3.11.14

Busteeeeed!


Heey,

Ever thought about what to do in holidays? Or, ever figured what NOT to do in holidays?

Tips for productive weekends :
1. Watch something AWESOME!
2. Try to explore new things
3. Don't move and stretch your muscles to much
4. Solve some mysteries!
5. Keep in touch with hot coffee~

Still thinking what to do? Haha, gotcha!

The answer is simple : WATCH MYTHBUSTERS!!

By watching Mythbusters, you'll see awesome things (check!) and know something new (check!) and keep muscles relax (check!) and solve mysteries (check!) and, last but not least, watching Mythbusters enables you to stay calm and drink Coffeeee (check!)


I introduce you a tv series : Mythbusters, a.k.a "Productive Weekend Mate"





Now, here are two responsive articles I made to some of their work...

          MYTH 1 : Sneezing with Your Eyes Open

Although it might sound simple, the myth that sneezing can pop our eyes out had fooled me, my relatives, and my friends for quite some time. It is not hard to believe this, since sneezing creates an unyielding pushing force of air going through mouth and nose. Moreover, human have reflex to close their eyes while sneezing, getting more people to believe it is true.

In respect to science, this myth has been proven wrong recently by Mythbusters, a tv series with five hosts doing experiments to bust or confirm popular myths. Mythbusters proved it wrong by analyzing the anatomy structure of human head, as written on the review article. The muscles of eye, eyelids, and force from the nose when we sneeze, all are not related to pushing the eyes out when sneezing. In fact, many eye muscles are holding the eyes in the facial skeleton. Other than the theoretical prove, Mythbusters also busted this myth by trying it right away. One of the hosts survived twice sneezing with his eyes—forced to be--opened. However, this myth might have another reason behind its existence. The experiment was done with a normal, fit person, and thus, leads us to an assumption that there might be some rare conditions of a person that make this strange terrifying phenomena possible.

MYTH 2 : You Can Catch A Bullet with Your Teeth


"Footage from a 1950s television show called You Asked for It featured a guy supposedly catching a bullet in his teeth".
The second myth has a simple, yet catchy idea. It seemed to be pretty obvious that human teeth are not designed to, and will cause a great damage when biting hard objects--especially a flying bullet. In the experiment, Mythbusters used a deceased pig as the test object. Other than because using real human teeth is too dangerous, swine jaw has a similar structure with a harder material. In the end, this myth is busted, leaving me with an opinion: to catch a flying bullet with normal human teeth, high-tech tool is certainly needed.

***

See ya in the next post! ~


10.10.14

"Keep Calm and Pick the Guitar!"

When we think about the songs from 50’s through the 80’s, some people may have “country music” genre quickly passing through their minds. In the early fifties, we have the legendary Johnny Cash, who is widely considered as the most influential American musician of the 20th century with his joyful—yet meaningful—country songs. In the late fifties, we also have Kenneth Donald Rogers, popular as Kenny Rogers, who is just as popular country singer and currently has his name included in the Country Music Hall of Fame. Both are well-known talented singers, songwriters, and also actors. However, they also have some clear and subtle differences in their history and style of singing.
          Almost all artists have different paths to fame, and so do Johnny Cash and Kenny Rogers. Both being famous country singers does not mean that they cannot have a totally different early career history. Kenny Rogers was in a rockabilly group The Scholars in mid-50s when he first began his singing career. Later, The Scholars disbanded and all of the members went solo. Rogers went to some jazz groups—one of his local well-known jazz group: The Bobby Doyle Three—and made some minor solo records. He kept continuing his career by joining jazz groups and signing on some records. Rogers’ ordinary singing career went on until 1977, when he made a breakthrough with his first major hit “Lucille”, which reached number one pop charts in 12 countries, and famous for selling over five million copies.


On the other hand, Johnny Cash started his career by recording gospel songs to the Sun Records studio. The producer, Sam Phillips, got bored of these gospel records and told Cash that he could no longer work at the studio. That was his early career. In my opinion, the mega-boost that made him shining on stage and famous among the music viewers, would be the one day when he unintentionally did an impromptu jam session with Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis, in Sam Phillips’ place. Johnny Cash would have got a ton of inspiration from those extremely big and famous musicians, even though—according to his autobiography--he was the farthest from the microphone when his, Elvis’, and two other voices were blended. Since then, Cash pumped out some of his major country songs, including “Folsom Prison Blues” and “I Walk the Line” which reached to number five and one in country charts, respectively. Kenny Rogers and Johnny Cash both started from the bottom of their career and both had their breakthrough pieces. However, Rogers’ steps to stage were most made by his active movement from one music group to another, while Johnny’s bridge to star were built by his plenteous music crafts and other’s rejections to them.
In his music, Johnny Cash has many touches of uniqueness. Most of Cash’s music pieces are highly related to his sympathy towards the poor villagers and prisoners. “Folsom Prison Blues” and “Man in Black” would be the two best songs to describe this. Humorous and fast-beat songs are also in his range of music: “A Boy Named Sue” and “Get Rhythm”. Even though his sympathy song creations were dominating the album, we can still say that Cash has got diversity in his country music. In his music, guitar dominates other instruments: bass-treble guitar strumming pattern has always been Cash’s country music’s best friend. Beside the sounds, Johnny Cash perform differently on stage, especially for costume. He was famous for wearing black in almost all of his performance. Whether he wears black shirt, tuxedo, or just a black t-shirt, accompanied with black trousers. The places where he performed were also catchy and made him a special country singer. San Quentin Prison is one example. His songs really meant to depict his true pity towards unfortunate prisoners who “has long paid for his crime”, as he said in his autobiography.



Kenny Rogers has a big difference with Johnny Cash in his types of country music. Rogers’ top pieces are usually story music and love songs. Three of his famous crafts, “Twenty Years Ago”, “The Greatest”, and “The Factory” are songs that tell stories, especially nostalgic stories of how old times are good times. His love songs are also considered as his masterpieces. I personally would pick “Buy Me A Rose” as his best love song, since the lyrics and melody are both strengthening each other, no wonder it reached on the top chart in its era. For the instrument, guitar was not Rogers’ only friend. Despite of his guitar-dominating top chart songs like “Lucille” and “The Gambler”, Rogers also used piano or keyboard in his performances. Rogers has no particular dress code that he always wears like Johnny Cash does. Bright periwinkle tuxedo or white long sleeve shirt would be his casual stage costume. Wherever and whenever Kenny Rogers does performance, this charismatic singer—with his eager songs and appearance—will always bring warmth all over the ballroom.
            Other than as highly recognized singers and songwriters, Kenny Rogers and Johnny Cash were both active as actors. Rogers’ one top movie “Six Pack (1982)” in which he played a race-car driver, successfully brought Kenny’s reputation up as an actor. Other than that, the movie itself was also famous for grossing over 20 million dollars during its theatrical run. “The Gambler (1983)”, “Wild Horses (1985)”, and “Christmas in America (1990)” were also famous movies and drama which Kenny played in. Johnny Cash, likewise, ran in some movies like “Five Minutes to Live (1961)” and “A Gunfight (1971)”, in which both are box office movies with Johnny Cash as one of the main actors. As actors, Cash and Rogers both frequently played in classic western movies. However, Rogers was more likely to play in comedy western movies, while Johnny Cash tends to play in action western movies.

            Differences between these two country singer stars are clear and subtle, obvious and hair-splitting in many ways. However, differences between them did not change people’s respect towards their music. Both are well-known, charismatic, and humble personalities. Whenever we think again about old country songs, it’s obvious, these two stars’ names should pass through our minds.
              So, wait for what? Pick up y'all's guitars!





3.10.14

"Cause I'm Afraid of it"


The role of "Fear" in human life hasn't been clarified yet, whether it brings sparks of kindness, or it calls sorrow. Fear has existed--in a bad form--to keep human away from something bad. Fear comes as a result, a surprise, or even a nightmare. It brings pain when we think about fear, and when we try to erase it from our minds as well.

Human are created with various fears. It can be something that most people aren't afraid of. Fear is not constant, appearing in many forms to many innocent peoples. One man can be afraid of another man. One creature can be afraid of one smaller creature, or a beast animal can be afraid of its prey. Fear comes, terrorizes, and stays.

When it comes to "the biggest fear", almost no one can answer his or her biggest fear accurately. There is always a higher sky to see, and so is fear. The limit of fear is infinite, and so are our thoughts and feelings to one particular fear. The limit of fear is infinite, and so is the time to erase one's deepest fear. The fear is way too deep for him to not think about it every possible conscious moment. The fear cuts deep through his veins, thrusts into the corner of his mind, and stays there until time would stop to help him.

We keep trying to find something that wins fear, when at the same time knowing that nothing is what we can only find. The laziness of waking up at 3 in the morning, cannot win a burst of sudden nightmare. The sleepiness of coming home from an exhausting day of work, cannot win the fear of not feeding thumbsy the cat. The wise men keep searching there for the thing that can beat fear, let's see the result in forever years later.