This Is Me #8

Odysseus

Chapter 1

There was once a boy who looked at the heavens and stood in awe. He wondered what it would be like to gaze these celestial bodies, to reach out and touch them, to fall into them. His dreams were filled with what he would experience when he finally stood face to face with these giants.

The boy grew into a man and he remembered his dream. The man built a vessel that could take him into space. There were those around him who mocked him. They told him his vessel could not endure the harsh environment he wanted to traverse.

The man paid them no heed. He knew of the dangers and had prepared for them all.  His ship was sleek and air tight and the route it would take had been all planned out. The last concern was time's pull on his aging body and mind, and for this, the man had concocted a sleeping potion. This would allow his body to rest and his mind to dream, free from time, while his ship would bring him closer and closer to his goal.

Upon finishing his preparations, the man celebrated the start of his journey with some wine. The man decided he would celebrate all day and all night instead of resting, as he expected the next months, even years, to be filled with sleep. After many of hours of merriment, the bottles of wine had been exhausted, yet the man still craved more. His eyes wandered all over his house, searching for more drink.

The man finally stumbled into his study and caught a glimpse of the sleeping potion he had concocted. In his drunkenness, he had forgotten all about his plans and his dreams, choosing to indulge in this moment instead. Seeking yet more pleasure from the drink, he drank the sleeping potion. Even when his eyes became heavy and his body would no longer respond, he had no notion of the mistake he had made; and in his study, he slept for many, many years.

This Is Me #7

Christianity Meh

The truth cannot be humble. A sweater that is black cannot entertain comments that it might be green or red because it does not want to step on people's toes. It is simply black and there's no other way to look at it. Sure, you can say that "this sweater was dyed black" and that's why it's black or you can say "this sweater does not reflect any light waves that would give it color" and that's why it's black, but at the end of the day you simply have to admit that it's black. The sweater isn't going to "be nice" and pretend it's another color to eventually let the fact sink in that it's black in the distant future when you're more ready. It's black. End of story. And that's the whole truth in a world where clothing is animate and has emotions.

Christianity's truth can be described in a similar way: Jesus Christ died for our sins and because his actions on the cross, we are promised eternal life with God in heaven. Anyone who is a Christian usually does not dispute this notion. Much like the color of the black sweater, this truth seems to be in your face, screaming, "I'm here! I'm here!" in the New Testament and there's no real way of getting around it if you believe the Bible to be true.

What Christians do not seem to agree on is how this should be lived out, what this affects in our day to day lives, and how it affects them. The whole spectrum exists, those who have conservative moral beliefs, those who have more liberal moral beliefs, those who believe in a young Earth, those who believe in evolution, those who give away all their money, those who save money to be used in ways they deem fit, etc. And all of them claim that they're right. Anyone who has conservative views believes that their way of living Christianity is the truth and is equivalent to the truth that Jesus is the Christ. The same can be said of more liberal Christians. One half says "shame on you", the other half says "this is the 21st century, get with the program". Both have biblical support (it seems). Both have few people who are willing to admit that the other group has any kind of meaningful traction that could be used in their own lives.

Outside of Jesus Christ, does Christianity have a truth like a black sweater? I have relegated myself to silent agnosticism in this case. Being humble seems to be a better route to me but this is little more than admitting I don't know the truth.

This Is Me #6

You can do it if you try
Go big or go home, don't just get by
Lies, false promises were told
Those were the words they said

Guess this is what they call life
Get knocked down and stay down, might
Be better tomorrow when the sun comes out
But for now, I wanna believe the best days are ahead

This Is Me #5

D-Frag! Anime Review

This is easily the best show to come out in the Winter 2014 season. D-Frag! is a perfect example of how to abuse the fact that you're watching an anime. It excels at being completely outrageous, both in its characters and plot, it can transition hilarious moments to very serious moments in the blink of an eye, and its content is extremely trivial yet somehow extremely entertaining. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of Gintama in just how absurd every episode becomes.

D-Frag! is classically set in a high school and the authors have chosen to fill its halls with the most random smattering of students you could ever think of. The only thing anyone has in common is that they are all failures. The main character is a delinquent who is actually a really nice guy and wants to help people out. The main love interest (in a very odd way) runs a do-nothing club. The rival club president cannot make amends with her friend. The school president is largely responsible for most conflicts as opposed to keeping the peace. The other delinquents in the school get beat up by the female population.

The show is able to combine real characters in real settings with the most unrealistic interactions. Of course, a teacher who sleeps all day in a club room seems very unrealistic, yet it properly portrays the fatigue that adults feel. D-Frag! properly portrays everyone's failure. We pretty much suck at what we strive to be and we unintentionally hurt people around us a lot of the time. To me, this is what story telling is all about: portraying reality through fiction. On top of that, anime allows writers to be as absurd as possible which usually makes things incredibly hilarious.

9/10. D-Frag! is great to watch and easily to relate to.

This Is Me #4

Teaching Methodology: Motivation

For students or anyone looking to learn something new, motivation is always at the forefront of why we subject ourselves to homework, exams, projects, and generally everything we dislike experiencing in life. Motivation can differ greatly from person to person. Some people seek education to please their parents or please their job/boss/company's requirements. Others learn new things because they have an interest in those subjects. Whatever the motivation is and for whatever reason there is motivation, learning is much more efficient and effective when motivation simply exists. Therefore, it is in teachers' best interests to learn to motivate students if their goal is to pass on complete knowledge and understanding; and, indeed, there are many ways in which teachers can motivate students.

Encouragement: This word can mean many different things and they are all applicable to helping a teacher also be a motivation. Anything from helping students who ask for help or merely giving positive reinforcement for tasks completed correctly could be seen as encouragement. The point of encouragement is to build students' confidence in the subject they are learning. Without encouragement, students are more likely to simply give up because they don't know how to solve a problem. However, with encouragement, students are allowed to take baby steps, making the larger problem less daunting. Additionally, they are given an external push to complete the problem along the lines of what a coach does for an athlete.

Challenge: Students often think a subject they are learning is boring for a plethora of reasons. Perhaps it is uninteresting to them or perhaps they think it is too hard for them to grasp. Another way of looking at this is through a "challenge level". If a subject is uninteresting and boring, it is likely that the subject is not challenging enough. If it is too hard and students give up before they even try, the material is likely too challenging. Balancing the challenge level at a proper point will motivate students to overcome this challenge and feel fulfilled when the challenge has been bested. This idea can easily be illustrated through completing a puzzle made of X pieces. If the puzzle where 2 pieces large, it would hardly be a challenge and hardly worth one's effort. If it was made of 1,000,000,000 pieces, the puzzle would also not be worth one's effort, but this time because the amount of effort required would be too large. However, many people love puzzles of 100 or 1000 pieces because that is a reasonable challenge level. It is not daunting enough to warrant immediate resignation and daunting enough to feel a sense of completion when it has been finished. Completing challenges will, much like encouragement, give students confidence as well.

Confidence: This is the idea that "I'm good at this". Confidence creates huge motivation because larger and larger challenges can be completed and a larger and larger sense of fulfillment can be obtained from completing these challenges. Many people take jobs in certain areas or study certain subjects in school because "they are good at it". If a student had no confidence in their ability, no matter how simple the challenge, he/she would likely not even attempt to complete it. Encouragement and challenge are tools to create confidence in the student, which in turn, creates motivation.

This Is Me #3

Tech Ideas

Low Cost Taxi System

Key component: Google' self driving car

Vision: Keep prices low no matter what

Exit Strategy: Sell idea/infrastructure/code to Google

Selling points:

- 24/7 response time (already possible with current driver systems)

- No need for human interaction, user can input destination into GPS interface

- No need for central dispatch, system can merely locate and send nearest car

- Cars can idle in vacant parking spots at no cost

- Idle points can be strategic in region's volume of demand

- Ultra cheap fares as machines do not need salaries, becomes much more efficient for customers looking to rent a car for an entire day/longer period of time

- Can entirely replace car rental market

- Hybrid/electric cars can be used to be more efficient with gas (selling point for cities to gain subsidies)

- Luxury cars can be used to gain access into high end market

- Can opt for ads somewhere, somehow inside or outside the car as additional (possible even main source) of revenue
- Mobile app to allow easy requests

Arguing points:

- Destroys large source of jobs

- Competes with public transportation already in place

- Greater road congestion if former is true

- Eventual need for refueling is a difficult problem to solve without human interaction with cars

- Constant maintenance checks likely required to keep cars running smoothly (difficult without dispatch center and having cars be on call 24/7)

- Need for Google's device is potentially large source of expense

- Nothing in place to prevent Google from becoming a competitor themselves
- No security on car itself (possible damage/terrorism)

This Is Me #2

Christianity Yea

 Something that a lot of Christians like to take solace in is Christianity's overarching nature. It explains everything we ever need to think about and this is quite nice because if we believe God is omnipotent, he should most likely want to have a hand in everything as well. This is something that cannot be said of evolutionist or atheists in general. I think even they will agree that they do not wholeheartedly devote their mind, strength, body, and soul to evolution or science, or even that they strive to do so. One of the closest historical examples I can think of humans trying to achieve this is the Nazis. Now this sounds hyperbolic but when you think about it, if you were very concerned about evolution and wanted the best evolutionary outcome for humans, you wouldn't want mentally retarded or the like to be in your gene pool. If you were concerned about furthering scientific exploration, you wouldn't mind doing some human testing or even animal testing. However, the case is that a lot of people seem to mind these things and many people hate that the Nazis did these things. Additionally, a lot of people also have compassion on those less fortunate than themselves. I'd say these are good things.

 One may argue that evolution or science or atheism does not need to pursued in a fashion similar to religion. That fanatical actions of any sort lead to these atrocities and fanatical religious actions have led to similar tragedies like what the Nazis did. Evolution or science or atheism does not need to be taken to that degree and probably shouldn't be pursued that heavily but is still a good explanation given the evidence we have. I think this is a reasonable stance to have but it also leaves a lot of empty worldview (and also devalues the argument itself to say that "well I don't really care about it that much"). If one does not devote themselves to evolution, science, or atheism, what do we devote ourselves to? Our self fulfillment, self progression, others? The funny thing is that this is ground that religion has a much bigger say in. Principles such as loving your enemy can go a long way to being that "good person" we all see ourselves as. At the end of the day, I think these are the things people really care about. Not that humans came from monkeys or fossils but how humans can help each other, how humans can persevere, and how humans can do amazing things. Religion surprisingly has great things to say about these things.