All posts by Steven Michael Perdue

Touch screens, so simple yet so complex.

There are some aspects of technology that I feel are taken for granted.  They were revolutionary when the ideas were conceived, but now, since they are in every device.  The technology behind certain features are complex which should lead to a greater appreciation for them.  Touch screens are what best fit this description.  I feel people believe touch screens to be simple when they are a pretty complex technology. (Warning, things are about to get extremely technical)

The first touchscreen was actually introduced in 1992 but they didn’t become popular in the public until the early 2000s.  The technology seems so simple because so many different devices have touchscreens.  Our phones, iPods, tablets, and even now laptops and monitors have touchscreen capabilities.  Although it may seem simple based on the immense amount of objects that have them, the technology is actually pretty cool.  There are three different types of systems: resistive, capacitive, and shock acoustic.

The resistive system consists of a normal glass panel that is covered with a conductive and a resistive metallic layer.  These two layers are held apart by spacers, and a scratch-resistant layer is placed on top of the whole setup.  An electrical current runs through the two layers while the monitor is operational.  When the user touches the screen, the two layers make contact in that exact spot. The change in the electrical field is noted and the coordinates of the point of contact are calculated by the computer.  Once the coordinates are known, a special driver translates the touch into something that the operating system (OS) can understand.

In the capacitive system, a layer that stores electrical charge is placed on the glass panel of the monitor.  When the user touches the monitor with his or her finger, some of the charge is transferred to the user, so the charge on the capacitive layer decreases.  This decrease is measured in circuits located at each corner of the monitor.  The computer calculates, from the relative differences in charge at each corner, exactly where the touch event took place and then relays that information to the touch-screen driver software.  One advantage that the capacitive system has over the resistive system is that it transmits almost 90 percent of the light from the monitor, whereas the resistive system only transmits about 75 percent.  This gives the capacitive system a much clearer picture than the resistive system.

On the monitor of a surface acoustic wave system, two transducers (one receiving and one sending) are placed along the x and y axes of the monitor’s glass plate.  Also placed on the glass are reflectors (they reflect an electrical signal sent from one transducer to the other). The receiving transducer is able to tell if the wave has been disturbed by a touch event at any instant, and can locate it accordingly.  The wave setup has no metallic layers on the screen, allowing for 100-percent light throughput and perfect image clarity. This makes the surface acoustic wave system best for displaying detailed graphics.

As you can see, the technology behind touch screens is so complex.  I hope this blog gives you a little more appreciation for them each time you open up an open using your finger.

Technology that pose a threat to cable

Many people are frustrated with Comcast and Time-Warner, and rightfully so.  The super powers in cable agreed to merge last year.  This has created a monopoly in the cable industry.  The frustration of Comcast within the population can be credited to their ridiculous reputation of raising prices without informing the customer, unreasonably high prices for the “service” that is being provided, and, without a doubt, the worst customer service ever.  Comcast is so bad that it somehow managed to beat Monsanto, yes that Monsanto, for the consumer’s vote of worst company of 2013.  With the rise of streaming service, consumers are starting to have some say in whether or not Comcast receives their money.  There are three major players in the streaming service industry that can keep the public away from the evil Comcast.

The first device that I will be discussing is Chromecast.  Chromecast is a premium streaming device that was developed by Google.  This is the easiest of the devices to use.  To set it up, one simply has to plug the stick into the hdmi port on any hdtv.  Supports a growing number of apps including Netflix, YouTube, HBO Go, Hulu Plus, Pandora, ESPN, MLB.TV, Google Play Movies and Music, Plex, MLS, crackle, Vevo, and Rdio.  One can also use this to open up a Google Chrome internet browser onto the tv.  With access to Google Play Movies, the user can instantly stream or buy new television shows or movies.  The convenient part about this, is that the stick can be connected to a cell phone for portable access of whatever is being streamed.

Apple TV is the next alternative to Comcast cable.  Apple TV, nicknamed iTV, was originally in development in 2006.  The first edition was released in 2008.  The current device that can be bought today has come a long way and has added many networks.  Apple TV is connected directly to the HDMI port on a tv. The device has no integrated controls and can only be controlled externally, either by an Apple Remote control device, with which it is shipped, using its infrared capability or by the ‘Remote’ app on iOS devices, such as the iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad.  Its Wi-Fi capability is  used to receive digital content from the iTunes app using AirPlay or directly from iTunes Store, which is then streamed to the TV.  Netflix, Hulu Plus, YouTube, and HBO Go are popular streaming services that are available to the streamer.  On top of those, iTV also offers standard networks such as ABC, Disney, History, Lifetime, and A&E.

The Roku 3 is another alternative.  Like the others, the Roku is connected directly to an HDMI port.  It is capable of streaming in full 1080p HD and comes with an HDMI cord for convenience.  The remote comes with a headphone jack in case the user needs to listen to the content in a more private manner.  The Roku comes with Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Hulu Plus and 1500+ channels.  There is an option to download the app onto a cell phone and stream whatever is being watched/listened to to the television that the Roku is connected to.  With the capability to connect to Roku Store, the user can purchase the newest of movie releases.

With the above services, and the increase in productivity of Amazon Fire TV, it’s possible to stay away from Comcast.  With a growing discontent, Amazon is going to need to do something to keep customers with them.

 

 

Police misconduct tracked for February 10, 2015

The police force is an ever powerful part of American society.  They are responsible for serving and protecting the people of the United States.  They are the ones that in charge of keeping citizens safe and in good care.  It’s expected for them to hold themselves to a high standard if doing so.  But it’s not impossible to expect them to be perfect.  They are human.  They make mistakes.  Here is the February 10, 2015 report for mistakes that police officers made on or before that date.

Last year, Kensington police Sgt. Keith T. Barrow had an encounter with a prostitute in a hotel room .  During this encounter, he fell asleep.   When he woke up, his badge, his gun, and two rounds of ammunition were all gone.  Although all of this happened, the officer managed to hang onto his job with no immediate suspension.  Many in the community were outraged that, even with an investigation, the officer managed to get off free.  His suspension was given out on February, 10th.  The length of the suspension is unknown.  Reno police got the gun back, but only after the prostitute’s pimp shot himself in the leg with it.  That last thing can’t be blamed on the police officer, just the idiotic pimp.

In Cedar Grove, WV, the police chief, Aaron Roop, was arrested and charged with domestic violence overnight.  According to a release from the Montgomery Police Dept., they were called to a home on Third Avenue early in the morning on Feb. 3.   When they arrived they found Chief Roop on the porch of the house with a gun in his hand, according to the release.  Witnesses say Roop threatened to kill  his wife and his brother-in-law.  According to a criminal complaint, Chief Aaron Roop pointed a gun at his wife’s head and threatened to “blow her head off, so she could not cheat on him any more.”  When Roop’s brother-in-law tried to intervene, Roop hit him with the gun and threatened to kill him.  He was also in trouble for an assault charge last year.

In Detroit, a man was awarded $2.5 million dollars, of tax payers money, for being wrongfully imprisoned 26 years for rape.  The reason this is significant is because he was convicted due to the police holding key evidence from the lawyers.  There was enough DNA evidence that clearly proved the man’s innocence, but it was never given to the defense.  Imagine spending 26 years imprisoned for a crime that you didn’t commit.  $2.5 million is nowhere near enough for what that man went through.

Isle of Wight sheriff’s deputy, Alvin Wood, was charged with sexual battery of a high school student.  He assigned to patrol the county’s high schools when a high school student complained that he touched her inappropriately, resulting in him being charged with sexual battery and indecent liberties.  These claims resulted in him being suspended immediately.  It seemed to have been a truthful claim as he resigned a month ago.

James Norris, a Lexington police officer, was charged with harassment with physical contact and second-degree official misconduct, both class B misdemeanors.  It is not clear what Norris is accused of doing.  Lexington police released few details about the incident, but released the following statement: “Lexington Police leadership takes very seriously reports of officer behavior that does not meet agency standards and guidelines. Upon hearing allegations of improper behavior by Officer Norris we acted swiftly, with the guidance of the Fayette County Attorney’s Office, to investigate and take appropriate action.”

In New York City, Officer Peter Liang, who had been on the force for less than 18 months, was patrolling a darkened stairwell at the Louis H. Pink Houses in East New York when he fired a single shot that fatally struck the man, Akai Gurley, as he walked downstairs.  The wound was enough to result in his death.  Less than 12 hours after the shooting, Police Commissioner William J. Bratton called Gurley, “totally innocent” and characterized the shooting as an “unfortunate accident.”  The officer was indicted for criminally negligent homicide, reckless endangerment, second-degree assault and two counts of official misconduct.  This occurred before the events of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.  This story was buried under the other stories that swept across the nation.

These are the people that we are to look to for safety.  These are the people that took a sworn oath to look out for citizens.  A sworn oath that they took that is to keep them doing what is right.   I am very well aware that stories like this happen to such a small percentage of police officers.  I am also aware that there are a lot of great police officers.  However, these are the reasons why there is a great amount of distrust for the law force.  They are here to serve and protect, not to threaten their wives or inappropriately touch a female.  They are especially not here to keep a man wrongfully imprisoned when the person that actually committed the crime is still out there.  People want to defend the police, to support them for stories like this.  Me, like most people that I know, will defend the police when given a reason to.

 

 

The amazing technology behind 3D printers

It’s best to begin by defining what 3D printing really is.  3D printing, by technological definition, is a process of making three dimensional solid objects from a digital file.  The creation of a 3D printed object is achieved using additive processes.  In an additive process an object is created by laying down successive layers of material until the entire object is created.  Each of these layers can be seen as a thinly sliced horizontal cross-section of the eventual object.

The process of creating a 3D printer begun in the 1980s.  In 1981, Hideo Kodama invented two AM fabricating methods of a three-dimensional plastic model with photo-hardening polymer.  The UV exposure area is controlled by a mask pattern or the scanning fiber transmitter.  In 1984, Chuck Hull developed a prototype system based on this process known as stereolithography, in which layers are added by curing photopolymers with UV lasers.  These two events laid the foundation of 3D printing.

The process  starts with making a virtual design of the object that is wanted to created.  This virtual design is made in a CAD (Computer Aided Design) file by using a 3D modeling program (for the creation of a totally new object) or with the use of a 3D scanner (to copy an existing object). This scanner makes a 3D digital copy of an object and puts it into a 3D modeling program.

To prepare the digital file created in a 3D modeling program for printing, the software slices the final model into hundreds or thousands of horizontal layers.  When this prepared file is uploaded in the 3D printer, the printer creates the object layer by layer.  The 3D printer reads every slice (or 2D image) and proceeds to create the object blending each layer together with no sign of the layering visible, resulting in one three dimensional object.

Not all 3D printers use the same technology to print their objects. The printers mainly differ in the way that the layers are built.  Some methods use melting or softening material to produce the layers. Selective laser sintering (SLS) and fused deposition modeling (FDM) are the most common technologies using that way of printing. Another method of printing is to lay liquid materials that are cured with different technologies.  The most common technology using this method is called stereolithography

Personal 3D printing currently has a small market.  It started to rise during 2011.   Due to the rapid development within this new market, printers are getting cheaper and cheaper, with prices ranging anywhere from $250 – $2,500.

It is predicted by some in the industry that this technological development will change the nature of commerce.  They believe this because users will be able to do much of their own manufacturing rather than engaging in trade to buy products from other people and corporations.

3D printers capable of outputting in colour and multiple materials already exist and will continue to improve to a point where functional products will be able to be output.  With effects on energy use, waste reduction, customization,  and product availability, 3D printing will change the manufacturing world as we know it.

3D printed skull

 

Phone case

 

3D printed car

Evolution of Video Game Consoles Pt.2

In last blog, I left off with the Nintendo 64 and original Playstation.  Those two were huge advancements in the technology that could be put into gaming consoles.  As you are going to see, however, each console released presented technology that would have been though possible just years prior.

2000 marked the beginning of a new era, and a new console war.  The Playstation 2 (PS2) and Xbox were released in consecutive years.  Both systems feature 128-bit processors.  The controllers of both systems introduced the usage of two joysticks.  The PS2 had backwards compatibility, meaning it could play games that were made for the original Playstation.  The PS2 also was capable of being able to play DVDs, making it the first console system that was able to do that.  It introduced bigger memory cards and a motion detecting camera.  The Xbox was the first system that Microsoft released.  The Xbox became the first system to have a built in hard disk drive.  Xbox also became the first system that was capable of supporting online gaming between people from all across the world.  To compete with Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo also released a console, the Nintendo Gamecube.  The Gamecube had very similar traits, including being powered by a 128-bit processor, external memory, and disk based games.

PS2 Graphics
Xbox graphics
Gamecube graphics

The timespan of 2005-2006 ushered in a new era in the console wars as the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 (PS3), and Wii were all released.  This generation introduced many important things.  Both the PS3 and 360 came with online play.  This connected people from all across the globe.  But more importantly, it allowed multimedia features.  The user could download games, music, movies, and television shows.  Both the 360 and PS3 came with internal hard drive, meaning memory cards were no longer needed.  The PS3 had a slight advantage due to it having Blu-Ray, which is just a higher definition of viewing movies.   All three systems introduced wireless controllers.  Nintendo’s alternative, the Wii, differs from these in some ways.  Although all three having similar processors and hard drives, the Wii was based on an entirely new concept.  The Wii used motion technology for the user to play games.  Each movement that the user made resulted in the game character acting in some way or another.  This model was ultimately “copied” by Xbox and its Kinect and Playstation and its Move.

Playstation 3 graphics
Xbox 360 graphics
Wii graphics

In 2012, the current console war began with the release of the Nintendo U.  The Wii U is the first Nintendo console to fully support high-definition graphics. The Wii U also introduced an interesting, new controler.  Its controller is the GamePad, which features an embedded touchscreen.  The screen can be used either as a supplement to the main display  or in supported games, play the game directly on the GamePad without using the television it is connected to.  The Wii U is also backwards compatible with most games released for the original Wii, meaning it can play Wii games.

Wii U graphics

The reason the Wii U is separated from the next two consoles is because they are in a league of their own in this console war.  Sony released the PS4 and Microsoft released the Xbox One in 2013.  Both are featured in beautiful, full HD,  are compatiable with video streamers such as Netflix and Hulu Plus, and have network play that allows friends and strangers to play with each other.  The controllers for each systems didn’t change that greatly, but they definitely improved on earlier generations.  The PS4 contains a processor which critics referred to as making it “the most powerful console ever”.  The Xbox One contains a processor that allows it to keep many different applications active at the same time, meaning one could have Netflix, Hulu, and a game open at the same time.

xbox one graphics

 

ps4 graphics

The rate of which video game consoles evolved is mind blowing.  Just forty years before the release of the PS4 and Xbox One, video games were visualized as single pixel items.  Not only did the hardware and controllers of consoles experience change, but so did the entire usage of consoles.  Now the Xbox one can be used as a cable box.  Combining that with Netflix and Hulu, it serves all entertainment purposes.  The PS4 allows users to stream their video game playing to people all over the world.  It’s going to be interesting to see what the next generation of video gaming has to offer.  It’s truly amazing how far we’ve come:

Very first graphics vs graphics of upcoming Uncharted game

The death of three unarmed men

404.  400.  320.   In 2011, 2012, and 2013 these were the, highly estimated, amount of civilians that were killed by police officers.  Of course 99% of these  were rightful deaths.  The police officer was in a gun fight, the life of the officer was threatened, or the person showed some act of physical violence against the officer.  I respect the officers that put their lives on the line each day to keep this nation safe.  I respect the good police officers that do everything in the book, the ones that try to keep themselves safe and the people around them safe.  It’s a shame that an officer is sometimes forced to take a life solely to save his/her own.

Amadou Diallo.  Oscar Grant.  Eric Garner.  These are three people that were killed at the hands of police officers.   They are also three cases that I believed not to be rightful deaths.  All three were African-American and resulted in detailed investigations against the officers.  Since two of these are very unknown cases, I’ll give a rundown of them.

Amadou Diallo was murdered in 1999.  A couple of NYPD officers confused him with a violent rapist.  A violent rapist that was already in custody.   He ran up to his porch, where they told him to put his hands up.  On his porch, he pulled out a squared object.  Believing it to be a gun, the police started firing shots at him.  One of the cops slipped and fell on the porch, making the others believe that he was shot.  At the end of the “shootout”, the cops fired 41 shots at him, with 19 hitting him.  The cops had zero shots fired at them, with zero shots hitting them.  The squared object that he pulled out of his jacket was his wallet, presumably with the intention of showing his idea.

Oscar Grant January 1, 2009.  Two officers got called to the train station because there was an apparent incident between twelve people that were described to be “hammered and stoned” on the police call.   Grant and two friends were involved in the incident.  The officers detained Grant and his friends.  This is when some of the disagreement comes in.  There are different views of whether his hands were behind his back or not.  According to court filings from the DA’s office, Grant had his hands behind his back during the time of the shooting.  With his hands behind his back, an officer announced that Grant was struggling and that he would “tase” him.  Instead of tasing him, he pulled out his gun and fired a shot into his lung.  The bullet resulted in a punctured lung, leading to the death og Grant eight hours later,  The officer responsible was charged with manslaughter.   These events are chronicled in the film Frutivale Station.  Actor Michael B. Jordan plays Grant.  I highly recommend it to all as it is an absolutely excellent film.

The third of these deaths is undoubtedly the most well known as it was the most recent one.  On July 17, 2014 officers approached Garner.  After Garner expressed to the police that he was tired of being harassed and that he was not selling cigarettes, officers moved to arrest Garner on suspicion of selling single cigarettes from packs without tax stamps.  When an officer took Garner’s wrist behind his back, Garner swatted his arms away.   The officer then put his arm around Garner’s neck and pulled him backwards and down onto the ground.  After the officer removed his arm from Garner’s neck, he pushed Garner’s head into the ground while four officers moved to restrain Garner, who repeated “I can’t breathe” eleven times while lying face down on the sidewalk.  After Garner lost consciousness, officers turned him onto his side to ease his breathing.  Garner remained lying on the sidewalk for seven minutes while the officers waited for an ambulance to arrive.  The officers and EMTs did not perform CPR on Garner at the scene.  According to a spokesman for the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association of the City of New York, this was because they believed that Garner was breathing and that it would be improper to perform CPR on someone who was still breathing.  He was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital approximately one hour later.  The most significant thing about this case is that choke holds have been banned in the NYPD for the past 21 years.  Also, all of this was filmed.

All three of these deaths led to major backlash against the police forcing.  That reaction was absolutely deserving.  In all three of these, the person that died was unarmed.  In two of these cases the police officer wasn’t indicted.  There are far more cases showing the brutality and unnecessary procedures made by police officers.  As another case pops up, the growing distrust in the community grows for the police officers.  We’re getting to a point where people are just not going to trust the police force.  I’m still in the middle.  I know there are good cops out there, I know these cases are one in a dozen, but they are hard to ignore.   The action of civilians needs to change, but the actions of police officers need to change even more.  They are here to look after us, to protect us.  I know that these people were involved, or accused of being involved of something.  But if we are moving to a nation where looking like a rapist, not following an order, or resisting is enough an officer needs to fire the gun, I don’t want to live in that nation.  I’m not going to get arrested, so these are things I don’t want to worry about.  I just don’t want people to die without an actual cause by the people that are supposed to prevent that.

 

link: http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-police-deaths-20140813-story.html#page=1

The Evolution of Video Game Consoles pt. 1

Video games today can be viewed at 1080p and 64 frames per second.  If you were to go back in time to 1962 and show someone a picture of what games would look like 50 years in the future, they would probably have labelled you as a Soviet spy and threw you in prison.  It’s truly amazing how far technology has come to allow us to experience video games in the way that we do today.

The first video games, starting with Spacewar! in 1962, weren’t actually that much of video games.  They were rather text to created worlds for the player to explore.  Instead of actually walking around to grab a lamp, a text would come up on the screen.  By clicking the text, the character would magically grab a lamp that didn’t appear to be there.

Atari caused a huge jump in 1979, when they took the classic game Adventure, and added actual graphics to it.  The following is a screenshot from that 1979 video game.


The main story in that game was to walk around caves and interact with the inhabitants of the caves.  Although major graphical limitations resorted in the representation of every character and object as a bunch of tiny, different colored, squares that were pixelated together, the user finally had some control in the movement of the character.

Although the Atari 2600 was the first console that could handle cartridge based games, it left a lot to be needed.  It  contained no hard drive to store programs,  possessed basically  no random-access memory (RAM), and had read-only memory (ROM) game cartridges with only two to four kilobytes of memory.   Graphics could only be displayed at a resolution of approximately 160×228 pixels in 128 colors.  To put that in prospective, your cell phone is probably running 1080×1920.

There were a few rises and falls of the video game market the next few years, and then the first major video game system was released.  In 1985, a Japanese playing card company called Nintendo released its first system: the Nintendo Entertainment System(NES).  With the help of The Legend of Zelda, Tecmo Super Bowl, and of course, Super Mario Bros., the NES quickly shattered previous records.  Even though video games weren’t very popular then, it still finds its way onto greatest selling console lists.

The NES brought some upgrades with its release.  The biggest upgrade would be its controller.  The Atari had a single joystick.  The NES had a directional pad and A, B, select, and start buttons.  It had 2 kilobytes of RAM and an 8-bit processor, both major upgrades from the Atari 2600. The resolution was listed at 256×240.  The upgrade in graphics is pretty clear:  

In 1991, North America experienced its first “console war”.  Nintendo released the sequel to the NES called the Super NES.  It faced off against the Sega Genesis, both of which were 16-bit processor systems.  Sega, carried by the popularity of Sonic the Hedgehog, fared well against Super Mario and Nintendo.   Both consoles introduced more buttons on the controllers, a major increase in RAM, as well as a big increase in graphics:

Mario from the SNES

In the years 1995 and 1996, the Playstation and Nintendo 64 (N64) were released, respectively. In this 32-bit processor era, graphics shifted from solely 2D to a major inclusion of 3D graphics.  Along with the Playstation came the introduction of CD-ROM technology, which allowed the price of games to drop tremendously.  With this came the invention of memory cards for systems.  The Playstation and Nintendo 64 both had a resolution of 640×480, both also being able to support 16 million different colors.  Nintendo, sticking to its old ways, released the N64 on a cartridge-based ROM.

Nintendo 64 graphics
playstation graphics

 

The history of video gaming consoles is absolutely massive and would take me another 800 words to cover.  This marks the progress made from the first graphic based gaming console in 1972 to the last ones of that millennium.  In the next blog, I will discuss the evolution of the gaming consoles released in our lifetimes.

Civic Issues ideas

Civic issues play a large role in the every day lives of almost all of us.  Whether it be involving race, religion, gender, politics, or any other sort of civic matter, our lives are directly effected because of it.  When thinking about different ideas, many came to mind so it was hard to narrow it down to just two.

The first civic issue that I considered blogging about deals with the police force.  Of course we all know about the issues in Ferguson and Eric Garner, but I want to go deeper than that.  I want to discuss those two events and other lesser known events.  I would also talk about things that are being done to help prevent this, as well as include a few stories of good police officers.  This would definitely be classified as a government issue as the police are government forces and its the government that is to take action against them.

Another civic issue that I would discuss has to deal with education.  This would deal with the schooling system, specifically elementary school and middle school.  It would discuss standardized testing,  the lack of creativity encouraged in schools, and the overall, in my opinion, awfulness of the public schooling system.

Both of those ideas would be interesting for me to blog about.  The schooling one doesn’t play as large of a role as it once did in our lives, but the one dealing with police does.  I’m unsure which to discuss but I know that it will be fun!

 

 

 

New semester, new (ish) passion!

Last semester, I wrote about perhaps the biggest passion of mine: philosophy.  I’ve been obsessed with it for years.  For some reason if you ever want to read about different philosophical ideas, or my personal philosophy, all of the posts are in the passion section in this website.

Although I could discuss philosophy for hours, I wanted to change things up.  I’m interested in many different things, so narrowing it down to just two topics proved to be pretty challenging.

The topic that came to mind first is science/technology.  It’ll range everything from the origin of different types of technology, technological advances, and important people in that field.  This topic is absolutely massive, covering many different things.  Technology is amazing, it plays a role in almost every single aspect of our lives.  I believe it’ll be interesting for the readers, and also for myself, to discuss how far we came and how far we have to go.

The second topic was entertainment.  I work at a movie theater back home, so movies are a big part of my life.  On top of that, I am completely in love with multiple tv shows.  If I decide to go down this route, I would review/discuss movies from the 1930s until today.  With the Oscars coming up, I would dedicate a blog or two strictly to the nominees in that prestigious award show.

The two topics that I have are vary greatly, but I would have fun blogging about either.  I don’t know which one that I’m going to decide on, but I’m excited either way!

 

Final post- my thoughts

Since this is the final blog, I decided to open up my mind to you guys.  I’m not going to do the same thing like the question-answer thing that I did.  It’s just going to be me giving my personal philosophy, without any philosophical terms, on things having to do with life.

I’m going to begin with my view on God.  I was raised in a Christian household.  My mom instilled Christian values in me at an early age.  I went to church every Sunday and once every other Tuesday for bible group.  With all of that being said, I wouldn’t necessarily categorize myself as a Christian.  I’m naturally skeptic.  Even at the age of seven, I was asking the group leader questions that she couldn’t answer.  These things stuck with me as I got older.  It was difficult for me to accept some of the things that they were teaching to me.  Because of that, I looked elsewhere for answers.  Now I also don’t believe there couldn’t be a god.  I believe there’s a very real chance that the one I learned about does exist.  My skepticism just requires questions that can’t be answered yet.

Next I’ll discuss what I think happens after death.  This view may contradict my views on a god, but it’s what makes most sense to me and it’s what I want to believe.  I do believe there is a difference between the body and the spirit.  When someone dies, I don’t believe the body just lies underground and the spirit dies off.  I don’t want to believe that, I want to believe that there is something that happens after death.  I believe in reincarnation.  In my theory of reincarnation, the spirit is like a metal.  When something is born, it’s born spiritless, it’s a magnet.  Each spirit, the metal, needs to find compatibility, or be attracted to, the birth of the new body, the magnet.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a human, tiger, elephant.  It just needs to have enough compatibility to be connected to the body.

I previously discussed my view on life, so I’ll just touch upon that quickly.  There is no set meaning to life.  Everyone needs to make the effort to find that themselves.  There is no book to how one should live.  There is no book to what makes someone successful or happy.  If someone is happy sitting inside and playing video games 15 hours a day, good for that person.  He/she achieved what everyone needs to: happiness.  As long as that person isn’t harming people, I don’t think any of us are in a position to judge that person based on what made him/her happy.

My view on social issues is very liberal and simple.

Gay marriage: I support it.  It doesn’t effect me.  It doesn’t effect anyone.  No one is harmed by it.  If two guys or two girls want to get married, that’s fine by me.  No one should deny them the right of happiness.

Marijuana legalization:  It causes less deaths than alcohol and tobacco each year.  Vending machines actually cause more deaths than marijuana.  The people of Colorado are handling it very well, I think the entire US can.  It just doesn’t make sense to me why it is illegal (I lied, it’s the pharmaceutical fault).

Abortion: This is one where I can actually reason with the other side.  I still hold a pro-choice stance.  There is no biological evidence of personhood, views of that vary based on the religion.  If someone wants an abortion, I’m sorry but that person shouldn’t be a parent.  The “they can put the kid up for adoption” thing is overused isn’t thought out.  Once again, if the person wants to have an abortion, they don’t care enough about the kid to ensure he/she has a better future.  I’ve read too many stories of kids getting born into the wrong people, being beaten, starved, and molested then dying at the age of three.  That’s the most horrible thing, and if it takes an abortion to stop that, then I’m for it.

I hope through this blog, you learned a little about philosophy, a little about me, but most importantly, a little about yourself.  I hope you enjoyed all that was taught, or at least attempted to be taught.  Thank you for sticking through the super long blogs, and the sometimes boring information.  This has been your bridge to the philosophical world, I hope it was interesting enough for you to stay there!