What really started me thinking tonight was something my boyfriend told me. Apparently, his English class got into a brief discussion about global warming this past week, and the teacher made it known that she believed it was all a conspiracy and lies cooked up by someone. Maybe it’s just the liberal streak in me, but I really don’t know why people are making such a huge deal about global warming these days, as in, “oh no, global warming can’t possibly exist!” Seriously? I’ll admit, Al Gore’s “documentary,” An Inconvenient Truth, was cliched and unintentionally funny at some points, but at least it helped to promote awareness about the issue. And all the scientific data is there to back up the statements. And no, global warming is not something new nor is it something people just made up for the hell of it. It’s a natural process that’s been happening for billions of years and years; the Earth has always gone through alternating periods of ice ages and global warming.

The problem today is that all the human activity in the last two hundred or so years – starting with the Industrial Revolution and coming right up to the present-day “let’s make nuclear bombs and spill chemicals into rivers and drive around in big ol’ Hummers” atmosphere – has accelerated the warming process. And scarily enough, past data has indicated that there’s always an intense warming period right before the advent of a new ice age. Now, I don’t know if we’re headed into the next ice age, Day After Tomorrow-style, but either way, does it really matter if global warming exists or not if it helps to promote environmental consciousness? What could possibly be wrong with wanting people to care more about the environment?

I’m no tree-hugger, but is it so hard to get up your lazy butt and toss something into an actual trash can instead of just leaving it on the ground? Or collecting your empty water bottles in a bag to recycle? How about car pooling or god forbid, even biking (especially since people are getting so fat in this day and age, why not save the environment and lose a few pounds while you’re at it?) It will not kill you to try any of those, I promise you, because I do all those things myself and I’m one of the laziest people you will ever met. I’m the girl who will lay there and contemplate if I really need to use the restroom, just cause I don’t want to leave my warm, fluffy bed, so if I can find the will to do the things that I mentioned, so can you. So all those whiners just need to shut up, stop complaining about left-wing conspiracies, and actually care. Cause, you know, we all have to live on this planet, and it’d be nice to keep it green and pretty instead of turning it into some apocalyptic wasteland. My thoughts for the night…

Tweet This Post Share on Facebook

Have you ever experienced or found yourself in that odd area between dreaming and waking? When you’re still half asleep, but you’re also vaguely aware of what’s around you? That’s what happened to me this morning. All night long, I kept waking up and slipping back into sleep, and my dreams began to blur with reality. I remember someone crying in one of my dreams, and as consciousness began to filter in, I wondered absently if maybe my roommate was crying.

It’s also a really strange sensation when you’re aware that you’re dreaming but you still haven’t woken up. I can’t remember how many times I’ve woken up and remembered my dream, and remembered realizing that I was dreaming but not being able to affect anything, almost like I was an observer peeping in from the outside. Lucid dreaming is scary, but at the same time, I’ve heard of people with the ability to consciously decide to enter into the dream state, kind of like meditation, and I wish I could do that.

I’m a psychology major, so of course, the psychology of dreams and sleep is something that really fascinates me, nerdy as that sounds. I’m currently taking an Abnormal Psychology class and one of the more interesting things we talked about recently was something called hypnagogic hallucinations. During the state between being awake and falling asleep, people sometimes experience visual and auditory hallucinations – they think they see shadowy figures crowded around their bed or hear faint whispers, which may explain the so-called “alien abductions” that people claim to have subjected to or even ghostly phenomena. There’s also hypnagogic jerks, when your body twitches involuntarily: I know I’ve experienced that before, mostly with falling dreams where I felt like I was falling forever into a deep dark hole until I suddenly jerked awake and almost fell off the bed 

There’s so much about sleep and dreams that we don’t know about yet, and I think that might be an area I’d want to conduct research in sometime in the future. What do you think?

Tweet This Post Share on Facebook

I’ve loved the book The Other Boleyn Girl, by Philippa Gregory, ever since one of my close friends Natalie introduced me to it back in junior high, so I was really excited when I saw the commercials for the movie start popping up. I thought, yay, they’re finally going to bring the book to life for me, and I figured it would be pretty good since Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman were billed as the major stars. Well, I saw the movie tonight with the boyfriend, and it was…okay. Parts of it seemed rushed, parts I liked from the book were left out or reduced to very small moments, and parts were just overdone and overdramatized. The costumes were gorgeous but the actresses weren’t used to their full potential and the whole plot seemed really contrived and reduced to simple sibling rivalry.

I mean, come on, both the book and the movie revolve around King Henry VIII’s court and the major roles that both Boleyn sisters, Mary and Anne, played in shaping England’s future. There was so much more exciting drama and romance and angst and hell, even sex, in the book, and it was squished into this dark-toned soap opera-ish movie that didn’t live up to the great movie it could have been.

It was pretty funny how squicked out everyone got in the movie during the scene when Anne pretty much demands her brother George have sex with her so she can pass a baby boy off as the king’s son. There was this horrified pause where everyone was probably thinking, is she asking what I think she’s asking, and then I heard more than a few “ewwwws” throughout the theater. Me and the boyfriend couldn’t stop snickering. Imagine how horrified most of them would be if they ever read the book, where Anne really did sleep with her brother and get pregnant by him, only to miscarry a deformed baby, which eventually lead to her getting her head chopped off. Ah, the sexual excesses of England’s royalty back in the day. Everyone in the courts back then were sleeping around, manipulating alliances, pawning off sons and daughters for money or power, the works, like a whole built-in soap opera that really happened. It’s one of my favorite historical subjects/periods to read and research about =)

Rating:

Tweet This Post Share on Facebook

You know, it’s something I’ve always wondered: is clumsiness (or its opposite, athleticism) a product of nature (genetics), nurture (the environment), or both? Why does one person (moi ) trip over cracks and drop hot things like a CHI straightener onto their feet, while others gracefully master things like football and ballet and volleyball almost effortlessly?

It can’t be completely an inherited trait, because I’ve met football stars whose parents and siblings can’t catch a ball if their life depended on it, and it can’t be completely due to the environment in which a person was raised, either, because in the opposite scenario, I have friends who are athletically-challenged and have siblings who play varsity tennis and basketball and the like. What is it that gives a person the ability to throw a ball into a small net from 20 feet away, while the rest of us can only pat ourselves on the back when we manage to toss a can into a trashcan 2 feet away?

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m far from what you would label an athlete. I exercise occasionally but I have to credit my skinniness (and my shortness, sigh) with my Asian genes. My hand-eye coordination is so-so: when I play tennis, I either miss the ball completely or hit it too high and bye-bye goes the ball. The only athletically-inclined activities you’ll ever catch me doing is more along the lines of Pilates, biking, running, swimming – all stuff that doesn’t require perfect coordination of your limbs and vision Astonishingly enough, I was never actually the last kid picked for a game of dodgeball or soccer or whatever else we happened to be playing, but I definitely wasn’t the first chosen, either.

So why am I not the next Michelle Wie or Kobe Bryant or Tony Romo? Is it because I didn’t grow up playing sports? Because the genes just aren’t there? My younger brother plays JV tennis but I’m horrible at it. Is athleticism an innate gift or something learned? Are the rest of us lowly people doomed to days of cringing and ducking when we see flying objects headed toward us?

Just a late-night food for thought =)

Tweet This Post Share on Facebook

Haha, I know some people will probably be “offended” by my blanket holiday greeting. Seriously, though, what is the big deal with saying “happy holidays” or “season’s greetings” in order to cover all the holidays that are celebrated by people of different faiths and cultures at this time of year? It seems some people want to take political correctness (or incorrectness) to the extreme, and they’re making a controversy out of nothing. Some get offended by “merry Christmas”, others by “happy holidays.” We can’t have it both ways, people. Everyone just needs to learn and accept the fact that America is built on a foundation of diversity, and respect that others may not have the same beliefs as you do. So what if you don’t like someone saying “merry Christmas” to you just because you’re not Christian? Get over it. Same thing goes for people who complain that using “happy holidays” takes away from the “true” meaning of Christmas. They are all well-wishes and have the same essential spirit: they are meant to express happiness and joy. The words might be different but the intended meaning remains the same.

The whole thing is just silly. The winter season is about the spirit of giving and family and love and all that (every day should really be like that, but hey, you take what you can get). It’s not about getting some expensive gift (though those *are* nice) – it’s about those core values of family and living life to the fullest. Everyone just celebrates in their own way, and they’re entitled to that. Why is everyone so stuck on some stupid phrases? It just goes to show how America can be so preoccupied with the most trivial and petty things. No wonder the rest of the world makes fun of us ^^;;;

Screw everyone else. I’m going to wish ALL of you a happy holidays – may the new year bring you everything you wish for. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, peace to the world, whatever you want to say. Just make the best of the holidays and enjoy what you got, because you never know what tomorrow will bring.

Tweet This Post Share on Facebook