An Ode to Hip Hop

Hip Hop is becoming more and more popular. It used to be the language of the poor class for the poor class, now it is the language of the lyrical rappers, for everyone who wants to hear it. In this article I’ll let you read it, hoping you’ll start listening to it.

Jay-Z, one of the most popular modern rappers, is famous for his rapping and music, rather than for being lyrical. But in No Church in the Wild, his first four sentences are very impressive.

Tears on the Mausoleum floor,

Blood stains the Colosseum doors,

Lies on the lips of a priest,

Thanksgiving disguised as a feast.

The whole song is about power, who has power over who? The church seems to have had the most power in the past, but what is God to a non-believer? And did the church use that power in the right way? In the first two sentences, he speaks about the other side of the ability of humans to build such terrific buildings. How many people died building the Mausoleum? How many people were slaughtered in the Colosseum? A lot. After that, about the priest who should be the most righteous man, but how many times has the church used men for their own good? Some churches are huge, but why did the money not go to the poor? Thanksgiving is a feast, but it represents the genocide of the Native Americans.

Lupe Fiasco, not very well-known, always tries to encourage people from the poor class to do something with their lives, while saying the government is trying to prevent exactly this.

The Sealy has the same feeling that the floor has.

This is about the government, which tries to keep the poor poor. The Sealy, being a big bed, feels the same as the floor, so why try to be rich enough to buy it when it doesn’t make a difference? But Lupe Fiasco pronounces it so that Sealy sounds like ceiling, which means the same, the top is the same as the floor.

So no matter what you been through, no matter what you into,

No matter what you see when you look outside your window,

Brown grass or green grass, picket fence or barbed wire,

Never ever put them down, you just lift your arms higher,

Raise them till your arms tired, let them know you here,

That you struggling, surviving, that you are going to persevere.

This part from The Show goes on is about standing up for yourself, not letting others get you down. Brown grass is what you see from inside a prison cell, green grass from inside a nice house, the same goes for the fence and the wire. Lifting your arms up speaks for itself. In order to really experience the way Lupe Fiasco is bringing what I would call hope, you’d have to listen the song for yourself.

Macklemore, sometimes called a pop-artist rather than a rapper, always comes up with original subjects. In Otherside he raps about problems with drugs, in Same Love about the problems people encounter being gay, and in Wings about consumerism:

We want what we can’t have, commodity makes us want it

So expensive, damn, I just got to flaunt it

Got to show em, so exclusive, this that new shit

A hundred dollars for a pair of shoes, I would never hoop in

Look at me, look at me, I’m a cool kid

I’m an individual, yeah, but I’m part of a movement

My movement told me be a consumer and I consumed it

This one isn’t very comlex, but it goes deep. He’s talking about an expensive Nike shoes, and people buy it because they think it makes them cool and it makes them different from others. But, as Macklemore says, they’re actually part of a movement, consumers like everyone else.

This is quite a long article already, so I won’t give any more examples. I might sound as if I understand all these lyrics, but most of it was too much for me too grab. Rapgenius.com is a website where all lyrics are explained very clearly and I recommend it to everyone whom I might just have given that little push towards listening to Hip Hop.

Some say Hip Hop has changed too much. It’s not what it’s used to and should still be. I admit Hip Hop is more linked to pop music than it was, but on the other side this means more people will be listening to it. And that is important in my opinion, because the meaning of a song outweighs the sound. I may be generalising a bit too much here, but you get what I mean. And whether people like it or not, Hip Hop has become more than just a genre, it’s the language of the thinkers, for a world full of them.

Life Without Passport is Punishable?

A lot of Western countries have problems with illegal immigrants – people who, one way or another, made it to the other side of the border without being noticed. Or should I say without getting caught? Because those countries do all they can to keep outsiders where they ‘belong’ – out.

Stopping people at the border is not considered wrong. If you don’t have some sort of identification proving you may be here, well, then you may not. But what if those immigrants do get past? They build a new life in a new country. Should they still be sent away? Many would say yes, for one because immigrants don’t have that little yet very important paper we call passport. And second because it would be an invitation to others.

How do you send someone away? In the Netherlands, there was a guy a few years ago who didn’t pay for the bus. The ticket control then looked up his case. He, being illegal, was discovered and was sent back to the country of his origin. I don’t think there’s something wrong with this. The goal of the (ticket) control wasn’t to find out whether he was illegal or to get him out of the Netherlands. The goal was to check whether he had paid or not.

What if for example a police officer thinks someone is illegal? Is it right to walk up to that person and check whether he does have a passport or not? No, because that would be discrimination, a.k.a. suspicion based on appearance. The only way to not make it look like discrimination is checking a whole bunch of people. That would be checking a whole restaurant. But in a way that is discrimination too, why check this restaurant and not the other one?

What if you could find a way to check someone’s passport without discriminating and the person is indeed illegal. Is it right to send him out of the country? In other words, it is right to punish someone just for being somewhere? In my opinion, the world is for everyone. Assuming there is no way to check someone without discriminating, sending someone away would be double discrimination.

Talking about passports, what exactly is the difference between someone with and someone without a passport? What gives person A the right to be somewhere, while B may not?

I think punishing illegality is wrong, especially when someone’s illegality is the only thing someone ‘does’ wrong. But not punishing illegality would be welcoming whoever wants to come in. Is the moral wrongness more important than the practical function?

Will We Ran Out of Land to Bury the Dead?

The CIA World Factbook sums 107 deaths per minute worldwide. A person in a traditional coffin will probably take six feet in length and four feet wide of land space. Since lots cannot be next to each other, they’ll take more area for the cemetery.

Burying those who already passed is expensive in terms of land allocation. The Woodlawn Cemetery in New York covers more than 400 acres of land to accommodate just 300,000 resting people. In due time, the cemeteries be filled up and the next land should be sacrificed for the dead.

Will we ran out of land?

With Earth’s 149 million km² of land surface, there’s obviously enough room for the living and the dead. But as much as we wanted to respect those who passed away, the living could use the finite space as valuable resource to actually live.

We demand living space. The average size of homes in the US is 2,438 ft², according to the survey of the National Association of Home Builders. We also need more land for the community’s social needs – schools, cathedrals, parks, factories, roads, famine and the list never ends. And since nobody would want to live in a village or plant their crops that’s been a cemetery before, the land of the dead is of little use to the living and thus, uneconomical.

The simple option to resolve the conflict of interest is cremating our loved ones. This method is increasingly popular with 40% rate in the US. Interestingly, Japan, with just 377,900 km² land area, cremates 99.85% of their dead. The Japanese graveyards are also tight in space, which is practical given their limited land area.

Cremation saves resources for the living. Urns require less space than coffins. Some families even prefer to keep the remains and place the ornamented urn inside the house. And some will opt to release the ashes back to the environment. The average cost of a traditional funeral is $6,560, while the cremation service through a funeral home is ranging from $2,000 to $4,000. The cremation process alone, should anyone decided to skip a funeral, could be as low as $700 to $1,000. This gives more money and land to utilize for the living’s benefit.

While living, people may already have planned their resting ground. They may have already bought a lot in the cemetery or have requested their family on how they wanted to be rested in peace. Earth can handle either burying or cremation, for now.

Would you like to be cremated or buried six feet under ground?

Problem: Too Much Religion and Denominations

Beside politics, religion is the most heated topic for discussion. Representative of a religion can have a strong tendency to defend his own belief, even to the point of criticizing other religions to address the dominance of his adherence. The other person will do the same, but siding his opposing devotion. The battle never ends since this is a clash of faith. You don’t have to prove it; you just have to believe it strongly as if it’s the absolute truth.

We don’t need an argument for religion to affect our interactions. There are prejudice against Muslims, Buddhists, and even atheists. There is in any religion, even to the devout Christians. It separated several couples because of families in disapproval. People are persecuted because of unmatched beliefs.

Does too much religion separate us?

Analysts argue that world religion is shrinking. But the major religions still keep a massive population of believers. Here is the tally of the top 10 organized religions by the world statistics of Adherents.com.

Christianity: 2.1 billion
Islam: 1.5 billion
Nonreligious: 1.1 billion
Hinduism: 900 million
Chinese traditional religion: 394 million
Buddhism: 376 million
primal-indigenous: 300 million
African Traditional & Diasporic: 100 million
Sikhism: 23 million
Juche: 19 million

There is also growing number of denominations within the above-listed religions. Buddhsim can be furthered into Theravada and Mahayana. Islam can be furthered into Sunni, Shi’a, Ahmadiyya and Sufism. Christianity can be furthered into Catholicism, Protestantism, Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, Mormonism and hundreds more.

There are thousands of religions and denominations in the world. It doesn’t take an elaborate history to form one; it only needs a founder.

On January 5, 2012, a little more than a year ago, Swedish jurisdiction acknowledges Kopimism as a legitimate religion. Founded by 19-year-old philosophy student Isak Gerson, adherents believe that file sharing is a sacred act. One of their symbols appears to be a Yin-Yang balance with Ctrl-C on top of Ctrl-V. Computer users and lazy pupils recognize these as copy and paste.

Among the fastest growing religions in the 2000s was Jediism. Based on the blockbuster sci-fi movie series Star Wars, adherents practice the spiritual and philosophical implications of the movies. They believe in the “Force” and observe the “Jedi Code”.

Another religion added in the 20^th century was The Creativity Movement. It is an atheistic approach that concentrates on the white people’s seclusion. In the words of the founder Ben Klassen, “united and organized the White Race is ten times more powerful than the rest of the world put together”.

Pastor James Emery White compared the foundation of new religions to starting a business. A million people found their businesses; but 40% dies by year one, 80% by year five. New churches and denominations share the same fate. White enumerates “Lack of Ministry Gifts, Lack of Money, Wandering in No-Man’s-Land, Failure to Contextualize and Small-Church Mentality” as the reasons why most ceased.

However, once a religion firmly proved that they’re renitent, they are added to the list of world religions and denominations. With too much to choose from, certain perspectives can construe to an individual.

Is it possible to have two non-conflicting religions? A Christian can believe in the trinity and still apply the Buddhist meditation. A Shintoist can diligently practice her vocation and also agree that there’s a “Force” within her that has a vast potential.

Can crossovers like this unite the world religions, or will it complicate it even more? If you have an answer to all these questions, what makes it right? It’s based on beliefs again.

Yawning – What For?

Air is coming in, it’s coming in, it’s coming in. Now it’s in the highest of high stretching my fully expanded mouth. I closed my eyes, stretched my arms and exhaled air back out. Yaaaaawwnnn. Ah, that’s satisfying.

We’re told guesses on why we yawn. It is a response when the brain needs oxygen. People think that it preludes sleep. But contradictories dismissed them. We don’t yawn while we’re exercising – the time when oxygen use is expeditious. Singers yawn before taking the stage – which doesn’t sound like a drowsy person.

But yawning has an alerting effect. It keeps us wake and more responsive. And it just felt damn good.

It may cool our brain as it sends air towards our headspace. Albany researchers found that those with cold packs in their foreheads are less likely to yawn than those with warmer packs. Since our brains burns a third of our calorie intake, it’s hot enough. It needs some cooling mechanism and yawning is some sort of our ventilation.

Yaaaaaaaaawwwnnnn. That’s a long one, really passionate. Writing YAWN couple of times won’t keep my mouth closed.

Everybody yawns. A growing 11 weeks old fetus already knows how to yawn. 50% of those who’ve seen other people yawning did the same. Probability is higher when we have a closer relationship with the yawner, says University of Pisa’s Elisabetta Palagi. Even dogs yawn with their owners, says Lund University’s Elainie Madsen. Many called this an evidence of empathy.

An interesting theory thinks yawning is a threat. Since it opens the mouth and exposes the sharp teeth, it may be considered as an aggressive behavior among certain species. The alpha primates yawn more frequently than the beta population. The leader is thought to yawn first while the rest follows to keep them alert in the wild. Thus, yawn is associated with dominance.

Even more intriguing, yawning is claimed to be a sign of sexual attraction. I don’t know but perhaps these scientists are bored.

How many times did you yawn while reading this?

Procrastinators and Planners

A procrastinator will sleep his full hours and then will wake up for a coffee while watching the doves dangle on sagging electrical lines. He will gather his presentation for his speaking engagement in the last 30 minutes. After all, he only needed half an hour of preparation.

A planner will take the night to assemble his speech and materials. He will practice and anticipate possible circumstances to attempt control over the impending situation. Once all is polished, he will then rest and calm himself as everything is well-managed.

Is one strategy better than the other?

There is greatness in procrastination. The National Sleep Foundation argues that the workplace loses $18 billion worth of productivity due to sleepiness. A period of relaxation is requisite to optimal functionality of our own selves. Doing after resting is productive.

Social psychologists Dianne Tice and Roy Baurmeister studied how procrastinations affected college students. Those who procrastinated experience higher stress levels than those who didn’t. The time off balances the deadline scare.

But the door is slammed on procrastinators many times. Researcher Piers Steel called procrastination an “irrational delay”. They are called lazy, dumb and barren lads. Yet the world has known procrastinating achievers in the names of Leonardo da Vinci, St. Augustine, Bill Clinton and Abraham Lincoln.

Many have advocated planning. It is focused on achieving what needs to be done. It is more efficient as they use the time to gather resources for delivering the best output from sedate deliberation. They are the now-doers and no waiting in between.

There are also disadvantages of planning. Even after spending as much time needed for perfect planning, the unpredictable will come and errors will occur. If the planner can’t adapt to that, he’s done. But if everything happened according to the plan, the outcome is near perfect. Achieving planners include Confucius, Steve Jobs, Henry Ford and Benjamin Franklin.

Essentially, procrastination is leisure first before play; planning is work first before leisure. If the balance between leisure and work is not satisfied, there is a chronic problem. If the procrastinators waited too long for the best time, it will never come. If the planners tried to isolate every factor of the situation, he won’t be successful.

Anything could happen in procrastinating and planning. Both tactics have produced world influencers while the other edge damaged some who strategized badly. It comes down to what fits the person.

Are you a professional procrastinator or planner?

Think to Decrease Pain

I may shrug when a woman’s pronged heel trod on my bare foot while the next adult will roar aghast at an injection. We are all susceptible to physical pain. A neural activity is spurred upon a pressure or cut. But we feel different pain intensity; thus a terrible pain may be a tickling scratch to the other.

Our genes are a determinant of pain tolerance. Red heads are more sensitive to pain possibly due to a mutation in their genes. You encounter pain the way you experience it because that is how you are coded.

Men have higher tolerance than women. Certain researchers claim this to masculine and feminine stereotyping. People with smoking vice and obesity are susceptible to feel more pain while the fit ones can withstand more pain. And as we age, we increase tolerance on cutaneous pain, meaning the pain on our superficial skin. However, older people have decreased tolerance on the deep pain.

How the pain is interpreted has a bigger role in tolerance. It is more psychological than physiological. “Mind over matter”, we heard people say.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins and the University of Wisconsin revealed the mind power to increase our pain tolerance. In their study, they asked participants to plunge their hand to ice cold water and keep it submerged until the pain is unbearable. Those who are asked to reminisce their sexual fantasies lasted the pain twice as long as those who thought a neutral fantasy like walking.

To combat the negative emotion of pain, think of something that elicits a positive emotion. This will increase your pain tolerance.

What thought will give you a positive emotion?

Online Reviews: Buyers Trust, Companies Manipulate

For a guy who despises shopping, doing it online is a felicity. I can avoid the crowd of people checking for bargain. I don’t have to transfer shops to find a stock for my 12 size feet. My choices are varied – selections extend to different brands and designs viewed on separate windows all within five minutes. And I can do it anytime of the day!

A repulsing shortcoming of online shopping is people won’t see the actual product. They can’t try it and see how it looks on them. They won’t know for sure if it will deliver the promise of the brand. But user reviews will address this this issue.

Online review is a place for buyers to rant a frustration or grant a satisfaction. These people probably have the same need as you that the product can suffice. And if the general consensus of the review is positive, then it will raise confidence towards purchasing.

This word of mouth marketing is arguably the most effective method of promoting a product. The Local Consumer Review Survey in 2012 found that 72% of buyers trust online reviews like they are personal recommendations. It is as if the whole community is a friend voicing out a valuable consumer opinion.

A new study from the University of Melbourne, Australia took a keen interest on online reviews. If the first review of a product or service is positive, it lingers on our minds. The negative reviews that may come later in the page won’t matter as our opinion is already influenced by the positive one we’ve read.

This gives companies a leeway for manipulation. Yelp, an online review database of local businesses, was sued claiming that the website makes offer to clear out negative reviews IF they advertised on the website. Writer Todd Rutherford used to pull in $28,000 a month writing false positive reviews for books. Competing hotels submit negative reviews against each other on TripAdvisor and Expedia. It is a dirty venture.

For us customers, we better skip the first review or just be wary of the influence of that first positive review on us. Let’s be critical of too good or too bad reviews that may not reflect the sentiment of a normal customer. But even knowing these, it would still be laborious to sort out the bogus reviews from real rating.

How important is customer reviews for your online shopping?

The First Scratch

Our latest gadget is like a newborn baby. We don’t want our days old smartphone to lie on jagged table, and we don’t drive our week old red shiny car in tight spaces. We see a delicacy in them. It is always new as long as the looks are preserved.

When we noticed the first scratch, we went berserk. How could that happen? We handled it with tended precaution and yet the scratch appeared, obvious and mocking.

Apple’s Senior Marketing VP Phil Schiller said that scratches in the new iPhone 5 are normal. “Any aluminum product may scratch or chip with use, exposing its natural silver color”, he added.

Making products vulnerable to scratches is a lucrative idea of multinational corporations like Apple. They know that we wanted to keep our purchases pristine and to do it, we release more money. The revenue of mobile phone accessories is a massive $34 billion in 2011.

We may start accepting the deterioration of our gadget’s exterior. Refurbishing the red paint on a car will cost around $250 to $400, and that’s a low-end job. The finest service for a car repaint can have a $4,000 to $8,000 price tag. It is expensive to keep them pretty, but it is needless. Phones became bulky when with cases. Scratches and dents are showcases of continued use. It is a testament of how you use your purchases and it meant that your gadget is worth more than the bucks you paid for it.

But I don’t think that will convince you. You’ll still try to keep them scratchproof because it’s cool to have an appeal of having new stuff.

There are practices to prevent scratches. Always place your phone on any surface head-first. Most screens have scratchproof glass so you’ll need to be protective of the back. And mind the things you put in your pocket with your phone – keys, coins and sands will scratch them. For your car, be wary of the road you pass – tree branches and rocks are sure irritation. Wash it regularly to clear the grits off.

At what count did you stop tallying the scratches on your gadget?

“What is Beautiful is Good” Stereotype

Everyday life imposes the “what is beautiful is good” stereotype. The appealing character in TV is the good guy, while the unpleasing face is the villain. The gorgeous lady was offered the first-in-line position while the rest will have to endure the wait. The nice looking guy earns respect without any act.

Businesses desire beautiful people to be the face of products and services. Sales people, flight attendants, news anchors are attractive because they interact with the public. Stunning is a common feature of models in advertisements.

Physically attractive people are perceived as “more sociable, happier and more successful than unattractive people”. And the reason why they are more successful is because they are attractive! Attractive applicants are rated as more qualified. And once hired, they are more likely to get promotion and increase in salary.

In court, attractive defendants have better odds. They don’t look like guilty. And if they are, these people get more lenient sentences, lower bails and reduced fines.

Attractive people have perks even in the simplest situations. They are desired, looked up and have a better treatment in numerous everyday circumstances. People associate the “good” characteristics with beauty without experiential evidence with the person.

The painful aspect of beauty is that they are sometimes thought to be unintelligent lucky breed. But then, jealousy is a manageable other side of the stereotype.

Is this a wretched world to live for the attractive ones? Thankfully not. Undoubtedly, there is more challenge to them; but they are more persevering people who deserve every bit of successful footing. Earning their better life based on hardwork is a felicity undeserving lucky people can’t reap.

Do you have the “what is beautiful is good” stereotype?

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