my reactions to Daoism/Taoism

Today in my world history class I learned about Daoism, which is also referred to as Taoism. Which also includes the Yin and Yang symbol. Which represents in a sense opposites, however I think it is supposed to mean that there are two sides and that one cannot live without the other. The reason I can’t say opposite is because it is not what Taoists believe it stands for. However, the actual symbol of the Yin and Yang stands for light and dark, earth and the heavens, male and female, and life and death.

            When I think about Taoism and what the Yin and Yang means I can’t help but think of opposites, because light and dark are opposites, as well as males and females. But I also think that seeing the two, as opposites, will prevent you from seeing them as anything else. It will hinder your ability to recognize that without one the other cannot exist and will only make you concentrate on the differences in the world. Which would cause you to become less accepting and more narrow minded.

            Another part of Taoism is the practice of Wu-Wei, which means without action, or action without action. However it dose not mean to sit around and do nothing, instead it means to go with the flow and not to exert unnecessary energy. Which is something I completely agree with, I have always believed to relax and go with the flow, in fact a few days ago I adopted the motto “If you don’t stop to look around once in a wile, you could miss it.” Which basically means to relax once in a wile and allow yourself to go with what nature wanted you to do instead of stressing yourself out by trying to go against “the flow.” 

Something in Libya?

For the past week or so there has been a dangerous event going on in Libya, I don’t really know what to call it. An uprising? Revolution? Either way I am still just as confused, I have no idea what is going on in Libya, the only thing I have understood so far is that a dictator that took over Libya in nineteen sixty nine, and his name is Gaddafi and that he was not going to step down even though his entire country hated him. I also saw that apparently Gaddafi’s son was killed while trying to look up the proper spelling of his name. This whole thing is going way too fast paced and is really confusing.

            Some of the things I have no idea what is going on about in Libya are for example, how did this uprising start? Did the rioting in Egypt start it? What happened with France? Who fired the missiles, was it France, America, or someone else? Obviously I know nothing about this current event and every article I try reading about this subject is extremely long and really hard to understand.

            After a little while of researching I found out that the Americans want to create a no fly zone over Libya with the help of the UN (United Nations) so that Gaddafi will be unable to use aircrafts to attack any soldiers of allied troops. But other then that, a half an hour of poor researching helped me understand nothing more. The only reason I am blogging about this because I would like someone, in the comments, to tell me what is going on. Only if you understand it though, because I cannot look at another confusing explanation about what is going on in Libya. What I want is a short brief explanation, like the plot.

            Thank you for listening to my free blog rant on the uprising in Libya.

Japan-Earthquake, tsunami, and fire oh my!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/12/world/asia/12japan.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

            Only a few days ago a serious earthquake with an eight point nine magnitude hit Japan, then if that weren’t bad enough a tsunami caused by the earthquake also hit Japan. During both the earthquake and tsunami thousands of homes and buildings were demolished, making all those people that have not died now homeless. If all this was enough then you should stop reading because besides the earthquake and the tsunami there is now a serious threat of a nuclear meltdown in four out of the six nuclear reactors. Which would devastate Japan for centuries to come. After further reading of the article I saw that the article said that the wave of the tsunami at its height was twelve feet high. And what I also found out was that there was also a fire in Kesennuma, a city with a population of over seventy thousand people.

            In my opinion what happened in Japan is like a perfect storm, the conditions were all just aligned so that Japan got the worst possible situation. I never knew about the fire from people talking but since I read the article I learned a few more bits of information that I had not learned from watching the news or hearing people talk. For example, that there were also waves that hit the west coast that sunk several ship and made seven foot waves in Hawaii. I had no idea anything happened to the west coast. I guess that shows how ignorant I am to world events, but with everything going on now in my life I have very little time to think about a country thousands of miles away from me. Although this article was very informative, I have to say I hated it. The only reason I say that is because I hate reading articles by force, if there is an interesting article by all means I will read it and blog about it, but that’s never the case, current events in my eyes are always boring!

IBM Watson

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/13/ibms-watson-supercomputer-destroys-all-humans-in-jeopardy-pract/

A while back I was forced to watch Jeopardy by my teacher, however this was no ordinary game of Jeopardy. This game had a super computer, whose name was IBM Watson, a computer that is loaded with over 90 servers and was designed to play Jeopardy. During the three day Jeopardy event Watson crushed his human competitors almost every single time. Watson uses all of his downloaded information to then select the right answer based on percentages.

 That is how IBM Watson runs, and when you think about it Watson has an unfair advantage against the other contestants, because he has access to the entire world ready the second he needs it, while human memory can be tricky and may not always be one hundred percent accurate. He also does not need to press the buzzer like other contestants, which is a slight advantage to Watson.

Although Watson was not the only one with an advantage, for example, the questions on jeopardy are supposed to be more indirect, which is harder for a computer to analyze, which gave the humans a leg up on that department.  However that was really the only advantage the humans had.

During the final Jeopardy one of the contestants, Ken Jennings, had put a particular comment on his answer that had won the laughs of many, Ken wrote, “I for one welcome our new robot overlords”(Jennings). Although I did laugh almost uncontrollably, I realized that this may be a joke now but who knows maybe in a few years from now robots will become so sophisticated and independent. I know it sounds farfetched now however, if you look back several years ago to today you can see that technology has improved exponentially, and if we continue the path that we are on now who knows what will be created in the future.