Author Archives: tjg5307

Yo Ho Ho and a bottle of…. Game of Thrones Episodes?

When you think of pirates, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Some may think of the classics like black bird who “sails the seven seas looking for treasure and plunder” while others may think of pirates that “act silly and have long dread locks and always ask where the rum is”. These pirates aside, there is one other type of pirate that sometimes gets forgotten by the not-so-technical of people. Some may even debate or even think these people are pirates at all. I am talking about the so-called pirates of the internet: who “pirate” different things off the internet like movies and music.

Pirate_Bay_logo.jpg
But the question I want to ask is why? Why do people pirate things off the internet? Piracy has been a common practice since the early days of the internet, and it would become a big thing that would change the very nature of the music/movie industry after Napster came out in 1999 which made it easy for everyone to download music for free off the internet (or i guess “pirate” it off the internet).
One of the obvious answers we can get as to why people pirate is because of the cost of such items. If given the option of going out to a store and buying a $29.99 Blu-ray or staying at home, finding a Torrent (the name for a file that contains the content) of the same movie at 1080p for free they will almost always go for the free option since they don’t need to spend money. But I feel like it is not as cut and dry as that.
There are a lot of factors as to why people pirate, sure stuff being free can be one but that is not the only reason. Many scientists, economists, and psychologists have been pondering this question, one major reason is the digital nature of the product, as this article explains: “Research into the matter suggests that many software pirates steal programs regardless of the software’s price tag. The economic factor provides the pirate with a means to justify his or her actions but it isn’t a real motivator. Studies suggest that people view digital property differently than physical property. They don’t place as great a value on software as they would a physical object like a car. In addition, they think that stealing software isn’t the same as taking a physical object because they’re making a copy of a program rather than taking a physical object. Because they perceive software to have less value than physical objects, stealing software doesn’t raise the same ethical concerns as grand theft auto” (Crowell, 2009). We are taught from a young age that stealing is wrong, but one thing that we did not have back then that we have today are advanced computers and P2P (peer 2 peer) torrenting which is mostly all the time all digital. I think this article makes sense in the fact we do not place high value on purely digital content and thus we see it as okay to pirate it as there is an infinite amount of the digital item to go around unlike physical ones. Another factor I think as to why they do it is because of the lack of risk involved, think about it: what do you think would be easier to get away with? Steal a car? Or steal a music CD off a website from inside your home?

Another reason as to why people pirate I think is because of the company’s implantation of various forms of DRM or Digital Rights Management. It is kind of hard to explain what it does, and it also comes in a variety of different ways, but bottom line it is a part of the software which tries to hamper people from taking the product and re-selling it or limiting how many times you can “activate” a product. DRM sole purpose is to place restrictions on the consumer, the person/people who have bought the product legally with cash. In a way the consumer sees this as themselves being punished for legitimately purchasing the product and is seen in many peoples eyes as anti-consumer. Sure, DRM may stop people from pirating it, but then again, it will ALSO drive these people to pirate content in the future or pirate the SAME software that has no DRM. Usually what happens is if a product has a very bad form of DRM people will try and “crack” it and put it up on BitTorrent sites and people instead of buying it will go to torrent it as it has no DRM on it. So in a way, DRM does more harm then it does good as it can be a gateway to torrenting.

Look, I’m not saying it is okay to pirate stuff, it is steal illegal and I believe that people deserve to be compensated for their work, I am just saying how corporations while in the pursuit to save their money have done more harm to themselves then good and has turned loyal customers into people who would pirate the same software to avoid the DRM of the products they put out. So piracy is a product of a lot of factors and is something that can’t be blamed on one sole reason as it is usually is a combination of various different factors based on each individual.

Also, I really recommend taking a look at this article that I linked earlier as it is a pretty good read about why people do pirate.

Man Brain Vs. Female Brain. What’s the difference?

May I start out this blog post saying how much I love Reddit.com sometimes? Sure it has it’s bad parts (there are some sub reddits that should be avoided, trust me) but it also has some pretty cool stuff and even very funny stuff. But it also has some very informative stuff as well, such as the topic of this blog post where I got on the sub Reddit r/science. If I could give anyone advice for finding a topic to write about for these blogs, r/science is probably a good place to look.

But anyway, back to the main point of this post. The human brain is a remarkable thing that we humans posses. It is the central control room of the body, are own personal super computer if you will. It is the one part of the body that controls who we are and is unique to each individual. But one question that has been asked plenty of times in the past is whether or not the brains of males are different in ways to the brains of females. Many scientists have made the conclusion that is the case, but now a recent study on brains may be the most conclusive of evidence that we have seen: that there are indeed many differences between the brains of males and females.
This article explains how they scanned a male and a female brain 1000 times and saw how the brain process different things and painted a neural path of brain functions. The neural map that they made for females and males can be seen below:
Brains.jpg
As you can see, the neural paths compiled for each brain are very different and process information in tasks in different ways. As the article states, the neural map women showed a strong connection between the right and left parts of the brain, while the men showed a strong connection between the front and back half of the brain. These differences are pretty clear, but it is something else about the findings that has one of the scientists on the team surprised.
One of the researchers, Ragini Verma said that she was surprised on how the results of the brain scans and the mapping of the neural network of the brains supported old stereotypes that people have made about men and women with the men’s brain being better at perception and co-ordinated activities while women are wired more social skills and memory as well as multi-tasking.
Verma says that: “If you look at functional studies, the left of the brain is more for logical thinking, the right of the brain is for more intuitive thinking. So if there’s a task that involves doing both of those things, it would seem that women are hardwired to do those better,” Verma said. “Women are better at intuitive thinking. Women are better at remembering things. When you talk, women are more emotionally involved – they will listen more. I was surprised that it matched a lot of the stereotypes that we think we have in our heads. If I wanted to go to a chef or a hairstylist, they are mainly men” (Verma, 2013).

So as you can see, this study pretty much confirms what most scientists have been thinking for a while when it comes to the brain: that the different sexes have different functioning brains with each sex having stronger sections then the other and it proves that they both work in different ways as seen by the two neural maps that have been made from this study. But this study may in fact gave us some proof to prove some of the stereotypes that Verma has mentioned and maybe debunked them as possible stereotypes. But none the less, brains are a powerful organ in our body and everyone’s brain is unique in some way.


Can writing help heal ourselves after a traumatic event?

Sometimes in people’s lives they experience an event that impacts them in a way that can cause damage to themselves and their mental state. whether it be witnessing the death of a close friend or loved one, to a person’s actions directly affecting the life or livelihood of a different person, traumatic affects like these can have drastic effects on the physique of person and can even have physical effects as well in some cases. There are some remedies to this in the form of psychiatric treatment and the use of medication, but there also seems to be another helpful tool in treating mental illness and even sometimes physical conditions brought on by mental illness and that is writing. But how does writing help someone who has been through a traumatic event and suffered mental illness? Or can writing also help someone heal after a negative physical ailment? According to one study, it can help a lot more then people think it can.

writing.jpg
This article talks about a study that was preformed by researchers in New Zealand conducted a study in which they wanted to figure out if expressive writing could help older adults heal faster. The surprising thing that this study found was that quite possibly expressive writing can heal physical aliments as well as mental. A control group of older people who had a biopsy on their arms were told to write about whatever they wanted to for 20 minutes a day, while another group did not right during the period. After the 20 day study period, the study concluded that on the 11th day that 76 percent of the group that did the expressive writing had fully healed compared with the 42 percent of the control group.
So maybe telling a patient to write about what they are feeling or other things can be a good treatment as well as medicine. But of course there is a possibility that these people healing faster is a result of chance or a 3rd variable because not all people are the same when it comes to healing from an injury. But this study does seem to raise a question as to how we humans can heal by doing something as simple as writing about it.

Can video games be beneficial to the body?

During the first blog period I asked the question “Do violent video games really turn kids into cold blooded killers?” in which I asked the question does violent video games play a roll into when people kill people or create catastrophes such as Columbine or the Virginia Tech massacre. I concluded in that blog post that violent video games does increase aggression, but there is no definitive proof that aggression produced by video games leads people to partake in large scale acts of violence.

Now I return to the realm of video games to try and answer another big question when it comes to video games: does playing video games help further develop the body?
670px-Improve-Eye-Hand-Coordination-Step-2.jpg
Now, if you were to ask anyone on the street if video games can be a positive thing for the body most people might say that video games have no positive affects and probably say that they are the reason that so many people in this country are over weight. There is no denying that video games could possibly lead to increased weight due to the fact that very little physical activity is done when you play video games and it sucks away time that could be used by exercising. But then again, so does watching TV or a movie as in you could say the same thing about those two causing a lack of physical activity. But there may be some people that do agree with the idea that video games help the body by developing hand eye coordination. This has been a widely accepted fact that games can do this, but it turns out there may be more positive affects to playing video games then just hand eye coordination.
A new study shows that playing video games can have positive effects on the brain. For the test they performed an experiment where one group of young adult males played the game “Super Mario 64” for a two month period for thirty minutes a day while another group did not play video games at all. According to the article: “Playing the Super Mario 64 video game causes increased size in brain regions responsible for spatial orientation, memory formation and strategic planning as well as fine motor skills” (Kurzweil, 2013). By playing the game and then scanning the brain after the test period it was found that the people who played the games were seen to have increased gray matter in the sections of the brain in charge of spatial navigationmemory formation, strategic planing, and fine motor skills in the hands.

So did this study prove anything? Well according to the people of the study it proved that there is a direct casual link between playing video games and a volumetric brain increase. The article also says that video games can also help people with mental disorders as well and with the results of this test it seems like a good idea.

So it seems video games can be beneficial to the body, mostly in the brain development and improvement part of the body. Of course, there is still the matter of how video games can make use lazy and take time away from physical activity which is something that will probably never change, but keep in mind there are a lot of things that can take away time to be physical such as watching TV and Movies which I mentioned earlier. So in some ways playing video games can be like a double edged sword when it comes to how it affects our bodies.

Either way, I’m still going to play some games for a good long while.

Homework: Good or Bad?

Let’s face it: homework stinks.

I say this because you could probably ask any kid or student on the street the question of whether or not they like homework and the answer will almost always be no. To many, homework is not something they like to do, it is just something they are forced to do as not doing it could result in bad grades and even failing a course.
homework.gif
So should we keep doing it? Or just stop this idea of mandatory homework? As it stands now, we have to do it since not doing it can kill someones grade and possibly their academic future. But by giving out this mandatory homework it can possibly do more harm then good. This article lists a study which can add some credibility to the fact that homework can be negative to the mental growth of a student. The article says: “A study by a group of Australian researchers found the average scores of relating to students’ academic performances against the amount of homework dished out at the end of the school day, showed clearly that when more time was spent on homework students were getting lower scores. The research clearly suggested that placing too much homework can cause lower grades and even lead pupils to begin suffering from depression” (Factual, 2013). As the article states, when students get over loaded with lots and lots oh homework their in school and test taking skills suffer as a result and it can even lead to depression. Doing so much homework and then finding out maybe that you did not get a good grade on test or quiz or the homework you did did not get a good grade can really be a demoralizing thing for a student to see and think that all that work and all that studying meant nothing. The article also points out the time table of a typical student in the elementary or high school level. A typical student spends most of their day at school from early in the mourning to mid afternoon and when they get out of school the last thing they are thinking of is doing more work. But when a student get’s so much homework or the homework is so hard they spend hours doing it, they now have no or little time to do what they want to do which can be somewhat of a overloading of material in a way.

So those reasons sound pretty bad right? Makes you think that maybe homework just doesn’t work and we should get rid of it huh? Well… maybe that is not entirely true. As you may have noticed, the main reason as to why kids were doing bad based on that study is not because of the material given to them as homework, but the amount they have been given. It goes back to “information overload”, when it comes to most people they tend to lose patience or start to turn off their brains in a way when a class or work drags on for too long. For example, I was in a class last semester which was dubbed a “tech class” by the community college. By “tech class” they mean that they think it should be a class that meets once a week for a long period of time: four and a half hours to be precise. Now I have been in long classes before, but that one took the cake. For me personally I can pay attention for probably 2 hours at one time (or 3 if we took 1 or 2 breaks) but to pay attention for four and half? No way! Now imagine a student in high school who has been sitting in classes all day for probably around 7 or 8 hours and then you give him/her 2 or 3 hours of homework to do! It can really put a strain on the mind and be really stressful!

Let’s take a look at another article which asks does homework really work? The answer they came to: “maybe?”. The article says that: “The good news: In an effort to answer this question, researchers have been doing their homework on homework, conducting hundreds of studies over the past several decades. The bad news? Despite scores of studies, definitive conclusions remain a matter of some debate” (Crawford). The problem is not that there are not enough conclusions raised by studies, there have been hundreds and hundreds of tests relating to the hypothesis of whether homework really works or is good for you, its just that the conclusions reached by these studies are not definitive in that many people debate the validity and the way these tests reached these conclusions.

One problem with trying to get a definitive conclusion on this matter is the fact that every child is different. You will probably never encounter two kids who are doing homework that each share the same viewpoints on the homework or show the same educational impact the homework has on them. Plus another aspect that can really throw these conclusions out the window are possible third variables that can cause the test to be “tainted” in a way. Performance can be blamed on lots of homework, but maybe the kid is more focused on something else? Maybe he is going through a tough time or has other things on his mind that could be making him think of other things then the test or quiz at hand? These confounding third variables could affect the student in a way that makes the test of if Homework works a void test since there is no way a scientist could possibly know about them to begin with.

Another possibility is the reason kids don’t do well after homework on tests and grades can be due to chance. For example, suppose I do a homework session that has the equivalent of one hours’ worth of homework and then I get a 20 question test that has all true or false questions. Now suppose I took the test blindfolded and answer the questions at random. Depending on how I answer: there is a equal probability that I could pass or fail that test. Pass or fail, it was mainly due to chance since I had no control over what I chose or what the questions even were, everything was chose at random. If I fail then I fail, if I passed then hooray for me but the fact remains that doing that homework did not really affect the outcome of whether or not I would have a better chance of passing the test.

Personally if you ask me, I think we do need homework even though we may not like it. I say this because I think it acts as a good way to keep the days materiel fresh and allows for the material learned during the day to sink in more. But what is interesting is that since I am older i realize this more or maybe it’s just that the older you get, the more homework helps you learn. Leslie Crawford, the author of the 2nd article I have read, lists a study that was done by a team at Duke University: “In a previous meta-study conducted in 1989, Cooper’s team at Duke University found that grade level heavily influences how much homework helps with academic advancement (as measured by standardized and class test scores.) It appears middle- and high schoolers have much to gain academically by doing their homework. The average high school student doing homework outperformed 69% of the students in a class with no homework. Homework in middle school was half as effective. In elementary school, there is no measurable correlation between homework and achievement” (Crawford). So by that logic, it can be safe to assume that students in higher level learning such as a college or university can benefit by doing their homework.

So is homework good or bad? Well, it probably depends on who you ask. There is no real right answer to this question because studies done can’t possibly conclude that it is either good or bad because each student is unique and holds different views regarding homework. But maybe there is one conclusion we can make from this: that maybe giving too much homework to students is the main problem we should be looking it. As Crawford says: “In fact, for elementary school-age children, there is no measureable academic advantage to homework. For middle-schoolers, there is a direct correlation between homework and achievement if assignments last between one to two hours per night. After two hours, however, achievement doesn’t improve. For high schoolers, two hours appears optimal. As with middle-schoolers, give teens more than two hours a night, and academic success flatlines” (Crawford). I think I can relate to this going back to what I said about long classes, there is a certain point that each student has where they hit a “mental fatigue” point where they just do not want to learn any more and what to do other things to stimulate the mind.

So maybe the problem inst whether or not homework does anything good for a student, but whether or not teachers are giving students too much homework and creating a lot of stress on the student as he spends his whole free time stuck behind papers and papers of homework. I think teachers need to take a good look at the amount of homework they are putting on the students as it seems to be doing more harm then good.

I agree that homework is pretty lame, I have better stuff to do then doing it. But I think it is something that can be a good tool for learning if it is used in the right way. Otherwise we could end up with students who just can’t get the grades they want by placing too much work on their educational plate to do at one sitting. Sometimes it is best to take teaching things in small chunks, then to just force the whole book into someones head at once. Let them live their lives outside of school, instead of turning ALL their free time into more school time.

The importance of sleep

Recently I took part in a 24 hour marathon for the video game club in which we play games in the HUB for 24 hours to raise money for charity. I personally did attend most of it, but I did not stay up the full 24 hours of the event and went to sleep for a few hours. Even though the event was for charity, staying up 24 hours without any sleep is not the best idea.

6a00d8341bf7f753ef00e54f90c8fa8834-800wi.gif
Staying up for 24 hours is not something that is easy to do, since fatigue and lack of energy start to set in when you are active and awake for so long. But sometimes we all stay up later then we should whether it be for an event such as the one I mentioned, or pulling an all nighter for the a big exam the next day or working on a project that is due the next day. But if you stay up for a 24 hour period and you are already a bad sleeper or you don’t get good nights of sleep, you are putting yourself and maybe even others at risk.
This article talks about how a mixture of lack of sleep and then staying up for a long period of time (such as 24 hours) without sleep can be produce a cocktail of trouble in a way. It talks about a certain study that looks at this sleep deprivation: “Staying up for 24 hours straight is bad enough, but the study shows that if you do that on top of having gotten less than six hours of sleep a night for two to three weeks, your reaction times and abilities are 10 times worse than they would have been just pulling an all-nighter” (Weise, 2010). So if you are a person who has trouble getting a good nights rest, staying up for 24 hours only makes your situation worse. 

This is a major problem if you work in specific fields of work that require you to be awake for long periods of time. Without sleep, work performance suffers and the person doing the work can not do it to the best of their ability or in worse case scenarios could be a danger to the people around them. In fact, the article also says that staying awake for 24 hours in a row for multiples days can impair a persons performance that is almost or just as bad as being under the influence of alcohol if you are driving.

So make sure to get some Z’s before you get yourself into some trouble.

For all the things that go bump in the night. Be afraid?

Ever watch one of those horror movies and started to get really scared? While watching did you hear a suspicious noise coming from somewhere in your house, then you go to investigate it? Your heart starts to pond as you inch closer and closer to the source of the noise. You open the door and your friend screams “Boo!” and then you scream from being frightened. This is just one example of how fear plays on the mind and is not just limited to this example. As the night of Halloween gets ever closer, it seems more then appropriate to ask this one simple question: why do we feel fear?


Jack_O_Lantern_by_Spirogs.jpg

Before we can answer why we feel fear, we must first discuss what fear is exactly. In this article by Julia Layton she tells us what fear actually is: “Fear is a chain reaction in the brain that starts with a stressful stimulus and ends with the release of chemicals that cause a racing heart, fast breathing and energized muscles, among other things, also known as the fight-or-flight response. The stimulus could be a spider, a knife at your throat, an auditorium full of people waiting for you to speak or the sudden thud of your front door against the door frame” (Layton, 2005). Different people become fearful or scared from a variety of different things and we have different ways of dealing with this fear. Like Layton mentioned, we deal with fear with something called a “fight-or-flight” response. When we run into a problem where we are in danger or need to deal with problem we tend to do one or two things and that is either stay and deal with the oncoming danger or scenario or run away from the predicament. In both instances, the body takes numerous steps to defend itself from harm by releasing different chemicals and triggering certain things in the body to assist in the fight or flight response.

So why do we fear things? Well as Layton has told us, we fear because it is a mechanism that is triggered by the brain in certain situations. Fear is also something we have no control over as Layton says it is something called a autonomic response in which it is something we cannot consciously trigger by ourselves and we don’t even know what is going on until the danger or fear is over with (Layton, 2005).

So we answered why we fear, but another question we can ask is what is the point of fear? What positive purpose does being afraid of something or fear serve us? The answer to that may be a little shocking to some. As Layton explains: “If we couldn’t be afraid, we wouldn’t survive for long. We’d be walking into oncoming traffic, stepping off of rooftops and carelessly handling poisonous snakes. We’d be hanging out with people who have tuberculosis. In humans and in all animals, the purpose of fear is to promote survival. In the course of human evolution, the people who feared the right things survived to pass on their genes. In passing on their genes, the trait of fear and the response to it were selected as beneficial to the race” (Layton, 2013). So fear serves as a very unique defense mechanism the brain employs to survive different encounters.

So fear can be something that could possibly save your life someday, or maybe not as you may not be put in those kind of situations that would invoke a big fearful response such as flight or fight.

So maybe it is a good idea to be afraid, be very afraid. Because it might just save your life someday.

Attendance Attendance. What is it good for?

As I am sure most of you are aware who were in class on Thursday that we had another one of those pesky pop quizzes again in which we had to answer some questions and also put on the paper are name for attendance reasons. If you WERENT there, then stinks to be you I guess. But for the people that were there right after you may have noticed a large influx of students heading for the door.

Thumbnail image for perfectattendance-255b1-255d.jpg
This got a somewhat surprised/shock/amused reaction out of the class (and Andrew himself) as to why they are leaving and/or why they are in the class to begin with. For good reason too, attendance to any class is a important part of the educational system and learning things as a whole. Of course back in the days of our elementary or high school days they basically made threats of detention and consequences for not attending classes which I guess they needed to do that for us to go in some way, that is not really the point of attending classes. This article talks about the attendance rate which is generated by the department of education and tells us why it is attendance and having a good attendance rate is a good thing: “The attendance rate is important because students are more likely to succeed in academics when they attend school consistently. It’s difficult for the teacher and the class to build their skills and progress if a large number of students are frequently absent. In addition to falling behind in academics, students who are not in school on a regular basis are more likely to get into trouble with the law and cause problems in their communities.” (Greatschools).

So in short, without attendance to class, students tend to not learn as much and end up dropping out or struggling in the class they are not attending on a regular basis. Another reason why attendance is important and a reason not a lot of people know about is that attendance rate directly affects the amount of funding a school could get. So in turn, you going to the classes on a regular basis helps the school stay good and funded with money.
So attendance is more important then what some people think it is. And one more thing: if you are paying 35 to 40 thousand to go to a university in this country, why would you NOT want to attend the classes you are paying for? If you didn’t want to go to class then you would have never forked over the money to go to a 4 year college in the first place. It’s just common sense people, go to your classes because they will lead to greater opportunities in the future.

Water: The life blood of the human race?

Water. There is no denying that water is one of the most important substances that exists in the world. It can be a liquid, a solid, or a gas depending on its temperature which is something that makes water unique and special. But why do we humans and most of life on earth need water? Why is it that we can survive for a long time without eating, but only survive for a couple of days without water? 

water-supply.jpg
Well the reason WHY we need water is because are body is mostly made of water. As this article explains: “Humans need to drink water to survive. Your body is approximately 60 percent water, your brain is 70 percent water, and your lungs are nearly 90 percent water. Each day, your body must replace 2.4 liters — or about 2.5 quarts of water — through ingested liquid and foods” (Margolis). Our bodies use the water we ingest for many things and without water are bodies could not do the day to day operations our bodies do. Water is something that is so important that we can die without it: “You can live without water for approximately one week, but you can survive without food for more than a month. Lack of water, or dehydration, reduces the amount of blood in your body, forcing your heart to pump harder in order to deliver oxygen-bearing cells to your muscles. In the early stages of dehydration, you can become dizzy, irritable and experience headaches. As dehydration progresses, you become clumsy and exhausted. Your eyesight fades. In the last stages of dehydration, you may feel nauseous and begin vomiting. Without water, you will enter a coma and die” (Margolis). So in short: if you do not drink water/liquids, you will die.

So that is why water is so important to us humans and the human race. We NEED water to survive, but some people for whatever reason do not think this. Take the CEO of Nestle for example, who went on record saying “Water is not a human right, should be privatized”. So he is basically saying that he and corporations have the right to block access to fresh clean water, bottle it, and then sell it back to people for a profit for something that should be free to all. Nestle and this CEO have received some harsh criticism for this comment and this way of thinking and for good reason. If water is essential to the human body and is a basic need the body needs to survive, then this CEO is basically saying that a substance that is needed for basic human life should be hoarded and then sold back to people as if it were a want and not a need which is completely insane to think.
We need water, without it we would all die. So to think someone like this thinks that water is something to be abused and priced is a completely asinine to think. He doesn’t care if people can’t get water and end up dieing as long as he gets the money from selling bottled water. Water must be available to all, because without it we would not exist. So I think we can all drink to that in the end.

How are we so forgetful?

How often have you found yourself doing something or in the middle of the task when you start to forget parts of it? For example, maybe you put in a load of laundry and already started the cycle. You start to walk out but then stop yourself, and start to think “Did I forget to do something?” and stand there for a few seconds then go “Oh shoot!” as you have just remembered/realized that you forgot to put detergent in the wash. That’s just one example, but forgetfulness is something that happens to a lot of people in their everyday lives.

forgetfulness.jpg
But why are we forgetful? Why is it we tend to forget things that seem to be easy to remember? Unlike computers which can always remember any data and information that is put on it, we humans do not have such a power as we are imperfect, fallible creatures. So why do we tend to forget things? well one reason that is seen as common knowledge is the fact that as we get older our body’s and brains start to get less and less productive which leads to more and more instances of us forgetting things. This article from the National Institute on Aging explains “Forgetfulness can be a normal part of aging. As people get older, changes occur in all parts of the body, including the brain. As a result, some people may notice that it takes longer to learn new things, they don’t remember information as well as they did, or they lose things like their glasses.” (NIH, October 2013). As you can see, forgetfulness is something that becomes more and more common with older age, no one is immune to it as it happens to the best of us on different occasions.

But there are different reasons we can be forgetful and those are by health related reasons. The first to come to mind is the disease of Alzheimer’s which affects the elderly in which the brain starts to degrade and their ability to remember things starts to be severely limited and it usually leads to death. The elderly are mostly affected by the effects of forgetfulness while the younger people tend to have less and less instances of forgetting things. Sometimes forgetfulness can stem from something less like emotional problems like stress, anxiety, or depression or it can be from something other more serious health issues such as mild cognitive impairment or dementia (NIH, October 2013).

So in short, Forgetfulness is something we can not avoid. It is something that happens to the best of us and we are just going to have to accept it. It is a part of life and it will probably happen more and more often as we get older, but we have to live with it. It’s just the way we humans are.