Question

Hi Michi,
Today I traveled to the Technion about my invention, as usual equipped with a copy of Makor Rishon. In Neve Sha’anan I changed buses—from line 123 I got on 19—and then I realized I had forgotten the newspaper on the bus.
I finished the meeting and went back to the bus stop. I waited for line 19 so I could get to the center of Neve Sha’anan to change buses. Line 144 passed by, and I asked whether I could get with it to the Central Bay Station. In short, the driver and another passenger convinced me to take that line.
And then I found the newspaper on the seat behind the driver, waiting for me patiently…
Truth be told, of course I don’t know whether it was literally the same newspaper or only its twin brother, but in any case the paper was open to the same article I had been reading. [And there are a few more questions on this topic…]
Now about the fridge: a few days ago I noticed that the water in the bottles on the refrigerator door wasn’t cold.
I checked the temperature. It was 10 degrees.
I pushed the thermometer deep into the fridge and saw that there the temperature really was 0.
I furrowed my brow, went over to the recycling center, and found a board of dense expanded polystyrene about 10 mm thick.
I fitted it to the size of the refrigerator door and attached it to the door loosely [on purpose!].
After an hour I checked the temperature—and there it was: 4!
All that at the cost of 30 minutes of a retiree’s tinkering and 60 cm of wide adhesive tape.

About the structure of the brain—I read an article saying that since it is possible to track different brain activities by means of MRI, a study was conducted on psychopaths imprisoned in a prison in the U.S., in which one could observe the brain characteristics of psychopaths. The working assumption was that psychopaths’ level of empathy for the suffering of others is lower than normal [with this being expressed in certain areas of the brain].
But it turned out that some of these neurological characteristics also exist among a “normative” population.
And then, in the course of the research, it became clear that psychopaths make up about 1% of the general population. But among chairmen of business corporations they are 4%!
The article ends with the question whether our personality is predetermined for us by the structure of the brain and its systems. The question becomes sharper: if the wicked person acts because of constraints imposed by the structure of his brain, then presumably the same is true of the righteous person. [The range of philosophical, ethical, and theological questions—all that is my own addition, of course.] But for me that is not the end of the matter, because I was reminded of an article I had read a few years ago, and happily Dr. Google helped me find it:
Practicing meditation helps not only day-to-day functioning, but also has a beneficial effect [it lengthens!] on telomeres.
What I want to argue ties into the old debate over which has greater power: heredity or environment?
I believe that environment—education, love, and distress—can have an influence even at the level of the genome, and only recently I read an article that cautiously supports this line of thinking.
To conclude, my surgery was postponed to the end of the month, and I’m trying to use the time to advance my invention in contacts with Menuei Beit Shemesh.
All the best.