Top Ten List Fail

by   •   Daily Post, What I'm Reading
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

 

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Topic #195: Make a top ten list of the reasons why top ten lists are often so disappointing.

  1. Most people who write top ten lists don’t have the proper expertise to rank what they’re ranking.
  2. The items on the top ten list are blatantly obvious and can be guessed easily.
  3. On the contrary, some top ten lists leave out important elements that everyone would expect.
  4. Or, some top ten lists are lists of personal preference rather than objective judgments.
  5. People leave some positions blank to fill in later, then forget to fill them in later.
  6.  
  7. When people run out of top ten items, they start rephrasing previous items.
  8. Sometimes the same item appears twice, but worded differently.
  9. Top ten lists sometimes don’t even have ten items in them.

 

What I’m Reading

A few days ago, I finally got a chance to finish reading the last book in a series that I started reading over five years ago – Scorpia Rising in the Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz.

Scorpia Rising

In this final installment of the series, Alex is sent on yet again another mission for MI6, even though he promised himself and his guardian that he would never get involved with MI6 again. This mission takes him to Egypt where all he must do is keep an eye out for a suspicious individual. What Alex and MI6 didn’t know is that this entire mission was set up by Scorpia, the criminal organization responsible for the death of Alex’s parents.

Like all the other books in the series, this one is filled with high levels of action, and Alex continues to show exceptional amounts of luck and intelligence. A main character dies in this book, but as a result, Alex gains the opportunity to start living a normal fifteen-year-old’s life when the mission is over. This book is a must-read for everyone who has read all the previous books in this series. I’m disappointed that the Alex Rider series is now over, because it was probably some of my favorite books that I’ve ever read.

 

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Throwing Food

by   •   Academics, Daily Post
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

I need some interesting topics for my extra credit papers for my psychology class, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to send them to me until August 10, 2011 (that’s my last day of summer classes).

I already did one on the ultimatum game, which you can read in my blog post from July 09, 2011.

 

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Topic #194: Recently Rupert Murdoch, as part of investigation into corruption at one of his newspapers, was attacked in courtroom by someone wielding a custard pie. Historically, people used to throw food at other people as a sign of protest, particularly eggs and tomatoes. Would you ever throw food at anyone? Perhaps in a college dorm food fight? Or have you ever had food thrown at you? Tell the first story that comes to mind.

I don’t think that I would ever throw food at anyone in protest or rebellion. It’s obviously wasteful to throw food, but regardless, it doesn’t seem like something that I would do unless I was in a life-threatening or harming situation and throwing something at my attacker’s face would give me a good-enough opportunity to avoid pain, injury, or death.

I (fortunately) do not live in a dormitory at my university, but if the members of my apartment randomly chose one day to have a food fight, I would not participate and instead would try to encourage the management to cancel the event.

I don’t think I’ve had food thrown directly at me before with harmful intent, but I have been hit by food when I was in high school because the people I used to sit by in the cafeteria during lunch liked to argue with each other, and thought it was a good idea to throw food at each other to prove their point. Once in a while, I would be in the line of fire, but when that happened, I usually shifted my seat and started eating my friends’ food so they wouldn’t have anything left to throw.

 

My Homework for Your Reading Pleasure

This is a very short paper I wrote for my Shakespeare class about my favorite quote from Much Ado About Nothing.

I’ve been slacking on putting up good blog posts lately because I’ve been busy, so I decided to put this up in today’s post, even though it might only make real sense to people who have already read Much Ado About Nothing. It does, however, slightly touch on psychology, which I know I’ve written about a lot before, and I know a lot of you seem to enjoy, based on your responses to my work.

A line in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing that I found particularly memorable was in Act 2, Scene 3 when Benedick says “Ha! ‘Against my will, I’ve been told to bring you in to dinner.’ There’s a double meaning in that.” This was said after Benedick overhears a set-up conversation among Don Pedro, Leonato, and Claudio about how much Beatrice loves him, and then Beatrice comes out to get him for dinner because she was sent out against her will. Relative to the remainder of the play, this line is at the end of the event that marks the beginning of Benedick’s change in attitude that ultimately leads to his marriage with Beatrice. This is immediately before Beatrice falls for the same trick and starts believing that Benedick loves her.

The fact that Benedick believes the conversation and believes that there is a double meaning in what Beatrice says is what started the remainder of the plot between Benedick and Beatrice. If Benedick had not believed what he had heard and knew that it was a set-up, he would not have changed his attitude towards Beatrice. However, because he believed that Beatrice loved him, he adjusted his behavior such that he acted in a manner a loved man would. I think this is extremely effective at getting the point across to the reader because it gives insight into Benedick’s mind and opens up an opportunity for us to relate to Benedick’s situation with a situation of our own where our attitude made a difference in our actions.

Benedick’s change in attitude also emphasizes the importance of preliminary attitudes when approaching a new or unfamiliar situation. Benedick and Beatrice had a history of making fun of each other and arguing at every chance they had, and if they had continued living with that attitude, they would have never seen the positive sides of each other. However, because of the deception and the change in attitude, Benedick and Beatrice were able to see through each other’s covers and realize that they had enough in common to become good friends, and later, spouses.

 

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I Don’t Like Traveling

by   •   Daily Post
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

As I said yesterday, I don’t really have time today to write a blog post, but the Daily Post topic from yesterday was nice and simple so I decided to do that while I’m taking a break from writing Shakespeare essays.

 

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #192: Planes, trains, or automobiles? What is your favorite way to travel 500 miles?

If I’m traveling 500 miles, I would prefer to use a plane. I don’t like traveling very much, so I would much rather have the trip over with as quickly as possible so I can move on to my destination and do whatever I need to do there. I definitely don’t want to travel 500 miles by automobile because I get carsick very easily and would not enjoy the trip.

 

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I’m Going To Be Very Busy

by   •   General
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

It was brought to my attention yesterday that the light in my office back at my university randomly decided to stop working and smell burnt for a while. Even better, my coworker who shares that office space with me refuses to replace the light bulb and instead prefers to sit in the dark.

-.-

In other news, I’m extremely busy until Wednesday because I have to study for two exams and do a lot of homework and a lot of reading. Of course, this is for my community college and I’m only taking this class to get transfer credits, so I don’t really need to study. But on the other hand, I don’t want to underdo it so much that I fail.

So that’s why my blog post for today and tomorrow is and will be extremely short.

 

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No More Hot Weather

by   •   Daily Post, General
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

Someone emailed me earlier today in response to yesterday’s blog post where I took a screenshot of my task manager. He was curious what my desktop background was, so here it is:

Yes, I know it’s not autumn yet, but I guess I’m eager for autumn to come.

I used to hate hot weather more than I hated cold weather, but after years of long, freezing cold winters, my preferences have switched and I would rather be really hot than really cold.

The only exception is that I have to be in a well air-conditioned area.

You may or may not know that I’m back home for the summer at my parents’ house where we actually have to pay for electricity (unlike my apartment), so I can’t blast on the air conditioning at 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius) anymore like I used to at my apartment. On top of that, our house is gigantic so it takes a lot of electricity to even lower the temperature of our whole house a single degree.

So I’ve been sweating a majority of the time that I’m awake (and I’m sure I sweat while I’m sleeping too). I normally don’t like driving, but I’m actually opting in to driving now because it’s easy to turn on the air conditioning in the car and have a cool environment in minutes.

 

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Topic #190: Can a movie be better than the book it was based on?

I think it would be extremely difficult for a movie to be better than the book on which it was based. I usually read the book before I watch the movie, and I have repeatedly been disappointed by the amount of detail that has been left out in the movies.

I understand that the movie does not necessarily have to be the exact same as the book, but usually when I finish watching a movie, I can point out many seemingly important things that were left out. In the rare cases that I watch the movie before the book, I feel as if I’m being filled in on the missing portions of the movie while I’m reading the book.

I think a valid justification for this is that movies can’t drag on for hours upon hours, but books can easily go past a thousand pages and still be considered normal. Thus, movies simply don’t have the time to go through everything a book might cover.

 

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Remembering to Restart Firefox Fail

by   •   Daily Post, What I'm Reading
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you don’t restart your Firefox for almost a week?

firefox.exe *32 850,000 K

It starts taking up almost a gigabyte of memory.

Now you know.

 

What I’m Reading

A while back, one of my readers named Jessie suggested that I read a book called How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less. She claimed that with my rising popularity, I would need to go out and meet more people in person, and I would have to learn how to make them like me in person as well as online. I didn’t really think that I needed to prepare for real-life encounters with people who keep up with me online, but I realized that it couldn’t hurt to check out the book anyway.

I was sort of disappointed after reading the book because the introduction claims that it covers some revolutionary method that has helped many people become successful. The main idea of the book is that when meeting people, you should approach them with a positive attitude and mindset and find stuff that you have in common. It also focuses on synchronization (or copying physical actions the other person does so they feel as if you’re someone familiar, because you’re basically emulating them) and identifying learning styles and using them to your advantage (such as identifying someone who is a visual person and describing your point of view in a visual manner).

Most of the stuff covered in this book seemed like either common sense or something that anyone could easily find out after some experience with meeting new people. If you don’t already know how to ask questions that induce longer responses rather than yes or no answers, how to synchronize with someone so that it’s not obvious that you’re copying them but still enough that the person subconsciously realizes that you’re special, or how to identify people’s learning style(s) (visual, auditory, kinesthetic) by watching their behavior, then this book might come in handy for you. If not, then it’s most likely not worth your time.

If you’re interested in buying this book, you can purchase it on Amazon.com at the following link:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0761149465/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=parkzer-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=0761149465

 

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #184: If you had a third arm, where would you put it on your body? Would you put it underneath one of your other arms? Or somewhere more interesting, say, the top of your head, so you could reach really high things? Or would you put it behind you, so it’d be a makeshift tail?

If I had a third arm, I would probably put it directly under my current left arm.

I think that if I were to put it somewhere else on my body, it would become a hassle because I’m not used to having a limb in that area. However, I’m already used to having limbs on the sides of my body and it would be easy to get accustomed to the extra arm. I’m right-handed, so it might be difficult to do some things with my right arm if another arm was right below it, so I decided to go with the left side of my body.

I realize that this might cause a balance issue with my body because the left side of my body will be heavier than the right side of my body, but the only way to solve this problem would be to either have my arm sticking straight up off the top of my head or straight down from my crotch, neither of which I would think is a good idea.

 

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