Today I Died (Documentary)

Today, I watched a science documentary called Today I Died which is about the possibility of the brain living on and remaining conscious even after clinical death. There was a lot of case studies on people who had experienced near-death situations. Most of the patients described that they saw a tunnel of bright light approaching them which why it happens is explained in the documentary scientifically. Furthermore, the patients feel very happy and peaceful, which is because large amounts of brain morphine is produced when the patient is under lots of stress when they are dying thus, they feel happy. Another common sight was that the patient could remain conscious and see what is happening around them when they were under anesthetics and were supposed to be unconscious. Even though it was not mentioned in the documentary, I believe that the patients were conscious as the anesthetics only reached the other parts of the body besides the eyes and the brain or were not enough there. I have personally experienced this, when I fractured my arm and went to the hospital, I was put under anesthetics and became unconscious. However, after a while, I could see what was happening, the nurses were twisting my arm but I could not feel any pain and was unable to move my body. Lastly, about the case where a blind person could see when she was in a near-death situation, I believe she just imagined everything, as she has never seen how the world actually looked like and can only assume that to be the world when it is really not the case. However, humans still do not know much about the afterlife, thus everything has a possibility of happening. In conclusion, I have learnt a lot from this documentary and hope there comes a day where humans fully understand the afterlife.

Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMGskL_bujE&feature=related

Paradoxes

A paradox is a self-contradictory and false proposition. For example, when someone says that "I am lying" , it is a paradox because if what he saying was true, then he would be lying, thus self-contradictory. However, if he was lying, then he would be lying about lying and would be telling the truth, thus it is a paradox. Many logic problems are based on paradox. However, there are several things that seem like paradoxes but are actually not. For example, one might think that there must be at least two barbers in a town in order for everyone's hair to be neat assuming everyone else besides the barber cannot cut their hair and the barber can only cut everyone elses' hair. However, the barber might be a female and do not need to have her hair cut. Thus, this is not a paradox.

Birthday problem(Desperate -.-)

The birthday problem is the probability of any 2 people out of n people having the same birthday. Did you know that out of only 57 people there is a 99% chance that 2 people have the same birthday? This is because every person must have a different birthday with all other people. The probability of 2 people having the same birthday is 1 x (1-1/365) x (1 - 2/365) x ... x ( 1- (n-1)/365). When you substitute n with 57, you find that its probability is 99%! This is hard to believe if you do not know the logic but it is true!

Colour Blindness

When people are colour blind, they cannot distinguish between certain colours, especially red and green. Bus drivers, taxi drivers, pilots are dangerous jobs if you are colour blind as you can't differentiate green light and red lights and might crash into something. Being a member of anti-bomb squad is also dangerous as you can't differentiate the wires and when you cut the wrong one the bomb might explode. Furthermore, some types of engineering are unsuitable as you might put the wrong wire in the wrong plug which may cause a short circuit and a fire may break out.

Recommendation to test whether if you are colour blind:

http://www.toledo-bend.com/colorblind/Ishihara.asp is a fast and simple way to test if you are colour-blind. It only takes about a few seconds. The test is just to see a number in the pattern of dots. Best of all, it is completely free! Try it now!

DotA 2 and my thoughts

Yay! The long awaited GamesCom has finally started two days ago featuring Icefrog and Valve's whole new game DotA 2 which is unrestrained by Warcraft III. This competition is the biggest thing in the whole gaming community. The prize is 1 MILLION dollars! Many of the top teams in the world are invited to participate in this competition. One of Singapore's team ,Scythe.sg, has been invited! Scythe.sg has been doing remarkably well so far in the competition, beating many of the top teams in the European scene(especially the far more experienced MYM)! China has always been the dominating country in the DotA scene but this time there might be a change! However, to be honest, I feel that this competition is more likely to be a marketing move by Valve rather than to feature the professional teams. I must admit that this is a good move as this has caused many people from all over the world to notice the game. Furthermore, I have a feeling that gaming may still become an investment for some people. For example, a rich son in China has bought 2 of the top China teams for a total of 9.2 million and reformed another team(iG)! Lastly, I would like to wish all the teams the best in the competition and I would definitely buy DotA 2 when it comes out!

Gaming smartly :D

Did you know that the grater the frequency of gaming, the grater the possibility of reduced social skills and the greater the chance of poor school performance?

Thus, today I am here to advise you on how to game smartly. Just to clarify, I am not here to advise you to stop gaming, but rather to game without affecting your life as well as learn useful things in the process.

First of all, I would recommend games that requires teamwork such as CounterStrike, DotA and strategy RTS games such as Warcraft III. These games help to increase your social skills through communicating with your teammates as well as train your reaction and test your mind. You may think that this games are less fun than MMORPG games such as Maplestory and WoW, but, this games can be quite fun and is much less addictive.

However, we should not game for too long for any type of games as it will affect our studies. We should play less than 10 hours a week and only after we have done our homework. Furthermore, rest your eyes every 45 minutes of gaming for about 15 minutes. However, one common sight is that when teenagers lose or win a game, they will tend to play more, either because they hate the feeling of losing or likes the feeling of winning and wants to play more.

This should not be the case as this will lead to being addicted to that game. One way to see if you are addicted to a game is by seeing if you always think and talk about it in conversations, classes and even dreams! When you are addicted to a certain game, you are often distracted by it and can lead to poor studies and being anti-social. Thus, we must cut our addiction as soon as we notice it. We can do this by : cutting down our gaming time, go for counseling sessions or go for supervised gaming sessions such as at Bukit Merah Care Corner.

Another good way to cut your addiction is to find out the reason that you game for. If it is for the feeling of winning and achievement, you can play sports and other recreational activities. If it is because of bad peer pressure, find some better friends or learn to say "no". If it is for meeting new friends, join some activities at community centres or go for exchange programmes.

All in all, I would like to remind you that everything is your own decision so decided wisely. Time cannot be gained back so treasure it.

Now, after listening to my speech, I hope you have learnt how to game smartly! Lastly, I would like to end with my motto " Work hard, Play hard". Thank you!

LA results

My LA has never been very good since primary school. From Sec 1 till now, my MSG has been always pulled down by LA. As always, this term, I failed my LA. D: I have been finding ways to improve my LA but all these methods do not work for me. I know that a language has to be learnt through practice and hardwork. However, both of these does not seem to work for me, I can't practice much English as my parents speak Chinese with me at home and because people in Singapore do not use proper English in their everyday conversation. Furthermore, whenever I do an exercise or read something, my mind becomes blank and I do not understand and remember what I have just done. This is probably due to my lack of interest. Now, I will try to read more books and hopefully, do better for my EOY.