I made two videos today, but one of them was so annoying to edit that i haven't bothered to upload it (it was about anatomical terms such as "superior", "inferior" and the like). Here's the other one:
This is about joint movements and the names for them. So far there are only two of them, but it's in the same series as this one:
(which is about lung volumes)
These are human biology/anatomy/physiology/medicine/whatever videos whose aim is purely educational and not particularly inspiring. However, the joint one does raise an interesting (for me) issue: how much learning is linguistic? How much learning just involves finding out what people call things so you can talk about them?
In some ways, i feel this kind of learning is less legitimate than more practical acquisition of skills. It's a bit like ornithological "twitching" (no offence to any twitchers in case i've got that wrong) or happening to know the Latin names for herbs without knowing anything about the ecology, biology, life cycle, constituents, cultural significance, real botany or uses of the plants concerned. It seems empty and anal to me. However, it's true that it acts as a stepping stone to learning, albeit mainly book learning, and it can draw an outline around something considered significant by some and as such may show something new about the Manifold - the blizzard of sensory impressions we call "the world". There are other kinds of learning though - emotional intelligence, acting, empathy, woodwork, playing musical instruments, finding your way around...
I suppose i wonder the following:
How much learning is linguistic?
What would be left if you took away the verbal stuff?
Is it overvalued in our society?
How can we tell if it's real (or does it make it real)?
People worry a lot about their privacy on the internet. I find this quite strange in some ways, although i do understand it and i take those concerns seriously. The reason i find it strange is that for the past thirteen years, i have tried to promote the herbalism on the internet, or rather, i did for a while and then decided it was a waste of time. I used to see anything i put on the internet as a postcard, i.e. anyone could see it. Whereas this is true, it's also the case that the internet is a blizzard of postcards and the chances of any one of those postcards being seen is very small. If this were not the case, it would mean that people would only be able to make money publicising other people's things on the Web if people's beliefs about publicity being hard here were ill-founded. As a result, i don't really care what i put on the internet because i realise most people have better things to do with their lives than pay attention to what some obscure middle-aged tranny thinks or does. Basically, i can shout as loudly as i like about whatever takes my fancy without ever being heard against the clamour of other voices.
With this in mind, i would ask you to consider watching the following video without mousing over or clicking on any of the recommendations at the end. If you do, you have only yourself to blame and you won't be able to unsee or unhear any of it. If you want, i can give you a context based on concern for people's safety, a certain Wikipedia article which got deleted and a certain psychotherapist who was afflicted with scepticism:
Anyway, on the subject of the video itself, it's mainly about the stomach and associated tubing. The stomach varies in size according to its content and is far from a passive receptacle, although oddly not much digestion takes place in it compared to a little lower down. As it fills, it relaxes, thereby preventing damage, and it can hold up to five litres of liquid, solid or a combination of the two. It also signals the colon hormonally as it empties, encouraging the movement of the contents of the digestive system down towards the anus to make space for the next lot. Liquids are not compressible, so five litres outside the body will be five litres inside it, but in the case of air and other gases, five litres at atmospheric pressure will be less inside the stomach and as a result the capacity of the stomach for air seems to be greater than five litres although in fact it isn't. Further down in the digestive system, the intestines have a capacity of about ten litres, so the whole digestive system from the bottom of the oesophagus downwards has a capacity of about fifteen litres overall. Add to this the five litres of vital capacity in the lungs and you have twenty litres.
Some people might realise that what i'm writing here has a different significance than what the uninformed reader might think, which really just proves my point that you can shout as loud as you like on the internet and nobody will hear you.
