Ancient Aliens and Jokes

                So today was the first time in forever that I have watched the history channel, and even though there are a lot of memes online referencing the Ancient Aliens dude about how he thinks that aliens have done everything in history that we humans have ever done or accomplished is done by aliens, he does have a couple good points, though I do not necessarily agree with him on all points. Something people need to realize too though is the fact that the show is called Ancient Aliens, so of course he is going to try to relate everything he can to aliens, anything for the views, am I right? I am especially looking at you MTV, which hardly even have music videos anymore.

                One of the reasons that I think some of the points they have can be true is because there are a lot of things in history that cannot be explained, or at least are kind of far-fetched or difficult to explain. One of the points was that the method of writing at first was used to record history or events that were currently happening or had happened. This would mean that the early writings should mostly be true, and that their “legendary weapons” recorded should be true then. A main reason why people I think do not believe this is because they do not want to admit that the past civilizations, to which we often refer to as brutes, were more advanced than us due to an outside influence. If these people are anything like me or most teenagers today, they would not like to be compared to their parents then be told that their parents had done exactly what they were doing in school, just many ages ago. Currently, many humans think of themselves as the pinnacle of evolution and they are literally god’s greatest gift to humanity. Literally just go to a social networking site or an online chat room, you will nearly immediately see someone who is toxic because he thinks he is the best.

                This is also another reason why I hate people who tell exactly the same joke that they heard from someone else but then try to pass it off as their own, particularly the internet. Being the stereotypical Asian that I am, I browse through the internet a lot and I see many people at my school who try to take a funny anecdote from the internet and try to pass it off as something that happened to them. I occasionally do this, but I always start off the story with, “Have you seen the one post online that said…?” and take it from there, I give them a bit of credit.

Chemistry? More like Chem-Mystery

                Although my school cares a lot about us students taking a multitude of Advanced Placement classes, sometimes the teachers make them extremely difficult to handle or even increases how much we worry. Currently, the AP tests are over which should mean that the class is close to over or the rest of the year should not affect the grade too terribly, but some teachers I suppose do not understand that the end of the year is where most students give up anyway, even us super prestigious Advanced Placement students. Sometimes, I think that we should also be more lax during the week that students do have their exams, even if the students have missed, and I understand that they will have to make it up, but they should be allowed a couple of extension days and not just taken points off for being late.

                In my AP Chemistry class, we had to finish a lab report for a lab that we could only do in class. The problem with this though is that we cannot complete the lab report until we finish the lab and we get all the data correct. By getting the data correct, I mean that we were given unknown solutions filled with unknown cations and anions that we were supposed to determine what they were using somewhat sketchy procedures. The problem I have with this though is the fact that the lab report is theoretically due tonight at midnight except for I did not guess my cations and anions correctly and so I am unable to complete the lab report. This then forces me to turn in my lab report late and so have points deducted from my total. Now, I know you guys may say that it was my fault for procrastinating or wasting my time in class when we were experimenting, but that would not be true. In reality, I had to attend three different AP exams and so I was forced to miss a couple class periods, and unlike some blonde genius I know of, I am not as smart nor am I as fast at completing lab procedures as she does. These AP exams have actually hurt my grade even though they are supposed to be a completely separate thing from school work. The biggest problem with this though, is that I am dealing with an AP teacher and she should realize that her class is not the only class a student is taking.

Every day I'm Gambling

            Gambling is one of the many joys of life, and very often I will make pointless bets with my friends for little money or just holding a favor. I do see the addiction in it and I can understand how it can lead many astray with promises of fame and fortune. This new study shows that the typical “hot hand fallacy” may actually be true, not because when you win it increases your chances of winning, but instead, it has a psychological impact on your bets. This, I think, can be true for some people, but not really true for me at all.

            Whenever I get on a winning streak, I always bet harder and more because I feel a lot more confident in my choices, comparatively where I am supposed to make safer bets, but hey, go hard or go home, am I right? On the other hand, when I start to lose, it could honestly go either way depending on the day, because some days I feel like winning it all or losing it all and go all in, while other times I want to conserve my money because I do not think I will win anything. Most days when I lose though, I always bet harder, according to the data, because I think, “But what if the next one is the jackpot? This might be like the one Orpheus and Eurydice story where they just missed by a little bit,” which would depress me even more, though it might be a good thing, because I would be so pissed off at the machine or whatever I would be gambling on and just quit.

            Although, one thing that makes this “fallacy” not really work is the fact that if there is something to lose, then the psychological effects of the fallacy would kick in harder, because when the thing you see is tangible, you tend to want to preserve it more. One example from my life is just playing my favorite game, League of Legends, yeah I know you guys are tired of hearing about it but just stick with me. Recently, I have been on a losing streak, even though I think my gaming ability has been about the same. It always fluctuates between a winning streak and a losing streak, it has hardly ever been just a mix of the two. I think it is more personalized.

Sometimes, They can be Trait-ors

                So today is Mother’s Day, and we should all be thanking our mothers unless she is gone or you just dislike her, which then I am sorry about that. Just remember that half of you came from your mother and so did quite a bit of your traits that you think are original to you, probably are not and instead are from your mother. Just be glad that no matter how bad your relationship is, at least it is not supposed to be like the relationship the Malachai is supposed to have with his mother. For those of you that did not catch the reference, go read the Chronicles of Nick Gautier, a good series.

                Recently, I have been wondering about what traits come from the mother’s side and what traits come from the father’s side. I honestly do not think that it is split easily fifty percent of your mom’s traits and fifty percent of your dad’s traits even if originally, the meiosis split had fifty percent of your mom’s data and fifty percent of your dad’s data. Personally, I think the environment that you grow up in affects the development of your personality much more than the genetics of where they came from. In certain environments, different traits are more heavily emphasized, because my mother always has a constant raging personality, while my father is patient up until a certain point. During middle school, a terrible time and a terrible place to boot which I would never wish on anyone, I was put in a pool of testosterone where you were supposed to be manly or get figuratively “devoured”. This turned me into an anti-social freak of nature and filled with rage and anger. Due to this, I made some terrible friends that I realize now, and highly regret, and if anyone starts telling you about my middle school years, just realize that I was stupid back then.

                It is not only emotional traits that are passed down, but I find that physical traits are passed down too, and although people say, “Awww, he or she has his or her mother’s nose,” which I never understood nor have I ever saw the resemblance in the person. I think that I look neither like my mother nor do I look like my father and my parents do not think I look like either of them too. This led to my parents joking about how I looked like my neighbor’s child. I personally like to think that I’m an original.

What's In the Middle?

                Apparently when you add in a middle initial to an application or just to something that you sign your name, the middle initial makes you sound a lot more intelligent compared to just omitting the middle initial, proven by a couple tests, linked here. I think that this is fairly accurate, because I always have a tendency to believe people if they sound a lot more fancy, such as Dr. Jacques P. Farquhar. Compared to just John Doe or something like that, the fancier names would make me think higher of their intelligence, but this is not to say that I discriminate against people who do not have fancy middle initials.

                Unfortunately for me, I actually did not include my middle initial on my AP exams that I registered for a while ago, and so hopefully it does not impact my college entrance. (Complete Sarcasm) Although first impressions are an important factor into what you originally think about a person, it should not be the only reason that you either hate a person, unless you hear them cuss with every other word or about how many relationships that they have cheated on or done drugs. Then, you have my full permission to hate them, and please do not start with the stupid, “You don’t know me, you don’t my story, you don’t know what I’ve been through,” It would have to be extremely high brain damage for you to do any of it.

                In case you guys do not know this, but I am indeed Asian and often stereotyped, especially when I wear my glasses, and am thought to be extremely smart, especially in Math. I won a couple awards in a math competition and yet not many people were that surprised by it, nor are they surprised to find that I also attended science bowl, which is obviously a science competition. Then again, now that I think about it, it has not been like I was trying not to give this stereotype, because I have been going to these competitions, and well, in all of them, about 99% of each team in the math competitions have been Asian or Indian, as in the sub-continent of Asia, not the Christopher Columbus Indians. This has gotten slightly off topic, but the middle initial was apparently started by the aristocrats of the era, and so when peasants saw aristocrats with their fancy middle names, this may be a reason why we immediately associate intelligence with a middle name.

Drink Thy Elixir!

                One of my many childhood dreams has been to live immortally, because who does not want to, right? Most humans are scared of death, probably because humans tend to fear the unknown, and I know that it is the case for me. I now realized, once I have grown and hopefully matured a bit, that immortality would be a terrible idea in multiple aspects, or at least it would be for me. It is not explicitly stated in the terms of immortality, I guess, but eternal youth is not a condition. So, with each growing day, a body would just grow more decrepit over time, which eventually it might just be a personal prison your soul is locked inside of. Even if eternal youth were granted, I would hate to see all my friends and family grow up without me, and eventually I would start over, find a new life and friends, and probably end up as Edward from Twilight.

                To be completely serious though, I could probably not deal with the fact that I will not see my friends after they die, because I honestly get extremely attached to everything, even inanimate objects. Last summer when my parents told me to clean out my room, I literally threw away leftover homework from the school year, and nothing else, even though my bookshelf is filled with books I never read anymore but have a sentimental value. Then there is the fact that my room is also filled with quite a bit of stuffed animals too, and I do not play with those either, but still cannot bear to see them in another room, or even worse, the trash, and knowing my mother, she would do it without a thought about how emotionally traumatized I would be.

                I thought about this topic because of the book I finished reading, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which does not have much to do with living forever in a literal sense, but it is an interesting book. In a figurative sense, the main(ish) character is living because her cells were stolen and reproduced without her explicit permission, but since they are too widespread now, there is not much anyone can do about it. I really hope that Henrietta’s mind is not still living, even though it should have died with the brain, one never can really tell, because the people who know about the life beyond death or whatever is beyond death, are not exactly in a position to tell us.

AP Classes - Absolutely Pointless

                Like I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I really like how we have started to put a higher emphasis on our academics. An example of how much more we have put on education is the abundance of Advanced Placement classes these days, and how students can now start to earn college credit before they even start college. Honestly though, I do not think that these are truly representative of real college classes.

                As a junior in high school, I can safely say that I have no real comparison, but if the comparison is anything like the transition from middle school to high school, I can say that it is going to be one heck of a rude awakening. Starting from kindergarten, schools have been separating the students into two different groups, “gifted” and normal. Speaking from a personal experience, I was not able to enter the “gifted program” until about third or fourth grade, and I am pretty sure it damaged my social abilities for a couple years. From that moment forward, I immediately developed a big time superiority complex, and felt that I was better than everyone else. This obviously was not healthy, but I just figured it was normal. Middle school was a terrible time, because when someone acts better than you, most of the student’s peers will prefer to not talk to them and just find themselves generally repulsed. Needless to say, my middle school experience did not go too well. Eventually, I somehow got righted on the normal student path and now I actually have friends…I think. Separating students at an early age is not the best idea if it is all based upon a stupid test that somehow can measure how intelligent a person is.

                I also think that Advanced Placement classes should be saved until a student’s junior or senior year before nearly forcing everyone to take one during or before their sophomore year. The problem with these Advanced Placement classes is that some colleges just do not accept these classes. Each test costs about eighty dollars, but college classes that are in the same subject would cost a couple thousand dollars, so this sounds like an amazing deal right? Wrong. If the college does not accept the credits, or if your major does not need the credits for you to graduate, it just becomes a waste of eighty dollars. See, I did not know what college I wanted to go to or even what I wanted to major in until a couple months ago, and apparently what I do does not accept any sort of AP credit. So here I am with about $480 wasted because I get no credit from it. Joys.

The Void Reaver

`               For whatever reasons that you personally may be scared of the dark, I think there is an actual scientific reason for why that people should be scared of the dark. There comes a point in a person’s life where they become ridiculed for being scared of the dark, kind of how there comes a day where you are required to stop acting like a child and suddenly become an adult. Evolution happens whether you believe it does or it does not, in fact, there is tons of evidence in multiple living things that proves it. As much as I want to respect the Christian idea of creating the world, let us just look at history and how many times they have been right in contrast to radical ideas. So far, the radicals have nearly always been right, but only after dying from being jailed by the church.

                Humans are not exactly the pinnacle of evolutionary standards, but we have developed different advantages to adapt against some of the more major setbacks. One such example of our evolution is the development of opposable thumbs. Without these, a lot of inventions would not have been invented, heck; it would even be difficult to eat a banana. Imagine the difficulties of playing on a video game system, and I agree that we would have adjusted our living style to account for this, but it would be more difficult.

                Now to get back on topic, night should be a very scary place for every human, because we rely a lot on sight, and we know that there are other animals or bugs that are out there that are much more adapted to the night than we are. A sudden noise. A piercing shriek. We immediately think the worst even when logically we know that we are safe. The problem is that we cannot see what is going on. Now especially animals that prey or hunt during the night are certainly the scariest. This video of a praying mantis shows how quick and efficient it is at killing and hunting down animals. Now if only they were actually large enough to attack humans, would we have to truly fear for our life. In League of Legends, Kha’zix is an adaptable bug from the darkest dark of the game and one of the best assassins, and seeing him leap onto your screen just incites fear. The dark is a scary place. We develop some fears because they help keep us safe, so who knows? Just be careful out there.

Middle School...

            Let us talk about botany, a subsection of biology. My school does not offer botany as an “important class” and the same goes for other science classes like ecology, geography, and astronomy. I am sure everyone has heard that story where a middle school student, usually a sixth grader wants to be rebellious, like most sixth graders are, and decides to try drugs for the first time. Then you hear all about how he wants to buy weed, and ends up smoking it, but after a while, he becomes enlightened when he realizes that all this time, he has just been smoking oregano. In fact, my friends and I were joking about doing this, by selling oregano to middle school students as a joke and to fundraise for our club. Keep in mind it was only a joke and we do not condone the use of drugs, unless you are living in Colorado, in which case we do.

            My middle school classes were all terrible, as in I learned next to nothing in them except for a few catchy phrases, like “There actually is no such thing as cold, but instead, a lack of heat,” so interesting, but exactly how does that happen. I think that middle school classes should be a lot more interactive with the students, because middle school was an extremely hard time, and I can personally testify to that, and this is actually where many students decide on how they want to live their life or when they decide to do drugs or take alcohol, which all might affect the development of their brain much later in life. Students will often come to regret their decision later in life, and so if classrooms or schools were more interactive and encouraged students to actually learn, instead of trying to strip them of all individuality. This is shown by the Calvin and Hobbes comic about snowflakes, shown here.

            I also think that parents play a deciding factor in a student’s behavior, as in the students will often model their parents, or at least how their parents want them to act. This was always me, because I always kind of was the child that my parents wanted their life to be, as in go to one of the best colleges and earn tons of money. Personally, I was fine with a mediocre college with a mediocre life, and it was not until high school when I realized that my ambitions did not align with my parents.

Doctah Jekyll and Meestah Hyde

                Today, Kennedy High School put on a musical about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, one of those traditional boring books that you would complain about in a traditional classroom setting, but a really interesting plotline if you want to see or read it. Now, I know that there are probably parts in the musical that are not in the book and parts in the book that are not in the musical, but I am sure that the general idea about the science is the same. I was thinking about Jekyll’s thought process about how all evil must be eliminated from the world, and I am pretty sure everyone agrees with this. The problem is, who defines what is good and what is evil.

                In a manga that I once read, called Death Note, it steps on this idea of differentiating between good and evil. For a quick summary, it is about a model teenage student who obtains a book that is able to kill people, and he uses it to cast “judgment” on those that he deems are not good enough to live by his standards. This often switches between the two perspectives, the police and the student, and a conversation that pops up occasionally in the police force is if what they are doing to catch this killer is really the right thing to do, because the killer really is only killing criminals and other mass murderers. Honestly this compounds upon history too, as in the winner gets to decide, or the victor is the one who writes the storybooks. Thus, to say, if the police caught the killer, the police would be deemed heroes, but if the killer killed off all the police, the killer would be deemed as righteous and not opposable.

                This just shows that there really is no difference between good and evil, just a matter of perspective. I like to rant about the difference between this because of sometimes how unjust a school system is, but Jekyll’s real point was to remove anger and other malevolent feelings. This would be interesting if it worked, but some of these emotions are what makes us human. If I saw a person who never got angry, I would not actually classify them as a human. It would be more like a robot if a person were to act like that, not to mention that competitiveness would be stomped out, and since I was raised on competitiveness, I think I would be bored for most of my life.

Slow Down for What?

                I am attending a state-wide mathematics competition tomorrow for an organization called Math League, and more can be found here. I like how much math and science programs have expanded, especially the STEM and another competition that I compete in is Science Bowl but we have already finished that in February. Not to mention robotics, even though I do not do much, the fact that there are more and more teams competing in Iowa and the United States. Although we are not technically doing as well as the Chinese are, it is very difficult to push the progression of education.

                One of the things that I do not think many adults understand because it has been awhile since they were teenagers is that teenagers prefer to do things at their own pace and if they are pushed sharply to do something, many will just push even harder back. Teens need to have an immediate reward and not a long-term questionable reward. As a teen, many do not think ahead or into the future much, and instead are all about instant gratification. I do understand, unlike some of my fellow peers, that education is very important in this day and age, but with a high unemployment rate, will there be room for the students who have no work experience, instead with a high education, to be hired? By job, I also do not mean getting a Ph. D in pharmacy but then end up working in a McDonald’s restaurant. As you can see, job security is not very much trusted in, and I do not think social security is either.

                At my school, we have a program where we can advance eight graders to a high school level. I think the school gets more money if these students take these classes. Back when I was an eighth grader we literally had only one person who advanced to the high school level, but now the school advances them regardless of whether or not that they are qualified to be in the class. I really am not trying to insult or offend the ones at our school, but many of them have been advanced past algebra and into geometry. Algebra is honestly one of the main fundamentals of math, and when these eighth graders do not learn it; they fall behind really quickly which is apparent in their grades. In our rush to surpass China and other “intelligent” countries, we are in fact making our own resources worse because we make them seem a lot smarter than they really are. History has shown us that this does not work. In the 1970’s there was a large movement after the Russian satellite, Sputnik, but instead what arose in America was a counterculture where people lounged around much more than they worked.

Open Your Doors

            I think that the iPhones and smart phones are getting a little bit too smart for us, or at least want to help us more in a bad way. I am going to assume that everyone who has a computer and the spare time to read this blog also has a smart phone and knows what I am talking about. The Open Feint application wants to know where you are and if a game is playing, it will often ask to use the location, usually for no good reason except to just compare your high score to others in your area. Or for those pop-up advertisements that exclaim how there are hot singles living in your area, and since I live in the middle of nowhere that is Iowa, I must be the hot single in the area. More often than not when you post to some sort of social networking site, it will post where you are currently at.

            This also means that your phone has a Global Positioning Device or GPS inside your phone, and while you think you have complete control over it, you really do not. No business in their right sort of mind would put a monopoly on a function that the business still owned. While you think that you can turn it off, and I know this kind of sounds like a conspiracy theory, it can probably be turned on with ease if you have ever piqued the interest of any government official or bureau. It would take no work, and just for a kill safe switch, I think that the device could be activated even if the phone was dead. That one person, I cannot exactly recall his name right now who released information about the NSA and security breaches, showed that the government is going to pretty high lengths to spy on every day monotonous activities, if you searched something really weird into google, like how to breach a military base, I can definitely say that they will trace you down, unless you are a really professional hacker that does not make mistakes, like in all those books that I have read.

            Although we live in the “Land of the Free” sometimes it just does not feel that way, with more and more government conspiracies popping up and some of them becoming more and more plausible. All that would appease me is if any of the government officials would just come out with all the secrets and give an apology to the American people. I would forgive them and accept it, because people do make mistakes, but it is what you do in the future that helps change them.

Could You Survive?

                So, this guy from Popular Science made a homemade crossbow because he was simulating a post-apocalyptic world where ammunition from guns would be scarce and hard to retrieve. A crossbow or a composite bow would be perfect because it packs a pretty high punch because it did put a hole through modern day “armor” or at least a car door. The ammo would be easily recoverable and crafted if we had either trees or just from scrap metal. Sure, the fire rate would not be optimal, but it would be enough to, sorry for the video game term, kite the zombies and continuously take them down one by one. After killing a multitude of them, if they had any brains, they would move on and realize that it would not be worth the time and energy chasing after you, kind of like a wolf.

                Now, I know the next thing you guys are probably thinking of is how cool you would be portrayed, and since bowmen hide in the back, they would be cowards. Now, in order to up the cool factor compared to swordsmen, think about The Hunger Games, was Finnick the main character? No, he was not. Katniss was the main character, who had the bow as her main weapon in an era of modern or even futuristic technology. Some more tips can be modeled after the best rapper of all time, 2chainz. He wears not one, but two chains. This doubles his overall cool factor and in general scare factor. It would be difficult to dual wield a bow, but take a hint from the night hunter class in Diablo III, it looks cool and wreaks a ton of damage.

                To be honest, I really do not think that this has even the slightest likelihood of happening, but when it does, I’ll either go down blazing, full guns and glory, but more likely I will be cowering in a corner wishing that it was a dream. Normally I feel like I am cooler and collected than most, but when pressured, I make impulsive decisions that I regret 90% of the time. I mean, peer pressure works a lot of the time, and am I right? The best I would hope for is a group of friends that I could travel with, because having people around makes things less scary and overall just boosts morale.

Doppelgangers

                Scientists have now proved that cloning a human cell is possible, which is almost the pinnacle of cloning, but they still admit that it is difficult to create a full human clone or even transplant some of these cloned cells into a human. It then made me question the usefulness of it, but it is in these small baby steps that help scientists build off and make progress. I personally think that cloning a person’s cells to replace bad ones is a fantastic idea. People will not need to know their blood type nor will they have to wait for a blood transfusion if the hospital is running low on blood. This is the same with organ donations, because if someone has a punctured lung and needs a replacement, the choice between a large bulky metal lung and a cloned lung is fairly easy to choose. Even if a person does obtain a lung from a lung donor, there is still a high chance that the body will reject the lung because it seems like a foreign substance, and so the body’s autoimmune system attacks it and thereby wasting a completely useful lung. A cloned lung would have none of these problems, because it came from the person’s body itself, and the person could continue living as before,

                Others think about the morality of this situation. That thought process goes like it is basically creating a human who may or may not have a consciousness but then just creating a person to save another person’s life. Cloning is a type of creating life, and I honestly do not think that Frankenstein is a good example, because it was not the monster’s fault, the doctor who created him was much, much worse than the monster. I agree with the fact that we should not just create life in order to save another life, but without a brain, I do not think that there is a conscious in the body, so as long as a brain is not created, I think that we should definitely clone other parts. There are others who think that we have gone way too far out of our limits in what we were meant to do, but I think we are just doing what we need to do to ensure the survival of the human race, not that we have helped the environment or the surroundings in the couple thousand years that we have been alive. This is just developing technology which I think that people should just get used to it, like we have to in jobs or just suffer the loss of a job. This is basically a human way to cope with natural selection.

7 Billion and Counting...

            Has anyone actually took time to realize how great natural selection is? It weeds out the weakest traits in a species and although it probably hurts the population at first, it strengthens out the species as a total. One of the reasons humans are so prone to diseases and natural disasters is that we have been trying to play as a God in our species. We feel like we are so much better than nature and can do a much better job than it can because we humans actually have consciousness of what we are actually doing. Our results in this effort have only really harmed the surroundings, like the environment, and we are definitely pushing the limits of what it can tolerate. Littering, fossil fuels, and habitat destruction has hampered the ability of the environment to tolerate human life.

            One of the reasons that I think we are constantly looking for a new planet to inhabit is because deep down within each scientists’ heart, they know that the Earth will not last much longer going at this rate, because they have seen all the statistics and there would be no way that the Earth has not been pushed past its carrying capacity. Our population has reached 7 billion and is still counting, which is putting a much larger strain on food production, and we have already used up a lot of Earth’s land that is already arable.

As some optimists claim, “We will be totally fine, because so far the human population has been able to produce scientists that know what they are doing and have been and will always find a solution to whatever problem arises.” This is honestly just a roundabout way of thinking, like how about we stop waiting to the last moment before we do anything. I can easily prove this with modern and historical examples. An easy modern example is most car companies. On average, cars in America usually do not get over 30 miles to the gallon, while in China, they have much higher emission standards that cars made in America would not be allowed to legally drive in China. Then entire world still uses gas made from oil, a non-renewable resource, and while some have electric cars and scooters, there is not nearly enough. It is known that there are plenty of other renewable resources that we can draw from, but “it is not enough to fuel everyone” the world has plenty of resources as long as we use them sustainably. We have not switched over yet, most likely due to greedy corporation heads who want to first exhaust all the money from using fossil fuels, then when we have an energy crisis that could have been easily prevented, people will complain. It is a very vicious cycle.

"Face" the Truth

                According to a recent study done at the Boston Museum of Science, facial expressions around the world are not as similar as people may have once thought they were. To quickly summarize, when the group of scientists asked people to categorize facial expressions from all around the world, and separated them into two different groups. One group had to separate such expressions into predetermined categories while the other had to separate them just by what they thought, with no limits on grouping. The predetermined group test was a test done much earlier in history and thought to have no mistakes, which is why many people assume that everyone around the world has the same emotions associated with the same faces. This experiment was, in fact, flawed. This was shown through the newer experiment because nearly all of the participants had different groups in which they separated them and they had little to no correlation.

                This relates further into school and everything we have learned. In my AP Language class, we learned about logical fallacies and specifically one of them kind of applies to this case right here, which is also known as “tainting the well” which means that a person would insult another person and thereby nullifying anything he or she had to say. For example, calling someone a liar would pretty much mean they lie all the time and therefore cancel anything they say. This applies here to the predetermined group because it already has expressions down for people to group them in, so it greatly reduces the margin of error, but while reducing that margin of error, it also reduces how accurate the results are. As the test results came out, different people have different ways of classification.

                This is also like parenting and how I really hate how some people are not tolerant of others. I am sure everyone has seen those Tumblr posts about how everyone should be equal and actually has very good points. One such post went:

                                “You’re getting a tattoo? What will your kids think of it?”

                                “Nothing, because I won’t raise them to be as judgmental as yours,”

This shows that parents often taint  the well of the child when they grow up because everyone knows that a parent is one of the biggest influences on a child because most of the time, they are the ones that is there for the child the most, and so their personality, whether good or bad, will rub off on them.

Iowa Test of Useless Skills

                Our school has just finished taking the Iowa Assessments which were not difficult for me personally, but I always hate being judged by people who do not really know me and compare me to everyone else in the nation. For those of you that do not know what they are, it is a standardized test given across either the nation or just Iowa, I cannot recall at the moment but that is not very important. I feel that because the United States heads of state feel insecure about the future of education due to the quickly advancing “geniuses” in China, they put more and more importance into school. This, at first, sounds like a good idea, because with school, the students will be educated and learn a lot, which will then carry into life. Anyone who has ever attended or is in a high school knows that this is not even close to the truth.

                School has always been “eat, regurgitate, and forget” and I am not just saying this with no credentials, I am at the top of my class and I will say that I often do this. I can also safely say that if you gave me a test on everything that I learned in my freshman year, with a bit of luck, I would say that I could maybe get half of them right. Even the more prestigious Advanced Placement classes are subject to this, though all of the teachers I have had have said, “You are going to need to this remember this material, because the entire rest of the year builds off of this material,” and I do remember the information… at least until the end of the year comes about, which is when I do not have to be graded on how “smart” I am. I do pass the class with a good grade, but it doesn’t have any actual real life value or application after the class. Even if the class would have an effect on my life, my school does not present it in a viable way.

                One of the problems with me taking any applied classes is because those are usually labeled as the “dumb kids’ class” because at our school, an Advanced Placement class gives a lot more bonus grade point average points than a regular course would give. For example, our school’s accounting class is not taken by any of the class’s highest ranked people, because many of them are expected to just take one of the two advanced classes, either calculus or statistics. I think the school should have more applied courses that people actually see the reason in learning it.

The Walking Death

            Horton Hears a Who was a popular book by Dr. Seuss when I was just a wee young lad. It lately has been adapted into a movie, but one of the main points that I would like to point out in the book is that, no matter how small something is, the thing’s life still means the most to them even if it seems meaningless or stupid and small to someone else. This translates into real life pretty easily, because many people do not really think about the microorganisms that go on in our body, but take them for granted and do not always treat them correctly. These organisms keep you alive day to day and so it would be nice to not endanger it with a stupid dare or a hashtag yolo action.

            One of the reasons that I mention this is because of a deadly zombie-like parasite amoeba that lives inside a body. This article here can give more information on the how. I think is a good breakthrough in how to increase medical abilities and technology. Researchers from the University of Virginia have determined that these amoebas do not release toxins and eat a dead cell like people originally thought, instead these amoebas will actually consume a living blood cell and devour it. Many people die from this disease each year and one of the reasons that it has probably been different to stop it, is probably because we have currently been using the wrong type of medication to treat it. In other words, the way how we used to treat the disease was like a person repeatedly being stabbed and having small chunks of his body ripped out by another person, where a bystander would come along and hand the person being stabbed a gas mask, to try and keep out the poisoned air without even trying to remove the stabber. Now with this problem fixed, these people will be more easily saved.

            I do not really believe the next sentence, and I know it seems heartless but just for an opposing point, if this is really such a great breakthrough after all. Everyone knows that the world is being overpopulated right now, and anyone who does not is probably uneducated about the Earth’s resources. There are currently seven billion people in the world right now, and still growing. There is only 3.5% of the world’s land that can be used for agriculture, so would it not be a good thing if we tried to keep our population down? People are trying long-term plans to try to keep population down, but we most likely are already over the limit.

Daylight Savings Time Saves No Time

                Anyone able to tell me what we Americans do that nobody else in the world does? Yeah, it really is not that hard to think of one because we do a lot differently. One is we have our temperatures in Fahrenheit rather than Celsius, and the other is the metric system compared to whatever we Americans have is called. I know most of these things seem pretty pointless to bicker over, and it really has not harmed anyone. One of the major differences between the United States and the rest of the world that affects everyone is Daylight Savings Time. In the fall, we jump ahead an hour, where in the spring, we jump back an hour. Honestly it has never made too much sense to me and although enjoyable in the fall, it is always stressful losing an hour in the spring. Previously, none of these differences have affected anyone in a harmful way and although it may be a coincidence, this study, with extra links if you want to learn more, shows that when we jump an hour forward, there is a greater amount of heart attacks, comparatively, in the fall when we are delayed an hour, there are a decreased amount of heart attacks.

                I admit that this could be only a coincidence and has nothing to do with each other, but it has been recorded consistently over the last couple of years. One must admit that it does make sense because I am pretty sure everyone has felt the agony of losing an hour of sleep and then the wonderful sense of relief when waking up in fall and having to be somewhere at 7:00 but when you wake up thinking it is seven, but then seeing that it is only 6:00. Heart attacks rates are proven to increase with the amount of stress a person has, and there is officially nothing scarier than waking up an hour earlier to a teenager, not even a large test that he or she has not studied for. Although being a student and a youngster, I can usually quickly adapt to this change, whereas elder people have much harder times adjusting to the time delays and jumps. To be completely honest, there is nothing that makes me angrier than not getting enough sleep, which makes me in a terrible mood and just wants to die. Coupled with the strain it must have on your body and your heart easily translates into a heart attack. I do think we should conform and not have Daylight Savings Time.

Pretty X-Static About This

                Sometimes in a deeply intense debate about overpopulation on Earth, many people often forget or lower the value of a human life. Not only on the topic overpopulation do people forget, but it happens often when people talk about war. This can only be attributed to the standard expectations of people. What I mean by that is that the common people only expect that soldiers will die for a country and do not really give it a second thought. The other case is that I hang out with extremely insensitive people, but let us just assume that I do not. This article displays a new invention that helps wounded soldiers, who may have died previously without it, from blood loss by quickly inserting a microscopic sponge that expands and absorbs the blood while also sterilizing it.

                This is a great invention and it already has approval to be used out in the field. Although after a great invention that makes a person a lot of money, the person would be tempted to stop unless they had completely good intentions when making it, I know I would be heavily tempted to stop, but I think that this should not be the end of a possible long procession of improvements in medics on the battlefield. Just thinking about it a little bit just shows that this is not a permanent solution, rather a temporary one. By no means am I saying that this is a terrible invention but that it could be improved. Of course, having invented nothing yet, I have no room to judge as if I were on their level, but just throwing my thoughts out there. This only lasts for four hours so it is really only a temporary solution, but it really is better than nothing.

                This not only makes saving the soldiers’ lives easier but it also makes the medics’ lives easier, according to a previous article, it replaces as many as four to five rolls in a medic’s pack which would make the pack a lot lighter or could carry a lot more supplies with the same amount of weight carried. If I were a doctor though, I feel like it would be difficult to remove the sponge after it clogs up the artery because it is supposed to take all the empty space in an artery, but I do suppose the worst thing that could happen is to cut off the artery and replace it with a pig valve like they do to heart attack victims. I mean, it is a much better alternative to dying.

Trix in the Cereal Eye-sles

            On television, there are a multitude of advertisements playing for children’s cereals. These commercials will often contain an animated cartoon with a repeated catchphrase such as “going cuckoo for Cocoa Puff” or “Silly Rabbit, Trix are for kids!” This later helps the child remember which cereal he or she wanted to buy. Not only do these companies try to reach out to the child through television advertisements, these companies try their best in stores too. Anyone who has shopped with a child or seen a child picking which cereal they want next know that many of them are indecisive, and by indecisive I do not mean that the child cannot pick one, but instead, he or she wants to pick all of them. In middle school during a graphic arts class, we learned about strategies designers used to entice children to pick a certain brand over another. One of the main strategies that many people already know about, before even designing the cereal, is that the children’s cereal will be placed on the lower shelves in the supermarket, while the cereal for adults are placed higher up. This is because the children are shorter and therefore will see this cereal first.

            One of the graphic tricks that I used was to use an animated character, since cartoons often appeal to many kids, and brighter and lighter colors that reflected the supposed “taste” of the cereal. Apple Jacks cereal is known to have a bright green color, the same color of a Granny Smith apple, which seems to imply all the tastes of the original apple. Let us also face that many of us are human, and most humans enjoy being happy. Very rarely do people associate happiness with the darker colors, like black or brown, and usually think happy colors are yellow and a bright green. This, of course, is not considering the other kind of “happy” whose colors are pictured as fifty different shades of gray, if you’re into that kind of stuff.

            A group of researchers from Cornell University did another study on whether or not eye contact from cereal boxes would increase a type of “brand trust” with them. I had not even thought about this. It makes more sense the more I think about it though. When a person makes eye contact with a person while talking, it usually brings a deeper level of trust into the conversation, while a person with shifty eyes, like many people do in books, usually means the person is lying or at least does not give the full truth. This, although a small design, does grant a bit more money to the company for minimal effort.

The Strip Club

                Being in our school’s Robotics Team, I found one of the biggest frustrations on working on the robot where we would accidentally strip a screw. What is really cool is that someone made this, which creates more contact between the screw head and the screwdriver and makes the screw much more difficult to strip. I will also admit that one of my first rookie mistakes in trying to drill a screw into wood was that I had not drilled before and so when I was forced to because everyone else was busy, I did not drill the hole first, instead I just tried drilling the screw into the wood where they said I was supposed to drill. Naturally, anyone who does know about drilling would know that the wood, instead of having a hole in it, actually split into two pieces down the middle. Luckily, these new screws save any future user from the embarrassment I went through because these have self-drilling parts to them.

                Although it is not mentioned in the article, it is only obvious that these screws will cost slightly more than the standard Phillips screw, but I think that the price difference should be affordable and comparatively better. Since these are screws, and a standard project needs a lot of screws, not including the ones dropped, lost, or stripped. Thus, if these new screws were not cheap and affordable, it would not be worth the price. Not only does that bring the price down, but these are screws. Screws are all supposed to be uniform so they have to be mass-produced in a factory, which as we all know from history with Henry Ford and Levittown, will drive down the price sharply. How I think these will turn out comparatively is that the ones able to be stripped are incandescent light bulbs while the ones that are much more difficult to strip are like compact fluorescent light bulbs. Although one may be cheaper up front, in the long run, there is going to be a higher need for them due to how often the screw is stripped. Thus, over time it would be more cost efficient. A big problem for stripping screws is that it is hard to get out. This invention, although great, is kind of a hidden insult to people, because all these new inventions are all geared towards assuming people are becoming more lazy and so appeals to that aspect, which I am. I admit that I am extremely lazy, but I do not like other people pointing it out.

Just A Rant

                I would like to take this time to quickly rant about the inefficiencies of the school system. As you can probably tell from my blog, I am a nerdy Asian kid, who obviously is very athletic. Well, actually my school is making me take a physical education class, which is a problem described later, but luckily they are letting me take a sport so not to harm my grade point average which is already fairly difficult to keep up. Next year though, they are thinking about not letting a student take a sport to waive the physical education requirement, which I find not one of the better things they could have done.

                My first problem with the inefficiencies at school is that every student is required to take a physical education class. At my school, the grade point average is supposed to be on a 4.0 scale, but many times a student’s grade will exceed the 4, which does not make sense though beside the point. Advanced Placement courses can add 5.0 to the overall grade point average, and guess which class does not have any sort of weighted grade? That is right, all physical education courses. I also find it stupid that gym teachers will actually grade a person on how “healthy” or “fit” they are. The few courses that I took before realizing I was killing my grade point average was where the more a person runs, the higher the grade, and although many people think students do not run the entire time because the students are being lazy. Many times it is not the person running’s fault, but instead the fault of the parents or a mesh of different factors. As described in Food Inc., families with a lower income usually resort to the more unhealthy foods because the food is cheaper than organic foods. Gym just is not a fair way to base a student’s future academic studies on.

                A couple weeks ago when I was actually practicing for tennis, well “practicing”, I forgot to turn in a signed physical to the school. I know this was extremely irresponsible of me because I had a couple weeks to turn it in, but what the teacher made me do was a complete waste of time. Instead of actually doing something productive, like playing tennis by myself on the courts, or studying, I stood there for the entire practice. Two whole hours of my life that I will never get back. Just standing. That is it. I know how much the administrators have to do, but at least they could make some of the gears run more efficiently, I mean, that is what they are paid to do, administer children and teachers.

Intelligence Quotas? More Like Impressive Quirks

                I found this article on Popular Science blog and it actually was not the content that interested me this time, but actually the title for the article, which was “Goats Found to Be Smarter than Previously Believed”. You can read the article, but the main point is that goats were being tested with a puzzle and if the puzzle was solved they would obtain a piece of fruit, or their prize. Two of the goats were disqualified from this “intelligence test” because instead of using the puzzle to open the lock, these just chose to gnaw their way through the box and so were dismissed. It is kind of funny that a goat’s intelligence is being measured through how well they can adjust to human standards and orders given out by humans. In a way, it kind of reminds us of school.

       Bill Gates once said, “I failed in some subjects in exam, but my friend passed in all. Now he is an engineer in Microsoft and I am the owner of Microsoft.” This shows that the “intelligence” of a person should not be measured in how well he or she can regurgitate information or follow orders, just like the intelligence of these animals were measured in. As Bill Gates shows, an obviously successful businessman, that the scores that appear on a report card do not define us as human beings, because many of us are more than just statistics and numbers. Of course, unless you are part of the secret robot revolution, which I am totally not, hahaha… In all seriousness though, my parents have always expected the best out of me, and by best I do not mean that they wanted me to try my best, but they wanted me to be the best or at least close to it. This kind of discouraged me from doing a lot of stuff, because I knew I would never get up to their expectations, so I quit a lot of activities that I kind of wish I did not.

                Of course, I complain about these things all the time, but honestly, I have no good alternative or at least a reasonable one that is not extremely radical. It is pretty difficult to judge a person based on what they put forth because many people do put up different fronts when they are with a different person, but next time a terrible grade comes out, if you care about grades, or called stupid, just remember that there are different types of intelligence. As Einstein said, “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its entire life believing it is stupid.

Turn Up the Heat!

                One of the more well-known laws of physics, the second law of thermodynamics states that then amount of entropy in a system will continuously increase in value. In English, it just means that energy or heat in a system will become more disordered which means that heat turns into a worse, more unusable form. However, London has found a way to reuse this energy by collecting the smoke from the heat and uses it to turn a fan which generates kinetic energy and reduces the amount of energy wasted. This is an important outlet to look at because carbon emissions are destroying the environment and this could reduce the overall carbon emissions, and increase the duration for how long we can stall out on renewable resources before these fossil fuel stores become exhausted.

                Although this method is viable to do in London, it would be almost out of the question in America, because London’s distribution of energy is in a smaller scale than the United States. The degraded energy has a very small service area and since the United States is clearly much larger than London and even Britain, so it would be difficult to provide the same amount of energy. Although if America was to have smaller much more centralized systems of power, it would be more environmentally friendly, but yet again, this is impossible. Many of America’s systems are the same. What I mean by that is that the products are tightly controlled by a couple companies, as demonstrated in Food Inc., and to split these companies up, as some presidents did, would cause a decrease in revenue and so would destroy the economy, but save the environment, and still, think about which is more important?

                This increases the efficiency of the electricity and energy, but makes one wonder, how would this decrease the overall carbon emissions? With an increase in the productivity, we would not use up as much coal or fossil fuels year to year and so to provide the same amount of electricity there is not as large of a need for the same amount of coal. Thus if not as much coal is used, then there is less of an output. One problem I see with this is that once the heat is used up again, it turns into a much more useless version of the once previously thought useless heat. This may or may not have adverse effects too, because sometimes humans are ignorant and do not think of other organisms when doing something. Hopefully this does not have any detrimental effects on the environment but it may take many more years before we realize the full extents of this.

Don't Be So Salty

                A group of researchers, who published their findings in Science Translational Medicine magazine found here, have been working on a new type of sodium called Tenapanor to replace the current sodium circulating throughout America. This is because they want find out if this new type of sodium will have better effects on humans rather than the original sodium, because Tenapanor inhibits the absorption rate of the body, so Tenapanor passes through the system as feces, where sodium would remain for a while. Sodium remaining in the body is a problem because it usually correlates with higher blood pressure and more heart diseases and heart problems.

                Although this new type of sodium has not been widely released to the public, it has been tested on humans and in rats, and in both cases, the desired effects have produced. This is important to our society because it could significantly reduce the amounts of deaths caused by heart attacks and cure multiple cases of high blood pressure cases without actually detracting from the usefulness of sodium in every day food. There would also be enough of Tenapanor to replace the supply of sodium, because it seems they have found it and created it from plasma.

                Like many engineered food, such as genetically modified apples or corn that are engineered to produce the most desirable traits of the food, such as larger yields or bug repellant, Tenapanor is yet another genetically modified food. Although it is genetically modified, it does not actually damage the body any more than any naturally created foods. In fact, this probably has more beneficial effects than the naturally created Sodium. Sodium Chloride, otherwise known as just table salt, if ingested can cause heart attacks if there is a little too much in your system; on the other hand, Tenapanor easily passes through the body and is excreted as feces so the Tenapanor does not stay in the body too long so it increases the quantity able to be ingested before actually doing the body harm.

                Others may argue that if people are allowed to ingest more than the standard amount, they will tend to eat much more than they originally would have, which then leads to wonder about if there was a restriction on how much food a person could eat or just restrictions on what a person could do, it would be another case of hampered freedom, which kind of defeats the purpose of America. People should be allowed to choose what they do, as long as it does not affect anyone else, whether it is a good choice or a harmful choice.

Sleep is for the Weak?

            I enjoy playing League of Legends or Sid Meier’s Civilization V until five in the morning as much as the next person, but at some point, I wonder if this instant gratification and short-term happiness is worth the loss of future endeavors. How much does lack of sleep actually affect a person’s activities the next day? According to a chart published in Popular Science, a lack of sleep can be extremely detrimental, in fact, sleep deprivation can cure multiple issues about a human, such as mental disorders, mental clarity, and weight gain. Although many people do not think this actually affects them that much, or think, “I have done this enough times that it does not change my normal routine anymore.” It actually does.

            Enough sleep is vital to the efficient function of a human being. A typical person will need seven to eight hours, and even six hours will cause harmful effects to the body. Without this extra hour of sleep, a standard human body will lose its mental acuity and actually seem slightly drunk. This, coupled with any actual alcohol one might take, multiplicatively decrease coherence and increase the amount of micro sleep – unintentional naps throughout the day – will most create an irritable person.

            A necessity for a functional human is food. Food is transformed into energy which helps focus the mind and provides nutrients for the body. This conversion is fairly efficient for it keeps many people alert during the day. However, a lack of sleep will decrease the overall efficiency for the body. Missing a night of sleep can in fact increase hunger hormones the next day, which requires the person to ingest approximately 20% more food to function at nearly the same rate as they could have with the amount of sleep needed. Teenage brains are also developing at this time and need sleep to further this development.

            Oftentimes, students do not have a choice. This is an important idea because many teachers often give busywork to students for a grade. This kind of work does not help the brain in the first place because it is just what it is termed, “busywork” and teaches no new material. This detrimental effect is doubled again when it keeps the student awake late at night to complete this, and so the brain is deprived of crucial time to develop. Yet, teachers still require students to be awake during their classes, though the students lack sleep, which is a huge contradiction.

Welcome to Bronze V!

                Most people enjoy video games, but I do not think many of them have ever thought about what makes these games fun. One psychologist believes it is primarily because people enjoy completing ideals of them of what they think their model self would be, her reasoning stated here. I think it applies to some games, but it makes no sense in other games. In fact, as a “gamer” myself, I can say that from personal experience that it comes from a lot of different sources, and anything small about the game could turn a person off from them.

                With the psychologist, although it makes sense for an RPG, role playing game, because you can design your character and upgrade its statistics, it makes no sense for games like Call of Duty, and why so many people play that game. I personally have never been to war, but if people wanted to pretend to be the character that they control, I do not think I would be extremely risky and just hope I spawn somewhere nearby sometime soon.  I personally do not think it is a great game, but when playing with friends I have a lot of fun, and I can tell everyone at the Fox News station that I have never thought about killing anyone.

                Most of the games I play are multiplayer and go head to head against other players. One of the reasons I enjoy playing my games, no matter whether it is a board game or an online PC games, is because I can assert my dominance over someone else, and it gives me a type of false confidence that makes me feel better about myself. For example, I enjoy playing chess as a type of board game, because it does not take any luck and also since it is a player vs player game, unless you play against a computer, it directly shows that you are better than the other. Then there are always those people that are sore losers who talk about how they, “were not even trying” or “let you win” even though you consistently beat them. Another game that I enjoy playing is League of Legends which is an online game, where you can form teams and fight other teams. I enjoy playing with friends because I know them, and we can go play games together. This is one reason on how games can become better for a person, which is to play with a group of friends. I always have much more fun playing games with friends, rather than by myself.

Something Smells "Unique"

                No matter what, I always find it surprising to see that some of human’s weird activities reflected in some animal activities. In this article, it shows that when lemurs mate or “marry”, they take both of their unique smells and then after a while, the smells becomes uniform between the two. This is done by rubbing goo or their droppings onto each other and all over their homes. It sounds like one of the more romantic nights to me. Of course this is before they have children, where they add their own “unique” smell, like many humans do too. This is a time of bonding for the newlyweds, and the smell could be all anyone to see that two lemurs have been a couple for a while.

                This is close to what a human does when newlyweds buy a new house. It would be empty at first, but then they start putting furniture everywhere and eventually, once they get to know each other enough, the house then has a smell to it that is different to everyone else. I personally have experienced this, not my own house, which is like someone’s body odor, only able to be smelled by someone else, but other people’s houses. I think that this is part of our primal instincts, and shows that humans really are not anything more than animals that think…they are better than any other animals.

                Animals and humans are not limited in their similarities in adult humans and mature animals, but they are also found in children too. These kids innately just want to play, which helps them mature into an adult. These connections are needed for a child to mature their instincts and common sense. Although, if it is so common, why does it seem nobody have it? Many children’s emotions and reactions to similar events are very similar. In this video, released by the Toronto Zoo, shows a polar bear’s reaction to seeing snow for the first time. It holds a sense of wonder and joy, like a child’s should. I think this makes nature more beautiful, because no matter what something is, no matter what their intelligence is, they can appreciate something nice. Of course, this will not last if the environment does not last, and no matter how much important we think we are, we really are not. The analogy where if the entire world’s history was put into the span of a year. The time for humans would be in the last minute on the last day, and yet, we have wrecked so much more of the environment than any other animals.

Just Keep Driving, Just Keep Driving, Driving, Driving

           As we all know, texting kills multiple people each year, or at least causes multiple accidents each year. This article brings up a new point that may possibly help with these kinds of accidents. These article writers believe that new technology is required to help with these teen crashes from texting. I will address these issues later, but I think that through all these different advertisements that many people put a lot of effort in to, shows that this is an issue that is extremely important. Thus, if anyone had common sense, they would not text. I can say that I have had the self control to not text and drive at the same time.

            One of the main ideas in this article is that we should have some type of machine in our car or on our phones that stop calls or texts from coming in, and this would link up to the car, and thus stop the calls and redirect them to an answering machine. Likewise with texts, it would store the texts, and wait until the car ignition is off before the texts would come in. One of the hardest things, I think, for teenagers about this, is that it might be an invasion of privacy, because with this device, what is to say that parents will not install listening devices onto their phones, or a global positioning system that allows them to track them. I am not saying that this is likely, but for those paranoid parents who thinks their child is being corrupted heavily by society, which they usually are just for your information.

            Although people think they need to look out for us teenagers, I think that teenagers will make their own decisions, because at this age, we start to think of us independent of our parents, and so we find these intrusions or attempts to “babysit” us as kind of offensive. I know this may seem contradictory, but I still do not think that teens understand the dangers of actually texting and driving, because an accident has not happened yet, so it will not ever happen. These thoughts of immortality are usually the deaths of most of us. One reason that teenagers might be like this is a quick look at how their parents drive. When obtaining a license, a teenager should be driving with his or her parents for a long time, and in this time, it is easy for them to pick up most of their parents habits, whether good or bad.

Not Child Alzheimer's...

                This post made by Popular Science is extremely relevant in my life, because I always have wondered about the earlier parts of my life. Like the one Calvin and Hobbes comic, shown here, I do not think it is a giant government conspiracy, but what I do think it is, is weird. This article says that we have altered these memories, that we even change how we felt about them. If it is within a couple years, the feeling should still be there, but just kind of muted. I think everyone feels this way, or at least recalls the best and the worst parts of their childhood, but since then, it might be differently thought of.

                I can honestly testify to this fact, because in sixth grade, I know I was really a bundle of hate, still kind of am, but that is beside the point, and I guarantee that I hated everything about middle school, but right now, I look back and think about how it was not that bad. I know that this kind of contradicts what the study says, but I think it is because it has not been long enough for me to forget about it yet. Other times, it will be good books that I have forgotten. One such example of this is when I read The Phantom Tollbooth for the first time when I was in first grade. During that time, I thought it was the greatest book ever in the history of mankind. Later, remembering how great this book was, in seventh grade, I chose to reread it, and I was honestly bored by the first quarter of the book, and halfway through I quit because I hated it that much. This shows that new memories that you make actually can overlap some of your older ones. The study first made it sound like these memories were permanent to me.

                There is also the fact that as a child, sometimes we do not know exactly what we are saying, and often make different sexual innuendoes where we do not currently understand at the time, but when we “mature” into teenagers, we start to grasp these different references. I know this happens, because I volunteer at places that requires me to take care of children. Often times, these kids will talk and have something extremely immature in them, which us volunteers then look at each other and laugh while the kids are confused. Once a kid hits a certain age, he might remember the memory, and then realize why and feel bad.

Yup, Iowa, It's Cold

                I do not really know about you guys, but I, for one, have always been afraid of being nuked just randomly. Not talking about all the nuking jokes that people have made about North Korea, or whether North Korea actually can nuke people, but like the nukes built during the Cold War that are meant for intimidation and to increase power. Of course, ever since I have ever lived, I think I have been overestimating the power of these nukes, because, call me ignorant or something, but I always thought that Iowa would be taken out with one nuke. In reality, the biggest nuclear bomb, the Tsar Bomb designed by the USSR, would only take out about a third of Iowa, shown here.

                I know this post is kind of morbid, but honestly, I would rather be caught in the initial explosion of the nuclear detonation rather than the radiation effects of the bomb. This is because the explosion would be a faster death, compared to the radiation where it would have many painful adverse effects on the body, like mutations. These mutations would be painful and it is very difficult to survive from this, not saying that there have not been people, but cancer would be extremely painful and due to the fact there is no consistent cure for it yet, the chances are higher for a painful death.

                This leads me to thinking about how much people would be out for blood if another country would nuke the United States first without a good reason. Of course, no country would be stupid enough to start a nuclear war, because it would lead to a giant regression of mankind. Like Albert Einstein once said, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought with, but I know World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones,” This has pretty large implications, because it is saying that it will pretty much destroy all of humanity and we have to start all over again. This shows something about humanity, because we have not completely lost faith in humans, like many people say all over the internet, since we are smart enough to realize that nuking people that we do not like is not the solution to everything, heck, it really is hardly even a solution at all. The more warfare advances, the more paranoid people will get, and the more gruesome the retaliations are.

iLose My Personal Info

            Looks like Apple thinks we enjoy having our personal information at a risk if it makes things easier for us. With some of the new apple devices, there has been a fingerprint scanner on these, found here. These record your fingerprints and then later, when you want to access the phone, you swipe your finger and it should work. The problem with this is that fingerprints is how the authorities identify you, and so it would be very easy to frame someone if they got ahold of copies of the prints.

            On a large scale, nearly every company has been hacked and had tons of information stolen which has led to millions of dollars lost to these hackers. Now, this kind of stuff is only credit card information, and once found out, can easily be solved. Fingerprints, on the other hand, can be printed out on a printer and then forged on to an artificial hand, which makes it extremely easy to frame someone for something that they did not do. Although it would be more convenient than remembering a four digit passcode with only ten choices, or for the more paranoid, a full keyboard with multiple letters, is the convenience really worth the risk of being framed or losing money just so you could go play a quick game of Angry Birds, or even worse these days, FLAPPY BIRD? (Currently trying to save someone’s life from being sucked in to it, do not download this game.)

            Although it would be secure, I really do not think it would be completely foolproof, because the digital scanners, unless they were extremely high tech which they should not be since Apple actually wants to make a profit out of these, would be fairly pixelated, and so would not remember the person’s exact fingerprints, so if someone else were to come along with similar fingerprints, the scanner would not be advanced enough to tell the difference and so would let them in. Even if it were only one person in a hundred thousand, keep in mind we have nearly seven billion people in the world. Not that there would be any sorts of important information in the device.

            On a micro scale though, this technology would be great. We all know those people who are really annoying, myself included, that when they see a friend’s iPod or iPhone just lying around, they keep putting in random passcodes until the phone locks itself for like thirty years. This would stop that because it would stop locking, since it guarantees it really is not the person. So, in the short run, it would be a great idea, but in the bigger terms of things, it is a truly outrageous idea.

Down With Homework!!

                As a high school student, I obviously take multiple high school classes and because I want to gain admission to a good college, I take many AP courses. Although these courses are supposed to help with college, I still have not found a use for it, and some colleges still do not accept these courses at their full value.

                One of the main reasons for this is because there is a high amount of fluff when someone looks at a grade. Many AP teachers give a lot of homework to students and this homework factor changes the college equation a lot, because it does not exactly show a person’s mastery of the course. As one of my teachers eloquently put it, “Homework is only there to stop parents from complaining that they think their child is not learning anything.” This has more truth than most people would think. In many of my classes, homework is just busy work that I am forced to do if I want to make it seem like I know what I am doing in my class. In reality, homework is pretty much worthless for me, because I just get through it and not really study it, because I enjoy sleeping before midnight. If I were to study my homework and try on it, sleep would just be another myth.

                In the age of Google and the internet, homework becomes even more meaningless. What really shows a person’s mastery of a subject are the tests they take in class. Albeit homework is supposed to help study for these tests, but I once had a teacher that forced everyone to create flashcards to study for a test. She was determined that everyone who used flashcards would immediately pass the test. I promptly failed the test, because flashcards do not in any way help me study. Some might say that I should have used my own test studying strategy to study, except that I had not time to, because these were a lot of flashcards that I had to make. Thus, teachers should take out the homework from their classes and have the grade in their class be from mostly tests.

                Tests in class are the only accurate reflection of a person’s grade now, because this is the only time where a person cannot cheat freely. If a person truly learned the material, it would be an easy test to pass, and if they did not learn the material, the grade would just be an accurate reflection of what the person knew in the subject.

We Need Dem "Shrooms"

                Reading this article from a newspaper makes me extremely glad that people are still caring enough about the environment to find a way to purify polluted waters. This article talks about people using mushrooms to purify water by dumping multiple mushrooms in the water, and it would purify the water. This is either people looking out for the environment, or, like most people, just looking out for their own self-interests, because if they are anything like me, they do not want to be drinking any kinds of polluted or black water, since it just sounds plenty disgusting in general. In fact, my sister will not even drink water if there is anything in the cup before the water hits it, even if it was drinkable.

                This purification also affects many fish living inside of the lake; in fact, they do not recommend multiple servings of the fish in the water, due to the high pollution content of the water. After this mushroom experiment, it should become much safer for people to eat, and maybe even to swim in…if they want to start polluting it again. Only one problem I see with this is that if the mushrooms ever fall out of this bag and start growing, if it was not originally naturally from the area, it could easily become an invasive species, which kind of would defeat the original purpose, like many other invasive species that have been introduced. Along with this problem is if the coffee grounds were to be released, it also would just add to the pollution content. Not only this, but it also uses plastic bags to store these, and well, everyone should know the problem with throwing plastic into a river, it is called littering and usually punishable by law.

                This has not come out with any official results, because it still is being tested and recording the negative or positive effects on the environment, and hopefully if it would be efficient enough to be used ubiquitously across the United States. Not only would the time efficiency factor into this, but cost efficiency too, because if it costs too much to provide constant purification comparable to the environmental benefits. All in all, I think it is too early to determine whether or not this would be a good idea that should be used everywhere. Even if it does not work, they should continue to try and make it better or more efficient, because mushrooms grow quickly, and in itself should not be too harmful to the environment.