Behold, the Sword of Expensiveness

Games,what have you done with the society?

How much would you spend on video games? Less, presumably, then you would spend on second-hand car. One gamer in China feels differently.

 The man blew 16,000 dollars at the pre-release auction to purchase a virtual sword in the game Age of Wulin. Yep, at the time, the game wasn’t even out yet, which should tell you on how much of a fanboy he is.

My exact reaction.

 A fantasy Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, or MMORPG, set in feudal China, it will allows players to roam the picturesque countryside, kicking pixilated enemy butt.

Look how happy he is. Or is he?

Other players made pre-purchases too, though not as hefty as the man. One lucky fan walked (or perhaps strutted) away with an as –yet nonexistent Hook of Departure sheath for 1,600 dollars. Another awaits his 2,500 dollars on Lordly Spear sheath with what we can only assume is insane level of anticipation and fanboyism.

Worth 16,000 of your money? Nope.

Personally, if we were going to spend 16,000 dollars on a sword, we would want it to a) Be in real-life b) boast magical powers, like the ability to cut the steel or even the wall and c) to have a phone built, or tablet , or hot tub or better yet, the real life light saber that can cut through anything.

Happy Camper

Brains like to be happy. And what makes them happy is certainty, a sense of control and the notion that everything happen for a reason. Another thing that seems to make brain happy is reading about this very thing, for What Makes Your Brain Happy And Why You Should Do The Opposite is the latest of several books and hundreds of articles that show how glitches in our cerebral software distort our thinking.

Picture unrelated

Such psychological quirks include confirmation bias (preferring evidence that supports our beliefs), framing (the narrow viewfinder through which we look the world) and the illusion of agency (seeing intent behind accidental events). They evolved because in general they help us survive and the contentedness they engender reflects this. What David DiSalvo makes clear is how they can put us at risk.

DiSalvo employs the engaging writing style you would expect from a regular contributor to Scientific American and Psychology Today. He peppers the text with cautionary anecdotes, while providing study references at the back of the book for those want to dig deeper. There is little here that will be new to regular readers of popular psychology, but that shouldn’t stop your enjoyment. Confirming what we already know is, of course, one of the things that make our brain happy.

Astronomer Relish long Winter Nights

Northern Hemisphere night sky

Isn't it beautiful~

 Wintertime in the northern hemisphere means one thing to an astronomer: the long dark and invariably, cold nights are back. While most life forms have started hunkering down inside to avoid biting breezes, now’s the time the astronomers are bursting into life.

Orion the Hunter description

The winter night skies are bustling with glittering jewels just waiting to be found, and the constellation of Orion is a rich hunting ground for some of these cosmic treasures. Orion, the Hunter, is a magnificent sight to behold. The bright orange-tinted star Betelgeuse marks his shoulder, while the blue supergiant star Rigel marks one of his feet.

Orion Constellation

Yet it’s another object in Orion that astronomer often look for when observing during these frosty months- the Orion Nebula. It’s an enormous cloud of gas where stars are being born. With dark skies you can just about make it out with naked eye. A pair of binoculars will show it as misty patch, while a small telescope will begin to reveal swirls of glowing gas. It’s a sight I never tire of seeing.

So while some may sit in the warmth, enjoying the wonders of television, we astronomers know the real fun it had to be outside, in the cold, looking up at the magnificent display taking over the horizon.

Astronomer would love this

Paper Cut

No surprise there

Surprisingly, in this technological age, more paper is being wasted than ever before-with industry analysts claiming that up to 95 percent of business information is still stored on paper. Some inspiring innovations enable us to help the planet, by minimizing paper wastage.

Save trees; recycle paper. Figures for paper wastage make for thought –provoking reading. According to the European Environmental Paper Network, over 50 percent of the world’s paper is consumed by just 10 percent of the population.

Better still; look through the trees to another paper source. Products using using bamboo, hemp, kenaf (made from African hibiscus plant) and even elephant dung is become widely available as viable alternatives.

Farewell natural beauty...

Cutting down on how much paper you bin (reportedly more than 200 kilograms a year for the average North American or European) is also impacted by the type of ink you use. Soy ink, made using soybean oil, is now available to consumers in printer cartridge and toner form as a greener replacement for traditional petroleum- based ink. Paper printed with soybean ink is easier to clean and in turn simpler to recycle. Cost comparable to usual printer supplies, this natural alternative also supposedly has a superior clarity.

To save paper, only print when necessary. Wherever possible, review documents and make changes electronically. Spread the word; you can sign off on emails suggesting that the recipient only prints if it is essential, as many people already do.

Closer Than Ever

Facebook account,i haz em~

“ Six degrees of separation”, goes the popular phrase, showing that we are just six connections from every other person on the planet – including American actor Kevin Bacon (hence the trivia game known as Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon).

Facebook is said to bring people closer than ever

Now, Facebook’s social network has demonstrated that it is closer to four degrees separation. Using the immense network of 721 million Facebook users across the globe, researchers examined that the total number of Facebook friendships (an impressive 69 billion) and tested how many connection needed to tie two people on the planet together.

They found that most people could link within four connections, even older people aged 60 years old. In addition, within the same country that number dipped to only three. It’s a small world after all.

A graph worth a thousand word

Art From Trash

HA Schults with the art from trash

Everyone knows the phrase, “reduce, reuse, recycle”, but whether they do it is another matter. What about upcycling? No, it’s not biking up a hill. It means converting waste materials into something new and useful. In this case, arts. Artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster create beauty from ugliness. View their work from one side and you will see a pile groaning with toilet paper roll, crushed soda cans and rusty scrap metal. Look like a haphazard scrap heap right?

In fact, the duo spend hours crafting yesterday’s junk to exact positions, so when a projector shines on it at the right angle , the resulting silhouette is a thing of beauty like the sleek shadow of a beautiful woman or a dirt bike or a man in a top hat. Simply put, their work brings order in chaos.

From trash you say? It look awesome to me. 

Elsewhere, German concept artists HA Schults has built his own private army. Since 1996, his thousands of silent sentinels have stood in formation around New York City parks, public plazas and even the Great Wall of China. In 2008, these soldiers could be seen standing in Antartica’s wastelands, as artful ambassadors for sustainability. Made from computer parts, cans and other scrap, it took Schult and his 30 assistants half a year to complete his sculptures.

Another work of HA Schults

The travelling Trash People aren’t Schults’s only contribution to recycling awareness. In 2010, he even created a hotel made entirely of garbage. As with the Trash People, the mobile hotel has travelled across the world, erected in South Korea, Brazil, Pakistan , Vietnam and several others countries. “The philosophy of this hotel is to expose the damage we are causing to the sea and coastline, he says.

Given the weight of the issue at hand, his question to humanity is relatively simple: “Do we really want this world? We live in an era of trash and we are running the risk of becoming the trash ourselves.”

Article 6: The Steve Jobs Nobody Knew

Jeff Goodell

After a long break, time to update with the sixth article. This time the article is written by Jeff Goodell and the title would be “The Steve Jobs Nobody Knew”. You might ask yourself this question, what side of Steve jobs that I do not know? Fear not as I will explain in a brief in this   

writing but the result for you to believe I will not guarantee as different people have different reason. First of all I believe most of you knew already this famous figure as Steve Jobs is an ex-CEO of the famous Apple Company that created one of the sexiest pieces of hardware ranging from iMac, I-pod, iPhone and it latest version of Ipad 3 which will be in the market very soon. He alone is able to bring the miracle of human touch to technology and genius man with endless ideas. His death in October 2011 is mourned by many of his fans and fanboy alike. He’s death is a great loss for both his fans and to the world of technology. His achievement is undeniable and his creativity and innovatively is flawless, but surely inside all his greatness lies a dark path right?

Steve Jobs prime time

Steve Jobs is the man in this particular hardware and software stuff and usually, for those who had worked experienced with him will know how he handles the employee. Many of them were led by his abrasive personality and unapologetic brutality like we all know; he used to treat his workers badly.He stomped, he shout and shriek to his employees until driving them to appoint that none of them want to work with him twice! Jobs started changes his attitudes and having problem in anger management when many people said that his temper grows shorter and he starting to treat people around him in bad way. Worst case is when he left his longtime girlfriend when he has a daughter with her. Jobs do not want to give any financial aid to his girlfriend and also give her bad name to mass media as he said in Time in 1983,” 28 percent male population of the United States could be the father “.What a father he is and he continued to deny paternity until the DNA test prove otherwise.

Megalomaniac? Or just pride?

Steve Job is actually a megalomaniac and often demanding for perfection and originality in any creation. He believes that he was right but not believes with the consumer’s right. Jobs mention that his Apple Company can do anything to achieve success. Well….let just say his right as Apple brand seems to be around the world and coveted by many nowadays. Look around the advertisement nowadays, Apple here, Apple that, I bet if you look around you will find that most tech users nowadays prefer Apple brand than others. Sure, Steve Job maybe a rough guy to work with but he is sure to have proven quality over quantity which most big company like Sony and Samsung striving to achieve bigger name, Steve Jobs create his name and Apple name to prove that he is a lot equal than others.

Look,he's got an Apple....Oh.

Article 5: The Jews and Their Deceit

Mein Kampf : My Struggle

This is the fifth and latest entry of this blog and the topic that I want to bring to your attention is about Adolf Hitler. Yes it has something to do about the Jews that he and he’s Nazi army of monarch slaughtered but the real topic here is about how Hitler perspective about the Jews and their deceit. They said everything has a reason and Adolf Hitler reason on slaughtering the Jews is pretty valid though receives much controversial response throughout the world.The article, The Jews and Their Deceits written by Adolf Hitler is a message from German political and military leader about the Jews to the world. Hitler claimed that Jews are evil and they hiding their true face and intention. Jews are known to have a great amount of intelligent but cunning is above everything else for them. When Jews are actually doing something good, expect a dark conspiracy behind them because that’s the way they do business.

Jews killing,brought to you by Hitler's army

Hitler reign: Is he a saint or a demon?

Adolf Hitler senses this deceit and ordered the Nazi to and kills them without any mercy along with the Sinti and Roma (gypsies), Slavic peoples and many others whom he felt inferior as his ideal to achieve racial purity in German entitled him as the 20^th century most powerful dictator as well as Germany political and military leader . Though most of the Jews have been eradicated in Hitler’s time, Adolf Hitler left a number of Jews to prove his point and unbelievably he is right. The dominance of the Jews can be seen everywhere, in the news, in the music industry, on the internet, in the magazines, in the government and many more. What actually happen? Do you still blame Hitler for the holocaust and death atonement in Auschwitz and be sympathetic toward the Jews? The very same Jews that been manipulating us and engage wars to Palestinian, Afghanistan, Iraqian and who know where their target would be. I say Adolf Hitler is right and by mean I do not fully support his cause for racial purity but I do give credit to Hitler for his attempt to fight from these Jews filth that contaminated our holy earth with their deceit, cunning, violence, manipulation and shameless efforts to control the whole world without caring about others than their own.

The Jews are liars and they hide their true feeling and color of their faces. They always hungry for power and always taking advantages from others. So please beware of their deceit and don’t get caught up with their lies.

Article 4: All The Cool Kids Are Quitting Facebook By Jenna Wortham

Jenna Wortham, technology reporter from New York Times

 Alright people. It’s time for the fourth entry of my blog .This time I’m about to introduce you a bit more trendy article. Could you guess it? It’s about the world most famous social network site…….. I know you guys had guessed it all along. It’s about Facebook and the article for today entitled “All the Cool Kids Are Quitting Facebook” written by Jenna Wortham. The title itself is sure to be interesting to look into as it makes us wander presumably thinking what is meant by cool kid quitting Facebook? To clarify something the article is not related only to kid and teen or whatsoever but to US and our perception toward Facebook. 

Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and biggest shareholder in Facebook

Not cool anymore?

Alright, first of all who doesn’t know about Facebook? If so then you must be living under the rock or something because it is estimated about 800 million users registered to participate in the number one social networking site. The main selling point of Facebook is to building closer ties with friends, families and colleagues as well as sharing interest and activities together in under one site. Needless to say its popularity is booming and generates millions to the company and to its founder; Mark Zuckerberg. Albeit popular, New York Times newspaper claims that the number of user is decreasing especially in America itself. Why does this happen? Is Facebook is not a cool place to hang out anymore? Or is the people had enough of Facebook? 

One of the biggest problem of Facebook

 

Let us take a look what causes the dwindling number of users in Facebook. Security problem seems at the top of the list as people are merely spook with the privacy pitfall that lead the hackers and cyber stalkers take advantage on their personal information thus threatening their life. A massive number of spam and scam added with virus is the second one the reason to quit Facebook. But the biggest giver is that addiction to Facebook that lead to the downfall of communication in life are getting serious nowadays until people become socially awkward even to talk to their relatives , friend and don’t get me started on how they react in front of stranger. 

Basically, these cool kids are actually doing something right in their life as addiction to Facebook is only decrease their morality and maybe their health as staring in front of the computer everyday doing nothing but clicking the mouse can result in cardiac arrest and many other chronic disease. So that’s it. Ask yourself this question… I give so much to Facebook but what it gave to me?

Article 3: Men and Women Are Merely Players by Robert Greene

Robert Greene

The 48 Laws of Power

On the third post I will comment on the article that sparks awe throughout every neuron cell in my brain as well as plunging my brain into the world of critical thinking and made me wonder till this day. Oopss,forgive my exaggeration there, the article that deserve the nomination is entitled “Men and Women Are Merely Players” written by Robert Greene. Actually the following article is an excerpt from the book, “The 48 Law of Power”. The main ideas of the this article is much separated but the only one that attract me started from the quote of a great Renaissance diplomat and Machiavelli wrote, “Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come ruin among the great number who are not good.” Let us find the deeper meaning of the quote, it literally means that people are not an  cannot be 100% good all the time, those tries so will collapse on their effort amongst those who practice hypocrisy as part of their life…or that is how I define that quote. Short story is one cannot be too perfect and must have their flaws. Machiavelli stated that inside everyone lies a dark side that exerts our true emotion upon something. 

Are we the player? Or we just being played?

There’s a good side and a bad side, so how do you manage to handle both?For Muslim ,praying 5 times a day and do many good deeds would settle the problem but easier said than done right? So everyone else include me play the safe game, put on nice face, say nice thing and keep the fiery dark hatred inside…. and that’s how you play hypocrite game. In the game there’s always a good player right? By making a show of one’s weakness is actually a very effective strategy, subtle and deceptive, in the game of power.

Who would hate this cute baby?

And this fluffy and adorable kitten?

And......I'm not sure how this picture

 is related

Beware again as being naive doesn’t mean powerless and weak as they can manipulate your thinking and let you believe them as innocent and at the same time pulling the string on you to get what their heart desire. It just seems so wrong but no one seems to put a fight to it as human nature is prone in wanting to protect the weak.Honesty is the best policy seems to be the finest moral ain’t it? Too bad human just stop being human long time ago as modernization rise. Welcome to a world of deceit as they say.

Article 2: The Degree Of Happiness by Betrand Russell

This will be my second post and the article that I had chosen this time is an interesting article entitled “The Degree of Happiness” written by Betrand Russell. Once again the title reveals the content of the article but again the content is so impressive and qualified to be debated and questioned. Let start again, can you define the meaning of happiness? Open dictionary wouldn’t help because happiness is a feeling that every human encounter in life and largely in correlating with deep emotional feeling. Getting married, receive huge chunk of reward, celebrate birthday with a family is a common type of happiness that most of us enjoy and the quote “enjoy even the littlest thing” is often seem soothing because you know that happiness is a great feeling and everyone want to be happy right? 

To think it thorough there is a degree of happiness. Two sort of happiness is dividing open between two which is one, open to any human being and the other for those who can read and write. Sounds peculiar right? It has it logic as happiness does not depend on intellectual sources and can be as simple of lying on the sofa after a long day of work. Like I say, happiness is keen to be found at almost anywhere and even at the smallest and simplest thing like texting your girlfriend can cheer you right up. But for all we know, that type of happiness is only classified on the lowly educated section of the community or to be precise it only apply to normal-everyday civilian. 

Albert Einstein: He is happy in his world

To the higher educational section of the community like the researcher, archaeologist, scientist or even paranormal researcher, their happiness lies within their lifelong research which require little amount of emotion and more to their addiction and satisfaction from their work. Betrand wrote, "Einstein is happy while the best painter starve" proves his point that men of science still practices good old fashion domestic bliss from their curiosity and hunger for knowledge and solution to their problem. Though the term happiness varies from people to people, it is concluded that happiness is a strong feeling that nobody would object.

Article 1: Thinking Folly by Eckhart Tolle

Eckhart Tolle,the writer of the article "Thinking Folly"

Now let’s get into business. The first article that I’m going to share my though with you is entitled “Thinking Folly” by a talented writer named Eckhart Tolle. The title itself made me thinking on how the content will be. Remarkably Eckhart Tolle managed to steal my attention with his twisted theory about well….thinking of course. He wrote that the thinker, which he meant all of us humans live in a separate world and apparently not as friendly as we may assume because our thinking is filled with insanely complex world of continuous conflict and problems like an infinite twilight zone and represent the ever increasing fragmentation of the mind. I would say that Tolle is right because as a thinker, making a decision and being indecisive is always a part of our mind venturing into the unknown. 

Seriously, what are you thinking?

Conflict and problem infinitely cycles into our daily life create an illusion of separateness that makes us thinker felt not believing into reality although life is happening right in front of us. Now you know how otaku (Japanese title for nerds and geeks), atheist, communism and so on exist. 

So what is your brain-mover?

Our mind is a powerful tool if used wisely and a disease if in the wrong hand. Tolle also emphasize another interesting theory that thinking is a disease. How? Believe me when I say that we are not the one who control our mind as it is a completely on the opposite. Don’t believe me? Tell me how many times you get distracted on what you suppose to do, as an example, let say you’re on your laptop and decide to drink a while and open your fridge and found nothing but keep repeating the same action in hoping of there is something in the fridge. With a wandering but aimless thinking we back to our laptop without the water but then again a couple of minutes we do the same exact action again like being in hypnosis. That’s our brain and that is us it controls. Tolle also quote that our mind is a survival machine that attack and defense against other minds, gathering, storing and analyzing information but lack of creativity. 

Creative is said to come in a still mind and can be achieve in a quiet state of mind. So if you’re a heavy thinker, STOP it because you’re losing all your creativity! Though said, the mind carries a freedom that one can’t stop and having realized you are not on your on shadow make you wake up from the deep mind slumber.

Introduction of Critical Thinking

Alright let’s get started then, as this is my first post in this blog I would like to clarify that I will post a few of my though on the article stated in the book Study Guide of Critical Literacy on the subject COM 2533. But before I start, I would to explain a thing or two about critical thinking.

Well, basically critical thinking is a decision making process. Sounds plain is it? Believe me when I say it’s hard to make a decision because you need to carefully considering a problem, claim, and question on the daily basis or situation in order to find the best solution. Now you see what I’m talking about right?

Critical thinking utilizes our left and right brain to achieve our goal and what better than the combination of logical thinking in our left brain and our fantasy and imagination in our right brain. But beware; our brain can be fool although it has more power than a supercomputer and have more line than a server. Take care of your brain well with adequate food nutrition and make sure to USE your brain ALWAYS when doing critical thinking.

Yes, I am talking about you lazy bums who always stuck in front of your laptop. Free your mind and let it run and you’ll be surprise on what your brain can do.