The Return...?

Original art here, folks. (shh, I know it's boring.)

Everyone still alive out there? Good!

I wonder what the record is for the longest overdue blog post of all time...this might be pretty high on the list. Anyway, today's topic is...hype! The world around us is constantly inventing and innovating new things for us to enjoy (or despise) and it's only natural to be excited for what is just around the corner-- whether it's a medical breakthrough, technological invention, or even just a new video game. Anticipation can be a rather big part of the equation of what makes life worth living. If you don't have hope, then what do you have? Not much.

I saw a Youtube video today of some new hoverboard technology being tested-- to be honest it didn't look extremely impressive and the prototype (I'm assuming?) was really loud. But hey, it was actually floating off the ground and even stayed that way when somebody stepped onto it. Small steps, people. Small steps. Who hasn't dreamed of owning a hoverboard to cruise around on? I know I have. (Thanks a lot, Back to the Future!) Heck, even Segways are a little cool. If you're interested in this technology you better start saving up today, I imagine they are going to be very pricey.. especially at first.

Personally I'm hyped for the Super Smash Brothers 4 release on the Wii U next month. I know it was released for the 3DS already but I just can't see myself playing the game on a handheld, mostly due to the controls. I'm a die-hard Gamecube controller user. Good on the people who have gotten enjoyment out of the portable release though. I've been playing since the N64 version, I remember when I saw Melee being released for Gamecube and was excited that Bowser would be playable...of course he ended up being rather clunky and slow. Because of that, I didn't play him much and gravitated towards Marth and Falco/Fox. Smash Brothers has been the only fighting game I can say I'm decent at, but I'm out of practice at the moment so we'll see how I do online against players next month.

Maybe we'll see some global smash scores posted up in here.

That wraps it up for now, so stay awesome and have a happy Halloween! Who is excited for what nowadays?

Sardines and Seaweed

http://inhabitat.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2011/03/sardines-fujimoto.jpg

Any sardine eaters out there? No? Can't say I blame you, really. They just aren't too appealing...a choice between sardines and [enter any other food here] usually results in a victory of the other choice for me. Still, sometimes I open a can up and eat them.

I haven't tasted many different brands of sardines, but from what I've had so far, Van Camp's sardines in oil (lightly smoked) are my favorite. If you like sardines, I recommend you try those sometime. Feel free to tell me your favorite brand too.

A can of sardines has about as much protein as a bag of beef jerky, so go ahead and eat some more.

Eat sardine, high in protein. Grow up strong. Kill bear for feed family.

"I made 'em go easy, and called off the wolves on my AOTP radio CB
Cause y'all ain't worthy of grenades and RPG's
Slit throat, hope you float with sardines and seaweed"
(Army of the Pharaohs - Seven)

Valentine's Day

Could've just let today slip by somewhat unnoticed on my radar, but I haven't posted anything in a while so I'll blab a little bit. Really, the only positive thing I can think of about this time for me is there has been quite a bit more candy and chocolate laying around the house. But even that's not saying much considering I've only consumed a few mini Snickers bars.

Sometimes I just gotta eat some mini Snickers bars.

Anyway right, Valentine's Day. There's probably a lot of people out there in the world that dread this day, since they're reminded of their forever alone status by all the couples being romantic. Personally it doesn't bother me much at all. To all you forever alones out there, I'll be your honorary valentine for today. Just don't tell anyone about it (including me) and don't talk to me or acknowledge that I exist.

Lots of people choose a superior option and ignore today, good on those souls. But even if you have nice plans for your sweetheart, I still hope you have a good day.

I gotta let you in on a little secret though...Valentine's Day is actually short for Vincent Valentine's Day. As celebration, use a wallpaper of him for a day. Who is that, you ask?

Go get eaten by a Goomba, ya dungo.

Death

January is nearly over, so I'll share with you guys a somewhat related video. I watched this quite a while back, but I just watched it for the second time today and it hit me harder than it did the last time. I guess I just didn't fully understand what he was saying the first time.

This video may go against your beliefs, so don't take it personally. But if you're like me and don't believe much of anything, this might be right up your alley. Particularly near the end when he says "What gives us any ghost of a notion that we're here, except by contrast with the fact that we once weren't?" I had never thought of it like that before, and for me that raises the question...would we realize we exist if death did not?

Just how much do we think we know only from the contrast of an opposite existing? There's a massive number of questions to ask, and if you're not firmly grounded in any belief (including science), there's hardly any answers. It's frustrating, and that's why we will be quick to follow the notion of certainty, even if it could be completely false.

"In the West, we inherit the idea of Law from those ancient conceptions of God, and it is even passed down into science where we discuss Laws of Nature. But one recognizes more and more in the sciences that what we call Laws of Nature are simply observed regularities in the way things behave." -Alan Watts

I hope that gave you some food for thought.

Universal Scale

Have been spending quite a bit of time at the Khan Academy, the Astronomy videos are pretty fascinating to me. I would also recommend the brain teaser videos, if you want to go crazy trying to think of a solution for a day or two (or however long it takes you). I didn't, so I just ruined all the fun and watched the solution immediately after the problem.

Found a neat thing while watching Astronomy videos though, so I figured I'd share it for those of you interested in this type of stuff. It's a type of scale showing how big and small things are compared to each other in the Universe, but I'm no expert so I can't say how accurate it is. In the grand scheme of things though, ants and us are basically the same size.

Maybe something to think about the next time we feel like killing them. Who knows, there may be creatures out there who wouldn't think twice about smashing us either.

Anyway, here's the link so you can try it out: http://htwins.net/scale/index.html

Credit goes to the creators, Cary and Michael Huang.

Khan Academy

Put your thinking caps on, because this website is gonna educate the $#17 out of you.

Directly from the website:

"The Khan Academy is an organization on a mission. We're a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere.

All of the site's resources are available to anyone. It doesn't matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. The Khan Academy's materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge."

This site has over 2,700 educational videos covering a variety of topics, 290 practice exercises for you to complete, and even rewards you with badges and points (useless as far as I know but satisfying nonetheless) depending on what you accomplish on the site. There are also other statistical graphs that track the subjects you learn about that you can view.

This is personally one of the noblest efforts I've ever seen directed towards the benefit of humanity, and if we had a world full of people like Salman Khan then we'd be in really good shape. My thanks go out to him and everyone involved in the creation and daily improvement of the website.

If you have a thirst for knowledge and love to learn, what are you waiting for? Make your own account right now!

www.khanacademy.org

Strange Thoughts

Do you ever think of things that are strange or really hard (if not impossible) to answer?

For example, what is consciousness? Is it electrical signals firing around in our brain, or do we have some sort of soul? Is it an illusion of all our senses working together, a few of them, or maybe just one? Do we know the exact criteria needed to be met for something to be considered conscious, or is it more abstract? Could planets and stars be conscious without us knowing? What about galaxies or maybe even the universe itself?

Senses are strange things too. Everyone is familiar with the big five (although there are arguably more), and we generally find anyone lacking one of them an interesting person. Most of us can't begin to imagine a life without both sight and hearing. Complete darkness and silence; only left with feeling, taste, and smell. How strange that must be...and unfortunate, if you know how incredible sight and hearing are.

What if a person were mute and lacking all of the senses but were still conscious? Could they be distinguished from a person in a coma? Would they be conscious that they are alive?

We call trees and plants "alive" and "dead". What if they only have the sense of feeling? We wouldn't be able to tell if they did or not. But if we knew they did, would we treat them differently?

I, for one, would probably find a lack of sight and hearing to be a fate worse than death. If you agree, here's a thought to chew on: how do we know we're not in such a state right now?

Before you answer, consider this. A person that has been blind since birth is incapable of fully understanding the experience of sight (without surgery), and a person that has been deaf since birth is incapable of fully understanding hearing (without hearing aids or what have you). Or an easier example to think about; a completely colorblind person has no idea what colors are like.

My question is, what incredible senses (if any) are out there in the universe that none of us have or know of and are thus not capable of comprehending? We can't just say "yeah right, those can't exist". An Earth full of colorblind humans would be wrong to deny the existence of colors.

Assuming there are aliens and keeping with the theory of evolution, what senses would they have if they were millions of years ahead of us? It's hard to even begin guessing. They could be capable of things we can only dream of doing, and have probably conquered death. If such beings knew of us, some of them might even say we are in a state worse than death right now.

Or maybe we're the most evolved thing in the universe.

There's so much more to contemplate, but I'll leave it at that for now. I hope this post gave you something interesting to think about.