Brion, Horatio Miguel III, P. 2011-35073 BS Mathematics STS X2
Not
Just A Beautiful Mind, But A Beautiful Soul
I
had heard John Nash’s name once, but I thought he was just a janitor who had
came into fame because of the Nash Equilibrium. But I was wrong. After watching
the movie “A Beautiful Mind”, my view of famous mathematicians had changed as I
finished watching the movie. John Nash is the recipient of the Nobel Memorial
Prize in Economic Sciences in 1994. Although he was a bright and a respectable
person, there was thing that hindered him to enjoy his life. He was married to
Alicia and they had a child. They live in a good home, but their lives were so
different. I admired John’s prowess in differential equations and in linear
algebra, but at some point, John is not that good though.
People see mathematicians before as
nerds, weird and anti-social. Unfortunately, John is like that. I was quite sad
when in the latter part of the story, the friends that John saw were just
hallucinations. It’s like a big failure for him to have real friends who would
understand him as a person with so much love and dedication to mathematics. Because
of this weirdness John has, he was bullied by his classmates in graduate
school. I felt like ashamed for grad students should be more matured than they
were in the undergrad, and yet the people around John kept on bullying him. I
found the situation absurd for the students even mocked John, who was at the
doctoral level. In our present days, we should be able to understand those
people who experience what John had, and we must help them to overcome it,
instead of making fun of them.
Also, being a loner is so hard. John
was good at being a loner, and he preferred to be in solitude than to be with
noisy classmates. I remember myself being like that, just sitting in one corner
thinking of good things and stuff. But I turned sad when he started thinking of
an imaginary roommate and an imaginary client for a secret mission. Because of
so much loneliness, he resorted in making himself a world only for him and his
friends. Because of this, I am thinking twice about taking Mathematics as a
course.
But
in the end, the love of Alicia helped him a lot in coping with his disease. At
first, he was given insulin shots in order for him to stabilize. But instead,
it made him worse than ever. However, Alicia was so patient and so caring, that
even though she almost gave John up, she did not give up. Her love and support
was enough to help John conquer his condition. John overcame his condition by
ignoring the images that he see. It was difficult, but John had the
determination to do it because he still wants to be with his wife. In spite of
those drawbacks upon him, he had produced a good paper enough for him to have a
doctoral degree. I had learned that even though we face trials of many kinds,
we could still see the light, even though the tides are so high to cascade.
Indeed, John is not only a beautiful mind, but also a beautiful soul on this
planet. A gem found at the bottom the ocean, one might say.
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Monkeys:
The Great Socialites
Many
agrees that our earliest ancestors were the monkeys themselves, although this
has not yet been verified. But one thing is sure about the apes, that they are
very similar to us humans. We are sure also that we are somehow related to them,
in terms of skeleton structure, and most of all, on how they interact with
their co-primates. In David Attenborough’s documentary, many species of
primates were presented, and the video showed how these animals behave in the
wild, and how they live differently from us, the ‘super’ primates, as they say.
The prevailing atmosphere is that
the monkeys have similar traits and attitudes with us, when it comes in facing
something complicated. Capuchins monkeys, for an instance, use their brains to
look for food everywhere. They don’t stop until they get what they want, as
shown that they pound a clam so tightly closed that even David can’t open with
his bare hands! They continuously pounded the clam, and they got the innards of
the bivalve. This technique and knowledge is passed through the next
generations, for the youngsters are closely watching their elders do the job.
They also use their resources for their own convenience, like using piper
leaves as insect repellent. For some monkeys, they use their body parts in
order to navigate around the vicinity, as shown by spider monkeys using their
tail and pygmies using their stealthy claws for catching insects and grasping
thin branches of trees.
Also,
another aspect they have similar to us is having a social structure. Family,
being the smallest unit in our society, plays a very significant role for one’s
development. Monkeys are not exempted in this matter. For example, baboons have
s social structure in their group. The masculine gender is indeed dominant in
their group, and other males would try to attest the leader’s potentials by
fighting. Then role of the mother is not very far from ours, and they really
care for their young. They also have a tradition wherein they groom each other
for their own comfort. They also gather in groups, just like humans need
companion while living. They are social animals, in which they also want
belongingness and a family to live with.
Brain
size really matters, right? Their brain size greatly affects on how they use
tools and how they see things. Tool utilization is the most advanced
manifestation of their minds, and thus making us close relatives to them. This
is shown by chimps pounding the nuts continuously, and they lose patience
sometimes at that activity. Also, one thing that is very convenient for monkeys
is that they see in full color, which helps them to distinguish the leaves that
are poisonous or edible. This also assists them in navigation, in which an
orang-utan creates a map of the forests of their own in their minds. Some
monkeys, like the chimpanzees, even dream. This greatly aids them also in
hunting even at night (as owl monkeys do), and they were even able to free their
hands to give them a new purpose, thus making them nearly and almost bipedal,
just like us!
It
seems so amazing that we are not the only ones who have the minds that could do
anything. Although we are the smartest animal in the world, we seem have limitations
just like other animals do. But one thing prevails in the end. We are now being
subjected in an evolution and revolution. Everything around us seems to be
different, and thus, they seem to evolve and cope with the things around. Not
only that, but also, everyone seems changing in terms of lifestyle, diet and
even in their sexual lives! Now we know that monkeys are not just animals in
the zoos, but there are great socialtes.
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Birds:
The Dancers of the Sky
Every day as we pass by any place
whether going to school or to work, we see birds. We also eat a kind of bird
(chicken), and we admire the alignments of a flock of some kind of bird during
sunrise, before it gets scorching hot. But, seriously, birds are so important
to the world, though they don’t seem to play a significant role in our
advancing life. If you would ask a random person about birds’ importance to
human life, they would just know chicken and egg.
In the University of the
Philippines-Diliman, there are about 50-80 species of birds, primarily
migratory in type. I was shocked that there are rare types of birds just inside
our campus. Furthermore, Dr. Benjamin Vallejo showed to us some beautiful and
cute little birds they found at Math Building. I was shocked, for I have been
three years in MB, and yet I haven’t seen such rare and beautiful birds. Dr.Vallejo talked about a lot of species of
birds inside the campus. I realized that UPD was like a little forest for those
birds, for the campus became a second home for them because of a lot of trees. When
we conducted a little bird-watching activity around the National Science
Complex. It was about noon at that time, and it was so scorching hot outside.
We were asked to look for some birds, and see if we could find birds of the
same species he showed in class. We were so doubtful if seeing them, for almost
every day we pass by a lot of trees, we can see nothing but dried leaves and
fruit pods falling.
So,
as we go along the premises of the CS Complex, we see, well nothing but trees.
The first birds we saw were running chickens. Then, we saw three mayas darting
across the floor. As we approach the Math Parking Lot, we saw shrikes, which we
found really up high the trees. After a long search, we say three kingfishers
perched also at the treetop. After that, we returned to CS Audi. Almost all of
us found the same type of bird. The reason or that was it was noon time, and
the birds wanted to have some shade, just like us humans. It’s so cute to find
that birds also acted like us, wherein they wanted to be secured and to be
shaded from the sun’s intense heat. He told us also that the best time to see
the rarest birds in the campus is at early morning, before the sun rises. We
were very frustrated that we did not see the birds that Dr. Vallejo had shown
in his presentation. It’s like UPD is a very big avian zoo, and yet, we can’t
see those beautiful flying creatures gliding in the air.
These
very elegant gliders maintain the balance of nature by seed dispersion, wherein
they somehow scatter the seeds of the fruits they eat onto the ground. Then the
seeds again germinate into saplings, then eventually, into tall trees which
bear fruit, and the cycle goes on, as if the seeds have the will to live for
nature. Also, as weird as it seems, birds are also predators of insects, and as
well as prey for larger birds. It is a little sad for me hearing news of forest
clearings for building edifices, illegal cutting and the like. As an animal
lover, I really feel so sad and angry for the ignorance that humans show to
nature. So as a student of the college Science, I would support everything
related to animal saving.
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