Wonder Apples

                Another attempt at making genetically modified food has yet again gone wrong. This article shows some extremists against GMOs who decided to invade his apple farm and hack into some trees, although they must not have been very educated otherwise they would have realized that GMOs are not actually too much different from regular fruit, the trees they hacked into were actually just regular apple trees and not genetically modified, and they did not even hack into the trees properly and so caused no permanent damage. This is what we civilians call amateurs. This is like trying to write an angry email talking about how you want a refund because you smashed an Xbox but forgetting to hit send or even writing the letter in the first place.
 

                As an avid learner in AP Environmental Science, it teaches many facts about genetically modified foods and how they are not the least bit harmful to humans, but people who have their own beliefs about it refuse to accept it. If you want to talk about how it is a government conspiracy, well that is like saying anything could possibly be a government conspiracy, which is something I do not want to get into, but if you want to share one, I would love to hear about it.

Many nations are starving because of the lack of food, like Latvia and lack of potatoes, but will not accept genetically modified foods, which seems weird at first, but I can kind of understand it. I mean think about it, how many humans, in the seven billion we have on our planet, are willing to help someone without expecting someone in return? Not many. So if a complete stranger offers you a source of strange food randomly, I would be a little suspicious, partly because my parents told me not to take anything from strangers. Now these companies offering this kind of food would seem out of good will at first, but multinational companies want money right? So, once this country is completely reliant on this crop, hype up the price. They have no choice but to comply with the demand or to change their country's food completely. I am not saying every company is as evil as this, but it was just a thought. I still believe that genetically modified food has to be the solution because of the growing population, unless people want to abstain from sex, or might as well try and live on the sun.

A Pretty Valid Excuse

                As a high school student, I found that this would be pretty interesting to think about, not saying that high school is stressful, actually I am, because it is. This article is related because it shows that humans will make the “easier” decision when they are under stress. This contradicts most schools because with those teachers that think their class is the only one that you have and give large pieces of homework due the next day. I do not know about you guys, but it really stresses me out so I do not do my homework as well as I could have.

               Of course this does not mean I do not procrastinate, and contrary to popular belief that procrastinators are just lazy, we believe that we are avoiding the stress of our workload. This is also not including the amount of standardized tests we have to take in our own free time, and those evil teachers that give a test that takes the entire class period then gives a large homework assignment. With stress, these choices may not affect you in the short run, but in the long run, it would affect you pretty badly.

                I know that in the article it says that stress should not affect the results of a decision too much from the experiment of the money making thing. I think that this was because it was not on a large enough scale for it to matter too much. The percentages did not vary too greatly and there was not much lost, only a quarter to gain, so I think that the people with the model based learning did not put their full intelligence to the test and decided to, sorry, “yolo” it. On the other hand, if these people paid fifty dollars as an entry fee and had a chance to win a million dollars, I am sure that the differences between the two would have been much greater, because it would have a larger, more profound effect on their life. Since all teachers and parents ever do is tell us how much our grades and choices will affect us the rest of our lives, it honestly does not help the matter of our stress too greatly. In fact, by telling us this and putting on greater due dates, it may be actually harming us. Just keep in mind that most of this is speculation and as a high school student, I am either too lazy to do this or do not have enough free time to test this. 

Nothing's Black and White

           Although this technically has not been proved yet, it seems like this would make a lot of sense, because zebras do use their stripes for camouflage, but if grass is long and yellow, how does it hide the zebra if the stripes are black. Well, black and white are two of the most extreme colors in all of the color spectrum, and the two most contrasting colors, so it really should not provide the most fantastic camouflage if you know what I mean. This study, while unchecked, has delved into the idea deeper, and has come up with the idea of an optical illusion to throw off their predators.

            Black and white would work extremely well in this case, because many of the mental tortures or appraisals have used black and white. One such mental test is the Rorschach tests, which are blobs of ink on a sheet of paper, and deciphering what one sees in there is supposed to help the psychiatrist tell what goes on in one’s mind. A mental torture would be the white torture, where a person is only allowed to see white, and technically black due to shadows cast in the room, and soon enough, the person usually goes insane. This just shows that black and white have long been associated with mental tricks. So, this optical illusion thing zebras do cannot be too far off from what they are actually used for. I would not recommend doing this to escape people you do not like or want to talk to. Trust me, ripping your clothing off only to find you have black and white stripes and running away usually does not work, usually. It would probably make you more of an outcast than you already are, and I am sure you are an outcast because no normal person would consider doing this. Painting the lines onto your body is no joyride either, unless you’re into that kind of stuff.

            I have always loved optical illusions since I was just a wee little lad. It always let me wonder if the impossible really were not all that impossible, because if you can get a never ending staircase, I am sure I can get anywhere. This optical illusion, though, focuses on two different types, the wagon wheel, and the barbershop, both shown. Included with their passive camouflage, it makes it a wonder to see them killed, but as it is, they are, which says something about lions and their totally deserved title of “King of the Jungle” not to be confused with George.

My, My, Such Colorful Language

                So apparently chameleons have abilities that are extremely similar to what humans experience before they fight. These chameleons, as summarized here, use a series of color patterns on their skins to try and intimidate the others, so it seems like a kind of chess game to me, but except this is only the pre-fight, and if neither backs down, then it becomes an actual fight. I found that this kind of related to humans, or at least the fights that threaten to break out that I witness. It usually starts with a large round of colorful language, and on what they are able to do. Usually one either will back down or “restrained” by their friends as they scream, “HOLD ME BACK! HOLD ME BACK!” Admittedly, I may or not do this, but if neither backs down, it becomes a full scale fight. At school, this usually does not happen because most of the time, unless the person is mentally disabled, would like to avoid a fight.

                Of course, physical fights are not the only thing that happens in schools, as all high school students are able to confirm, unless they lived under a rock or was homeschooled, not that there is anything wrong with either of those. Well this study apparently wants to record chameleons and figure out what they are going to do before they actually do it. The only way I can think of that this relates to humans or the significance of this would be that we could eventually predict what humans were to do much before they could actually perform the action. This may or may not prevent a lot of fights, because many people have pride, but could you imagine if one could quickly analyze a person’s movements and determine exactly what they were going to do.

                Yes, I do know that this happens like 99% of the time in all of those secret agent books and movies, but unless you were an unstoppable killing machine or at least an assassin, I do not think it would be possible to determine it. In accordance with this, assassins are killed all the time, so obviously the concept is not too accurate. Either way, the idea that this is going on, and that scientists can actually analyze what happens or link it with real actions is pretty exciting, but makes me wonder if humans are trying to play at god again. As every literate person knows, that does not ever end well.

Lazy and Hipster People Central

                Whoever thought that using modern technology to go back in time is probably not the brightest crayon in the crayon box. I am not exactly targeting all the hipsters out there, but I just find it pointless. This printer is cool and all, but it is multiple light years behind current technology (which any pokemon player should know, is actually a measure of distance rather than time) and thus fairly worthless in modern day technology, although it is cool and, if build from scratch, gives a feeling of accomplishment. In fact, my robotics team is actually trying to produce a 3D printer, which is possibly what this thing printed, and so since it is a type of “open source” where everyone can view the design and change it, anyone can build it.

                The basis behind a 3D printer is that one would program in a blueprint with all the necessary information and then it would be able to “print”, but more like make, the blue print in full materials. I really like the idea, but once I looked deeper, it does only save the manual labor, which actually provides quite a bit of jobs but that is for another economic blog, because the printer still needs to be supplied with the materials made. So, if you would like to take  my recommendation, I would totally recommend making or at least building a 3D printer if there is a schedule deadline and for all the lazy bums out there, although it does take quite a bit of work to make it in the first place, but businesses and other areas could too, but us poor high school students would like random jobs, so it would be nice to save a couple of them for us. A lot of instructions and building materials are online somewhere and they do not cost money, except for the materials of course.

                To achieve the highest degree of laziness, I would say that you would start with the absolute crappiest printer that you can find and shoddily throw it together. Then, when you present it to your friends, they will laugh and you will feel bad for a while. Don’t stop reading just yet. So, when you hit the lowest of the low, you then find the directions for building the best, most awesome, printer, and so while all of your friends, if you have any, are working hard and laboring over their new printer, you can sit back and relax as you put in the directions to your printer and it comes out perfectly. This is a method that even the laziest person I know, Sean, will approve of.

It's made of Plastic, IT'S SO FANTASTIC!

            Has anyone else found the repetition of an empty two liter bottle of soda whacking against your own head strangely therapeutic? Really? Only me? I guess this is why I don’t sit at the cool kids table during lunch. I know many of you currently think I’m weird or strange, which I really am, but this article proves my quirk is not as weird as it may seem. You see, plastic has a calming effect on one’s body, proven by this, or at least a kind of medicine derived from it, so when most of you are either dead or in a lot of pain, give me a call with your address and I will makes sure to come to wherever you are and whack you upside the head with a two liter.

            Even though fungal infections can be dangerous and would be a good idea to remove them, it would be much better if it were viral infections, because anti fungus medicine already has a fairly large abundance. Viral infections on the other hand, are like zombie plagues, nobody knows how they work, and whether they are living or dead, and the only way to get rid of them is to empower the human population with enhanced powers. This analogy is like a viral infection, they invade your cells and spread, but the only way to kill them is to feed your body steroids with its “roid rage” and kill viruses.

            Fungi is pretty scary too, it can becomes like the Titanic. Wow, I am just full of fantastic analogies today. Although it seems like not much, in fact, it could be worse than one thinks. The Titanic was a giant iceberg, so by the time they were close to it, it probably was too late for them to avoid the problem, because the problem with an iceberg is that it grows in deep. So it actually seemed even worse than it was, although with a bit of prior planning, it could have been easily avoided. Life lessons and learning, what more could a reader possibly want from a blog?

            One final reason that this may be a fantastic idea is that people will recycle their plastic bottles more often, since it has a better use to it, rather than just be thrown away. Of course, plastic is a nonrenewable resource, and so though this does not seem to have any malicious effects on humans, nor have fungi developed a resistance to it, it will not be a permanent solution to solving this fungi problem.

I'm Not Being Race-ist or Anything, but This is Cool

                Well technology just becomes cooler and more interactive each day, does it not? Looking at the past couple years of video game console developments, first you have the Nintendo Wii, which uses controllers to put the people into the game, which was topped by the Xbox Kinect, which then followed up with the new Xbox One, where I am sure many of you trampled each other to obtain, which has a new voice activation system and lets you control what it does, well mostly anyway. Now, this new company came out with AnkiDrive, whose details can be found here, but in short, it is like racing games, only live and real. Although it is really cool and brings the racing applications on iPhones to life, the price is kind of high and is only a really glorified version of remote controlled cars.

                I do not know how long they worked on it, but I really like how they turned it into a collectible game, because these cars would be able to be upgraded in-game, and so, from a child’s point of view, could effectively show off their hundred dollar toy, which honestly is a fantastic marketing idea. Since this would be played on an iPhone or iPod, it would also encourage the use of Apple devices. Of course, if this game were to even slightly resemble any kind of app store games, it would have to have in app purchases to upgrade them even more. Speaking from personal experiences with children obsessed with a game and want to level up because they are not patient enough to play the game and wait for it, it is a great marketing idea, because let me tell you, they are extremely annoying, and well, usually get their way.

                I guess this does define the capitalist country though. I do not think that any of you readers will be able to tell me without completely lying to yourself or to me, that money does not make the world go around, or if you have more money, you can get further in life. Do not get me wrong on this, I do not epitomize money as the basis of my entire life, or think that this is a good way to teach children how society functions. I also never/ said I was the best teacher of morals either. Either way, this is a really cool piece of technology, and as always, up to you whether or not to get it and teach your child morals if you plan on having one anyway.

Is Your Motherboard as Good as Mother Russia?

            Ever hear of those Russian Supercomputers that are supposed to be ridiculously fast and impossibly good at chess like most Russians? Stereotyping, yes I know, but computers these days are becoming extraordinarily faster and are still becoming better at an exponential rate. Although it is still not like the rate that we humans enjoy reproducing, that is still at a much higher rate, but it is starting to drop quite a bit. Anyway, apparently Russia has not had any of the world's largest super computers for a while now. There is of course, probably some discrepancy within the data where it does not find the most superior computer, but there is probably a limit a computer has to pass to become a super computer, and by that I mean, the graphs are only showing quantity rather than quantity.

            My interrogative nature will not let me put this question to rest. Why do we even have super computers anyway? I mean, if we have the technology to create a supercomputer, why is it not widely available to the public. Sure most of us plebeians do not have much of a use for them, but when top secret government places have it, it not only shows the differences between the richest and poorest classes, but it also feeds, much like my League of Legends teammates, the conspiracy theorists who are all about, "the government is corrupting" or "Aliens DO exist" which usually is not such a large deal, but it is something to look at. 

            I wonder why most of the operating systems are usually none of the popular ones, because Linux is not used in all of its penguin wonderfulness, and hardly anyone has even heard of Unix in years. Nobody out there can possibly say that they have not heard of a single person who has not had an argument with another about whether Windows or Apple is better, unless one lives under a rock or in Iowa. (It is okay, I can make these jokes, I am an Iowan.) Supposedly the world's best computers are made using Linux, but many people decide to use Windows or Apple instead. I cannot say much, since I am using Windows, but I would assume the reason is that these two operating systems are easier to use and more self-explanatory though more restrictive on actions. Looking at it this way, it could be analogous to how the smartest put effort into their work, but the average ones are lazy. Hint, hint, right?

Are These the Drones You're Looking For?

          So it indeed has been a while between posts, but forgive me for thinking that the entire month of November is not only my birthday month but also Thanksgiving, which I decided to take off. Hopefully these new “drones” made by Amazon Prime Air will not take as much time to deliver the order as I take to create a new post. I am sure many of you have seen this commercial, but it is here if you have not. Although this first looks like just another fanciful futuristic flight plan made by Amazon just to show how quickly they can actually deliver the product, according to the company’s CEO, Jeff Bozos, it could very much become a possibility within the next couple years, around 2015. This statement draws much skepticism from all sources, and many of them do have a base for the criticism.

            One of the biggest things I find wrong with this is that in order to deliver the product, the drones need to fly through the air, which can be a major safety hazard. I mean, everything comes with a risk, but this one probably has more than usual. For an example, if you were to walk onto a plane and told that there was no pilot, but instead a robot, not even one with a physical body, just a type of consciousness, would you really go through with the flight? Another thing is that these drones would also have cameras on them, which could monitor people and take pictures of houses, and in the end, would there be much of a difference between military drones to control outsiders to these drones that would control internal problems? It would be a huge violation of privacy, and we would have to put a lot of trust into the government to not spy or creep in on us, which if we learned anything from the NSA or WikiLeaks, it is that we really cannot. Sure, we could program these robots to not be able to keep the stuff, but robots have to be programmed precisely otherwise they do something completely different, and as an avid member of the robotics team, I can guarantee this.

            This would bring me to my next point, which is that it would be extremely difficult to achieve this by the end of the decade, much less 2015. It would take a lot of work to make sure there would not be any bugs in the program, and to make it completely safe. There is also the issue of fuel, since it would take a lot of gas to do its task. This guaranteed is going to take longer than a year unless all their resources are developing, which is not a fantastic business plan. I still do not think that this would be too great of an idea, because the delivery service give people jobs, and the unemployment rate would rise. Sure, some new jobs will be created, but not as many, and it would be in a different field of work. One final thing I find wrong with this is that it would make everything much more mechanized, which is not a bad thing in an industrial society and continuously upgrading technology, but has anyone not seen I, Robot because like humans, robots could rebel, and although there are the laws of robotics that supposedly protect people from them, but it is not like people break society’s laws at all, am I right?