Religion?

Religion is defined as "a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects" by www.dictionary.com. But I beg to differ, this may have been religion once upon a time, not so much anymore. Religion these days does not quite fit that definition anymore. They still fit the general requirements but these days it seems far more like a business than a religion. Business is defined by www.dictionary.com as "a person, partnership, or corporation engaged in commerce, manufacturing, or a service; profit-seeking enterprise or concern." I feel this definition fits far better into so called religion today. If we read the definition we can see it says " . . . corporation engaged in a service; profit seeking enterprise . . ." Is this not what religion has become? If we look at how "The Church", for example, conducts their goings-on we see that they are running their "religion" as a business. This is how I see it, when they make people pay "tithe" they are making you pay for their service as it were. This is one reason why the religion is more like a business. Another reason is that religion used its people in the past to get what they want. Such as for example The Crusades. The Crusades were merely a money making venture if we look at it from an economic stand point. There was lots of monetary value in sending people to conquer new cities and taking over trade routes and such. Now try saying that religion isn't a business maybe in some ways this might not be true but as a whole religion is the best business ever established, and for that I commend religions everywhere.

Incarceration

http://www.barnorama.com/the-cold-hard-facts-about-incarceration/

The United States has the largest inmate population in the the world about 25%. There are more and more elderly people being put into jail every year. 90% of these prisoners are male, and 44% of those are black. Also 1 in every 100 men in the United States are in jail or on probation.
These stats personally frighten me into never wanting to go the the United States. The fact that they have the largest prison population in the world along with only 5 % of the worlds population means they are either too hard on people for committing lesser crimes or there isn't any effective crime prevention. I think that it is a little bit of both. America is notorious for jailing people for lesser crimes and most of those lesser crimes are possession of narcotics. Also The american community doesn't do much to prevent crime. Not to sound course, but the American population is overwhelmingly selfish, meaning that they don't care as long as it doesn't happen to them. Many people on top of that, have an attitude of "Just leave me alone in my living room with my toaster and TV, I'm not hurting anyone. . ." When they should be saying that this is unacceptable and it will not happen anymore. When we look at the amount of money being spent on prisoners each year and then look at how much is being spent on education, its no wonder there is a rise in crime. More and more youngsters are getting a bad education because the American government keeps cutting the education budget, while at the same time increasing the DOC's (department of corrections) budget. The point is that if more time is spent on preventing crime then less crime is likely to be committed, because educating kids is after all crime prevention.

Purity of expression

What do you think of when you hear the words "purity of expression" ? Well the other day I was listening to some one say that he wasn't happy when a "bitchy [sic] english professor" seemed unconcerned his purity of expression. This got me thinking, why is out purity of expression being stomped on daily? The fact of the matter is that we are being molded into conforming into society every time we get a bad grade for having missed the point of an assignment. But what if we hadn't missed the point? What if the point was there its just that the teacher didn't appreciate that it was done exactly how they wanted it. Much of what we say and do is skewed by what others want to hear. Imagine a world where everyone expressed them selves purely. it would be EXCELLENT! But this is not the case, most of what we say isn't pure at all. take for example people that censor themselves. Instead of coming out a straight up saying "fuck", which would be pure in expression because it is raw and untainted, because it is what was meant. It shows the emotions of what the person is feeling and far more effectively conveys the message. We have people that instead of expressing themselves purely saying things like "frek" or "fck", which to me is tainting what u mean to please others. Purity of expression does not mean swearing at all. In fact swearing itself can be tainting people's purity of expression. Take for example when a person curses every few words or so, all the time. That too taints the purity of his or her expression, because it is not allowing them to put out what is foremost on their minds. Instead they are diluting their words with pointless meaningless profanity, which when they need to use it to convey their emotion of anger or sadness may be lost on his or her audience, because the audience cannot see the true meaning behind it. So the point is to be pure in your expression, say what is pure and not what people want you to say.

Ssunflower art

http://funguerilla.com/millions-of-porcelain-sunflower-seeds/

What this man did was amazing he had 100 million porcelain sunflower seeds made. Every seed is individually made and is completely unique from the others. So the piece is actually made up of 100 million smaller art works. The amazing amount of time and effort that must have gone into this is astounding.
I think that this embodies China perfectly. For a nation that produces just about everything and in large quantities it seems only right that they produce this as well. The piece shows the new China as it is today. The abundance of the seeds to me represents the abundance of production goods that are made in China. The fact that it was hand made shows the manpower that the country has to spare and how they can do anything with sheer willingness and man power. The other side to the piece is the cultural aspect, the fact that it is made out of porcelain shows the culture of China because they were the first to have it. Why do you think its called China? other than that if you read the article it says that at one point the Chinese economy was producing vast amounts of sunflower seeds, this give us a peak at their heritage.The best part of the whole thing is the "Made in China phenomenon" because to be honest just about everything is made in China these days, and if it isn't its really expensive.
So at the end this piece of art is the embodiment of what we know as China.

Super Powers

http://wtf.thebizzare.com/offbeat/science-and-technology/5-super-powers-you-can-have-today/

As kids we all wanted to have super powers and it was but a fantasy, but we still wished it was true. Now that we are older and have been exposed to the world of what is possible; we have lost our imagination and our hope in super powers. The new technologies that have been developed has brought back that possibility of having super powers. Look at how the disabled can run again and faster than the average man. See how a man can record his days with an eye which is a micro camera. The future is full of wonders such as these superpowers. But the question now becomes when does it stop? The way things are going its only a matter of time before people are getting elective implants for everything. It starts with a guy trying to run again and leads to people cutting off their own legs so that they can run faster and longer. Where do we draw the line ? When does it become an invasion of privacy to film every one around you all the time ? There are things that must be outlined that eventually must be dealt with. There isn't yet a limit to what we can do with our technology and pretty soon I think that people will have superpowers of some sort if they can afford it. So in the end our childhood dreams of super powers may still come true, and at the rate technology is evolving it might be sooner than we think.

Is Gogle god??!!??

http://www.thechurchofgoogle.org/Scripture/Proof_Google_Is_God.html

Is google god? or is it just some crackpots crazy rants. I think that although it is very close to god in many aspects it is not quite there yet. God cannot be replaced by a machine or a cleverly designed bit of software because god has to make moral and ethical choices which a computer cannot yet fathom. Yes it is true that Google can potentially be everywhere, contains almost all of human knowledge, and is potentially immortal. It is not god because it has no ethical or moral brain. It is merely a tool for human use. Also if google were god it would be all powerful which it isn't simply because it cannot function outside the realm of cyber space. sure it potentially controls all of cyberspace but it cant function anywhere but. So even though it is the closest measurable thing to god it isn't god. This debate can lead into whether god is real or not, but for the sake of argument lets assume god neither exists or doesn't exist.

Google!

http://www.topstrange.com/google-empire-2882

Google is our answer to everything these days! If you have a question, look it up on google, if you want to know about a movie or a restaurant or even a person, look it up on google. But how far is google going? Google now has everything from answers to hardware. I think that if google progresses at the same rate it will reach a point where it owns us and all we will be is slaves to google. I mean look at that video linked above. It makes it pretty clear about what google is planing on doing. Google is trying to buy the internet and the electricity that runs the computers from which you use google. So does this not show that they ay be planning on controlling when where and how we use the internet. Not only will they control the hardware they will control the software too. They want us to use google docs and gmail and so on, so that they own all of our intellectual property. This is a scary thought because nothing we do on the internet ever truly gets erased. So when we look at it our lives will be owned by google and everything we do will be on record. So to conclude i believe google is trying to own us all and make us slaves to their products.