The Chronicle of Charlotte

  Someone once said “laughter is the best medicine”, but they clearly didn't suffer from the chronic condition of laughing when others cry, because trust me, it doesn't help anyone.  There is truly no worse feeling in the world than listening to someone you care about talk about their darkest and saddest moments, only to realize you're about to start absolutely dying laughing for no logical reason. There's no reason why someone’s heartache should be humorous, but it seems to be an unconscious reaction. Which begs the question, if humans are such empathetic creatures, why do so many of us find other people's pain funny? The article, “What's so Funny - The Science of Why We Laugh” provides an answer to this question. According to Sigmund Freud’s Theory of Release, “laughter allows people to let off steam or release pent-up ‘nervous energy’”. Essentially, we laugh in uncomfortable situations when we feel the need to release tension in the environment. Our laughter ...

  The concept of time has fascinated physicians and science fiction authors alike for centuries. According to Marrium Webster, time is “a nonspatial continuum that is measured in terms of events which succeed one another from past through present to future”. We’ve even come up with an equation for it: Time = Distance / Speed. Yet despite its mathematical origins, time seems to be anything but. It is said to speed up, slow down, and even stop - all because of our current emotions . That is because time is decided entirely by our perspective of it.                We may assign values to it, based on consistent changes such as the earth orbiting the Sun, but our true experience with time is constantly warping in immeasurable ways. Our current emotions act like buttons on a remote, fast forwarding through some events while slowing down to an almost painfully slow pace for others. Once, when traveling outside of the country I got on a bus mea...