Scientific processes given in a realworld grounding. The book describes amazing dreams and adventures narrated with poetry that dazzles us with its color and depth
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The Quantum Leap Yesid Vianchรก
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Copyright © 2019 Yesid Vianchá All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under the copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission. ISBN: 978-170-99-4145-0 Granted by the regulations of the Republic of Colombia. Bogotá (Colombia), November 2, 2019.
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Dedicatory
“For all those that have stolen at me smiles and tears, illusions and disappointments, joy and sorrow. Your presence has made my life like a huge and constant cascade of emotions. So, I have lived intensely.� Thank you very much. In particular, my nephews, Iker and Felipe, and my niece, Maria Jose.
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Acknowledgments
Donny Benjamín Cuervo Barón (ilustración de Cubierta) Plastic Artist e-mail: tetraoro@gmail.com Editing by Tony White of Editing101 e-mail: editorinchief101@gmail.com
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Table of contents Dedicatory .......................................................................................... iii Acknowledgments............................................................................. iv Routine................................................................................................. 1 The “value” of things ................. ¡Error! Marcador no definido. Daydreaming ................................ ¡Error! Marcador no definido. The zombies................................. ¡Error! Marcador no definido. The comfort zone ....................... ¡Error! Marcador no definido. Resources...................................... ¡Error! Marcador no definido. Pulling Juan’s leg ......................... ¡Error! Marcador no definido. We never lose – we either win or learn¡Error!
Marcador
no
definido. Everything changes ..................... ¡Error! Marcador no definido. The gift ......................................... ¡Error! Marcador no definido. The starting line ........................... ¡Error! Marcador no definido. The jump ...................................... ¡Error! Marcador no definido. About the author ......................... ¡Error! Marcador no definido.
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Routine
S
he was overwhelmed all the time, due to the noise produced by the three industrial printers placed at one side of her office door. However, she hadn’t said anything because of her strong belief about the importance of those documents. That’s why she considered it normal that, every day, these machines spat out hundreds of and hundreds of well-structured and elegantly written letters, faxes, memorandums, production orders, and many more things besides – all without ever considering that, in the end, they were all single-format copies, in which the recipient had been changed before each was sent. The idea was to give them some importance and status. That was where she had to sit for eight hours every day. She also got bored of the job, as a result of her inability to meet the company’s frequent and exaggerated demands that she express her enthusiasm and commitment, to the point of reaching her limit of rejection. It was not that she defined herself as a rebel but instead, it was quite difficult for her to understand the following belief: “Accepting extra work, sharing your best ideas with the organization, exceeding your physical limits and even temporarily neglecting your tasks one day, will give you the same happiness and quality of life that the owners of the company have.” Perhaps, that was the reason why she did many things to maintain her commitment to the job. One of them consisted of increasing her attention – to forget tiredness – by introducing almost 70mg of caffeine to her body every two hours. That became one of her hardest problems: to get rid of the temporary 1
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renovation effect produced by this chemical substance! But that wasn’t the worst. That was the sensation of lost brain control when the temporary pharmaceutical enthusiasm and extra energy coming from these products expired. She was not conscious yet that, as soon as its effects passed away, she would feel tired and anxious. Well, like any drug, it encourages dependence. The evidence of this was the variety of different caffeine soda-cans and disposable cups in the office trash… On the other hand, and in a conscious way, she was annoyed and bored about all those common phrases her co-workers used when trying to justify those absurd things of life, like “when life gives you lemons…”, “this is the kind of life we have…”, “everything happens for a reason…” and “let sleeping dogs lie…” among many others1. While at the same time, she was hiding her sad feelings for those who ask or say without interest – only as a formality – phrases like “How radiant you look today! Did you rest well last weekend? Have you managed to solve that problem? Did you see the latest episode of the soap opera?” while feigning some interest in the answers. Another typical day concluded in Sandra’s ordinary life. The last-minute review in the “report that her boss would present the next day” ended the anxiety and hopes she’d had throughout the day, to feel the heat of the sun as she left work. Now, it was useless to continue fantasizing about touching their revitalizing rays while they strolled across her bare arms. It doesn’t matter that it may only have lasted a few seconds, nor that its brightness may have blinded her at the moment, on seeing the sun directly. When she left the building, her brain, like a naughty boy, presented to her imagination the image of her warm tongue smashing and melting a sweet and delicate dough. She imagined her palate making pressure against it. But the next thought that came to her mind, indolent and crushing, caused her to go back to the real world: It was late, and as usual, the bus would be packed. The last These are symptoms of conformism and lack of self-love because they justify the misfortune of many as a lesser evil because it affects a large number of people. That is how we end up assuming that there is no way for situations to change or be solved. 1
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The Quantum Leap
time she tried to enjoy an ice cream on the way home, it formed a very thick and exquisite odor when mingled with the air inside the bus, created as the denaturalized proteins, organic acids, and mineral salts exuding from her fellow bus-travellers mixed with the caramel of nuts, the sweetness of vanilla and the sour of chocolate. And that wasn’t the worst. The most-heavily fixed image in her brain was the selfish citizen that brought to mind two things – the inflexible natural laws and the fragility of beautiful things. The first one presented when a push unexpectedly moved her body2. As a consequence, the fragile cream mixture, formed by small air bubbles trapped in the emulsion, moved from its center of gravity in its container. It would remain suspended in the air and without mercy – as if it was reclaiming its sovereignty – before one of the four fundamental forces of nature, tyrannic and implacable, would make that weak mixture of water, oily bases, stabilizers, emulsifiers, sugars, dyes, and flavouring agents, fall through the air. Finally, it would crush against the bus floor, releasing the right amount of energy to deform and become unable to be savoured.3 That also reminded her of the promise made earlier, about all those possible scenes affecting her soul. “I would see them without saying a single word, only sadly…” She was no longer a child! If it had been that way, her cheeks would have turned red quickly, and her tears would have flowed easily, sliding over them (as it hadn’t been a long, long time ago). And maybe, if she had been with her mother, she would have bought her another ice cream… Getting to the place where she could be herself, without any kind prejudices or limitations (because nobody could be watching her), took approximately 45 minutes. As soon as she opened the front door, she saw her neighbor Maria, who was leaving the building.
2 She was in repose or stillness when this strange force moved her. Inertia is the ability of bodies to maintain their state of relative relaxation or motion, as long as there are no counteracting forces. 3 Gravity, that attractive phenomenon that forces matter to join other matter, depending on the mass. The other three fundamental interactions of the Universe are strong nuclear interaction, weak nuclear interaction, and electromagnetic interaction.
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“Hi Sandra, how was your day?”, she asked. “Pretty hard. As usual.” “I have two envelopes for you and the electricity bill. Please, don’t forget that you owe me a cup of tea and a talk about the new fashion magazine.” “Of course, my friend!”, Sandra answered automatically, trying to hide her bad mood as best she could. “Don’t worry. But not today, I’m exhausted, and I want to rest.” “Have a good night.” “Thank you.” After she opened the door to her apartment door, she took a long stare at its interior. It was the first time she has done so with such detail. This made her aware of how much her life seemed to be an agitated and violent change of materials, ideas, and energy that always exhausted her soul. But inside those four walls, one door, and no more than three windows, time seemed to stop. Every object stayed in the same place it had been left, and the odors were the same. Even after she had left it behind in the morning, the same solitude was welcoming her now. It was like she was the self-proclaimed guardian of those eighty cubic meters. “It’s unfair,” was her first thought, “that time can’t change. That its only fate is to flow and watch, like a cold and ominous spectator of every single living thing on the planet. It was also unfair to get older and to feel increasingly tired. Also, the idea that one’s possessions become colorless, old and cracked, that food breaks down, and in the end, everything in the Universe has to die. Yes, time is the real enemy of death, because it never dies.” Thinking about that made her feel weird. “What if… I am crazy? Well, craziness is not too bad because that legally it would imply a rejection of all my duties.” But if she sincerely wanted to think like that – as a life project – in the words of her former math teacher: “You have to demonstrate it”, and if she was going to do that: “Before demonstrating any theory, you need to determine and define the portion 4
The Quantum Leap
of the Universe to be tested”. So, in this sense, what would be defined as ‘crazy’? People use to say that craziness is a reduced ability to understand or profit from reality. Therefore, the first thing she should do was to define her existence. “Wow, what an excellent task!” she thought. That confused her because she wasn’t entirely sure to how she would recognize which of the two spaces in which her body moved was the ‘real’ one. Perhaps that bricks-andwindows box was her real world and, to avoid the insanity and boredom of solitude, society demands a series of dull, stressful and monotonous activities, serving only to keep the brain functioning. It was also possible that the many emotions, actions, decisions and frustrations she faced at work were the real world, and that this space was only designed to disconnect her mind, with the same goal of avoiding insanity. Difficult question. But, if things were like that, where should she put her emotions, her future, her plans? What is the purpose of all those intangible but real things like love and feelings? Her top 10 list in her biggest concerns… maybe the catalyst of a bunch of choices and plans. Many questions and not enough answers. Immediately, some fragments of an old science fiction movie came to mind, one she had seen not long before, in which humans were used as batteries to produce electricity for a large and complex system of machines and computers. In that movie, ‘reality’ was only a virtual simulation connected to the brain, with the sole purpose being to cheat people. Through complicated computer commands and sophisticated binary languages, they could make people believe they are breathing, that they feel things like love, that while receiving nutrients they may be enjoying fantastic foods, in emotions, in learning from each other, and in life and society… then she asked herself: “What if all that is the reality?” The sparkling and rhythmic sequence of knocks on the window, as the firm droplets of rain stopped and deformed against its surface, brought her back to reality. Well, that supposed reality. Probably better to say that the rain made the imagination come back to the space her conscious was belonging at that moment. Then, she felt cold, or in her thermodynamics teacher’s words,
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Yesid Vianchá
remembering one of his classes: “Your hypothalamus4, in an unconscious way, has received information from nervous receptors all over your body, that you are transferring too much internal energy to the room air and at too high a rate. That is convection, and our body perceives it as a cold thermal sensation.” Her conscious response was to reduce the heat loss by taking a jacket or something from the closet. The yawn that followed after this action brought the image of her teacher to mind again: “Your unconscious brain response is to increase chemical thermogenesis5. In more familiar words, to initiate a series of chemical reactions to produce energy from the molecules inside your food. That is the reason why our body produces hormones, chemical substances that, as soon as they are released into the blood flow, control a broad and diverse range of functions in living organisms and facilitate chemical processes, allowing the conduction of electrical nerve pulses. For example, thyronine helps to produce energy through thermogenesis; thyroxine is in charge of increasing the metabolic rate and making people hungry; adrenaline is a helper in the mobilization of sugars, reducing blood flow in non-essential organs, and prioritising energy use for crucial processes only. On the other hand, our body produces corticosteroids – substances that make people reliable or fast when encountering danger or stress. This works by increasing the A region in the centre of the brain, responsible for controlling the body’s glands and the regulation of many of the corporal functions through the production of hormones. National Research Council (US) and Institute of Medicine (US) Forum on Adolescence; Kipke MD, editor. Adolescent Development and the Biology of Puberty: Summary of a Workshop on New Research. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 1999. Adolescent Development and the Biology of Puberty. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK224692/ The Beginning and End of Reproductive Life: Pubertal and Midlife Changes. Kirtly Parker Jones, M.D. Department of OB/GYN. U of U College of Medicine. Available from: https://library.med.utah.edu/kw/human_reprod/lectures/pubertal_midli fe/index.html. Hormone affects how teens’ brains control emotions. Bethany Brookshire. Science News for Students. Available from: https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/hormone-affects-howteens-brains-control-emotions. 5 A form of heat transfer, characterized by the movement of fluids such as air and water, among others, whose molecules transport energy, between zones with temperature difference. 4
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The Quantum Leap
arterial flow, accelerating the cardiac rate and breathing, and enhancing muscular contraction. It also produces norepinephrine, a molecule that allows us to be on alert by activating our natural preservation instinct, improving concentration and avoiding depression. Furthermore, this last one facilitates the neuronal conduction of electrical pulses.�
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