Brand Marketing Wars between Chinese Dynasties

Zhu Yuanzhang named his dynasty Ming. The ideogram Ming 明 combines the pictograms for sun 日 and moon 月 to convey the sense of brightness. When the Ming were overthrown in the 1640s, the invading Manchu chose for their dynasty the name Qing 清, combining the pictograms for water 水 and blue 青 to create a composite that means purity. There is a scissors-paper-stone logic to this naming progression.


The ancestors of the Manchu (the Jurchen) had founded the Jin dynasty that had flourished for more than a century until its overthrow by a Mongol-Song coalition. Jin 金 means gold, named after the Gold River in their homeland, and of course gold is a metal and therefore can be melted by the fiery brightness of the Ming. Fire, however, is extinguished by water. By changing Jin to Qing, the Manchu were figuratively confirming their victory over the Ming. In addition, a famous festival in China is known as Qingming (literally pure brightness, or The Feast of Pure Light). By choosing the name Qing the Manchu were ensuring that their name would forever proceed that of the Ming in one of the most important dates of the Chinese calendar.  

Now, the term Ming has several other associations.

First, it forms part of the Chinese term given to Manichaeism (Ming Jao). In his struggle to overthrow the Mongols, Zhu Yuanzhang the founder of the Ming dynasty, had first to defeat a rival faction that was predominantly Manichaean. His choice of the name Ming was partly intended to keep survivors of the defeated group on board.

Secondly, fiery brightness is also considered to be yang 阳 contrasted with the yin 阴 of water. The south is considered to be yang while the north is yin. By choosing the name Ming he was giving primacy to the south.
  

*Taken from the Vietnamese book The Song of Kieu, A New Lament, pages xxii & lviii

Human Language vs Animal Communication Systems

From what different experts or random people have meant, one can conclude more or less that language is the “emergence of thought in the natural world”. Through the complicated process of muscle activation and breath, sound is produced, the info of which we decode for the purpose of inserting the meaning into our minds. Animals, also living beings, have similarly developed communication systems so as to interact easier. The question is, on what do those two differ? They differ in three points.

The first one is called “Discrete Infinity”. Language as a tool has at its disposal a discrete number of fundamental units, the alphabet.  From these 26 little legos the human mind has offered outflows of tens of thousands of books, essays, dialogues, academic papers. This diversity of output, as time passes, goes to infinity. On the contrary, while animals do have basic mechanisms of communication, it is hard to say that they have the ability to express this great complexity.

The second difference lies on the thinking of time, space and the abstract. A human can speak about its baby age in the past and dream the love of its life in the future. On the other hand, an animal expresses itself at the moment. A human discusses on countries kilometers away, travels with a plan, and in general has sufficient clarity for many things that aren't at the exact place it is being/living. For the animals the dimension “space” is very restricted, they can only reach an understanding on what is “there”, “here”, “a little further”. Moreover, humans think abstractly, we talk about justice, write poems and compose music. Animals cannot comprehend that “sadness is getting more beautiful because we look like her” or “do a leap faster than decaying”.

The third one is on the purpose of communication. In the human/animal society every member has a role to play for a common purpose. That's why we have to transfer images from one to another, to get into the shoes of the other so that we function more efficiently as a whole. Two monkeys look at the same wig, may know that they see the same wig, but cannot interact in that complex way we humans do.

Source: The info was taken from a MOOC(online lesson) in coursera.org called Human Linguistics, the teacher was Dutch.

It seems that the root/basic difference that is preceding the differences above is the intelligence factor and it is explained by Michio Kaku why we were the species that got it at a blog link here: http://ideanautica.blogspot.gr/2017/02/michio-kaku-on-evolution-of-intelligence.html

Pythagorean Cup

Imagine Pythagoras in one of his school feasts in southern Italy looking at his pupils having fun. He sees some drinking too much and thinks about the vices of men. So he decides to teach them a lesson, involving math as always. What was later conceived was one of the most simple and marvelous ancient gadgets.

What is it?

The cup is exactly like all the others, though it differentiates in 2 things. First, inside of the space where the liquid is to be, there is a small bit lifted in the middle. Second, inside the bit there is a route for the liquid that goes, as the below image demonstrates, out of the cup.  

How does it work?

So, you fill water in. Until you reach the discontinuous line everything is fine. The water will concentrate around the bit and inside it, but only in the right side of the liquid route. When more liquid is thrown and the line is passed, the laws of nature take charge. What happens is that liquid falls in the right side of the bit holl and a route is created that is pushed by the weight of the rest of the liquid. End result = no liquid to drink :(

Algorithm “filling the drink”:

litresofwater = 0

enter the loop/startfilling

{

litresofwater = litresofwater + litrespouredintothebottle

if (litresofwater > limit)

go to A

else

continue loop, but first

If (you want to stop)

go to B

}

A: throw slowly the liquid out

B: stop filling and drink as you like

End of Algorithm

It is also very interesting because during the application of the algorithm you get schooled by dead physical matter which at least i think is wow. Step one, you fill the cup, it's your trial, this step is in your total control. If you don't cheat your classmates everything is fine you are equal among equals, you have respected the fair distribution of resources, you can now proceed with confidence coming out of a moral challenge and discuss with your peers. If you do cheat, you have to be humbled, and your chance of drinking sweet wine of the Mediterranean is diminished so that you think what happened.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISfIT3B4y6E

Michio Kaku on the evolution of Intelligence

Some people think that intelligence is the crowning achievement of evolution. Well if that's true there should be more intelligent creatures on the planet Earth. But to the best of our knowledge we're the only ones. The dinosaurs were on the Earth for roughly 200 million years and to the best of our knowledge not a single dinosaur became intelligent. We humans, modern humans, had been on the Earth for roughly a hundred thousand years. Only a tiny fraction of the 4.5 billion years that the Earth has been around. So you come to the rather astounding conclusion that intelligence is not really necessary. That Mother Nature has done perfectly well with non-intelligent creatures for millions of years and that we as intelligent creatures are the new kid on the block.

And so then you begin to wonder how did we become intelligent? What separated us from the animals? Well there are basically three ingredients -- at least three that help to propel us to become intelligent.

One is the opposable thumb. You need a tentacle, a claw, an opposable thumb in order to manipulate the environment. So that's one of the ingredients of intelligence -- to be able to change the world around you.

Second is eyesight. But the eyesight of a predator. We have eyes to the front of our face, not to the side of our face and why? Animals with eyes to the front of their face are predators -- lions, tigers and foxes. Animals with eyes to the side of their face are prey and they are not as intelligent -- like a rabbit. We say dumb bunny and smart as a fox. And there's a reason for that. Because the fox is a predator. It has to learn how to ambush. It has to learn how to have stealth, camouflage. It has to psych out the enemy and anticipate the motion of the enemy that is its prey. If you're a dumb bunny all you have to do is run.

And the third basic ingredient is language because you have to be able to communicate your knowledge to the next generation.And to the best of our knowledge animals do not communicate knowledge to their offspring other than by simply communicating certain primitive motions. There's no book. There's no language. There's no culture by which animals can communicate their knowledge to the next generation.

And so we think that's how the brain evolved. We have an opposable thumb, we have a language of maybe five to ten thousand words. And we have eyesight that is stereo eyesight -- the eyesight of a predator. And predators seem to be smarter than prey. Then you ask another question. How many animals on the Earth satisfy these three basic ingredients. And then you come to the astounding conclusion -- the answer is almost none. So perhaps there's a reason why we became intelligent and the other animals did not. They did not have the basic ingredients that would one day propel us to become intelligent.

Neuron: The fundamental particle of Neuroscience

The neuron is the basic functional unit of the nervous system.

It is mainly structured in three parts:

• Cell body, contains the nucleus and organelles
• Dendrites, branching extensions of the cell body that receive signals
• Axon, long projection off the cell body that sends signals

They are divided into two categories:

• sensory neurons that receive and transmit stimuli
• motor neurons that send a response in targeted cells

How many?

There are approximately 86 billion in a human brain and transmit electrical and chemical signals to one another

How do they function?

Once a neuron has been stimulated by some sort of stimulus, it generates an electric potential that travels down the length of the cell. This is the 'electro' part of electrochemical. Once the electric current reaches the axon terminal at the end of the cell, it triggers the release of certain chemical messengers. This is the 'chemical' part of electrochemical.

In more detail

1. Neurons begin at a resting potential of around -70 milivolts, during which no signals will be transmitted
2. An adjacent neuron sends neurotransmitters that bind to the dendrites of the neuron
3. If these neurotransmitters are excitatory, then gated ion channels will open up to permit ambient sodium ions (Na+) into the cell (making the potential more positive). If these neurotransmitters are inhibitory, then gated ion channels will open up to permit internal potassium ions (K+) out of the cell (making the potential more negative)
4. For an action potential to be generated, enough excitatory neurotransmitters must be present to raise the charge above a certain threshold level. Once this level is exceeded, an all-or-none electrical potential is sent down the length of the axon (depolarization)
5. After depolarizing, the neuron's ion pumps begin working to reestablish the resting potential. While the neuron is doing so, it enters a refractory period during which no further action potentials can be generated. (hyperpolarization)
6. Once the potential has been restored, the neuron is ready for a new stimulus

Source Wikiversity(!): https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Fundamentals_of_Neuroscience