SUNDAY TIMES OF INDIA, BENGALURU
MAY 14, 2017
TOI BRINGS YOU A WEEKLY PICK OF STIMULATING IDEAS AND OPINIONS THAT HAVE APPEARED IN OTHER MEDIA, ONLINE AND OFFLINE
QUORA QUESTION
A compelling question
from Q&A site quora.com
What will one cup of green
tea a day do for my health?
Answer by FRANK HORBELT,
In the tea business for nine years
People want me to recommend a
tea to cure their cancer, halitosis,
premature balding and tennis elbow. And
to be honest, Im sick to death of other tea
businesses luring people in with health
benefit claims. There may actually be
some health benefits, but its my opinion
that they are grossly overstated and
misleading. I personally think the biggest
benefit you might get from drinking any
kind of tea would be the benefit derived
from replacing a sugary, high-calorie,
possibly carbonated, beverage with tea,
which has no sugar, or calories by itself.
The short answer is, drink tea because
you enjoy it, or drink tea because it is
better for you than soda, but dont expect
it to work magic on you.
16.8K upvotes
672K views
G R E AT R E A D S
Stories you shouldnt
miss this week
WHY MOST RECIPES ASK YOU
TO COOK AT 350 FAHRENHEIT
W hy do so
many
recipes ask you to
cook or bake at
350 degrees
Fahrenheit (177
degrees Celsius)?
The answer lies in chemistry: a phenomenon
called the Maillard Reaction occurs at that
temperature, giving rise to complex food
flavours and also an appetising golden-
brown colour. Chemistry aside, 350 degrees
is also a very commonsense temperature,
hot enough to cook things fairly quickly but
no so hot that your dish burns.
For more: The Atlantic
YOUR BOSS IS LESS STRESSED
THAN YOU, BUT WONT ADMIT
Y ou have always known
it but were too afraid
to say: your boss, who is a
self-proclaimed martyr to
the Cause, is shamming it.
A study published in
Journals of Gerontology,
claims not only are
subordinates in a
corporate setup under
more stress, most of them carry the
elevated stress into retirement. Lower pay,
poorer pension arrangements, less control
over their work, are some of the conditions
that crush people on the lower rungs.
For more: Motherboard
HOW COMMERCIALISATION
IS KILLING CO-WORKING
W orking out
of pay-as-
you-go shared
offices became
a trend around
2008, and was
widely seen as an
essential part of the coming gig economy,
but just 10 years on it has lost its spark. In
the US, shared workspaces now occupy a
record 27 million square feet, but instead
of a social experiment coworking has
become a booming industry. Providers of
coworking spaces are not scaling the
original concept, but have adjusted their
business models so they look more like
providers of private offices. For more: Quartz
How negative thoughts kill by damaging your DNA
D
o you seethe when someone cuts past
you at the checkout counter? Do you
think they deliberately did it? Be-
ware, you are cutting short your life, warn
molecular biologist Elizabeth Black-
burnwho won the Nobel Prize in Medi-
cine in 2009and health psychologist
Elissa Epel, who studies stress and ageing.
The authors claim in their new book,
The Telomere Effect, that negative thoughts
harm your health at the DNA level. Re-
search has shown that a persons social
relationships, environments and life-
styles affect their genes. Even though
you are born with a particular set of
genes, the way you live can influence how
they express themselves.
Blackburn and Epel say components
of DNA called telomeres determine how
TO I S M O S T WATC H E D
275K 2.5K
VIEWS LIKES
HOW RICH NEIGHBOURS
CAN MAKE US UNHAPPY
Seeing Them Constantly Reminds Us We Got Left Behind In The Rat Race
K
eeping up with the Joneses
hurts, but it is not always a case
of envy, says an article in The
Guardian. Even well-paid peo-
ple, the upper-middle class, can
suffer bouts of misery when they are sur-
rounded by the rich.
Being highly paid isnt enough: people
want to see progress in their lives, to feel
as if they are moving up, and to be able to
exhibit that ascension to people in their
community and to themselves.
Take the Silicon Valley programmer
earning $10,000 a month. She might be bet-
ter off than the vast majority of Ameri-
cans, but after a monthly rent of $3,000 and
other expenses if all she saves is a few
hundred dollars, she is not likely to feel
rich seeing the swish lifestyles of others
around her. To catch up with them, she
might take up one or two side gigs, but this
will only burn her out quickly.
It is hard for such peoplethere are a
surprisingly large number of themto
find sympathy because they are taught
from childhood to count their blessings.
People treat their complaints as the petty
cribbing of the privileged, but research
shows their feelings should not be disre-
garded as a sense of inadequacy or inferi-
ority can lead to mental health issues.
You might be living in a comfortable
condominium, but if you are still driving
a small car when most of your neighbours
have graduated to SUVs, and you see no
prospect of upgrading, you might start
feeling smaller. And over time, it can hurt
your mental health.
It does not matter where you stand
relative to the national per capita income.
It wont matter that you are in the top 1%
Weekends keep changing with time
B
enjamin Franklin, one of the founding
fathers of the United States, once
claimed he got a promotion at the Lon-
don printing house where he worked simply
by showing up on Mondays.
In the early 18th century, it was normal
for employees to skip work on Mondays,
saying they were keeping Saint Monday,
says an article in Quartz.
Workers were paid on Saturdays, were
required to attend church on Sundays, so
Monday was the day to blow up their mon-
ey on drink and other entertainment, even
though it meant losing Mondays pay.
Why tock-tick does not
sound right to your ears
E
ver wondered why we say
tick-tock, not tock-tick,
or ding-dong, not dong-
ding; King Kong, not
Kong King? Turns out it
is one of the unwritten
rules of English that na-
tive speakers know
without knowing.
The rule, explains a
BBC article, is: If there
are three words then the
order has to go I, A, O. If
there are two words then
the first is I and the sec-
ond is either A or O. Mish-
mash, chit-chat, dilly-dally,
shilly-shally, tip top, hip-hop,
flip-flop, tic tac, sing song, ding
dong, King Kong, ping pong.
Theres another unwritten
rule at work in the name Little
Red Riding Hood, says the article.
Adjectives in English abso-
lutely have to be in this order:
opinion-size-age-shape-colour-ori-
PLAY IT BY EAR: If a word sequence
sounds wrong, it is probably wrong
ages. They also have shorter telomeres.
When pessimists develop an ageing-re-
WORK OUT MIND AND BODY: Stay positive
like Forrest Gump, and go long-distance
running to keep your genes healthy
Stray cow
attacks girl in
Surat street
A video of a stray
cow pinning a little
girl against a bike
and then throwing
her down in a Surat
street was seen 2.75
lakh times on TOIs
Facebook page.
http://bit.ly/2dPX8TJ
3K 1.5K
SHARES COMMENTS
TIMES CURATOR
COMPARISONS HURT: It does not matter that you are in the top 1% of the population,
financially, if everyone else you know lives like a celebrity
financially, you will always be sizing your-
self up locallycomparing yourself with
your colleagues, your relatives and your
neighbours.
Even if you are middle class according
to national averages, if you dwell in the
hyper-wealthy areas of this country (all
the richer thanks to inequality), you will
probably find yourself struggling materi-
ally and emotionally Like politics, all
status is ultimately localpeople compare
themselves to those they live near. Ameri-
cans overall may live better than medieval
aristocrats could dream of, but that means
nothing when oligarchs live in the neigh-
borhood next door, flaunting their luxuri-
ous homes and top-quality private schools.
This would not matter if we suffered
Employers countered this by offering
half-Saturdays at full pay, and Saint Mon-
day quickly became history.
In 1926, Henry Ford gave his workers
Saturdays off, hoping they would buy his
cars to kill their extra leisure time. Later,
the Great Depression forced many corpo-
rations to cut back to a five-hour week,
and by 1955, it was the norm across the
US, UK and Canada.
But all countries did not settle on a
Saturday-Sunday weekend. In the Middle
East, Friday-Saturday weekends became
the norm...some Gulf and North African
gin-material-purpose noun. So
you can have a lovely little
old rectangular green
French silver whittling
knife. But if you mess
with that word order in
the slightest youll sound
like a maniac.
That explains why we
say little green men not
green little men, but
Big Bad Wolf sounds like
a gross violation of the
opinion (bad)-size (big)-
noun (wolf) order. It wont, Advanced Audio Codingis now the de
though, if you recall the first
rule about the I-A-O order.
That rule seems inviolable:
All four of a horses feet make
exactly the same sound. But we
always, always say clip-clop, nev-
er clop-clip.
This rule even has a techni-
Getty Images
cal name, if you care to know
itthe rule of ablaut reduplica-
tionbut then life is simpler
knowing that we know the rule
without knowing it.
For more: BBC
fast your cells age. Short telomeres are one
of the major reasons human cells grow
old, but lab tests have shown that they can
also grow longer. In other words, ageing
could possibly be accelerated or slowed
and, in some aspects, even reversed.
The shopper above is an example of
cynical hostility. People who score high
on measures of cynical hostility tend to
get more cardiovascular disease, meta-
bolic disease and often die at younger
Pessimism shortens telomeres too.
lated illness, like cancer or heart disease,
the illness tends to progress faster... They
tend to die earlier, warn the authors.
Ruminating over a bad situation is also
destructive. Rumination never leads to a
WIT OF THE WEEK
17
II N
NCCR
R EE D
D II B
B LL EE FFA
ACC TT
50C
Although normal human body temperature is
37C, mitochondria inside our cells that burn
food to produce energy can be as hot as 50C.
Source: New Scientist
Getty Images
Fatal crashes increased in 2016 but
ying still the safest means of travel
Fatal civil airliner
crashes since 1945,
by country
813
US
Russia
Brazil 187
514
In 2016, 1 plane was lost for
Colombia
181 every 2.5 million ights, as
compared with 1 plane for
Canada every 3.1 million ights in 2015.
occasional stabs of envy on seeing our
179 Still, ying remains about twice
as safe as train travel and 100
wealthy neighbours, but research shows
constant comparisons harm our mental
UK
105 times safer than journeying
health. Michael Daly, an associate profes- by car. The US, which has
sor in behavioral science at the University
France
103 the maximum air trafc, also
of Stirling in Scotland, and his colleagues leads in the number of fatal
claim social position rather than mate-
Indonesia
98 civil airliner crashes since
rial conditions may explain the impact of 1945. There have been 813 fatal
money on human health. Mexico 97 crashes in the US in these 72
It seems the feeling of being left be-
years, as against 514 in Russia.
hind economically triggers an involun- India 94 China, which has the second
tary defeat syndrome in which low so-
cial rank opens people up to psychologi-
cal disorders such as depression. Essen-
China 76 busiest skies, has had only 76
fatal crashes to 94 in India.
tially, if you are surrounded by those who
outrank you, it is likely to affect your
identity in insidious ways. LESSER-KNOWN TREASURES FROM THE WEB
For more: The Guardian
A pick of offbeat, non-mainstream blogs and sites
thenib.com
I f you like your politicians
countries booked off Thursday and Friday.
That was all right before globalisation, skewered in a cartoon and
but increasingly, countries are aligning news told through comic strips,
their weekends with the Saturday-Sunday The Nib is just the site for
routine of the West. Oman switched from you. Matt Bors, a 2012 Pulitzer
a Thursday-Friday weekend to a Friday- Prize nalist, started the daily
Saturday weekend in 2013. The same year, comics publication in 2013 to run
Saudi Arabia followed suit with a royal political satire, journalism and
decree that looked a lot like an open-for- non-ction comics on what is
business sign.
going down in the world.
Even Israel, where the official week-
end is the day and a half that constitutes
the Sabbath, is changing to remain
For the past few months the
site has been predictably heavy
nation, South Sudan, is on the
verge of famine and genocide.
competitive. For more: Quartz on Trump cartoons but there is a Sam Wallmans visual essay
lot more that foreign audiences on the minimum wage and how
can also connect with in The Nibs capitalists are trying to get rid of
MP3 audio format four-year archive of more than
1,700 cartoons.
it will strike a chord with workers.
The seeming contradiction
is history, but your Not all of their cartoons poke
fun at powerful people. There
between global warming and
unusually heavy snowfall in
are explainers and even news some parts is quickly reconciled
music wont die illustrations on topics that do in a six-screen strip. There are
not nd adequate space in major comics on autonomous trucks,
media. For instance, Andy Warner
W
hen Apple became the first firm to be the race to Mars, and current
valued at $800-billion last week, it was and Victor Ndula explain in just topics like United Airlines many
a moment of glory for the MP3 audio six screens how Africas youngest controversies.
format that enabled the iPods rise many sum-
mers ago. But the MP3 is dead now. You might
have hundreds or thousands of songs in the PICTORY A picture that tells a story
format stashed away on your phone or com-
puter, but the people who created it in the
1980sGermanys Fraunhofer Institute for SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE SET
Integrated Circuitshave officially an-
nounced its demise. FOR A MAJOR TUNE-UP
Another Fraunhofer creationAAC or
facto standard for music download and videos Iconic it is Its main concert The This will be
on mobile phones, reports NPR. AAC is
more efficient than MP3 and offers a lot more
and a money- hall is too big and building the rst time
functionality. spinner too, too high for sound will also that parts of
Listeners loved the MP3 for the ease with but Sydney clarity. Now it is be made the building
which it allowed music to be moved around. Opera House being tuned up disabled- will be shut
Back in the days when storage was expensive, has always had from the inside for friendly in down in
it compressed songs to a few hundred kilo-
a problem with a better listening the four- its 43-year
bytes. But it also destroyed the established
business model of the music industry by ena-
its acoustics experience year project history
bling rampant piracy. What next for your
hoard of MP3 songs? They will be alright for
as long as devices can read the files.
For more: NPR
solution, only to more ruminating When
you ruminate, stress sticks around in the
body long after the reason for the stress is
over. The resulting depression and anxi-
ety only make your telomeres shorter.
Trying to suppress thoughts and feel-
ings makes matters worse. The more
forcefully you push your thoughts away,
8m 1bn
the louder they call out for your atten-
tion In a small study, greater avoidance
of negative feelings and thoughts was as-
sociated with shorter telomeres. Annual number Yearly revenue
Even lack of focus is bad for telomeres of visitors to in Australian
because when people are not thinking the opera house dollars
about what theyre doing, theyre not as
happy as when theyre engaged. To re-
verse the harm to telomeres, try medita-
tion and long-distance running.
For more: Ideas.ted.com
NYT Syndication
WEAR THIS SHADE OF GREEN
TO BE NOTICED BY EVERYONE
T o a physicist, colour is nothing but the wavelength of
light. Experiments show the most striking colour is a
particular shade of green that can be pinpointed as light of
555-nanometre wavelength. According to the UK National
Physics Laboratory, (it) is the point at which the greatest
number of cones of your eye are stimulated the most,
says an article in Fast Company. The research has found
use in clothing now. People on adventure trails, workers in
hazardous settings and someone merely out cycling at
night need to be visible from far, and jackets of the
555-nanometre colour can keep them safe. Why not use
flashing lights or some other gadget? Gadgets fail, not the
physics of a fabric. For more: Fastcodesign.com