This is the end of another semester. This will most likely be the last blog entry I make. I hope you all enjoyed reading about things I find interesting. Overall I really liked making this blog, The blogging process is kind of relaxing. I am usually browsing around the internet reading science articles or stumbling through forums, it's nice to have a place to share things I find, and also hear what other people think about that stuff. Blogging is a great place to practice having a voice in writing. It is an easy medium to express yourself however you want.I like that there was structure to the whole blog process. I think it would have been difficult to stay on top of the blog if there were no assigned entries, but also I think the assigned entries could of have been a little more broad. All and all I think it was a great way to practice certain elements of writing that were necessary in every paper we had to turn in, and also a fun way to get that practice. Much better then some other English classes I've been in which just have assigned reading, tests, and papers.
I have always been the kind of person that want to learn new things. I really do enjoy learning, I however do not always agree with the education system. I feel like the system gets bogged down and doesn't do a good job recognizing everyone as a unique individual with something to offer. Here is a spoken word video I found that expresses my thought on the education system perfectly.
Want I want to do for the rest life requires an education. it's something I realized at a young age. I know that I want to be a veterinarian, and I know there is no way of getting there without doing well in school, and pretty much doing exactly what this video is speaking against, but it doesn't make this video any less true. This same kid does another video in fact I think it's the first one in this series. It makes a similar point I'll post it here as well. It's important to to realize no one is saying that you shouldn't educate yourself, just standardized testing doesn't accurately measure the diversity and different strengths we all possess.
When I think about the word media like most, I think of major media outlets. I always have to approach all mass media as a skeptic. I am a huge proponent of social media being used as a source of major news. the social site Reddit.com is a great example of media, and news being socially generated. sites like this make it possible for information to travel at alarming rates. as well as allows people to instantly discuss and debate any news story being presented on the web. With the recent Boston marathon tragedy, for example, I was amazed at just how much more information I had just by browsing the front page of Reddit then the majority of people I talked to. Basically, I don't believe in every crazy conspiracy theory I have heard, but at the same time I feel that I am intelligent enough to draw my own conclusion on any given topic. I enjoy educating myself on a topic before just believing what I heard on the news, or radio. Perfect example is again with the Boston Marathon explosions, the day after the event all of the major news outlets were all releasing incorrect information about suspects, ect. Just because they all wanted to be the first to release information, even if it was wrong. I'm just not o.k. with that. I prefer to research and form my own conclusion, hence browsing reddit.com/r/worldnews was a great way to stay up to date and not have to deal with "More on this developing story, @ 10:00pm"
Anyway...
Tl;dr: Don't believe everything the mass media tells you, use your brain, and think to draw your own conclusions. oh also if you don't already browse Reddit and you like learning new things. it is worth looking into.
So I found this video and I just wanted to share it, I wish that we had videos like this to help get kids motivated on science and math. I know when I was a kid, I was always the nerd, or the geek. When I was in elementary school I was excited to be a part of the math club, my favorite subject throughout high school was always science. I remember taking aviation science / astronomy my sophomore year, so I could take physics my junior year. It just makes me happy to see videos like this because when people stop caring about science and math... Well I saw the movie "idiocracy "
Capitalism an American Love Story in my opinion was a really informative movie. We've been learning about ho to use rhetoric to persuade or to inform. I think this movie did an excellent job informing.From discussion in class it seems everyone thinks the purpose was o persuade, but really what is Michael trying to persuade you to believe? This isn't the same as a movie about being pro-choice where at the end you can still make a moral decision about the subject. In the case you would need to be persuaded to one side of the argument or the other. With the American Love Story, we don't really have to decide if the big banks are screwing us over at the end. We know they are. Michael Moore is just pointing out the injustice, he's just making sure that the big banks are not able to get away with theft, at least not without keeping us informed.
Movies like this are important to spreading awareness about any kind of injustice. I personally think that Michael Moore is a credible journalist. He is just reporting on some majorly controversial topics. For some reason or another people have a hard time hearing the truth. I think that is why some people have such a big problem with with Michael Moore, and he knows that people don't like to hear the truth, that's why he has so much comedy in his movies. He knows if he just threw hard facts at people the whole time he would loose his audience pretty quick.
"I refuse to live in a country like this, and I’m not leaving."- Michael Moore
I just have to take a moment and tell you guys about how incredibly excited I am for the release of the new expansion to Starcraft 2 "The Heart of the Swarm" or 'HotS' The game officially launches tomorrow, and could not have come at a better time. I was playing in open Beta since January and have grown attached to all the new units, and changes they made. Beta was closed on March 1st. Right now you can still log into the Classic Starcraft 2 servers and play games. and Tomorrow they will re-open the Heart of the Swarm servers for the official game launch. I'm extra excited just because I've had the opportunity to practice with all the new units and will probably rank higher when the game launches.
Starcraft 2 has become a huge competitive E-Sport.
"The GOMTV Global StarCraft II League (or GSL for short) is a large tournament-based League held on location in South Korea and holds multiple events each year. Having started in late August 2010, the league was first step towards a professional league in South Korea for StarCraft II. The event is broadcast 3 nights a week (Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday) on GOMTV.[1] The Team League is broadcast the remaining 2 weekdays. (Thursday and Friday)"
Anyway, I am in no way a pro gamer, and I am not going to devote my life to Starcraft, BUUUT I do really enjoy working through the ladder and seeing progress, with time spent. I currently rank Gold, and when I started I was ranking in Top bronze and Silver.
Is adding 71/2 week classes to it's Spring and Fall face-to-face semesters.
I don't really know how I feel about this, I get that everyone is different and maybe this does appeal to some people. I get that some people can handle cramming everything down to half the amount of time and not go crazy trying to juggle school, and life. I just don't think I wouldn't want to put myself through that kind of stress to graduate a little sooner.
This is cool though because usually people who want that kind of fast paced class environment like the article said are having to take online course to accomplish that. Online course at A.S.U. even for an instate student are treated as out of state for tuition purposes. So now people who need to have a shorter class time to allow for more time for working, or things like that, are able to.
All and all I think it is a step in the right direction, and also the article does say that they realize not all classes are able to be condensed down like this. Not all material can be taught in a 71/2 week format, but for the more general classes this is a great move on A.S.U.'s part.
Doesn't it feel like this is 2013, and we should have some cool robots by now? I wanted to check and see what the current status on real world applicable robots was, this is what I've found.
Here is one example I found. The A.R.M. program or Autonomous Robotic Manipulation program, is developing this new software that allows robots to complete human level tasks, with little human input. This is phase 1 of development, they are moving onto phase 2 because of the success they had with this phase. The robot uses vision, force, and tactile (or pressure) sensing to manipulate objects like opening a door, or taking out the trash. The possibilities of meaningless tasks that could be completed by robots is endless.
My God they are teaching them how to throw heavy objects?!? We're screwed!
This Robot is called BigDog. It's is being developed by a branch of the military. It's cool because it's not a lot now, but just like how the cavemen started with primitive tools that were refined to be more advanced tools, so on and so on until we get modern technology. This will be that kind stepping stone to way cooler robots in the future. Anyway here is a video of BigDog being used for transport by the military.
When I think about any sort of media bias I immediately think of Fox News, with their super slanted news reporting. This is a video I found of a reporter taking a "On the spot" poll, in a diner during the last presidential election. even though the poll completely backfires on him, he still manages to use his slanted reporting training, to shift the results of the poll to "a split." Ohh man, priceless.
Look I know that all news sources tend to have a bias. I hope that even the people who watch fox news know that they are watching only one side of any given story. I just wish that fox news would have their bias and not alter the news, maybe just report the news and then have a conservative reaction to it. not change the results of a diner poll, to make it seem like the republican candidate has a chance at winning.
Glenn Beck is a internet new broadcaster, he tends to not have a bias, and points out main stream media biases. This is an article with his reaction to a group of different reports who left their mics on before an interview with Mitt Romney on the US Embassy attacks. They are all planning questions together, and making sure that no matter who gets called on they all ask the same question. it's outrageous, it shows that no matter what news source you're watching they all seem to be in it together anyway.
“They’re going to continue to play this game and they are going to continue to dismiss and they are going to continue to mock, but they’re done,” Glenn told listeners. “I do this for a living. We have stood against all odds, all odds we've stood. And we keep getting bigger. And there’s going to come a point, there’s a house of cards. When you tell lies, when you engage in propaganda, there are enough people that it will come down like a house of cards.” ~ Glenn Beck
Check this video out. I'm sure all of you guys going into a medical field will find it interesting. using 3-D printing technology to print out human tissue, using actual human cells. I'm having one of those mind blown moments.
I remember reading an interesting article a while back and it was talking about the rate at which we are advancing in medical technology and the effects that will have on our life expectancy ect. ect. the point was that it got to a point that for every year a person was alive their life expectancy increased by two years making everyone immortal, as long as you have access to healthcare and not counting random death, or murder.This is the kind of technology I think they were referring to.
This was a really cool video I found that shows for the first time ever an actual thought being formed in the brain.Think about that, being able to see a thought being formed. I know that this is just the brain of a zebra fish embryo, and that the fish is just reacting to being shown food.but still that is what the electrical impulses in a brain looks like.
Whenever I see something new and ground breaking especially in the field of science. I try to think about what the implications there could be. Remember that movie with Will Smith Wild Wild West?
Oh man, who am I kidding, of course you do!
Well remember that part in the movie they use some machine to project the last few minutes of a guys life so they can see who the murderer is. That's what I think of when I think of how this technology will evolve in the next 10-20 years.
This is also cool because it is a breakthrough in 2 different fields at the same time. This is not only the first time we have witnessed neuron signals firing across the brain, but also the first time we've recorded it. it makes you think back about how far we've come from the Polaroid.
Being able to scour through other blogs has been pretty cool, there are a lot of good blogs out there, but what seems like, just as many not so good blogs too. Here I've compiled a list of three blogs. One I really didn't like that much, one I really did, and the third (spoiler alert) is Google's blog and I don't think they would let themselves post a bad blog.
This is the blog that I didn't like. The blog is written by Dr. Orly Taitz Esquire, she is a leading activist in the fight against president Obama's birth certificate and citizenship status. Her blog is poorly formatted right from the start, and has over stretched images littering the front page. Her blog is filled with un-categorizedblog entries that are mostly just direct quotes from other sites, about information that may or may not be credible.
I think that there is a lot of good that can come from someone using the power of technology, especially the social power that something like a blog gives you. for instance we are still a long way away from solving worlds energy problems. And I think it is sad that there are people out there who will never see the big picture, they will continue to run blogs like this that will ultimately accomplish nothing.
Another reason I am not a fan of the way Dr. Taitz runs her blog is the way that she doesn't really understand the technology he is using and makes that known pretty readily. in one of her most recent blog entries she took the opportunity to ask for technical help with her computer, specifically her email. she was hoping one of her readers could maybe shed some light on why her yahoo emails kept disappearing. Could you imagine the only people who read he blog are older people who, to be honest I'm surprised they have even found her blog.
So this is the blog that I've found that I really like. The Consumerist is just that it is a blog that you can follow to find out all sorts of consumer inside look at how customers are treated by different companies. It may not seem like it but this is going back to the power of social media and technology thing I was talking about. Blogs like this make it a little hard for companies to take as much advantage of it's consumers.
The first blog post I read about was from a lady who had to write into that Soda-stream company, the one that makes the carbonate your own soda machine. well this lady was getting an upset stomach and having a to run to the bathroom every time she made and drank one of her homemade sodas. she consulted her doctor who told her to stop drinking and maybe ask for health information from the company. she did just that. The consumerist took that email conservation she had with the customer service rep and made it public so now we all know how companies treat their customer. In this case we got to see how the company bounced her email around and made fun of the fact that she explained how the soda is giving her diarrhea. somehow the email chain was forwarded back to the customer who didn't really get the solid health answer she was looking for but instead made to feel embarrassed for even asking the question.
And lastly we have Google's Blog. It looks like they power their blog through blogger aswell, so that is pretty cool to think, there is someone out there, maybe a team of people working for Google. making more money then I could even dream of in a year and all they do is post cool video's in the same blog program that I am required to use for my English 102 class. Things like that make me a little sad, but anyway.
Google's blog is really cool, it is interactive, at the very top of the page there is a bunch of circle shapes that move around when you mouse over them. The blog is very well formatted and clean. It has a nice flow from article to article, and unlike Dr. Taitz's blog it isn't trying to shake you down every 5 seconds to donate to it's paypal account.
All of the posts here are all really interesting. In this post, they are talking about enhancing the functionality of google maps and taking it "off road." take a look at the video called, "Exploring the Grand Canyon"
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Introductions:
Hey everyone, welcome to my blog. let's start with an introduction, my name is Tony, I'm 26 years old and like most of you I'm attending G.C.C. with the goal of transferring to a university.
<--- That's me with a disguise on.
I love animals, and one day I'm going to be a veterinarian. I have a dog named Bender. He's a Boston Bull Terrier, and he's also my best friend.
<--- And that's Bender with his driving goggles on. Yes... Bender has a pair of Doggles, what-of-it?!
Anyway, I am looking forward to keeping up with this blog. My goal is to share my thought and opinions on all sorts of cool science related stuff that I find from around the interwebs. Feel free to comment and share your ideas on anything you find interesting.
