Post Christmas Stress

Christmas should be one of the best times of the year: meeting up with friends and family and having a well deserved break after such a long stretch of time working. Christmas for me brightens up the miserable rainy part of the year with reindeer jumpers, excessive amounts of mince pies and carols which only ever sound right when sung in the echoing cathedral.

The main problem now is getting over that lead up to the event. Such a big rush and now it's over with a wash of PCISD (Post Christmas Induced Stress Disorder) and we're all writing our new year's resolutions: keeping a blog, losing weight, doing some more chemistry revision, yeah right...

Oh well at least I've got a Bond themed New year's party to look forward to with this little number and some smoky eye make-up. I could be Eva Green's twin (Casino Royale), couldn't I? Don't answer that.

Discovering disability

If you were expecting a child but discovered it was going to be severely disabled what would you do? A disability is a massive thing to cope with and can destroy families with medical bills, strain and a constant tie to the child which will never lift. Of course some people are against abortion, in some cases for religious reasons which I completely understand, however I think we have to consider the quality of life for the child. Operations, discrimination and other struggles may form their life and I don't think anyone would wish that upon their own child. A controversial issue for some serious thinking about.

Laughing out loud

This morning I was considering to myself, what determines what we find funny? Babies laugh all the time, they take pleasure in absolutely everything, but what if we could find a way to calculate how to cheer someone else up. I can see a psychology experiment idea forming for next year's class here! I came up with some determining factors which I have thought about.

1. Age: smaller children laugh at anything whereas adults tend to restrain themselves which is a shame as we could really do with some more laughter.

2. Culture: different societies have certain things which simply are well 'funny', a universal humour being anything related to toilets.

3. Personality or perhaps intellectualism, smarter people will understand some subject related jokes which are on their radar. There is an example below which I found hilarious (but I am bring driven mad by chemistry revision so I'm losing my mind).

Two hydrogen atoms walk into a bar. One says, “I think I’ve lost an electron.” The other says, “Are you sure?” The first replies, “Yes, I’m positive…”

5. Who told the joke. I feel so much more comfortable when my best friend tells me a story, than if it was my head teacher.

6. Personality: some people like slapstick comedy whereas others prefer dry humour, whatever floats your boat.

I have no idea whether I will ever come back to this idea but it would be great to be able to cheer up the population of Britain, especially with all the rain!