First Impressions

I don’t quite understand why people put so much stock on first impressions.

You make a judgement of that individual based on one, single moment. How can that be a basis for any sort of relationship? One moment can’t accurately represent anyone.

Just think: that person could be in a bad situation. Anxiety, anger, grief, pain. It seems rather heartless to decide you were disappointed and thence use that person’s vulnerability as the basis for future interactions.

Obviously our instincts can be right. (This is especially so with dating. No point wasting time on someone you see no hope with.) But with friendship and professional interactions, using the brain more than the heart seems sensible.

Obviously people do change their minds.

But most people say first impressions are important which makes the willingness to get to know someone a lot harder. It seems more practical to get to know someone because how can you like or dislike them if you know nothing about them?

Everyone should be given a chance to show who they are. If they continue to be unbearable then sure, they’re not for you, but there’s no way to know this before you interact with them more than the once that is a first impression.

So no, I dislike first impressions. If I paid them any attention, I wouldn’t have such close bonds with my friends (and, in all honesty, some family members) and my working relationships with others would be unbearably tense and full of annoyance. To rely on first impressions would have robbed me of many of my most precious memories. So no, I dislike first impressions and ignore them completely.

Colour of Nude

Throughout my childhood, ‘nude’ was never used to reference one’s state of undress: naked was the word of choice.

Nude instead meant a specific shade of beige with nothing to connect it to skin colour. In the UK, white people are pink-to-cream, too light for nude; the olive skin of Spanish and Italian friends was too dark for nude. There was no reason for us to connect ‘nude’ with ‘nakedness’.

American shows turned ‘naked/bum/arse’ into ‘nude/butt/ass’. In America, ‘nude’ referred to the many shades of white people’s skin (none of which could be actually identified as nude, I might add). This meant the cosmetic industry excluded and alienated black people. Why this made sense I don’t know: surely if you’re going to make ‘nude’ cover people’s nakedness, surely you’d extend it to everyone’s nakedness?

This may not seem like such a big deal but oppression is built upon loads of little things adding up to become unbearable pressure. This is just another example of people ignoring black people. So it needs to change.

This is a problem that started in America but it has bled through to other places. I don’t think it’s possible to salvage nude the colour from this mess. The specific shade that we’d call nude needs new terminology (perhaps ‘soft olive’ or warm beige’). The incentive to change it is far stronger than the incentive to keep it: what’s a colour compared to millions of people?

Old Wives’ Tale: Salt makes water boil faster

This is a complete falsehood. Sure, if the water boils faster, the pasta will be cooked sooner. Adding salt isn’t the solution you’re looking for.

Pure water boils at 100°C whereas salt water boils at 104°C. The higher the temperature needed to boil the water, the more time it will take to boil; by adding salt, your water will boil at a higher temperature and thus take longer to do so.

Physics explains this well. The more of something there is, the longer it takes to heat up. Adding salt to water means more stuff and thus a longer waiting time to become hot.

I doubt this info was around when this old wives’ tale began and I understand how it came into existence. Time feels like it goes faster when you are occupied with something. Adding salt to your water just passes the time which, in turn, make it seem like salt speeds things up.

Of course, if you want your water boiled quicker nowadays, just stick the kettle on.

Old Wives’ Tales: Why jinxes appear to work

https://frostgriffin.blogspot.com/2018/07/why-jinxes-appear-to-work-reality-of.html

‘Old Testament’ vs. ‘Hebrew Bible’

There’s been a push in recent years for the Old Testament to be relabelled the ‘Hebrew Bible’ because ‘old’ has negative connotations.

My first reaction was no, the Bible is the name for Christian scripture so to use ‘Bible’ for Jewish scripture isn’t acceptable. But ‘bible’ comes via Old French and Latin from Ancient Greek ‘biblia’ meaning ‘books’. Hence the Bible named after its role. The same is true of God (from Old English ‘god’ meaning ‘deity’) or how people use ‘Mum/Dad’ as proper nouns when ‘mum/dad’ are ordinary nouns.

But the reasoning for replacing ‘Old Testament’ with ‘Hebrew Bible’ still gives me pause. ‘Old’, it’s reasoned, is considered bad with negative connotations, connotations that are only accentuated when compared with, or placed next to, the new (i.e. the New Testament). Yet renaming something to get rid of the negatives simply legitimises and confirms these connotations as true (because you can’t get rid of something unless it’s real). Elderly people get enough trouble as it is.

So I’m going to stick with ‘Old Testament’.