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.