Archive for the 'Videos' Category

Inner life of a cell

Published
by
Phil
on March 24, 2008
in Science and Videos
. 1 Comment

A group at Harvard came up with this incredible, realistic animation of the inner workings of a cell. There are two versions. One is a 3-minute animation with (good!) music; the other is an 8-minute animation with narration.

The “story” is about leukocyte extravasation, or the movement of a white blood cell out of the bloodstream and into infected tissue. A fairly decent background in science will be necessary for anyone to get a good grasp of what’s going on in the video, but even the common person will be impressed or even amazed by how intricate our bodies are, down to the very molecules. (I would recommend the 3-minute version if you find yourself short on science background.)

We live in an amazing world, we are amazing worlds, and, in light of this video, each one of our cells is an amazing world. Who knows, molecules and atoms could also be worlds of their own, far more complex than we could ever imagine. Nature works in astounding ways.

3-minute version

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The only thing scientists, partially including myself, might have against this is that the animations of the molecular movements are too “perfect.” In reality, molecules wiggle against each other randomly (Brownian motion) until these things happen naturally - more of a chaos really. Of course, if they were to show that in the video, it would probably greatly confuse the viewer, so I can see why they decided against it.

If you’re skeptical about the kinesin motor “walking” protein (and you have every right to be), there’s also a video that breaks down the process of how it “walks,” courtesy of the Milligan lab:

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Continue reading ‘Inner life of a cell’

Lena Maria: an inspiration

Published
by
Phil
on March 25, 2007
in Life and Videos
. 0 Comments

Lena Maria Klingvall was born with uneven legs and without arms. With this condition, she has been able to accomplish much more than ordinary commonfolk — such as setting two Swedish swimming records, for example. (So that means she swims better than most of us that do have hands.)

Now at the age of 40, she has learned how to do almost everything without hands (including using chopsticks with almost as much finesse as an oriental), and she is quite possibly many times happier than any 10 random people on the street combined. Narrations in the 30-minute video are in Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles, and Lena herself speaks fluent English.

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I think there’s just a great deal we can learn from Lena. A good inspiration for the rest of us!

Life a pointless race?

Published
by
Phil
on March 18, 2007
in Life and Videos
. 4 Comments
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Birth. Life. Death. A meaningless cycle, really. But you can give life a meaning if you want to. From my standpoint, a life is only meaningful if you take the time to learn the essence of the universe and become “one” with it. It is the only way that your essence won’t be isolated from everything else when it becomes unchained from your physical body. It is only then that you can vanish from all existence and become the universe itself.

That put a really poetic twist on an actually very simple idea. Who are we as individuals? Nothing. We are simple manifestations of our surroundings. I don’t care what about us you think is “individual,” it ultimately came from somewhere around us. Our appearances, thoughts, ideas, bodies - they all came from our surroundings and lineage, be it our ancestors, food, or the simple reaction to outside stimuli. Therefore, in truth, there really is no “I” distinguishable from everything else. Individuality is an illusion - how can we break from that?