Imagine this: you were eating at a café went you had the unpredictable misfortune of slipping on a puddle on the floor (all those years of ignoring the “Caution: wet floor” signs caught up to you). Your phone slips out of your hand into a by-standard’s coffee. Awkward. The call you expected from your boss comes through, loudly ringing at first, then fading as your Smartphone is infiltrated with liquefied caffeine and cream. You suddenly find yourself back in the market for a new cell phone. You’re walking into your local Verizon/AT&T store when you stop. All you see are rows of models lined up, side-by-side with comparison charts, facts on battery life, and handheld models. With all these choices, you would think that you could be satisfied when find the perfect one to fit your needs. Right?

Wrong.

Cover of The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

You are more likely to feel disappointed by the final model, than if there were fewer cell phones to choose from. In fact, the greater the availability of options, the less satisfied people are with their decisions. Psychologist Barry Schwartz spent several years researching this apparent contradiction and called it the paradox of choice. He explains this phenomenon by observing how people react when given few choices. With fewer options to choose from, there is a clear divide between the benefits of one option over another. However, this distinction fades as the number of options to choose from increases. As more choices arise, the decision making process is more strained—one must now weigh the costs and benefits of a larger set of options. This has three primary effects:

1) Each decision requires increased effort and attention.

2) Mistakes become more likely to occur.

3) The psychological ramifications of those mistakes are greater.

The combination of these effects causes a decrease in satisfaction with a decision between many options. In fact, it makes the process mentally taxing for those who are unwilling to “settle for less.” Sometimes the extra effort required to fully analyze additional options is not worth the potential gain from finding a better option. What I mean by this is that after a certain point, more options will not be beneficial to providing the best choice because the energy required to make that “best” decision is often better spent if one could just settle for an option that would suffice. In context, finding the “perfect” replacement phone is not worth the time and effort saving when settling for a good phone that will work.

Source: Schwartz, Barry. The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. New York: Ecco, 2004. Print. 

“Do we really live?”

Let’s start with how I ended up asking myself this question … A couple of years ago one of my friends asked me “Have you ever thought that we are nothing but machines?” .When I first heard this I thought that it is kind of no sense theory, but a couple of days ago somehow I remembered about his question and tried to answer it.

Now when you know what the real question is you might think like this “This is pointless, I have feelings, I can think, I have consciousness and I have wishes, I can’t be only a machine.” … Is that right? First you must understand that if you want to debate that theory, humans cannot be considered a simple machine, something like a car, humans must be a very complex kind of machines.

We all know that we can do things that a machine invented by us can’t do, let’s take feeling as an example, feelings are of course something that set us apart but are feelings something that a very developed machine can’t achieve? To answer that question let’s get to some basic understanding of machines, they work like this:

INPUT -> PROCESSING -> OUTPUT.

Input means just some data that the machine receive; processing means what the “brain” of the machine is doing behind the doors, and to be more explicit that means transforming the input data into some output data; output means what the machine will give, more like an action, or answer.

If we look at that cycle we can notice that reflexes have the same structure, we need something to start our reflexes (input), we need something to process our reflexes i.e. brain (processing), and some reaction (output).

Feelings are also reflexes, they are activated by some events, they are processed by our brain, and we do react to them.

Now it seems this is getting pretty strange, intelligence and wishes are also some reflexes built in our early times when we learn everything (input), we store it in our memory (processing) and we use it later (output), after all you can’t wish something that you don’t know; but now let’s get to harder subjects, consciousness. Consciousness is pretty hard to understand but in light terms it means the understanding of the world, makes us understand that you, me and the rest of us are here on this earth working to make a living.

Consciousness is hard to be considered introduced into “devices”, considering we don’t know any device that has consciousness. But hard doesn’t mean impossible. What you need to create consciousness is (in informatics) a self-writing code. What a self-writing code means? A code is something that drives the actions of a program or a device, a self-writing code means a code that modifies itself under the influence of some events. A code like that will make our device able to learn and understand what happens around them.

I will end this here telling you that in my opinion the answer to the main question is YES, we do live, we love life, we make decisions, and we have some souls to feed here (talking about completing our wishes) . But when someone asks me about cyborgs, robots that think and devices that learn and live just as we do, thinking that they are “alive”, I don’t think that we are that far from inventing such things. Who knows, maybe your neighbor is a robot (just kidding (or not)).

According to relationship expert David Wygant, “many women who claimed not to know what to do when there are men who are interested in him”, therefore he recommends that women avoid some of the following if you and he are both interested.

A. Pretended not to be interested
For some reason, when it knows there are men who are attracted to us, usually we even pretend to be indifferent or just shows the attitude of pretending not interested in him. “It’s a trick that will never succeed,” said David. Women do usually pretend to look down, with the aim of showing the attitude of “play hard” for daring to challenge him to approach you.

Yet when he saw a reaction like that, the men actually had another thought, namely a rejection reaction. They think you’re more interested in what’s down there, or other men.

2. Pretending to be busy
The technology is very helpful human life, but sometimes this has a negative effect if used for wrong purposes. When he realized there was a man who observe you, you immediately pretended to be busy or playing with the phone. Sometimes there is also a pretend phone call, or searching for something in the bag.

“When approached by a man, woman instead of a smile but is busy with a phone, pretending to get a new SMS or a phone call. Do not do that, because it will not make it close to you,” he added.

3. Pretended not to see
Many women who accidentally exchanged with a handsome man who bumped into you, or stand in front of you, but immediately turned away. No point in pretending not to see him, because he really is before you. When you do this, the men would take it like a game. He knows you want to be addressed first, and show the desire to pretend not to notice him.

“Maybe there are some men who like to serve this kind of game, but we can not guess whether these men are the type who likes to wait on your game, or even just straight down. It all depends on how you change this awkward feeling to be attractive to men , “he advised.
So do not ever lie to your own feelings, because the opportunity did not come 2 times, to the best advantage than sorry in the end.

The Shot Heard Around the World…As is well known by now, Mr. Stephen Hawking presented a statement regarding Extraterrestrial Life and whether or not we should continue pursuing a discovery of them. Let me just say that although I think that Mr. Hawking is a brilliant intellect and is the proverbial “it” in the world of physics, I found his statement to be a brash one that was egoic, arrogant and effetist, rife with suppositional anthropomorphization of human assumption that was blatantly wrong on so many levels.Of course an Extraterrestrial Intelligent Lifeform would be expected to act just like us…NOT!I am going to use Mr. Hawking’s own example of the Columbus Voyage to the New World in which he illustrates from his view, the probable mentality of the visitors should they come to Earth and how things didn’t turn out so well for the Indigenous beginning with that fateful day in 1492.It has been said that the Indigenous population of that little cluster of islands couldn’t even see Columbus’ small fleet of ships moored off of the beach as they did not have the referential archetypal imagery in their collective subconscious to even recognize the comparatively behemoth floating transports. It was the Shaman that suspected that something was askew and not well with their world as he noticed that the ocean water was rippling inconsistently and oddly in the very place the ships were anchored. He later was able to witness some structure which then alluded to the now famous discription of giant water birds.If there is anything that we can learn from this is that history has a tendency to repeat itself if I am at all even prepared to entertain the slightest inkling of the possibility that there is some merit to the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis, which in my view is plausible but exeedingly thin in that same said plausibility.We can get into all kinds of speculative trouble here, but I would hedge a guess that any visitors would easily be able to take advantage of this subconscious blind spot in our psyche in so much as any kind of stealth technology used to hide their appearance would simply be an innocuous act of redundant overkill. I certainly do not think that they, were “they” here to “conquer” Earth and its inhabitants, would even bother to land but instead would probably do something analogous to what we would call Terraforming in which we would reformat the environment of the planet or other some such heavenly body to suit our biological needs. A few well placed probes dispensing microbes and viral substances toxic to our systems and ecology would probably do the trick quite nicely and all we would know is that a mystery illness is killing us and the Earth’s lifeforms off without even a hint as to whom had perpetrated such a deed. This is just my own very simple idea of how easy it would be to conquer us with not much of a dent in their budget should they even have an economy which would just be another gross assumption.How Mr. Hawking came to this idea is complete mystery to me. Surely he could see the error in his giving Extraterrestrial visitors or conquerors as it were, human psychological attributes. I understand that we have only a human point of view to suss things from or do we? It is obvious that an attempt at looking past our own flawed reasoning and rationale wasn’t even attempted here and Mr. Hawking’s statement just comes across as slap dash, last minute and flagrant which reminds one of the not so distant past’s atypical thinkers of flatland mentality just a hundred plus years ago.I do not mean to insult Stephen here, but I certainly felt that this statement needed addressing as Mr. Hawking’s authority and notoriety in the field of physics is globally known and so as a direct result, his opinion has a tendency to carry a lot of weight which in this regard I think could be disastrous.We, as a global society, are a lazy lot and do not want to be educated or to pursue any kind of effort other than that which is the bare minimum for every day functionality. Educating and thinking for oneself has become so blase faire that the global standard anymore is pretty much one of a marketable entertainment peppered with 30 second sound bites of compact and useless information just gleaning the surface of reality. It is to this general population that Mr. Hawking has thrown his perhaps very irresponsible statement and leaves one to wonder if it was made in earnest or was to generate popularity or perhaps some other unknown agenda.The bottom line here is this: People will believe him! This I find to be a potential psychological societal tragedy in the making. The seed has been planted. Will the governments of the world use this statement from a Super Intellect speaking from well beyond his field of expertise to regenerate new interest in funding yet another stupidly arrogant Star Wars-like defense program? I know. Out on a limb, but you see what I mean.Mr. Hawking’s statement is so like us humans. Who, in their right mind, would come here openly? We are not friendly. Our Modus Operandi in every single aspect of our collective cultural past has been simply this mentality:It’s different. Kill it.We have done this with everything and every race on the planet. We kill stuff that looks and acts different because in our underdeveloped reptilian brain we fear difference and see difference as threatening.Now, you can see where I find major flaw in this statement and why I think that there is possibly an alterior motive behind it. Whom or what stands to gain anything from this statement? Is this statement societally preparatory in nature or is it just an innocuous off the cuff rambling from an aging brilliantine? Was he put up to it? If you ask me, it does seem way out of character for him.I’m not going to give my guess or reasoning beyond what I have provided.

I had a friend who’s sister was married to her 8th grade boyfriend of 12 years. I guess I subconsciously told myself that that is what I wanted. To be loved by someone at an early age and to never be loved by anyone else.

Sadly, I’m not getting what I wanted. I don’t get to have the great relationship with that great girl whom I love and and whom I fall in love with. I don’t get to go on long drives with her or sleep on a blanket underneath the stars or act like idiots screaming out the lyrics to our favorite ADTR song. I don’t get a good morning text or good night message and I don’t get to send them either. I don’t get to hold hands as I walk down the high school hallway and be proud of who I’m with, of who I’m not afraid to show off to my friends.

I don’t get those things. I’m not that lucky guy that gets the girl or that athlete that gets all the girls. I’m not happy. I’m not content. I’m not angry. I’m not anything. I’m just… Here. I exist. I do my part in life and that’s it.

For once, I wish I could have that life. The life of the lucky guy. The life of that athlete. I’d love to just be happy again for once. Like I was in middle school… Especially 8th grade.

Goddamn… I wish I could take so many things back. So many ignorant things that I didn’t know the consequences of at the time. I wish someone would fix this thing I hesitantly call a life.

But wishes never seem to come true. So what is left? Sit here, day in and day out, waiting for high school to end. Waiting for my college career to take over.

Waiting for a new start… New people. People that don’t know me. People that could be ‘the one’ even though that to me, that person is already gone.

So what is left…? The agonizingly long wait until my ‘life’ actually turns into a life.

So much for being happy sooner rather than later. 

What is love? A mere feeling or emotion? The increase in heartbeats, butterflies in your stomach, quivering hands? It’s everything and more. Every girl wants to find their one person, their one true love. A person they can count on, they can trust, they can share moments with. Every moment leaves behind an impact and that directly affects the heart. Girls are so stupid at times in thinking that some actions appear to mean more than their face value. We take things that guys say, sometimes manipulate them to make us think they are crushing on us, and then, we hurt ourselves.

 All our young lives we search for someone to love, someone to make us complete. We choose partners and change partners. We dance to a song of heartbreak and hope, all the while wondering if somewhere, somehow, someone perfect is searching for us. -The Wonder Years 

Nobody knows when they will fall in love or if they ever will, it just happens when it wants to happen. The feeling of having somebody there for you, by your side for support and pure stability would be great, who wouldn’t like that? It’s just a matter of time and not knowing. How am I or how are you supposed to know if somebody likes you if the lover never has the guts to tell you?? You never know. My grand mom says that there are three things you can never predict, when a baby will be born, when somebody is going to die, and lastly, when you will fall in love. It is truly a bitter-sweet mystery. 

I love you. And not, not in a friendly way, although I think we’re great friends. And not in a misplaced affection, puppy-dog way, although I’m sure that’s what you’ll call it. I love you. Very, very simple. Very truly. You are the, the epitome of everything I have ever looked for in another human being. And I know that you think of me as just a friend and crossing that line is the furthest thing from an option you would ever consider. But I had to say it. I just, I can’t take this anymore. I can’t stand next to you without wanting to hold you. I can’t, I can’t look into your eyes without feeling that, that longing you only read about in trashy romance novels. I can’t talk to you without wanting to express my love for everything you are.  – Chasing Amy

So many of us feel this way. I know I had told both of my previous crushes that I liked them…did it go well? Not at all. It was just awkward afterwards and that’s the last thing I wanted. But I’ve definitely grown since then and learned a lot about life because of those situations, such as, “Don’t jump the gun.” I guess more traditional ways are better. In most cases, just wait for the guy to tell you.  

Thoughts are an energy level transitional phase joiner that establish a link between the thinker, and God. This happens in such a way that the thought becomes real in the thinker for a time, but really it is just a mirror, or holding pad of a part of the truth of God. The truth is rendered into language or words, and depicted as a thought in the mind of the person, rather than remaining only as a knowing in their heart, or soul.

Thoughts bring such inner unconscious knowings of truth to consciousness. They are a linkage from the unconscious to the conscious, and they create something that can be envisaged or worked with within time, rather than out of it. This allows the organism thinking a thought to be able to see, and to understand how unconscious wisdom or truth can be brought across to be lived consciously through creating such degrees of thoughtfulness within themselves. Thoughtfulness is love being consciously lived from.

Love is the energy behind a thought, and this is why a consciously powered thought becomes alive. All thoughts have been already unconsciously thought by God within his oneness of oneness, and it is our freedom of choice, and the degree of our consciousness level that chooses the thoughts that we will follow for ourselves, and so then label as being our own thoughts. Nothing is new under the sun, means that all thoughts have already been thought or created within the infinite unconscious realm of God’s oneness.

This means that our thoughts are not really our own after all. All thoughts are God’s thoughts. We just process them through our consciousness, and then choose whether to action them for him, or not.

Thoughts are a manifestation of love churning around within God in the melting pot of himself. All souls are also part of this pot, and so thoughts, any thought, can enter any soul as an idea, and that soul can then choose to do what they like with it. The soul will often pass this unconscious thought on as a conscious intuitional nudging to the mind that is attached to its lower physical body.

There are always consequences to acting on these thoughts however, because the thought when acted on must be monitored as to its affect on other souls, yourself, and on God. Love must be the rule here, you are a sieve for God’s love, and for all of his unconscious thoughts that haven’t been sieved through this love as yet, or need to be sieved in a different way. Each soul acts as a uniquely different sieve for God’s thoughts. Every thought of God will be sieved through each of his infinite parts over time.

This is our role, to help God sort the sheep from the goats, or the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.

This means that we are to try to find the best way of processing God’s unconscious thoughts consciously by presenting it to others, or by living from it, in the most loving of ways.

God himself operates from something other than thoughts, and this is why his thoughts are not your thoughts, because they are not created from within a mind, on the other hand though, all of your intuitive thoughts, or ideas, come from your soul that is always connected to God.

God thinks intuitively too, but from a level of absolute knowing that has grown past intuition, and so this is not then thought. It is direct creation occurring in the moment of its creation. Time only acts to delay this fruition, because time is where thoughts are created as God’s higher intuitive knowing manifests itself via consciously created thoughts into the time based created Universe, and this is why you hear God’s thoughts, because of time rendering them to you in this way.

Consciousness only exists within time, and so time was created so that consciousness could spontaneously erupt so to speak when love travels between God and a part of himself, or a soul. Consciousness is a field created around moving love in a similar way as to how a magnetic field is created around electricity moving through a wire.

Consciousness is a mirror for God’s knowings or his truths to be displayed and then understood within his parts. Thought is the connector linking each part or soul to its lower bodies, emotions play a similar role, as does intuition.

Thought then is merely a vehicle for God’s love as it travels between a soul and its lower bodies, as are emotions, and intuitional ideas as well. It all depends on what level we predominantly operate upon, the degree of emphasis or importance we place on the way of this transmission. some of us are predominantly thinkers then, others are more emotional, and still others seem not to think at all very much, but more just follow their gut, or intuitional responses.

The 57 year old mother prays that her children all in their thirties together with six of her grandchildren aged between two to fifteen to come home.

Rohaya, 57, said according to the police and shaman that she met, all three of her daughters are in a neighboring country. She also added, her muallaf (someone who converts to Islam) son-in-law who is in his 40s, works in the night market and married her daughter in 2005. His secret was discovered in September 2009 when he abducted his 31 year old sister-in-law who is married with five children aged between two months to seven.

The same thing happened again in 2010 when her family recieved news that her second daughter aged 34 with three of her daughter was abducted by the same person from her house in Batu Kurai, Perak.

Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the most outstanding representatives of the irrationalism view, in general.The main and axial idea of the irrational philosophy of Nietzsche was the “Will to Power”.As Shchopenhauer before him, Nietzsche was of the opinion that is not the matter that lies in the foundation of the world, as the materialists say, nor idea or consciousness,as idealists of different colors claim, including Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel with his idea of united world mind, but he was of the opinion that it was will that constituted the world. But unlike Schopenhauer, he defines will as “Will to Power” as a will to rule the nature, society, and the individual himself. “Will to power” is a cosmic power,irrational and, is displayed as will for life and living. According to Nietzsche, “to live means to have will to power or reign”, and dominate the others.

Because “will to life”, to dominate, is overall, indicate that men are in a unending war to rule.The result of this war to secure the “throne” is not predictable. As “will to power” as well “Will to life” is spontaneous, irrational, unconscious,instinctive,and unstoppable.Nietzsche’s immoralism defines as primary the ”will to power” in relation with mind or reason; according to him, its not the reason that defines will, but the other way around – will defines reason.Reason is only a  shape of the appearance of “will to power”.”We consider something real, valuable and good something that pleases the existence” – says Nietzsche.Primary and key is willl, and mind, reason, theory, moral, truth etc. are under will.

Another axial idea of the irrational philosophy of Nietzsche is the “Eternal Recurrence”.As Heraclitus from Ephes in the VI century B.C, Nietzsche in the second half of the XIX century thought that world in general and the things, phenomenas of the world, when they are over or dead, they return in a eternal way in those things or phenomenas that they were before.There for, world and life is not static, rather, the world is an unstopping process of eternal recurrence.According with his irrationalism Nietzsche is of the opinion that “Eternal Recurrence” is not done according to an objective ordinance, because such a thing does not exist.”Eternal Recurrence” is a chaotic movement, that does not have a beginning, end , nor a predefined order.”Everything goes and comes back;the wheel of the being rolls in an unending way; everything dies and everything blossoms again; In a eternal way flows the year of the being…. but always remains the ring of the year” – says Nietzsche.Even the life of men is a manifestation of “will to power”.Life and death, joy and sorrow, good and evil, the pleasant and the unpleasant, also come and go, repeating themselves in different ways.

Gent Govori

Relying on our brains can be a pretty iffy proposition at times, and why is it that our minds seem to plot to humiliate us exactly when it is most effective? Some of these instances create memories that we will take to the grave with us. One instance comes to mind that the whole of the U.S. cringed to witness on television, when one of our Republican presidential wannabe’s could not remember which agency he was promising to eliminate. It was agonizing. Perhaps not for him as much as for the rest of the nation who could hear a pin drop while he squirmed. It can happen to anyone. Well, almost anyone.

There is a questionaire to find out what areas you need to sharpen. It is quite fine-tuned and personalized. It only takes a minute or two to fill out the questions and get registered.

The website at the bottom of this article provides a free five week brain training course. It is geared for your personal educational and age level, and is tailored to your own preferences and areas of need. It takes about fifteen minutes a day, and people report that it helps them improve in their ability to think better in areas of speed, problem solving, multi-tasking, concentration, memory, flexibility and other areas. It is like a tune-up for our cognitive processes. And who among us couldn’t use a tune-up?

Here is the website: http://www.lumosity.com/app/v4/personalization/surveys/training-program/survey_categories/your-memory/user_survey_responses/new