Three articles this month, all of them on biology. The first one is only a scientific article in the vaguest sense and talks about the cognitive benefits to gained from travel. The second one weighs in on the age old debate of cats versus dogs and the last one concerns a recent development that could lead to superhuman strength being a reality.
The first article is less formal than the usual stuff that I link to as part of this series and frankly I didn’t think it’s a bit too long for the ideas it presents, but it does make for a rather good if somewhat obvious point: that travel expands the mind and opens us to possibilities that otherwise wouldn’t have occurred to us. What sets this observation apart is that the article cites experiments performed by psychologist Lile Jia at Indiana University. He assigned tasks to two group of students with one group told that the task was from a place far away while another group was told that the task came from somewhere nearby.
Continue reading Recent Interesting Science Articles (December ’09) →
The real adventure for us started with the trip to Camp 5. First we had to take a one-hour boat ride from the entrance to the Clearwater Caves, carrying all the gear that we would need for the next two nights with us. Then, led by our guides but carrying our own stuff, we had to hike along a jungle trail 8.8 km to Camp 5. The terrain was flat for the most part, but there were still plenty of roots, rocks and muddy patches on the trail, so we had to keep our eyes constantly glued towards the ground or else we’d trip or slip and fall. We arrived about 2.5 hours later, including time for a rest stop in the middle.
Camp 5 turned out to be a small cluster of wooden buildings next the swift flowing Melinau River. The accommodation is very spartan: basically each person is assigned a hard mattress on top of a wooden platform in a large communal room. The scenery however is fantastic. The camp itself is located just at the base of the mountain that we’d be climbing, part of Gunung Api. On the opposite side of the river lies the even more majestic Mount Benarat. Meals were prepared by the guides assigned to each group using rations that they had carried with them from Mulu and eaten in the large open cantine area. After dinner, our guide briefed us on what the climb would be liked, reminded us of what we’d need to bring and gave some advice.
Continue reading Mulu Caves / Pinnacles Climb, Part 2 →
Writing everything that I have to say about this trip would both take too much space and too much time for a single post, so I’m going to split this into two parts. My wife and I went on a four day / three night trip to Mulu in Sarawak state over the extended Hari Raya holidays and, quite unexpectedly to us, had one of those rare, once-in-a-lifetime experiences. We’d originally planned to have a small and simple trip to take advantage of the holidays, and since we’re currently based in Kota Kinabalu, thought that it would be a good idea to visit Sarawak, which neither of us had ever been to. The caves at Mulu is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and we’ve all read about them in our geography textbooks, so it was the natural candidate.
Visiting only the caves however is normally just a two day / one night excursion, so my wife looked for something else we could do in the area. She eventually picked the Pinnacles to tack on to our trip. It was advertised as a hiking and mountain climbing trip. We expected it to be somewhat strenuous and thought it would make for a good warming up exercise for our Mount Kinabalu climb planned for early next year. I did not expect that it would turn out to be the most physically exhausting thing I have ever done in my life. But more on that in the second part.
Continue reading Mulu Caves / Pinnacles Climb, Part 1 →
The unexamined life is a life not worth living