#And it's a fucking “hmm atheists think about this you fucking idiot” video

[pseudocyance]

its 11pm how did I just manage to get on the toxic christian side of instagram

[itsnotmydiary]

I accidentally spent 2 hours in a bookstore

This is a distracted me’s brain while I was going up the lift: ok I’m bored what now. I had a big breakfast but I want to eat something. Ok fine let’s go have lunch. But *sees microwave popcorn* never mind I’ll just have this for lunch, I’m lazy to go all the way out. Hmm, but do I really want to snack on popcorn? Fuck it, let’s go to NTUC to buy nuts, because I can only eat nuts now. *Walks to NTUC* sees Butter my Buns, tempted inside by the waffle store, realise they sell more than food. They sell BOOKs. And then 2 hours passed as I stood there browsing every single aisle. Here are some of the books I snapped pictures of because I would really love to read them but a. It’s finals and I shouldn’t really be jumping into such uncharted waters of procrastination rn b. I need to watch my spending and I could probably find the pdf with some intensive googling c. I still have other books in my queue to read

Without further ado here are the books I have bookmarked (aha)

21 Day Weight Loss Kickstart

Now I know the title sounds really clickbait, but this book proposed the physiology of insulin. And I love it when people produce the science as explanation, as it does present a compelling case for me at least. Anyway, the book proposes a fat detox ( I word it rather extremely) since the lipid molecules within the cell - not the visceral adipose tissue around your thighs and hips - are the ones inhibiting the cell from converting the nutrients to energy straight away. Hence the fat detox would spike the metabolism by 16%, sounds promising, and I was so tempted to drop everything and go back to make a sweet potato in the microwave but I realised that I still wanted to keep to my goals for now. 

The Hair of The Dog and Other Scientific Discoveries

I only got to browse the contents table of this book, but I stumbled across this title ‘How do birds know physics’ and interpreted it as how are e.g. seagulls so aerodynamically efficient when it comes to swooping in close to the surface of the water to snag their prey? The bird can’t make calculations, but perhaps this perfect behaviour was born out of repetitive action. Although we have put a language to physics, it seems that the birds are intelligent enough to comprehend such a concept in bird language, if you will. 

Darwin’s Doubt

As a 50% atheist 50% agnostic I have always showed an inclination towards theory of evolution, but my understanding on the theory goes as far as the apes to human progression chart. The blurb of this book introduced to me one of the failings of Darwin’s theory of evolution: how come there was the animal Big Bang about 500 million years ago. The burst of complex and varied wildlife can’t be explained by evolution, which preaches slow and gradual change. Hopefully this book provides answers, as well as greater exploration of the intelligent design concept (a scientific argument for God, if I’m not wrong).

The Greatest Science Stories Never Told

The trend here seems to be science books. Hmm. Anyway. I flipped to a page which explained that the pedigree of Coca Cola was used in drug rehabilitation in the onset. I’ll look it up whenever time permits. 

The Idiot Brain 

As someone who is a master procrastinator, spontaneous and pretty eccentric in my ways ( not exactly a compliment, but it isn’t meant to be derogatory either) I want to learn more about my brain. Is it just a series of chemical reactions? Primal instincts that haven’t developed enough to adequately deal with present day environment? If our brain is dumb, does it mean we are dumb? Could our intellects be separate entities from our brain? WOw. that is trippy. 

Thinking Like An Engineer

My friend casually mentioned this before, and I asked him what do you mean? Does it refer to being extremely oriented and detailed? The use of scientific method but with hardware? ( I sound so dumb right now but these are my actual thoughts) I was surprised when I came across this book. I’m intrigued by this mindset and definitely want to find out it’s differentiating factors from a non-engineer’s mindset. 

Everything Bad Is Good For You

Ah, sociology books. Or anything human-based trivia Freakonomics-99%-invisible related makes the nerd in me shiver in excitement. Ok that sounds weird. But this book takes a radical stance on pop culture, explaining why variety shows and video games might not be so bad for us after all. I was excited to find the key points of the book summarised on wikipedia, and I’ve still kept that tab open.

Proof Of Heaven: A neurosurgeon’s journey through the afterlife

Now I probably am not going to actually read this book because I love living in my own cognitive bias cave bubble tm too much. Frankly it was because I flipped through a few pages and I saw descriptions about angels and other holy-ish descriptions... But I thought it would be interesting since the protagonist was a serial atheist and science guy at first and after ‘witnessing the afterlife’ he believes in the concept of god. I feel like the ironic thing is that he is changing his mind on where he sits on the god dichotomy because he has evidence of the afterlife - which, if you think about it, is a very atheistic way of thinking about things.

The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and for Humanism 

I feel that this would be the one book you need if you wanted to explore religion and the anti-religion ( there isn’t supposed to be a negative connotation here) since it deals with al the arguments for and against, so you’re getting to listen to both sides of the room. The book also largely deals with how being secular is better, and that is something I want ponder more over, as someone who has only lived in Singapore who might have taken advantage of the lack of imposed religion. 

Wow I realised I only read certain types of books.

Well. My non-fiction bubble can swallow me for all I care. 

Anyway, that was one of the best feelings ever. Being able to loiter in a bookstore with no time limit, slowly going through every spine of book there is and learning something new. There’s something about concrete paperback books that make learning so much more enchanting than opening a new tab in safari. Haters say it’s an imaginary difference.