Month: February 2011

Technology: Beneficial or Superficial?

Paloma SpencerLeave a comment

Either in movies or in real life, many of us have experienced the over working, over bearing parent whose blackberry seems to be a survival necessity in their quest to gain a new promotion or simply balance their hectic work schedule.

Though surprisingly, recent technology has provided more ways for people to spend time with their loved ones, rather than taking this time away.

While Avaya executive Craig Wilson double tasked by enjoying a Linkin Park concert with his children and finishing up tasks for one of his clients in Australia, Covestor’s chief executive Perry Blacher engaged in his business’s board teleconference while enjoying a christening celebration at the local English pub.

This is the power of technology: being in two places at once, accomplishing two things at once.

However, arguments still remain that this sense of multitasking takes away from the whole experience.

People may find themselves unable to participate fully in experiences with friends and families, and may also lack proper concentration on their business work.

These issues became noticeable after the rapid development of the Blackberry and have increased exponentially with the inventions of the smart phones and the increased accessibility to social media.

“Home has invaded work and work has invaded home and the boundary is likely never to be restored,” said the director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, Lee Rainie. “The new gadgetry has really put this issue into much clearer focus.”

But an intriguing question still remains unanswered. What drives a person’s desire to balance work and play, even in times of supposed leisure?

Its simple. It’s the recession.

Not only do these business men and woman need steady paychecks, but many have shown an increased worry over simply maintaining their jobs.

“Even if you have a career that is pretty solid, there is the feeling that advancement requires being plugged in at all times,” said Peggy Klaus, an executive coach residing in Berkeley, California.

While pressures may disable parents from taking a true “vacation,” technology has enabled them to be both a parent and a professional.

In my opinion, technology has enabled us to grow in many aspects. And even if one does feel as though the newest gadgets have caused a multitasking, unfocused population, simply do what my parents do and banish it from the dining room table.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/business/06limits.html?_r=2&src=me&ref=general

Lights out for lighthouses?

weirdjennyLeave a comment

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Lighthouses have shone a friendly beam for sailors and fishermen for several centuries. However, the new technology, Global Positioning System(GPS), has gradually replaced the role of lighthouses.

The president of the America Lighthouses Foundation, Jeremy D’Entremont, said that “Everyone loves lighthouses, but as far as the government is concerned, they are not exactly a spending priority.”

Although there is 75% of lighthouses are still working in America, federal funding is limited to the mechanical maintenance of the lights. In Britain, the last light keeper retired in 1998.

So now, all British lighthouses are fully automated and monitored by computers, and they can even change light bulbs by themselves. Although that lighthouses are gradually replaced by new technology, they still keep many cultural and historical value. Many lighthouses have turned into hotel, resting places, or museums. Despite the fact that new technology is replacing the role of lighthouses, they still are an important role in sailors and fishermen’s heart!

Super Bowl Sunday Isn’t So Super For Numerous Ticket Holders

Paloma SpencerLeave a comment

While fans crowded with their green and gold jerseys, I can imagine many being quite envious of those who were sitting in the stands, feeling the intense excitement and suspense. Unfortunately, this group of envious supporters didn’t just consist of those watching through the television screen, but also many of those who were turned away from their thousand dollar stadium seats, minutes before the game started.

This Sunday, over 1,000 ticket holders were turned away from their seats after sections of the Cowboys Stadium’s bleachers were left uncompleted.

Wisconsin native Jim Rouleau, a Packers fan who held his season passes with pride, was told his $7,800 seats were “unavailable” and he and his friend simply “could not sit there.”

“We got all the way to our seats,” Rouleau said. “They just turned us away.”

With approximately 1,250 people having bought tickets with seats now deemed unavailable, Mr. Rouleau was not the only one who was simply turned away.

And even though the N.F.L. was able to supply 850 of these confused fans with relocated seating, the several hundred others were left to wait in line, hoping for some type of plausible solution.

Eventually, these unsatisfied ticket holders were either turned away or invited to enjoy the game at one of the stadium’s local clubs. The N.F.L. promised a refund worth three times the ticket’s face value.

However, the $800 to $900 face value of most of these tickets didn’t even come close to the true amount of thousands of dollars numerous customers paid for these seats.

“I’ve just lost eight grand,” said the Dallas lawyer Bradley Geier who spent $9,700 for two tickets that had a face value of $900 each. “Just because they decided to put seats where they shouldn’t.”

These fans not only lost money and an amazing experience, but they also had to undergo the horrid security checks before they were informed of their ticket’s disablement.

“The frustrating thing here is that they wait till the day of the game to say these auxiliary seats aren’t good?” said Dan McGinnity of Spokane, Washington, a Packers fan who paid $900 for his ticket. “Don’t they have any sort of plan ahead of time?”

With this question left unanswered, we can only hope that next year wont face the same dilemma.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/sports/football/07fans-super-bowl-dallas.html?src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB

Emotions

therightliberalLeave a comment

Football brings fire to my veins. I am an emotional player by nature. I commit hard tackles, scream my head off and have a tendency to tell the refs my honest opinion of their most recent call.

But one thing in particular that I love about football (and other team sports as well) is the sense of a brotherhood. I love playing for a team where I know that every one of the guys wearing the same jersey as me has my back. I love the confidence it gives me. I love the passion that it brings onto the pitch.

Many people call it a family but I do not see it that way. It is more primordial, raw emotions. There are many times that those emotions overpower my common sense to the point that my actions are run totally off of testosterone. But that is the greatest high in the world.

Football is a team sport. Nothing gets done unless players work together. That mentality leads to a relationship among players that cannot be understood by anyone who has not experienced it.

I love football because I know I can leave everything I have on the pitch and my teammates will be there right by me. I love football because no matter what the circumstance we play to win and stop at nothing.

“Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, You’re Our Only Hope”

sennymcflyLeave a comment

future

Yet another post relating to the future. I promise I’m not doing this on purpose. It just happens this way. But, while we are on the subject let’s talk about Holograms.

Yes, Holograms. As in, a visual phone conversation. As in, Star Wars. As in,

We don’t even have to talk face to face anymore. Pretty soon we’ll be saying, “You saw her in person? Oh my gosh, that is so passe! It’s all about holographic communication now.”

It is not yet perfected, but it is certainly possible. I love all of this new future technology. I feel like when I turn 27 my blood will turn to liquid iron and we will all be walking robots.

Solar Panels

weirdjenny2 Comments

nullGenerating electricity from solar panels is currently the newest technology to get energy from renewable sources. One of the benefits for this method is that sunlight is free, so we don’t need to spend money and labor to mine coal or oil. The other benefit is that it won’t produce any greenhouse gases or pollution while generating the electricity.

However, building a solar power plant requires a large area, so most of the power plants are built in the desert. Some of the environmentalists are concerned about building power plants at the desert will destroy the fragile ecosystem, so that is why we haven’t really build many power plants now.

However, a study showed that we don’t need to build any power plants and we can produce 90% of the electricity we use in America. Let’s assume that there are 100 million houses and then each house installs a 100m2 solar panel on the roof, so there are total 100 billion m2. According to the research, there are 5 kwh per m2 per day of insolation to earth, and our recent solar panel can transfer 20% of the sunlight to electricity, so every m2 of solar panel can generate 1 kwh of electricity per day. So 100 billion m2 of solar panels can produce 3.65 trillion kwh of electricity per year.

And during 2005, America use about 4 trillion kwh. Although that not everyday and everywhere can have sunlight all the time, at least we can generate plenty of electricity by using solar panels and without using any lands.

Valentine’s Day Dessert

yrreskrap1 Comment


Last Valentine’s Day, I attempted to be a really cute girlfriend and make him desserts from scratch (after all, the best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach). My plan was to make him two desserts. Dessert #1: chocolate dipped strawberries. Dessert #2: heart-shaped sugar cookies with royal frosting.

I had made the desserts the morning of Valentine’s Day and I had all my ingredients laid out. I melted the chocolate, dipped the strawberries, and laid them out to harden. Yum, maybe I’ll taste one (or two…or three) to make sure they are alright. Next were the sugar cookies. I made the dough, flattened it out with a wooden roller into even sheets, and cut out heart shaped cookies. Aww, these are so cute! He’s gonna love these! I placed them on a buttered metal pan and waited. BUT WAIT! TODAY’S OUR SOCCER GAME! I ran up the stairs into my room to dig my uniform out of the abyss of my laundry basket…

The smell of burnt cookies filled the kitchen. I arrived to the scene of the crime and removed the hard, browned cookies from the oven. I sighed. These are ruined! I pulled out the other two pans of cookies. They were just perfect! Yes!! I quickly iced them and set them in the fridge to harden. I’ll get back to those later.

After the game, I wrapped the strawberries in little bags and placed them in a glass jar that I bought from Rain’s specifically for that purpose. Ohmigosh I’m the cutest! Then the cookies. OH NO…oh no…oh. no. The cookies had come out and baked into triangles. I had forgotten that cookies expanded in the oven. The hearts expanded into triangles. I gave them to him anyway, telling him that they were love triangles.


This year, I will send him cupcakes from Cupcake and Cookie. They are based in Thousand Oaks and they won the Food Network’s Cupcake Wars so I know they are tasty. Plus! They deliver! But, I will attempt to make him a treat that is made from scratch this year. I they will come out great. I hope.

Puppy Bowl

smackyjackjack1 Comment

Today, the most important football game in American history took place. That’s right, the 2011 Puppy Bowl. The Puppy Bowl, hosted by Animal Planet, is a football match that has puppies for players. The objective is to have the puppies carry the stuffed toy shaped like a football to the other side of the small stadium.

This wasn’t any Puppy Bowl though. This was the 7th annual Puppy Bowl with the Kitten Halftime show. They were better than the Black Eyed Peas though. One of the puppies was called for a call of “excessive cutness”. Which was a bummer because that puppy had a lot of potential.  If anyone were to stray from their couches and change the channel during the really important super bowl, the Puppy Bowl VII would have been the best choice.

Words

theycallmedameLeave a comment

I always thought of my cousin (Let’s call her Cousin for the sake of her privacy) as a small, slightly pudgy girl with a big smile. She always trailed behind my eleven other cousins, my big brother, and me while we played games, and she always seemed to happy just to sit and talk with us.

I was once told that while she was in fourth or fifth grade, her mother found her in the bathtub with her legs completely hairless. Very confused, her mother inquired about it, and Cousin explained how girls in her class called her legs hairy and gross, so she shaved the hair off.

That was the time that we should’ve started keeping a closer eye on her.

I had heard over the years that my aunt and uncle were worrying about Cousin and peer pressure issues. They were mainly concerned about her eating habits. They thought that maybe girls were calling her fat and she was reacting the same way she did when they told her she had hairy legs.

But when I saw her two years ago, it was not what I expected. The girl I once thought to be radiant and albeit a little pudgy, was nothing more than a shell of a person. Her feet were pressed against each other, as were her knobby knees, but her legs touched in no places. Her shirt rested a bit high above her jeans, her hip bones jutting painfully out and her stomach fat nonexistent. With her back turned to you, you could practically count her ribs and her arms looked no more than toothpicks. Her collar bones stuck out like mountains from her chest and her neck looked to thin to hold her head up. She wore makeup and looked as though she thought the world of herself. Cousin was in sixth grade.

It made me angry. Oh, it made me so angry to see her this way. I wanted to yell at her, shake sense into her feeble little body and watch her as she ate every last thing on a plate piled a mile high. But I sat back and watched as she and her equally skinny friend shared a kids meal, but barely touching the plate at all.

While in the car back to the hotel they were staying at, I casually mentioned how if you stopped eating you would gain water weight as your body tried to counter it’s lack of nutrients and eventually your stomach would start to eat itself. They looked appalled, but recent photos show no difference in her ghastly appearance.

I just want her to go back to the way she was before. I just want her to be happy.
I just want her to live again.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will hurt forever.

Space doesn’t seem so far anymore

yourgingerkidLeave a comment

When most people think of space, they imagine a massive area splattered with start and planets, forming thousands of galaxies that seem intangible. However science is now not too far away from actually attempting to spread our species to other planets.

Space exploration has been a hot topic since we first landed on the moon, but who would’ve thought that actually living on another planter would become realistic in our time?

A total of 1,235 collective planets have been discovered including 68 Earth-sized, 288 super-Earth-sized, 662 Neptune-sized, and 165 Jupiter-sized planets all from between 500 and 3,000 light years away. Optimistically speaking, one of those has to be realistic option.

I mean honestly, how cool would it be to be re

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