feel other feelings? Tell us about it.

• Are you afraid that some day you could be one of those mentally ill? (For me Alzheimer is one of the worst and scariest mental disorders).

• Do you ever suspect yourself or your friends/family of having some sort of mental disorder(s)/problems? (Please don't answer too seriously ;)

Obesity around the world - part III

In this part I’ll present you different possibilities for active spending of your free time. I‘ll also tell you which my favorites are.

Probably most of you spend most of the day sitting in front of a computer, in classes or something like this. It’s normal for students.

So if you want to be fit and feel better you must start exercising/doing sport. It’s not as difficult or expensive as for example fast diet products. Your physical activity should be at least 2-3 times a week for about 30-45 min, but every day is the best. It depends on what you want to do. Now I’ll show you what you can do.



If you want to have a good condition or reduce your weight you can start from home exercises or, if there is good weather, you can do running, jogging or cycling. Some people say that a good idea is to do it before breakfast. Your workout should take at least 30 minutes if you want to lose weight. The tempo shouldn’t be too high and should be constant. Another popular thing you can do is Nordic walking. I’ve chosen running and I do it 2-3 times a week in the summer. The best thing is these activities are free :-).

http://www.trendz.pl/files/imagecache/wide2/files/gallery7810Jogging.jpg

Another interesting activity is swimming. It’s good for all muscles. It also helps you to reduce your weight. If you can’t swim you can do an aqua aerobic. I usually go to a swimming pool in autumn and winter about 2-3 times a week. It’s very relaxing. After swimming you can go to Jacuzzi and sauna. Swimming pool is not very expensive. It costs from about 10-18 zł for 1-2 hours if you are a student.

http://robertrosenthal.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/17/michael_phelps_swimming_bejing_2008.jpg

Next thing I do in winter is volleyball. I rent a school gym hall with my friends once a week for 1,5h. It’s great fun! Warm-up is quite intensive so it’s great to improve your condition. Costs are low because we are sharing them for 10-12 people. It’s about 20-30 zł per month. It could be any other game like: (indoor) soccer, basketball , handball, unihockey, etc.

http://polish-blog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/volleyball1.jpg

At the end my favorite activity, which is the gym. I have gone to the gym 3-4 times a week for about 3 years. It’s great for men, but there are quite a lot women who go to the gym too. Women can also go to fitness trainings. In the gym you can work with all parts of your muscles. An interesting thing is that if you want to, for example, lose weight doing belly exercises, your result will be poor. You can’t reduce fat in one part of a body. I’ll said you should do an aerobic workout (such as jogging or cycling) and it will gives you a proper result. For me the gym is also a social place. I have a lot of friends there and I can talk with them during breaks between exercises. My gym costs about 130 zł / month for students. It’s the most expensive thing from this text but it’s a normal price.

http://www.gym411.com/images/fitness-top-1.jpg

If you already play any sport or do another activity – good for you. If not – you should start. You probably have a lot exercises (no time, no money, no place, etc.) but I’m sure you can find 30 min / 2-3 times a week. Money is not necessary and place is not a problem if you really look for it.

At the end some tips about diet and workouts from really “hardcore” body builder – Robert Burneika :-)



I hope you will change your lifestyle to healthy one after reading this presentation. It’s easy and obvious for most of you but it’s hard to start. If you change your habits it will become normal. I hope my advice was useful.

Questions:

1. 1. Do you play any sport or do any other activity? What is it?
2. 2. What kind of sport did you choose to pass your sport classes in school?
3. 3. Does anyone of your family or friends leads a healthy, active lifestyle? Is she/he satisfied?

Forex Part 3- How to start

Knowledge

Theoretically in order to start you just need a broker and trading platform but in fact most important thing is knowledge.

If you are interested in trading Forex is strongly advise you to read much more information before you start trading as otherwise there is no difference between trading Forex and going to casino.

Personally I’ve learned from this website: http://www.babypips.com/school/ and I can really recommend it because it helped me understand a lot.

There you can learn such things as technical indicators, support and resistance levels etc...

After you learn these things you should start working on your strategy, you can try to develop your own or learn some existing ones.

You can look on these forums for them :

Forex Factory
Forex Navigator (Polish)

Broker


Broker is a dealer through which you interact with market, there are two types of brokers: ECN and Market Makers but the first ones are only for people with deposits of $50000+.

You can find many brokers on the internet, but before you choose one you should compare them.

Characteristics of good broker:

-Low spreads
-No other fees
-Provides demo\practice account where you can play with virtual money.

You should also read opinions of other people on forums such as provided above to make sure that broker is reliable and does not use any dirty tricks.

Platform


There are two types of platforms (software for trading) – broker-dependent and broker independent.
Choice of platform usually depends on your broker, but some of them provide multiple platforms.

Personally I use MetaTrader 4 as it allows use of automated trading so I could use my programming skills to create automatic robots which would play using my strategy.

List of steps
-Learn the basics

-Sign up for some demo account so you can try things you learn in practice

-Develop a strategy

-Test it for at least a month (or maybe more depending how stable it is) on demo account

-Find a good broker

-Start trading real money, you should start from minimal ammounts and increase your deposit after some time if your strategy is working fine.

Summary
I hope my presentation gave you an entry point to the world of Forex and I’d be glad if you would learn further. But please be carefull, I don't want you to curse me for losing all your life savings on Forex :)

Here are some questions for you but if you have any questions regarding Forex please ask them.

Questions

1) Do you know any famous Forex trader?

2) What do you think about Forex robots?

3) Would you buy Forex robot if you were 100% certain that it works or maybe would you rather write your own?

4) Would you play against currency of your home country if it would be profitable?

5) If you had considerable income from Forex would you pay taxes in your home country (19% of all your income in Poland) or in some tax heaven where they are much lower (For example fixed ammount of about $100-$500 per year in State of Delaware) provided it's 100% legal?

Forex Part II – How does it work

In this part I’ll explain you how do you make trades on Forex and when profit comes from.

Don’t worry about calculations, in practice you don’t have to compute anything as computers do this for you.


Basics


Currency Pairs

When playing on Forex you trade on currency pairs, for example EUR\USD which at the moment is priced at 1.4283.

It means that one unit of base currency (Euro) is sold for 1.42833 units of quote currency (USD)

Orders


You can start two types of orders: Long order and Short order, Long means buying currency pair, Short means selling currency pair.

Please note you can sell currency pair even if you don’t have it, it means you can profit from both ups and downs so there is no such thing as crisis or depression on Forex, you can always make money :).

So if you predict that Euro will rise against Dollar you go long and if you think it will fall you go short.

Bid\Ask and spread

If you go to currency exchange you will notice that there are two prices for reach currency – buy and sell, difference between these two is spread – profit of the currency exchange.

Same thing is in Forex, but they are called Bid and Ask. You open long order on ask price and close on bid price, short order starts at bid price and close on ask price. Spread is difference between these two prices.

Pip

Pip is a smallest digit of currency pair, for example for EUR\USD its 4th place after zero. Profit or loss is usually presented in pips, for example if price will raise from 1.4283 to 1.4300 you will earn 17 pips.

Leverage



Size of your trade is multiplied by leverage which is different for every broker.
Some have 1:20 while others have 1:400. For example if you have 1:100 it means that you can make trades 100 times bigger than your deposit so with $100 you can make trade of $10000.

Simple Example

Let’s say you have $1000 at your disposal, predict that price of euro will go up and decide to profit on this.
From our broker we get following information: Leverage is 1:100 Bid price is 1.4267 and Ask Price is 1.4268.
We open buy order (go long) on Ask price so we buy (100* 1000) /1.4268 = 70086.91 euros.
Let’s assume we were right and euro rise by 100 pips to 1.4367/1.4368 and we decide to close this order.
It’s close on new Bid price which is 1.4367 so our 70086.91 euros is now worth about $100694.

We’ve just earned $694 dollars for one trade that’s about 70% profit for a single trade which could have been active only for few minutes...



On the other hand if we were unlucky it would be 70% loss for a single trade…

These high figures are result of the leverage and that's why some people consider Forex to be very risky.

If you have bad money management and lose some trades (which will happen sooner or later) you can reduce your deposit to zero in few hours.

Normally traders don’t use their entire deposits for single trades, instead use about 1%-3% per trade which is still very profitable and much safer.

Summary

I hope I’ve managed to explained basics of Forex in these two posts, in next one I’ll give you information how to start, where to look for information, strategies etc.

If you don’t understand something, have any questions related to Forex please write them in comments.

Obesity around the world -part II

In the first part of my presentation I tried to point out the problem of obesity around the world. Second part of my presentation focuses on the ways to prevent obesity, namely proper diet. However I do not want to give you any advice what diet you should use to get slimmer. I would like to talk about the so called “miraculous diets” that people use to lose weight in a very short time.

Have you ever dreamt of losing 10 kg in 2 weeks without much work?

Below you can find a commercial of one of the best known products that help you lose weight:

http://image.absoluteastronomy.com/images/encyclopediaimages/s/sl/slimfastlabel.jpg

Believe it or not but with slim fast diet you are supposed to eat 6 meals a day. 2 meals should be slim fast products and one snack. The rest of the meals should include one fourth protein, one fourth starch and half of vegetables.

Slim fast is only one of many diet programs used to help people lose weight. Apart from slim fast there are also many other easily accessible products that help you better burn calories and lose weight.



Do you know any of such products or miraculous diets? Have you ever used any of them?

Unfortunately, in today’s world TV has created an image of people that are forever young, beautiful and slim. In most cases this picture of celebrities being almost perfect is achieved with the help of photoshop. However, teenagers look at those distorted pictures and strive to be just like their idols.



This phenomenon might have very negative results leading to health problems with young people.

Please do not let anybody fool you, fast diets help only in the short run. There are many downsides of fast diets. The most common ones are as follows:

- You might lose weight quickly but when you stop taking care for yourself you gain weight even quicker
- Most of diets can lead to your starvation because you only eat shakes and a piece of fruit, many people claim that they are simply hungry while dieting. So if you think that you will be able to eat 6 meals and get slimmer you are wrong
- Most quick diets are expensive.
- Not everybody likes the taste of such diet – if you do not like the taste of it how can you continue eating something that you don’t like for a long time?
- Diets can also lead to many illnesses and in extreme cases cause anorexia or bulimia
- Products such as slim fast contain huge amounts of sugar that can cause diabetes when used for a long time

The best way to lead a healthy lifestyle is simply to take care of your body in a natural way. That means lots of exercising. In my next part of the presentation I will present some sport disciplines that can help you stay fit and healthy without using any of the “miraculous diets”

Questions:

1. Do you think that miraculous diets can help in losing weight?
2. Have you ever tried any miraculous diet? What was the result?
3. What other ways of losing weight do you know?
4. Do you think that using products such as slim fast is necessary when trying to lose weight?

Obesity around the world - part I

In the world full of temptations it is getting harder and harder to understand why we live and what we live for. Some people live for money, some people live for fame and some are made to eat.

Nowadays, more and more people take over healthy lifestyle as their way of life. There is no question that such a lifestyle should be admired. However this trend is only beginning to become more popular. There are still thousands, if not millions of people who are overweight. And this is the problem I would like to focus on today.
Do you think that people in Poland are obese?

If your answer to the above question is yes, please have a look at the video I have included below:



As you may already know, the highest number of obese people is found in the USA , Mexico and Australia. Over 74% of people living in the USA are overweight. In Australia there are over 67% of obese people. In Poland this number is not as dramatic as in other countries since it is “only” 19% of population that is overweight. However one has to admit that even in Poland the problem does exist.

Please refer to the diagram below for more information on the percentage of obese people around the world.

http://www.diabetesfamilies.com/sites/default/files/global_obesity_map.gif

It is also very important to realize what causes obesity. According to WHO definition obesity is the lack of balance between the number of calories consumed and burnt. Among most common reasons for obesity we can find: lack of movement, unhealthy diet, genetic factors. It is also important to realize that obesity is a disease and that it should be medically treated.

According to WHO – world health organization the number of obese people since 1980 has doubled so far. Even though there are more and more people who try to lead healthy lifestyle it does not affect other people who prefer to be overweight.

Not so long ago, Morgan Spurlock - a film director, made a movie called supersize me. The director decided that he will be eating at McDdonald’s every single day for 30 days. The results were extremely harmful for him. His doctor told him to stop this experiment due to health issues.

http://www.vismaya-maitreya.pl/uhuhuhuhuh.jpg

Below you can find shortened version of what was included in the movie supersize me:



For more information on the problem of obesity you can refer to WHO website.

Questions:

1. Is there any way people can fight obesity?

2. What do you think will happen in the future, is obesity going to disappear?

3. What healthy lifestyles method do you know?

4. Have you ever had any problems with your weight?

Microwaving. Everything.

So I accidentally found this channel on youtube. First I thought that some - not so bright – Americans pretending to be Arabs and microwave every thing they get in their hands. I also thought: wait till Bin Laden see this! They will suffer from making fun about the Arabs. But then, after couple of watched episodes I've got revelation - they are really Arabs. (:D) And yes, they really microwave everything. And now I don't think they are not so bright, they probably don't have any better idea (just like “Dancing Matt”) and they want to arise on the internet.

With all responsibility I can say that this material/channel is pure sh*t with some flashes of coolness.

Some of the videos are cool like microwaving a lighting bulb:

I love the effect. But I agree with one of the youtuber's comment:

“its as if you can see the microwaves at some points like 1.22

And yep, mercury vapours give drain bamage.. awsome vid tho!"
(I don't understand the first part but agree with the second).

Some (videos) are stupid (“and that's like my opinion, man”) – microwaving a 100 pack of cds:

When I saw it I thought to myself: much better effect you will get from microwaving one CD. Not that I tried to microwave CDs. I just watched clip of microwaving one cd 2 days ago. And that's how I found this guy(s). And I'm not alone with that opinion because one of the comments is:

“Just saying this dude but this video was kinda weak. Nothing special I'd rather watch one microwaved for the spark show rather then a bubble show. :/”

I think that this kind of activity on the internet is more ambitious than dancing in some exotic parts of the world and filming it (I again talking about “Dancing Matt”). And of course I didn't know that Arabs can laugh about themselves.

So if you you are bored, in TV/internet is nothing on – watch some things being treated with microwave!

Q: do you ever microwaved something other than food? :)