Talk Show Podcast Episode Ten

Social networking, online communication, and Facebook have become a substantial component of our routine lives over the years to the point where some prefer online interaction to face-to-face ones. 

The current edition of Talk Show Podcast is aimed at elaborating on the notion of social networking as well as providing some background and analysis for the renowned website Facebook. Later in the course of the program, Steve N.B., internet devotee and adept pianist joins us for an intriguing interview regarding the subject matter. 

Alternatively you can download the podcast here

Few moments with Steve N.B.

Artistic soul is something that is assumed to be rare, but when it comes to Steve N.B. this is certainly not the case. Steve is a 19 year-old student of architecture as well as a professional pianist. 

     All you need to do is to listen to him play the piano for a short period of time before you recognize that he undeniably has earned the term professional with all its corresponding accessories. He has begun learning the piano from an early age; as the years went by, he became more and more enthralled by the mother of all musical instruments, and  nowadays he and the piano are literally inseparable.

     I asked Steve to join me for an interview regarding social networking and Facebook, which he so gently accepted. I have to mention at first, that Steve himself uses the internet and social networking websites for about six hours a day grossing the notorious title geek in the process, thus surely he could be dubbed an internet enthusiast with sufficient knowledge and experience in the medium.

     It’s Steve’s firm assertion that it’s indispensable to embrace the new internet movement “in order to be competitive “ simply because the modern wolrd has undergone substantial changes as a result of the internet.  “I believe the internet has revolutionized our lives in many ways, it has changed the concept of communication and entertainment “said he and later continued: “in the mean time search engines provide us ways to search any information worldwide and [the means of] getting up-to-date”.

     Steve maintains that much the same as any other entity, the internet has its own share of advantages as well as disadvantages; for instance, albeit we all can benefit from swifter, finer, and more convenient access to information and communication, we cannot deny the threats of identity theft, spamming, and cyber stalking.

    Nevertheless, the merits of the internet by far surpass its drawbacks and hence it proves essential for implementing the day-to-day tasks. Social networking is a pivotal facet of Steve’s life, and he attributes it to not only a place to catch up with friends, but also an ambit to be submerged in while witnessing a diverse and multi-cultural environment and learning “a thing or two about new cultures or languages”. 

     Like many of us, Steve believes Facebook to be the throne keeper of all social networking websites with insurmountable potentials along with a “super positive atmosphere”.  When I asked him what he thinks of the validity and rigor of friendships on Facebook as opposed to real-life friendships he cited:

     “ Facebook is a means of social networking where you find the opportunity of finding your oldest friends from all over the world.” However, he said: “we should try to make our relationships stronger and better using the power of Facebook”. 

     In due course, I myself truly took pleasure in interviewing Steve for many reasons, from his passionate tone of speech to his rational behavior.   

You can listen to the entire interview at Talk Show Podcast Episode Ten.

Let us reform our educational system

If   we were to determine the most substantial element behind the functionality of the society as well as its long-term outlook, we would be pointing our fingers at nothing but the educational system. 

The current trend of instruction and its inadequacies

     It’s through this hierarchy of grade-based knowledge that many individuals discover their pathways in life, while the others lose the very sough-after clue that they were hoping to find as they entered the school. Whether you like it or not, the current educational system is robbing the students of their creativity due to its lack of flexibility, biased evaluation process that favors conformity, and typecasting all the learners in the same manner despite the immense dissimilarities among every single one of them.

     In a world where the so-called educational inflation, the process in which degrees no longer guarantee employment and the minimum requirements are rising from Bachelor’s to Master’s and from there to PhD, has changed the way we assess our workforce in a way that could ultimately precipitate the manifold stirs that are ensuing at the present time. 

     Global economic crises, insurmountable waste and lack of proficiency, increased level of fraud as well as crime, lower payments and salaries, monetary divisions, general lack of happiness, and most of all, uncreativeness that has led many nations into intellectual poverty are all but few of the repercussions of the aforementioned obsolete academic establishments. 

     Hence, it’s evident that our scholastic needs surpass that of mere evolution, and instead, demand a robust revolution within the composition of our educational systems from kindergartens to universities and in its entirety. 

     The following speech will address the urgent necessity of a reform in the educational systems all across the globe;              

The Rise of Women

The ancient conception that attributed a woman to being the second class citizen, the weaker sex, responsible for trivial matters, unaware of the economic, social and political issues, less thoughtful, and overall inferior to men, whether you like it or not, is but extinct.

Welcome to the new world; the epoch which has brought with itself multitude of women who have proved themselves worthier than heaps of men. Embrace the new world that has seen many women as scientists, politicians, analysts, managers, astronauts, authors, trainers, and even presidents.

Suffice to say that the feminist movement since the dawn of its establishment, has spread the message of unity and self-reliance among all the women around the globe.

We, now, live in a situation in which women in many parts of the world contribute to more than half the income of a given family, and being the sole breadwinner of the household is nothing uncommon for the ladies of the 21st century either. The role of women in our contemporary life-style by far exceeds what it used to be few centuries back.

The aforementioned change in the attitude towards women did not come cheap however, many women, for years and years, persistently fought for their various rights, from suffrage, and guardianship, to equal pay and publicity.

Do not believe me? You can check out the following video that elaborates on the rise of women, and the fact that females have managed to surpass their male counterparts in various aspects:

2011 New Year’s Resolution, by Daniel Mulligan

 

And thus the New Year is upon us once again,
All the buzz, activities, motions, and cheerfulness,
Sitting in the cozy nook near the hearth,
I spell my New Year’s Resolution,

Novelty flows in the air, hostility, but rare,
As if the old globe has been replaced with a spare,

Dear universe, let me set my first desire,  
A world at peace and away from war’s fire,
The year that passed witnessed so much scourge and affright,
Let’s hope that the New Year will impel all that to expire,

 
Dear universe, let me instate my second wish,
Allow me to flow freely and autonomous akin to a fish,
Live free or die well, I heard them say, 
Hence I would play the role of a free man in this play, 

Dear universe, let me articulate my third hope,
Sweet happiness for the humanity to cope,
To live mirthfully, and to make others joyful,
 To knot the people unitedly using this felicitous rope,
  

 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
That among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,
These three wishes, also make the Declaration of Independence, 

May 2011 be a year of aliveness, autonomy, and contentment,
That is my sincere bid, resolution, and statement. 

Space Exploration or Financial Imploration

 If you invariably keep your eyes on the sky you may inevitably stumble over the ground. We all cherish and value all the researches done on the outer space and heavenly matters, however, when it comes to budgeting the aforementioned affairs, things get a trifle baffling.

    In an era in which most economies have failed to meet the needs of the majority, dedicating substantial amounts of funds to researches and inquiries that are predominantly involved with the aerospace and its corresponding fields may prove as the second priority when such bulk of the citizenry are struggling to make their earthly ends meet in various dimensions including, but not limited to, housing, employment, education, health care, welfare, and infrastructure.

    In this regard, our contributing correspondent, Mack Moradi strictly derives his agenda from the old saying that says: "charity starts from home”. The following depicts his sentiment about the issue at hand:

     "I personally subscribe to a view that governments should focus mostly on earthly matters rather than spending all the national funds for outer space exploration. However, needless to admit that space discovery would have the benefit of its own for the mankind. Yet, the funds should instead be allocated to diminish the illiteracy in each society, to provide an affordable housing, and to eradicate unemployment. 

    Illiteracy is indisputably regarded as an impediment to the advancement of a given society, entailing the implications of its own. Quite simply speaking, a literate workforce would evidently have much greater efficiency and productivity than the illiterate ones; in addition, the latest research proves that a literate individual has healthier and longer life span; furthermore, they can by far raise better children than the illiterate ones.

   Fortuitously, in order for the government to contribute to this matter, initiating free public education, and enforcing it as a compulsory requirement for joining the work force is not beyond the realm of possibility.       

Is funding the outer-space exploration at this time of financial hardship a waste ?

 
      Affordable accommodation is still one of the persisting problems with which vast majority of households are dealing, and no one can be extricated unless the government enforces some stimulant in housing policy such as "long term installment loan plan"with low interest rate, establishing it merely by investing mainly in housing projects, not to mention eliminating all the barriers for the construction companies to stimulate the building process.         

                                                                                                              
      Above all, unemployment undoubtedly is observed as an insurmountable dilemma that all the governments nowadays, especially developing ones, are struggling with. The government, thus, owing to the limitation of the national revenue, should shift its main investment into the country's infrastructure, by granting  adequate incentives to attract foreign investors; simply , creating more jobs is way out to remedy unemployment which otherwise entailing rather devastating consequences such as theft, embezzlement ,bribery, money laundering ,or any other anti-social behaviors for that matter ; to make the situation even worse , it might lead to a more dramatic drawback known as "brain drain".    

    To sum up, I firmly hold the view that governments ought to designate most of the budgeting funds to conduct a profound reform in the educational system in order to diminish the illiteracy effectively, to eliminate the accommodation issue, and unemployment. In other words, no government is supposed to assign the budgeting funds entirely for outer space discovery; they should simply bear in mind that charity starts from home, and meanwhile people deserve and yet is bound to a better life on earth."

Our Planet, Our Home

 “There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our lungs there'd be no place to put it all.”  ~Robert Orben

“Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.”  ~Cree Indian Proverb

“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.”  ~Native American Proverb

A mere look and a slight contemplation towards the aforementioned statements are more than sufficient to awaken the most barricaded of minds. As the days go by, humanity finds itself more and more in ordeal with the earth in all conceivable aspects not knowing that the real struggle exists within itself.

The global attention regarding the dire need for substantial changes in the way we, the tenants of our planet earth, treat our very home has been steadily increased over the years especially among academics and intellectuals . Alas, such tending is a direct result of the evident impacts done on our environment and their respective trauma; an impairment that is getting us closer and closer to an uninhabitable world due to the abuse committed by none other than ourselves.

Air pollution, global warming and inexplicable weather patterns, the dwindling supply of clean drinking water, reduction of fertile soil, increased level of poisonous chemicals in all elements of the planet earth, raise in the level of radioactivity as well as seismic functions, …, the list goes on! 

But why?! Why should we let our own sanctuary be affected by our own greed?

The following video is an elaboration on ways upon which, the world can see a reversal in its destructive path by allowing the environment to lead us towards its destiny,
 

Facts About Marriage( A Response to the Time Magazine)

Article at Suite101.com by Daniel Molagan

Access : Marriage, I Do , or I Don't

The Attitude of Gratitude

Hearing the phrase “Give and you shall receive” might not make much sense at the beginning. At the least, for me that was the case after reading it for the very first time when I was just a small child. 

     Due to my curious nature (which I am so grateful for) I have always loved to poke into the nature and conception of every phenomenon and event. My desire to understand why things are the way they are, by far outmatches that of accepting the current situation. Thanksgiving which is a part of every American and Canadian lifestyle is yet another occasion that comes and goes for many without changing any. Unsurprisingly, I was sitting around today contemplating regarding the true implementation of Thanksgiving and its subsequent streams of thoughts and feelings. 

     When the entire family gather together to celebrate their warm (or not so warm) union through expressing their gratitude and thankfulness for all that there is, and for all that is about to come ,somehow, out of the blue, there takes place something magical , something beyond that of which logic can address. The realm of possibilities.

     If you have had access to The Secret, you are already well aware of what I am about to say. The law of attraction, which is the primal rule upon which our universe is governed, simply says “like attracts like”; in other words, specific feelings, or thoughts, or actions bring about the same round of result within the same spectrum. That is, by sending out thoughts of “X” TO the universe, you would receive nothing but “X” FROM the universe. 

     This notion could not have been made more apprehensive anywhere better than the books The Secret, and The Power. Explanation of this theory would be far facilitated by reading the aforementioned books; however, the overall concept could easily be grasped by placing the formula inside the Newton’s third law which is unanimously adhered by all:
 

“To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction."

     Hence, for instance, by hitting a wall with your fist, you will force the same pressure emitted on the wall on your own fist. Now let’s widen our scope and take things to a mental level. Through having a given mental attitude towards the world, you would receive the same attitude in return. 

     I just reviewed the book Rich Dad Poor Dad which by the way is dubbed “the book that rocked the financial world by the Wall Street Journal”; and among the multitude of tips for greatness, the most astonishing is a reiteration of what I previously mentioned:

“In my life, over all these years, whenever I have felt needy or short of money or short of help, I simply went out and or found in my heart what I wanted, and decided to give it first. And when I gave, it always came back.”, writes Robert T.Kiyosaki in page 184 and proceeds a few lines below : “Whenever I feel that people aren’t smiling at me, I simply begin smiling and saying hello, and like magic, there are suddenly more smiling people around me. It’s true that your world is only a mirror of you”.

     In this way, we can conclude ,so with ease, that our way of thinking could change everything that happens to us, and if our way of thinking is submerged in thanking then the outcome is quite manifest.

     The concept of showing your thankfulness for all the little things that you have ,as well as the attempt at giving what you want for yourself to the universe just to retrieve the same matter in higher quantities are indeed realized in one term; 

Thankfulness + Giving things out = Thanksgiving 

     Thus, let us hope that we will be celebrating our life in a thanksgiving mood every single day of our existence for what is better to give to the world and receive than our very thanks. 

     
 

The History of Thanksgiving and its Celebrations

The Greeks,Romans,Hebrews, Chinese, Egyptians,
Americans, and Canadians have all been indulging
on the day of Thanksgiving throughout the history.
Learn more by visiting 

Thanksgiving on the Net - The History of Thanksgiving and its Celebrations

Social Skills

From day-to-day greeting to a formal presentation, social skills play a major role in our interaction with the community in which we dwell in. 

Social skills, in nutshell, refer to the way we interact with the other people around us, and the treatment that we receive in response. While, social skills vary from one culture to another, it’s safe to say that a combination of verbal and non-verbal functions shape the basis of such skills in a guild. 

Communication, facial expressions, body language, external behavior , overall mood towards others , accent, level of closeness , the recognition of social status, presupposition, openness, self-confidence are but few of the notions that fall under the category of social skills. 

Acquiring social skills has as big of an impact as lack thereof. Thus, social skill deficits could literally paralyze one’s sense of self in a given community which ultimately reduces the interactive quality of the person in its immediate surroundings. 

 


The links below are invaluable resources in order for improving social skills in the most sensible manner:

Link #1

Link #2

Link #3
Link #4
Link #5
Link #6

  

Dreams that go further down the surface

"On the surface, I once bought a forest. The parasites claimed that the land belonged to God, and demanded that I establish a public park there.It wasn't impossible to build rapture at the bottom of the sea, it was impossible to build it anywhere else." 


Andrew Ryan

For as long as humanity existed, so did the desire to ascend in the air which eventually came true by invention of various airplanes, jets, and space shuttles. However this arising desire has not stopped the humankind from arousing the wish for descending upon the surface of the bodies of the water around the globe. 

      The notion of life underwater is not an unfamiliar concept, and you can scarcely find individuals who are unacquainted with some form of fiction or info related to this construct. 

      Considering the fact that the majority of the planet earth ,in terms of net area and surface, is covered with rivers, lakes, seas, and above all oceans we can easily imagine the magnitude of infrastructural potential that is given to us by a vast sub-aquatic margin, something that can now become yet another step towards our prosperity thanks to the advanced technology.

      In a world that is becoming more and more populated if not polluted every single day, the chance to extend our civilization beyond our lands would seem quite welcome despite all the limitations and difficulties associated with such a grand agenda.

      If you are into video games , you have probably heard about(or experienced) the video games series Bioshock; and in particular Rapture city and its own political, social ,justice, and educational system that is thoroughly unlike any other territories in the world because of  its isolated, and independent nature. Alas, Rapture city is depicted as a grand yet imperfect icon of human ambition that was spoiled by greed and other infamous human characteristics. Fiction aside, the concept while quite hard to achieve is by all means possible using the contemporary technology. 

      However, the recent occurrence of the oil spill disaster in the gulf of Mexico may be the first skeptic sign that passes through your mind the moment you think of establishing an entire city with its various elements that has the potential to create disasters of larger scope. After all, in such a city anything could go awry at any single moment, and due to the submerged nature of the infrastructure, the risk of all sorts of damages and loss are but high. 

      Everything said and done, placing all the disadvantages of a city under the ocean on the one side of the scale would still be no match for the vantage points of all the benefits received in such an environment. Only future has the answer for the billions of people who will be forced to choose between abandoning the planet earth or living under the oceans should the current trend of natural exploitation on the surface of the earth continues.Let's hope for a bright answer hereafter.