Do video games teach historic principles?

While I was in my interview with the professors, we got to talking about virtual economies and how there are many studies being done to determine if video games aren't simply "a waste of time."   I grew up playing regular, super Nintendo and lastly Nintendo 64 before making the switch to PC games where the first game I purchased was Sim City 2000.  You had to quickly learn common principles that cities need to function such as controlling taxes, maintaining water and power supplies, and having adequate governmental forces to regulate crime and natural disasters.

When I started to play "The Sims," (a game where you control the life of an avatar, earn money and build your house gradually) I started to realize and that our lives aren't much different than the fictional characters I'm controlling.  In the game, you have to maintain a balance of Hunger, Comfort, Bladder, Energy, Fun, Social, Hygiene, & Energy.  If any of those gets too low, your "Sim" cannot function efficiently (and sometimes not at all) until those levels are brought up.

When I'm having a busy day, lets say I've been driving to Utah from Washington, eating junk food, my teeth need to be cleaned, I need to take a shower, and I'm starving.  In this condition there's NO WAY I'm going to sit down at my computer and take a blackboard quiz.  I noticed that within myself I behave in a way very similar to that of the avatars in the game "The Sims."

I can write on and on about the benefits of learning from civilizations from "Where in time is Carmen Sandiego" or "Age of Empires."  I remember playing campaigns in the latter game when I controlled Joan of Arc and led her followers to take on missions which actually occurred in real life.


Recently I found another game being advertised on facebook called "City of Wonder" which is designed to show you the progress of civilizations and as they progress, you see why it is and how it is that they get better. The unique items of this game is they provide you with "advisors" by which they recommend you to act/research/purchase varies items for your civilization.  In the image below, the cultural advisors suggests that there is something significant about having religion within a culture to explain the unexplainable.

  As we study the various subjects of democracy and the social contract as well as history in general, we can learn a lot about how and why societies have behaved using video games and see ways in which everything could be better without improper government decisions or the necessity of war.   I believe games may be used as a very resourceful tool to aid in study, but cannot completely teach all concepts/mindsets possible.

Reflective Post

I feel as though this class has integrated very nicely with a lot of my other classes at BYU and I've been able to use concepts and principles learned in one class and apply them to another.  Such topics have included Architecture within Athens, play writers and medicine men such as Hippocrates.  In my history of creativity class we've talked about Hippocrates & play writers and what it was that made them so unique and great in their time.  We didn't necessarily talk about the implications of their work like we do more in our digital civilization class, but the two topics flow well together.  My interior design class is really going in depth with the architecture of buildings such as the pantheon which complements the topics covered in my history of creativity and my digital civilization class because when we refer to the enlightenment and how men searched knowledge for the sake of knowing everything, I was able to have a much better understanding of some very specific items which were addressed during this time period.

How has your digital literacy assisted your self-directed learning in the subject areas of this course? (consume)
  My digital literacy has really helped me find various credible resources to do research with.  It helps being a senior majoring in Information Systems as I already have a lot of tools in my belt in which to work with.

How has your creation of blog posts and digital media impacted your learning? (create)
  I think the fact of having the requirement to post twice a week to a blog motivates me (and I'm sure others) to do enough research to make a reasonable post and be able to expound more on a general specific or two within the topic being covered.  It has also been fun to post something and send its link to other professors within other classes so they may reference to it in regards to something relevant to their class.

How have you connected with other class members and with the general public in these areas? (connect)
  I have connected by commenting on the sites wherewith I find information on topics I'm studying.  For example, when I wrote a post on the combined strategies Planet Hollywood did with a flash mob using the top subscribed YouTube "Vloggers", I informed one of the guys I follow on YouTube of my blog post regarding the flash mob.  To be completely honest, I don't feel as though I'm doing too well in this category as I have not heard back from any of the multiple sites I've posted comments on.  I feel as though I've connected nicely with multiple individuals within the class in regards to their blog posts and them commenting on a few of my own.

I've really enjoyed learning of new sites with very useful tools on them.  Quizlet is probably my best find.  I programmed a very crude java application which would randomly generate multiple choice questions for term/definition practice.  I spent hours on it and shared it with many people in the past couple years.  Now that I've found Quizlet and see how it's much more refined and better than my own, I highly appreciate it and I've even used it to study for a midterm this semester in another one of my classes.  Whenever I get the chance, I share these tools with other classmates and it's fun seeing their responses.

Overall, I've enjoyed this class quite a bit and I feel as though I've met two out of the three learning outcomes very well but I can use a little improvement in the third (connect) category.  I definitely spend more time doing reading and assignments in this class than any two of my other classes combined.  The blogs are fun and I really like how the class is completely networked outside of the classroom.  Sorry about writing a novel.  I hope you don't mind reading this.

Virtual Economies

Virtual economies has facinated me for the past year or so.  I knew they existed clear back in 2000, when I first heard of them because I had some friends who played Everquest and sold their avatars for hundreds of dollars.

I'll admit to the fact I play a little FarmVille on facebook for a few minutes each day just as something fun to do.  I've watched (sometimes in pain-staking agony) as the game has evolved over the last six months.  It's designed so if you want a head start or simply not wait, you can pay REAL money for the privilege to expedite  a process/building, or to simply purchase items ONLY available with "FarmVille cash", which you acquire only when you level up (and even then it's only in increments of one).  Zynga (the producers of FarmVille) is in it for the money, not to please its gamers by developing improvements to enhance user enjoyment.

Virtual economy spending will amount to nearly $2 billion this year and next year it's expected to reach $2.6 billion! In a recent article I read (found in the "spending" link above) that one report shows a virtual game player paid $330,000 REAL dollars for an imaginary space station in a virtual world!

I'm thinking I should learn some additional programming and manage a team to make the next big & highly addictive virtual world/game.  There's potential big money in this area!
 

Babies in class?

I was curious on what your thoughts are on college students bringing in babies to class with them. Do you view it as acceptable or completely not acceptable?

Flash Mobs Planet Hollywood

Flash mobs are recent creative means to attract the masses.  Check out the flash mob video below:



Not only did this one-time flash mob advertise in front of the hundreds present, but they attracted millions over the internet.

If you noticed in the video, many of the people in the "flash mob" were holding cameras.  Planet Hollywood made a genius marketing move by flying down the people who have the most subscribers on YouTube.  I've been following the bearded guy for over a year now.  His name is Shay and goes by Shay Carl on his YouTube channel "The Shaytards" http://www.youtube.com/user/SHAYTARDS.  Shay Carl decided to begin doing something completely new.  He started "vlogging" or in other words video blogging his life and he has attracted over 625,000 subscribers to date.  On average, his videos receive half a million views a day.  You guys should watch and subscribe.  Anyways, Planet Hollywood is essentially advertising (via YouTube) for free to millions of viewers!  They were practically guaranteed millions of views just from the accumulative daily views of each of the individuals holding a video camera in this flash mob.

Most flash mobs aren't like this.  This one is definitely on steroids and turned out to be a success before it even began. 

Empiricism & Ants

I find it interesting how the majority of my classes have similar topics.  On Monday in my biology class we watched a movie called Lord of the Ants. If you're interested you may watch it here: http://video.pbs.org/video/980049632/  It is 50 min long so just prepare yourself (I may add it's quite interesting).

This video is a documentary of Edward Wilson and his life findings regarding his life-long studies of ants.  This man, much like the wise individuals of the renaissance, started making observations from scratch.  One interesting thing though that ties well with John Locke's Essay on human understanding is that a fellow scholar of his suggested he try to link chemistry with the behavior of ants.  This new idea led him to discover how ants communicate one with another regardless of the fact they can't see and they don't speak.

Have you ever wondered how it is that ants know where to go to get food after one ant has found a stash?!  They leave an invisible chemical trail behind them and when they return, others may follow its scent and the trail becomes larger and the invisible chemicals stronger until the food source is devoured.

Edward Wilson followed the practice of empiricism to find his answers and unlocked a new way of understanding how insects (ants particularly) live & survive.

John Locke

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke

In John Locke's essay concerning human understanding, he basically explains that it takes experience to generate ideas in general.  Creativity thus wouldn't be possible without first seeing something with a little bit of detail on it.

Teachers have suggested in a few of my classes that by getting something/anything down on paper in regards to composing an assignment will naturally generate additional thoughts and provide you with a direction to follow.

There's a small creative side to my brain.  I find that when I go to stores such as RC Willey or down a craft isle in a random store, random thoughts automatically jump in and say "what if..." or "I could do this with that" or "wouldn't it be fun to use this and do/make...".  If any of you play FarmVille, you'll understand me when I say there aren't a lot of options to choose from when it comes to decorating your farm.  Having random objects available may be enough to spark ideas to turn original functionality of one object into that of another.  Take for example the brick wall in front of this school house:

It appears as though it's a simple brick wall adorned with flowers here and there.  In reality, those are multiple stone mailboxes positioned side to side to give the illusion of a wall.  The flowers act as a way to cover up what's really there (the physical box sticking out).

The actual John Locke:

LogMeIn

website: https://secure.logmein.com/

Have you ever called in to get help to fix your computer? If you are among the many who have had to dealt with an IT person over the phone, they most likely had to go to a link which gave them access to your computer.  This is called remote desktoping, or in other words, connecting directly (via the internet or internal network) from one computer to another. 

Have you ever been put in a situation where you wish you could simply SHOW your friend/parent/grandma how to do something with their computer WITHOUT attempting to patiently guide them step by step in a painstaking manner (often bundled with errors due to improper execution of procedures)?  Let me introduce you to LogMeIn.

LogMeIn.com is a tool you may use to access your computer from anywhere in the world!  Well, as long as it's connected to the internet and not powered down. 

Here's a quick rundown:

Recent functionality has just been added so you may access your computer from your iPhone, iPad, and smartphone.

If you read my Dropbox post you know I helped set up my grandma's computer.  I made sure to also set up a Logmein-free account for her computer.  The reasoning behind it is so I (or my parents) may help her with her computer problems in the leisure of our own homes.  Often times the problem is simple such as not being able to get to a webpage because the hyperlinked shortcut disappeared from the desktop.  If you decide to purchase the Pro version of Logmein you will have a lot more functionality at your disposal.  They give you the pro as a trial for a couple days and in the time I had it I remember logging into my desktop computer from my laptop and listening to the music with my laptop speakers.  Other neat things include direct transferring of files in a drag & drop manner.

Anyways, check it out and drop me a line to let me know what you think.  You may never know when it'll come in handy.

Sign up at: https://secure.logmein.com/

Dropbox

https://www.dropbox.com/
A fellow student in one of my classes introduced Dropbox to me at the beginning of the year.  It has been so resourceful that I've told everyone I can (when computer stuff is brought up) about it!  Let me introduce it to you with this video available on Dropbox's homepage.

Practical use for Grandmas:

Over the summer I helped upgrade my grandmas computer (a college student's nightmare).  She informed me that she had lots of floppy disks I could use to move her files over.  Thinking of that process made me shudder and almost want to vomit in my mouth.  Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but to say the least, I was very happy to inform her I could simply use the internet to transfer her files and reload them back onto her computer.  Now that thought I'm sure made her shudder.  Her eyes got really big and replied slowly, "On the internet?!"  Old people talk of the incredible changes in technology continued in her family room while I went to her office to set up a free Dropbox account and begin uploading her genealogy history files and her desktop shortcuts and a few images.  Once her new computer was set up I signed into Dropbox under her account and installed the software and within an hour or two, her computer was all set up with her former files.

Practical use for anyone with two computers:

As for myself and for all those who own two computers, I use it as a means to keep all my data in one centralized location.  I rent a laptop at college so I have a computer to use in my classes and to do misc homework/research in areas other than my apartment. 

Before I used Dropbox, I would:

1) save my assignments to a flash drive, take it to school, and load it up onto my secondary computer or lab computer.

2)email the assignment to myself, log into my email account once at school, and retrieve it to work on it.

Both of these methods took approximately 2-3 minutes to perform, but now with Dropbox, it's only a second or two.

Sign up at: https://www.dropbox.com/
You won't be disappointed.

Interior Design Assignment

The purpose of this assignment in my interior design class is to experience contrasting options when purchasing furniture.  I visited three stores and here's my analysis.

Furniture Store Visits on September 17, 2010

RC Willey: 

This was my second time going into RC Willey and being able to identify interior design concepts as opposed to simply being fascinated by sheer beauty completely made my visit worthwhile!  As I entered the store the first thing that caught my eye was the arched ceiling which had architectural lighting to emphasize the paint pattern & texture on the ceiling.  Right away I was able to identify multiple Doric & Ionic styled columns.  I never realized how significant each little part (fluting, abacus, echinus, acanthus leaves) was.  Many of the back legs on the chairs resembled that of a saber leg.  One thing that I was curious about was the "golden" mean rule for having wall wooden borders.  In RC Willey it appeared as though they didn't follow that particular rule, but kept their border approximately 1/4 of the way down from the ceiling.  It's possible that the colored paint in the background needs to be visible above the large furniture so it's set up so you can see the colored wall above and all around the objects you're viewing.  One lady thought I was one of her employee's nephew (that was random).  There was a lot sale this day and on the outside there was a lot of furniture in the parking lot.  The exceptional quality of their products and the decorations surrounding modeled rooms really put me at ease and I felt as though I could chill in a corner for the entire day and be content with simply looking at my surroundings.  Oh, and I've been wondering what one would fill in the corner of a room if a bed was positioned diagonally in a room (leaving a large chunk open, inaccessible, and useless).  In RC Willey they simply put a tall fake green plant and a tall lamp for lighting.  It looked simple and simply amazing!  I also saw a couple large candles.  One was $80 and the other $200!  They were as large as a fire hydrants and the patterned colors matched with the theme of the balanced room.  I kind of wanted to light all ten of the wicks on the two candles but then, I have better things to spend $280 on while I'm at college.

Website:  http://www.rcwilley.com/utah/orem/

Basset Furniture Direct:

I realized after returning home that Basset fell in the same category as RC Willey for this assignment but I'll still write a little about my visit because I'm glad I dropped in and learned more about their business.  When I first walked in the thing that caught my eye was a huge bed displayed about six to eight feet in front of me.  When I looked around the bed I saw couches and pillows.  My first impressions were that they specialized in selling couches and beds.  When I walked around the corner and saw a lot of empty space my impressions weren't that great because I was comparing them to the grand RC Willey and their extensive decorated rooms.  A lady approached me and after I told her what I was doing she gave me a very good run-down of their business and what they do and specialize in.  After realizing that they customize furniture so you may select ANY fabric or material you could ever desire, my opinion on them changed dramatically.  She flipped through a catalog near the end of my visit to show me some of the items they have made in the past.  Essentially, if you decide to purchase from Basset, you're getting help from professional interior designers.  They're in a different market segment than that of RC Willey, but also claim that they're the cheaper than all their competitors.

Website:  http://utah.bassettfurniture.com/

Alice Lane:

This small showroom was considerably different than the previous two stores I visited because its products were VERY unique.  I kind of felt as though they were more in the market of "fad" furniture and household accessories.  If you're looking for a one-of-the-kind item to show off in your house you can easily find one in this store.  One thing that caught my eye was movable track lights scattered throughout the store (as opposed to general fluorescents).  One of the employees informed me it was their second year birthday as a business and that I was welcome to have some of the assortments of candy on their front desk.  Honestly, I didn't really like this store.  I thought it was trendy but I didn't get sucked in with their displays.  I'm thinking that possibly one of the reasons for this is there were windows everywhere and it was around 6:30pm so the light coming into the store was a very warm/hot one which added glare to a lot of the products I was viewing.  The number one thing that impressed me was a base of a trunk of a large tree which was sanded down, treated, and in the form of a table in front of a couch.  Anyways, simple pleasures for simple minds I suppose. 

Blog: http://blog.alicelanehome.com/

Website:  http://alicelanehome.com/

Niccolo Machiavelli

Hey class, I found an outside blog posting that addresses current events with the views of Niccolo Machiavelli and I'm curious to know what you think on the subject.

In short, Obama has recently declared that "The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq's leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops" and he wants them out NOW.

According to the views of Niccolo Machiavelli and what he views the characteristics a priest should  possess in regards to war, he states:

  “A Prince should not have another objective or thought or take something else for his Art (profession), outside of war and its rules and discipline: Because that is the only art that awaits those who command, and it is of such virtue not only for those born Princes, but many times it brings fortune to private men to rise up to that level.”


  “So as to exercise the mind, the Prince ought to read the histories and in those, consider the actions of the excellent (notable) men, to see how they managed the wars, to examine the reasons for their victories and defeats, to be able to know what to avoid and what to copy. And above all to do as the notable man has done. To imitate someone, before his time, who was lauded and glorified, and whose actions and deeds were always held close to him.”


The credit behind this post belongs to Steve Amoia whose blog is http://niccolomachiavelli.worldhistoryblogs.com/.  He addresses current events through the eyes of Niccolo Machiavelli (if he blogged).  His blog is very professional and addresses some interesting concepts.

The concerns I have of this recent current event and relating them to the words of Niccolo M. is:

• Is Obama trying to achieve a separate objective by removing troops from Iraq than simply promoting peace?
• Has Obama fully examined the reasons why our war has prolonged for so long and is he classifying the entire war as a defeat?

What are your thoughts on this topic?

Capturing Carbon Dioxide

In the last thirty years our planet has become subjected to various pollutants that has harmed our environment and negatively affected our general health.  One of the main pollutants and leading cause to global warming is carbon dioxide.  I have researched and found a national geographic article that has a solution to cleaning up carbon dioxide emissions in our atmosphere.  I will explain how this toxic gas affects our planet negatively and why we need to control and/or eliminate it from our planet. 

The National Geographic article is titled "Scrubbing the Skies[1]."  It's located in the August 2010 edition and is found on pages 30-32.  This article explains that roughly a third of carbon dioxide emissions come from cars, planes, and other vehicles.  Millions of dollars are being spent on research to make our cars and jets operate without having the need to emit pollution.  Pulling carbon dioxide out of the air may be a much easier solution than trying to engineer a car or jet to not emit the toxic gas.  

Most of you have heard at some time or another that burning certain things such as plastics is bad.  Have you ever wondered why it's bad?  In the Journal of Geophysical Research[2], an article explains the following:

·         *   Carbon dioxide gas is the most contributing pollutant to global warming.

·         *    It is estimated that eliminating bio-fuel carbon dioxide over 100 years would reduce temperatures approximately     .05-.1 degrees Kelvin (see chart below).

The study in the article examined the effects of eliminating specific pollutants.  In the chart below, FS stands for Fossil-fuel soot and FSBSG stands for fossil-fuel plus bio-fuel soot and gases.  Looking at the carbon dioxide, the two lines surrounding the text shows that the temperature may decrease from at least 1 to at most 1.5 K.

 

Earth's pollution is gradually warming the planet.  It's creating a pollution layer that traps in heat that needs to escape our atmosphere and into space.  To better illustrate how carbon dioxide is essentially contributing to global warming, please view the image below and on the left.  Note that greenhouse gases primarily consist of water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide, and most importantly, carbon dioxide.

(Courtesy of Wikipedia[3])

Carbon dioxide absorbs primarily the Earth's infrared radiation and reemits it into the air.  The reason for why retained heat should be avoided is so that we preserve the Arctic ice around the North Pole.  If the Arctic ice were to melt, I'd have to write a whole new report on the negative outcomes that would come from it.  The Journal of Climate[4] identifies that the rate of warming increased strongly in recent decades with exceptionally high temperatures reaching 1.72 °C in 2003, 2.11 °C in 2005, and 2.18 °C in 2007.  These are the warmest recorded years in the history of instrumental observations!  The illustration below is from NASA[5] and depicts the changing of the diminishing ice around the North Pole over the last 21 years.  Since pollution is gradually increasing with time, the greenhouse gas layer continues to grow and the heat retained in the earth’s atmosphere is slowly melting away the ice at our earth’s poles.

The Solution:

In order to mitigate the problems associated with global warming and the melting of the ice caps, pollution needs to be controlled, and if possible completely removed.  The National Geographic article illustrates new technology being developed called scrubbers.  Scrubbers can capture approximately 1000 times the amount of carbon dioxide than that of an average tree.  The technology & chemistry is similar to what is used already on space crafts and submarines.  Once the carbon dioxide is captured we have a couple options with what to do with it.  The quickest approach involving the least amount of energy is to compact it into a liquid form and dispose of it.  Current considerations are being made for areas below the earth's crust.  Additional research needs to be performed to identify the practicality of this approach and whether or not it's feasible.  The three areas identified are: 1) oil reservoirs, 2) the saline aquifer layer, and 3) the volcanic basalt layer of the earth.  Another approach is to add hydrogen to the captured carbon dioxide and convert it back into liquid hydrocarbons.

In the article "The teraton challenge", multiple methods are identified to convert or transform carbon dioxide into more practical molecules.  The article explains that the hydrogen needed to perform the converson of carbon dioxide to hydrocarbons and alcohols demands a lot of energy and is not favorable unless the energy needed comes from renewable energy[6].  The next available and more practical solution is create formic acid using hydrogen and super-critical carbon dioxide under a ruthenium catalysis.  This hydrogenation process has more technical advantages such as stability, ease of separation, handling, and reuse of the catalyst.

It's best to find a way to reuse or convert the elements captured from the carbon dioxide gas in the environment.  This will save billions in drilling to dispose of the waste and not to mention the fact that once we run out of room to store it, we're out of options.  The earth can be a much cleaner place to live once we start taking the measures necessary to reduce emitted pollutants and clean up the damage already done in our atmosphere.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, we have identified carbon dioxide as the main contributing pollutant to global warming.  Documented research has proven that the atmospheric temperatures have increased dramatically over the past decade and has resulted in the melting of the ice around the North Pole.  By reducing and eliminating the greenhouse gas layer we can gradually lower our planet’s retained heat and prevent Arctic ice from melting.  Buildings have been designed to rapidly capture large amounts of carbon dioxide out of the air.   The proposal of capturing and disposing carbon dioxide waste is costly and not very sustainable.  The better and more practical approach is to convert the carbon dioxide into a reusable product such as formic acid using hydrogen as the means to do such. 

With time, and with the help of technology such as scrubbers, we can return the earth to its natural and pure state to enjoy fresh, clean air everywhere we go.

Sources:

Images captured from the Natural Resources Defense Council, Wikipedia, and National Geographic.

---

[1] Kunzig, R., (2010) Scrubbing the Skies. National Geographic, Retrieved September 11, 2010, Website: http://sfx.lib.byu.edu.erl.lib.byu.edu/sfxlcl3?genre=article;isbn=;issn=00279358;title=National%20Geographic;volume=218;issue=2;date=20100801;atitle=Scrubbing%20the%20Skies.;aulast=Kunzig,%20Robert;spage=30;pages=30-32;sid=EBSCO:Academic%20Search%20Premier;pid=

[2] Jacobson, M.. (2010). Short-term effects of controlling fossil-fuel soot, biofuel soot and gases, and methane on climate, Arctic ice, and air pollution health. Journal of Geophysical Research. Atmospheres, 115(D14),   Retrieved September 11, 2010, from Research Library. (Document ID: 2134027531).

[3] The green house effect:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_green_house_effect.svg

[4] Bekryaev, R., Polyakov, I., & Alexeev, V. (2010). Role of Polar Amplification in Long-Term Surface Air Temperature Variations and Modern Arctic Warming. Journal of Climate, 23(14), 3888-3892,3894,3896-3899,3901-3906.  Retrieved September 11, 2010, from Research Library. (Document ID: 2125403031).

[5]Global Warming Puts the Arctic on Thin Ice:  http://www.nrdc.org/globalwarming/qthinice.asp

[6] Mikkelsen M., Jorgensen, M., & Krebs, F. (2009). The teraton challenge. A review of fixation and transformation of carbon dioxide. Energy & Environmental Science, Retrieved September 11, 2010, from Research Library. (Document ID: 10.1039/b912904a)

Creating Waves

Have you ever been peacefully chilling on a raft, perhaps laying down and soaking in the sun and some punk in a big boat zooms on by creating these annoying waves to interrupt your little moment?  Essentially this is what Martin Luther did to the Roman Catholic church.  Only not did he create simply one wave, but 95 of them directed at the Roman Catholic church.



   Luther was one of many who took advantage of information recently made available from printing presses.  He studied the bible and identified missing principles and practices found within the common beliefs of the people.  In his pursuit of truth, he actively encouraged others to follow him.  One of the main points Luther argued was that the Bible was the central means to discern God's word, not the pope.  He also believed it was wrong to require people to purchase penitents for a remission of their sins.  To Luther and other critics it appeared that salvation was simply for sale.  (http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1136.html)

Martin Luther was a very intellectual man.  He earned three Bachelor's Degrees, a Masters Degree, and a Doctorate!  Sometimes people are simply born extremely smart, other times, you have to work hard to mold your head into one that thinks "outside-of-the-box."  I think many of us fall under this category.  For the last couple years I've come to realize that the most significant thing I'm taking away from college is not a degree, it's not hundreds and hundreds of random general education facts, it's that I've learned to learn.  I can't speak for Martin Luther, but I have a feeling that his many studies attributed to his earthly accomplishments.

Understanding Women

I just wanted to give a shout out to Dr. John L. Lund for bringing clarity to both men and women on how the opposite sex thinks.  I listened to his recorded set of talks on how to strengthen a marriage and was very intrigued and impressed with the material he presented as well as how he delivered his messages.

Dr. Lund go into specific details on the differences of a woman's brain and a man's brain.  I don't want to give away the main points, but one thing covered is the neurological studies of the human brain for both sexes.  If you were to compare a woman's brain, it would be like a four-way highway with information constantly coming and going.  These range from emotions to thoughts to all sorts of things where as a typical brain of a man is like a path in the forest.  Only one thing at a time.  Dr. Lund explains that men are the protectors.  If they had a brain like women and were in a war, they couldn't fight ferociously while thinking about the wood that needs to be chopped that evening.  The Dr. explains the benefits both spouses brings in a marriage and interjects scriptures sporadically to add meaning and support to his topics.  The CDs are very spiritual, comical, and will literally benefit anyone's life if they choose to listen to them.  I HIGHLY recommend them.

It's only $14 on amazon.

Data vs Information

I thought I'd share a quick post on the differences between data vs information since I'm majoring in Information Systems and the field is very interesting.

Image being a store manager and you have a database set up to keep track of all the purchases made via bar code scanners.  When a products are scanned at a cash register, an individual record is generated for it which contains the product name, its cost, perhaps the date purchased, a product ID number, and/or the employee who carried out the transaction.  This process is repeated until eventually you have hundreds and thousands of rows of records.  This entire sum of items is data.  Typically data comes in large sums.

Information is analyzed data which represents something of value.  For example, the Walmart in Orem typically stocks up with items such as hangers and toilet paper near the beginning of the fall.  They do this because they've analyzed previous years of data and identified that incoming students of the local colleges of BYU and UVU find they need these items when they move into their new apartments.

The major of Information Systems teaches students how to turn raw data into useful information via computer programming.  The main language is SQL (Standard Query Language), which allows you to search on whatever it is you please.  SQL statements may be simple and short, and can also fill pages with its intricate procedures.

Searching - Recommendation Systems

When I want to look up information on a product I want to eventually buy, I want to know, and I image most people in the world do as well, if the product is any good. The main tool I use is Amazon's vast customer review database. Amazon carries and distributes thousands of products ranging from college text books to girls gone wild video tapes. Go to Amazon.com and perform a simple search for a water bottle.

You should see a returned list of all items relevant to your search. If a product has ever been purchased before on Amazon, chances are a review or two will be written about that product. Amazon takes all its reviews and displays the average customer review by the means of gold stars. Once you click on the stars, you may begin to read the reviews. You may read some of the best reviews or the worse ones. What I typically like to do is make sure the span of customer reviews is large enough and if there is clearly a dominating review of it being really good or horrible, that's enough for me to make a purchasing decision. In the example below, a water bottle has 461 reviews and 3/4 of all votes ranked it at five stars. There is a very good chance that you won't be disappointed with this product if you were to buy it.

 There are critics everywhere so if I find a product with only a couple reviews and one is either really positive and/or negative, I can't really rely on that being very accurate. It could very well be that vendors rival is simply trying to get a competitive edge on the internet by playing dirty.

The effects of the printing press

One of the most significant events in the early 1400s was the creation of the Johannes Gutenberg printing press.  Why was this such a significant event?  It was the means of publishing and distributing books to common people so they could learn truth for themselves.  A civilization ruled by a church manipulating what and how you thought became a place where people could learn truth for themselves.  This became quickly evident after the mass production of the Bible.

Like my previous posts, I like to have a small video to better explain these topics.  Enjoy.

Humanism

One of the topics we're covering in my Civilization class is humansim.  Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, or practice that focuses on human values and concerns.  As I was performing my various research I was getting somewhat confused because the information I was finding wasn't always consistent.  Humanism may mean several things. Wikipedia breaks it down into the following four categories:
1. A historical movement associated especially with the Italian Renaissance
2. An approach to education that uses literary means or a focus on the humanities to inform students
3.  A variety of perspectives in philosophy and social science which affirm some notion of human nature.
4.  A secular ideology which espouses reason, ethics, and justice, whilst specifically rejecting supernatural and religious dogma as a basis of morality and decision-making.

To attempt to better understand a humanistic way of thinking I found a video of Humanists expressing their views on the subject.      
                                                                


This video came across as slightly confusing and contradictory to my own personal beliefs.  As one woman put it in the video, humanists don't need to be "forced" or have a reason to do good things.  I don't feel as though people of a religious background that do positive things are doing them always out of duty.  To simply put it, I believe people act in a manner similar to their parents and since God is our Eternal Father, we have it in our blood (soul/spirit) to do/act/think as He does.

After watching the video above, humanism seemed to sound a lot like atheism.  I was able to find a video of an individual who views himself as a strong atheist address this subject.



A follow-up comment was posted to the video defending Secular Humanism and it reads:

   "No, we don't shift the same values from Christianity into secular humanism because we don't believe that we are inherently bad and need to be constantly apologizing for our existence. Just the opposite; we put authority of thought into ourselves and we celebrate the existence of human kind. We value our existence and we do believe in SECULAR science as the only real science, in the art and humanities and WE BELIEVE WE CAN DECIDE ON OUR MORALS - that's a huge difference."


After reading the posted comment, I better understand where Secular Humanists stand.  I can also understand where the guy in the video is coming from, although some of his statements are a bit biased

Syncfriend.com

Syncfriend.com is essentially a central tool a cell phone user may use to synchronize and backup their mobile phone's (and Outlook) contacts and calendar for free over the internet. 

 

One thing Syncfriend offers consumers that no other site or service does is its ability to deliver other people's contact information (with their permission) to your phone.  Both you and your friends may share each other's contacts in an equally effortless way and not have to worry about losing your contacts because they're stored securely online.  Proper programming has been taken into consideration so common contacts will not be duplicated in your phone.

 

You may edit the information on each of your contacts on a provided user interface with Syncfriend.  Information such as email, home addresses, business title, and more may be entered quickly with ease. 

 

Cell phone users in the United States have increased from 34 million a decade ago to more than 203 million[1].  As a nation, approximately two out of three individuals owns a cell phone.  With this widespread use of a common device, there will always be emerging needs that will change along with the technology improvements of the cell phone. 

Getting down to the basics, the one thing all phones have in common are contacts.  Names and numbers need to be entered manually for each phone.  I realize that there are tools which exist on Apple Macs such as iSync which will (via Bluetooth) allow you to sync your contacts on certain phones with your computer.  If you aren't a Mac user or happen to own a phone that isn't compatible with iSync, you're out of luck.  The average cell phone user has approximately 60 contacts[2], and manually entering in the names and numbers of each contact is tedious and time consuming. 

When a cell phone user switches to a new provider or simply upgrades to a new phone, switching contacts is typically performed at the provider's location and often includes a $10-$20 fee.  People pay because spending 1-2 hours entering in contact information with small cell phone buttons is neither fun nor enjoyable.  Syncfriend is a free service and is available to everyone. 

The entire idea behind Syncfriend is that users only have to maintain their own personal profile.  When you make a change to your profile, all your friends' phonebooks will be automatically self-updated and vice versa.  As Black Eyed Peas put it, "We are the now generation" and we want things immediately.  Anything that saves us time is valuable and will be (if it isn't already) in high demand.  Let's take a look at just a few items: 

• Cars replaced bikes which replaced walking/running to get from place to place
• Wikipedia replaced the need to pull out one of the dozens of encyclopedia (sometimes outdated) books
• Microwaves replaced the need to manually heat/prepare food and meals
• Digital music is replacing physical CDs
• Online ordering is slowly replacing the need to physically shop at stores

There are very few people in the US who haven't driven a car, searched Wikipedia, used a microwave, listed to music digitally, or ordered something online.  That's because those items all had one thing in common.  They were created with the purpose to expedite a former slow process. 

In conclusion, Syncfriend is a free tool designed to synchronize and backup your contacts as well as the contact information of your friends.  It replaces the tedious task of re-entering in contact information or paying a provider to give that service to you.  With cell phones rapidly increasing in popularity and demand, consumers will be looking for simple ways to enter in their contact information and back it up.  Syncfriend.com takes the tedious cell phone functionality of saving contact information, and simplifies it in a more efficient and effective way.  For those reasons, I believe Syncfriend.com is one of the best startup businesses on the internet.

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[1] http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06075/671034-294.stm

[2] http://www.chacha.com/question/what-is-the-average-number-of-contacts-saved-on-a-person's-cell-phone

I was able to find this map while doing some additional research of the various voyages taken during the early years of discovery.  This incorporates extensive new geographical information based on four series of voyages: Columbus to the Caribbean, Pedro Alvarez Cabral to Brazil, Vasco de Gama followed by Cabral to eastern Africa and India, and the brothers Corte-Real to Greenland and Newfoundland.

The efforts of the early voyages helped us to eventually create a civilization which created computers and eventually developed the internet with its multiple uses.  Now we have satellites which enable us to view any section of the earth we desire. Google has taken it an extra step and is generating "street views" of places everywhere in the earth.  Within a couple years, Google has mapped out essentially the entire US.  Even the town I'm from (population < 3000) has the main street mapped out.  Google has been fighting legal disputes with other countries regarding privacy concerns with their street view.  A few years ago you could  browse down the streets of Russia and other countries, but now only the countries shown in blue below are accessible to users.  The individual blue dots you see scattered everywhere are images of that location.

Street View (below)

I included an example of what a street view looks like and I literally found our building on campus.  The semi-transparent white line on the road is the line you may follow with the virtual camera and view the scenery of all the surrounding areas (a complete 360 degree view).  If you're not familiar with this, go to maps.google.com and click and drag the little orange guy on top of a blue road.  The street map will automatically appear and you can control where you want to go by simply clicking the arrows shown on the road or double clicking on a visible path further down on the road.

Galileo Sun-Centered System

I was able to find this video on YouTube which helps to explain the old Ptolemaic thinking and how the Copernican view came to be.  If you're a visual learner like myself, this helps illustrate a lot of the text we needed to read for this lecture.