How Humor Makes Your Life Better

The key concepts:

• The concept of laughter as a cure for disease lacks scientific support, but humor may indeed have significant effects on the psyche.

• Laughter relaxes us and improves our hearing and hearing jokes may ease anxiety. Amusement can also counteract pain.

• Cheerfulness, a trait that makes people respond more readily to humor, is linked to emotional resilience—the ability to keep a level head in difficult circumstances—and to close relationships. Life satisfaction may increase with the ability to laugh.

The community of patients inspired by such miracle treatments believes not only that humor is psychologically beneficial but that it actually cures disease. In reality, only a smattering of scientific evidence exists to support the latter idea—but laughter and humor do seem to have significant effects on the psyche, even influencing our perception of pain. What is more, psychological well-being has an impact on overall wellness, including our risk of disease.

Laughter relaxes us and improves our mood, and hearing jokes may ease anxiety. Amusement’s ability to counteract physical agony is well documented, and as Cousins’s experience suggests, humor’s analgesic effect lasts after the smile has faded.

Cheerfulness, a trait that makes people respond more readily to laugh lines, is linked to emotional resilience—the ability to keep a level head in difficult circumstances—and to close relationships, studies show. Science also indicates that a sense of humor is sexy; women are attracted to men who have one. Thus, in various ways, life satisfaction may increase with the ability to laugh.

Why Music Moves Us?

In the most basic terms, sound is merely a pressure wave that ripples through air. So how does the combination of sound waves that we know as music become, as Tolstoy put it, “the shorthand of emotion”? Or, to put it another way, how can mechanical vibrations have such a moving effect?

The answer, according to Philip Ball, author of The Music Instinct, lies not in the notes themselves, but in our brains. 

Whatever your favourite kind of music, your brain has to work hard to make sense of it. Its remarkable skill at pattern detection will take the extraordinary richness of a note on a piano or flute – which is crammed with harmonics – and magically collapsed it in our heads, so that we perceive it as a single note rather than a forest of overtones.

“We are pattern seekers,” explains Ball, “and music helps us to find patterns in sound. We come equipped with all sorts of rules of thumb to make sense of what we hear, and those are the brain mechanisms that we use to organise sound and make sense of music.”

Medical scanners have shown that this process is not limited to one part of the brain. Different aspects of music activate different areas: we use our temporal lobe to process melody and pitch, our hippocampus to recover musical memories and our “rhythm-processing circuits” to fire up motor functions (which might explain why it is hard to sit still when listening to Music, or tunes with similarly propulsive beats).

Interestingly, the brain gives out the same signal of confusion when it encounters examples sentences of that sense make don’t, like this one, as music whose “syntax” seems wrong, as when the chords don’t seem to fit. And if you study how we react to patterns of notes, you find there is something special about a pitch that is double the frequency of another – the interval better known as an octave.

The biggest question, however, is whether this kind of mental circuitry is designed specifically to handle music, or if songs and tunes are just “auditory cheesecake”, as Harvard University’s Steven Pinker puts it – sounds which accidentally generate pleasure, via neural systems that evolved to respond to other kinds of stimuli?

The disappointing truth, says Ball, is that we just don’t know. But we do know that the way we learn to appreciate music is profoundly affected by how were raised. A few years ago, Ball wrote in New Scientist about how music seems to have a national character, probably as a result of the rhythms and cadences of each different language. The English tend to vary the pitch of their speech, and the length of their vowels, more than the French, and their composers follow suit in the rhythms and intervals they use. On the latter measure, Elgar was found to be the most “English” composer – which perhaps helps explain why his Pomp and Circumstance March No 1 is at the heart of the Last Night of the Proms.

Similarly, concepts of what is harmonious boil down to a matter of convention, not acoustics. Many old fogeys struggle with modern music and complain that it is dissonant. “Actually, dissonance – horrible clashing notes – has always been in music,” says Ball. “Listen to Beethoven and Chopin, which are full of it. It is a matter of convention: what we regard as consonant now was thought dissonant in the Middle Ages.” The augmented fourth (the spine-tingling interval in West Side Story's Maria) was thought sinister in medieval times, when it was dubbed “diabolus in musica”. We still find it slightly unsettling today – which is perhaps why the music of Black Sabbath relies on it heavily.

Towards the end of our meeting, Ball answered a question whether music’s effects on the brain can be harnessed for good. It was a perfect set-up for him to examine the so-called “Mozart effect”: the belief that playing your infant classical music will make them brainier. He cited an experiment conducted in 1996, when one of the “Megalab” mass experiments run byThe Daily Telegraph and the BBC showed that playing babies Blur worked better than Mozart. The important thing was not the music per se, but the fact that it put the children in a good mood.

For Ball, the definition of the “music instinct” is that we are predisposed to make the world a musical place. Apart from the tiny proportion of the population who really are tone-deaf, it is impossible to say: “I am not musical.” Even if it may seem that way whenever you get dragged along to the karaoke.

The Sunny Side of Smut

   The article “The Sunny Side of Smut” is written to expose about the different view towards pornography where it can be seen as a positive side. The excerpt by Melinda Wenner Moyer suggested that it is not immoral act to watch pornography as it is able to prevent many serious sex cases like rape and sexism. As we know, pornography has been labelled as an immoral action to be done but this article inversely comes up with the ideas of seeing pornography in positive view. In fact, despite of others example the writer came up, we could barely think critically that pornography is a bad idea to educate people.

    Porn along with controlled masturbation improves performance. Sex therapists often recommend using masturbation as practise for sex. Adding porn into the mix can help make it more realistic, improving the ability of man or women to respond and perform during the real thing. However, Porn makes women seem less attractive to men, Naomi Wolf. "The Porn Myth." The Atlantic. 2010: "The onslaught of porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women, and leading men to see fewer and fewer women as “porn-worthy.” Far from having to fend off porn-crazed young men, young women are worrying that as mere flesh and blood, they can scarcely get, let alone hold, their attention”. Porn can serve as a (partial) substitute for sex life. For people that (for various reasons) don’t have a sexual life, pornography can (partially) serve as its substitute. This holds especially well for men, who are much more visually oriented (with regard to sex) than women are, as can be seen from the fact that the clear majority of pornographic material focuses on the female form. Nevertheless, Porn leaves men feeling empty and upset with themselves. David McLeod, a marketing executive, said to the Guardian in a 2003: "You can easily get too much of it. It's deadening, nullifying, gratuitous, unsatisfying. At one point I was single for three years and I used a lot of porn then. After a while, it made me feel worse. I'd feel disgusted with myself and have a huge purge”

Porn degrades human romance to mere sex. It debases human interactions by eliminating love, laughter and all other emotions, and reducing them to the crudely sexual. While this is not always the case with porn, it is generally true, thus sending the wrong message to men and women about how they should prioritize sex in their lives.

Pornography encourages promiscuity and shallow relationships. Ray Wyre, a specialist in sexual crime, said to the Guardian in 2003 that pornography "encourages transience, experimentation and moving between partners. Pornography does damage because it encourages people to make their home in shallow relationships”.

The Gods Must Be Crazy

It's no wonder The Gods Must Be Crazy was a huge hit upon its release some 20 years ago, as the film contains enough elements to please the majority of audiences. The film is jam-packed with moments of physical comedy, romance, and even abrupt violence. It's a bizarre mix that nevertheless manages to entertain, primarily due to writer/director Jamie Uys' obvious enthusiasm for his material.

There's not a single storyline at work here, though the most famous (not to mention effective) remains Xi (N!xau) and his efforts to throw a seemingly demonic coke bottle off the edge of the world. Said bottle has brought his tribe nothing but bad luck, so he's taken it upon himself to extricate the item from their lives the only way he knows how. Meanwhile, romance is in the air for a fetching young teacher (Sandra Prinsloo) and a bumbling scientist (Marius Weyers). The third plot strand, involving an evil revolutionary, is easily the film's weakest - but does serve to unite the other two stories in the movie's last act.

The Gods Must Be Crazy works best during the opening sequences, in which the film apes a documentary - complete with voice over from a stuffy British narrator. It's an intriguing way to introduce the various characters, and nicely sets the absurd tone that follows. The oddly named N!xau, who was actually a bushman when he was cast, proves to be a natural actor, winning us over with his charm and memorable facial expressions (and without speaking a single word of English!)

It's not hard to understand why the film was such a worldwide sensation, as it's entirely possible to watch the movie without understanding any of the dialogue. The Gods Must Be Crazycontains enough moments of physical comedy - along the lines of The Three Stooges or Abbott and Costello - to keep the majority of audiences semi-entertained. While there's no denying that the film is overlong by at least 20 minutes, primarily because of that needlessly violent subplot dealing with the villainous rabble rouser, the easy-going nature of the characters makes it easy enough to overlook such flaws.

All the cool kids are quitting facebook

Since facebook been found by Mark Zukerberg, a new phenomenon of social network have been discovered where people see the definition of facebook well that is "connecting people"..However,there are some arguments that shown how uncool it is to be part of Facebooker.

There are obviously two sides to this argument, and it all depends on what your opinions are. People who like Facebook can spend hours on it browsing through other people's profiles, whereas some people cannot even stand the sight of it, even though they know how to use Facebook wisely. Here are some of the well-known pros of Facebook.

• You have the ability to find old friends and reconnect with them.

• You can keep in touch with your friends, no matter how far apart you'll are physically.

• You can keep your friends and family members updated about what is happening in your life.

• You can promote yourself and any other work that you do.

• You can make many new like-minded friends by joining various groups and communities.

• You can share your favorite music and videos with your friends.

• You can play many different games and use many different applications.

• You can communicate with your friends at any time you want.

To balance out these advantages, there are bound to be some cons of Facebook as well, and these are what deter many people from joining Facebook.

• You will get bombarded with unwanted friend requests from many unknown people.

• Your friends and family members will be able to snoop around and know what is happening in your life at all times.

• Your pictures could be misused.

• You might mistakenly befriend an individual with dishonorable intentions.

• You will get unwanted newsfeeds about every single activity that your friends perform on Facebook.

• Your friends will get newsfeeds about every single activity that you perform as well.

• You will get bombared by spam and annoying advertisements from time to time.

• You will witness unnecessary dramatization of unimportant occurrences in your friends lives.

• Anyone on Facebook will be able to see your information and pictures, if you do not update your privacy settings regularly.

• Your friends may tag you in a picture that you do not want others to see.

• Applications will ask you for many details that you would not normally give out.

• You will waste many hours because Facebook is addictive for most people.

Since there are more cons than its pros, we can obviously says that quitting Facebook make us cool and we haven't waste anything on it.

The Steve Jobs Nobody Knew

 "The Steve Jobs Nobody Knew" an article by Jeff Goodell that gives inside look of Steve Jobs along his career life until his death. The one that been praised by all the gadget-lovers who inspired him much towards his invention. When talk about Jobs, the first thing come out in people's mind must be about Ipod, Ipad, Iphone etc. 

But do people know who Jobs really is beside all his great achievement in his life? Credit to Jeff Goodell for revealing the true position of Jobs to the worlds where people can open up their mind towards the people they 

    Steve Jobs has inspired many people who admired him as the father of new technology, however Steve sets a bad example in workplace by his abrasive personality and his unapologetic brutality. He  had cruelly a casual way of driving employee to the breaking point and tossed them aside when he finished with them. He also never appreciates what people say as the right thing only about him and what he has done.

     His leadership leads the company to the biggest success and the made him one the most successful person in world, but t he people in the company somehow irritate with the way Steve behaved towards his employee. Plus, he demanded perfection and originality in every detail and to ensure that happens, his employee has to be the victims for his bad attitude.  In order to be one step forward from anybody else, Steve dare to hijack a team that was working in another project and can risk the company’s name. His  innovation does impress people outside but after he resulted to be the greatest invention, he does touch everybody around him. Stunning people with his carrier life turn him out to greatest machine world ever have.

      In order to create something better for the future, Steve has already abandoned his future long time ago. Steve forgets to treat himself well for the sake of his work arts. Perfection he seeks only can be found on his career not on his life. This show that how fails is Steve to be a good example to the people who never knew him well. His deniable towards his daughter Lisa increase the impossibility of him as the father-figured best example. People will lose respect to him if they know about the real Steve Jobs that nobody knew.


    Maybe people will see Steve as a God but beneath of his attitude people might want to re-judge him again.

What is Eureka Moment?

Unplanned ideas are often best illustrated by 'Eureka!", or 'Aha!', moments, like Einstein's clock tower moment that sparked his special relativity, or Archimedes’ bathtub water-displacement idea. 

some of conditions where we can find it is 'Eureka Moment'

• Is when everything from confusion finds his way.... and you feel better.

 

• when you see something unexpected that completely changes what you thought was possible.

• happens when you've done your homework and you know enough to recognize something astounding and understand immediately what it means. 

• To see the striking similarities from other research areas and understand how much of it is pertinent to your research.

• when you 
find out good principles to turn video games into good educational tools.

Example of eureka moment from the story of Archimedes and the Golden Crown:

It all started when King Hiero II was skeptical about his new laurel leaf-shaped crown. The king wanted to know whether the crown was solid gold, or if some other metal had been added.

It was up to Archimedes to figure this out. Only there was one catch: he couldn't destroy the crown.

After what probably felt like days with the Jeopardy theme song playing in his head ad nauseum, Archimedes drew a bath and suddenly it all became clear. He could determine the density of the crown by noting how much water it displaced. If any other material had been added to the crown, it would be less dense than if it were made entirely of gold.

Archimedes was so excited that he ran naked through the streets (remember, he was about to take a bath) shouting, "Eureka! I have found it!"

He may not have been the first person in history to get a sudden flash of inspiration, but Archimedes is the man who made eureka famous.