Welcome to the Journal section, where I'll be writing my thoughts on various topics. My goal is to share my curiosity, and hope to bring out the viewers curiosity as well. Please, enjoy.

6 / 09 / 2009
Is Our Personality Written in Our Handwriting?

I found and read this article about how our personality is exposed not only in our actions, taste in fashion, or habits, but also in our handwriting;

"I believe that studying handwriting could offer some understanding about ourselves, if only because it’s so individualized. Like any other method of personality analysis, it’s just a fun way to deconstruct ourselves in the hopes of getting a glimpse at who we really are. And maybe that’s not exactly written in the stars or our signatures, but it’s still fun to look..."

The article goes into serveral discussions / topics about different styles and forms, and how these can relate to our personality. Overal, I found the article fun to read and ponder about; it greatly influenced me to think about other people's handwriting, and how accurate this article is.

It's interesting us humans are able to leave small traces of our identity. Sometimes it is intitional, and while other times it doesn't even cross our minds. Perhaps in the end, we are meant to leave something behind, even not knowing about it.

SOURCE: Is Our Personality Written in Our Handwriting? By Vicki Santillano

5 / 10 / 2009
Seeing Red: How Color Alters Our Behavior

This article discusses how color can greatly influence not only our style of choice, but also our behavior;

"Most of us recognize that certain colors inspire certain moods (which is why the colors we paint our rooms are so important), but few realize they can shape how we perform and think. They can even affect how things taste. Color psychologists study these kinds of influences on humans and while their findings aren’t all-inclusive—many personal factors, like cultural norms and experiences, shape a person’s perception of color—they have discovered that color can alter behavior in unexpected ways..."

The article continues into different categories of each common colors, and how each color represents a distinctive mood.

How does color influence or change your daily lives? Does a color trigger a certain mood or memory?

SOURCE: Seeing Red: How Color Alters Our Behavior By Vicki Santillano

4 / 12 / 2009
What Causes Vivid Dreams?

For this entry, I found an article about the positive and negative points about vivid dreams;

"Vivid dreams can be either pleasant or frightening. They have a variety of potential causes, from deeper systematic woes to simpler dietary hiccups. Provided they are not associated with any adverse health effects, vivid dreams can be a tool for achieving more lucid dreams and increased awareness while dreaming...

...We do know that they arise from Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, in which the brain is as active as it is when the body is awake. Sometimes these dreams are extremely vivid, so much so that the dreamer often has trouble understanding that he or she is not actually awake...

...Nightmares are one thing, but these were so lifelike, it took me a while to separate the dream from reality after waking. I still recall each sensory detail of those dreams in all their horror... "

The article continues into different categories or types of dreams, and tries to explain different scenarios.

It's interesting we're always trying to understand other people in our lives, and while it can be troublesome; the real ordeal is understanding ourselves. Can understanding our dreams help explain ourselves?

SOURCE: What Causes Vivid Dreams? By Molly Mann

1 / 29 / 2009
"SCRIPT & SCRIBBLE": IN DEFENCE OF PENMANSHIP

I found this article to be quite interesting while discussing about the changes, and acceptances when it comes to writing:

"I began writing books back in the late 1970s, pen in hand, notebook on my knee, typewriter at the ready to receive my completed manuscript in its various incarnations. (Somewhere in a box I have 13 typed revisions of my first novel, which probably should have been called "The Death of the Forest".) But when the computer came along and made cutting and pasting virtual instead of messy, I saw it as the compulsive reviser’s dream machine...

I was surprised to find that the answer is: Not so fast! By the end of my journey into the world of penmanship–from the Phoenicians to the Bic, from monks in their scriptoria to Bill Gates at the keyboard–I’d found plenty of evidence that handwriting is a skill that should be kept alive...

Educators I talked to claim that kids master reading more easily when they write a word as they learn it: the writing process keeps their attention focused as they match symbol to sound. Quite a few teachers whose schools make little provision for teaching handwriting have wedged it into the curriculum anyway because they’re convinced of its importance..."


Source: "SCRIPT & SCRIBBLE": IN DEFENCE OF PENMANSHIP By Kitty Burns Florey


Although writing may seem "dated" to some, others still keep true to their writing habits. Could the way a person writes protray a person's character? Do you take great effort to write a simple note, or could careless about it? What does writing in hand mean to you? When receiving a note from someone, does it bring more pleasure when its hand written or typed on a Word processor?

While for some, as long as the message gets acrossed its fine. But perhaps other, are willing to take the time to write something dear. Not only the mental expression going on the paper, but also the physical expression that is shown with the pen; as if leaving a small part of us on paper.

01 / 12 / 2009

Coldplay: Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends
Strawberry Swing

They were sitting
They were sitting
In the strawberry swing
Every moment was so precious
They were sitting
They were talking
In the strawberry swing
Everybody was for fighting
Wouldn't wanna waste a thing
Cold, cold water
Bring me round
Now my feet
Won't touch the ground
Cold, cold water
What ya say?
It's such
It's such a perfect day
It's such a perfect day
I remember
We were walking up
To strawberry swing
I can't wait 'til the morning
Wouldn't wanna change a thing
People leaving all the time
Inside
A perfectly straight line
Don't you wanna curve away
It's such
It's such a perfect day
It's such a perfect day
Now the sky could be blue
I don't mind
Without you
It's a waste of time
Could be blue
I don't mind
Without you
It's a waste of time
Could be blue
Could be grey
Without you
I'm just miles away
Could be blue
I don't mind
Without you
It's a waste of time

Every song is opened to many interpretations, such as this one. No, I am not asking to interpret this song, but rather ask, "how do the words relate, mean, or reflect to you."

12 / 02 / 2008

Patternicity: Finding Meaningful Patterns in Meaningless Noise
Why the brain believes something is real when it is not

"Why do people see faces in nature, interpret window stains as human figures, hear voices in random sounds generated by electronic devices or find conspiracies in the daily news? A proximate cause is the priming effect, in which our brain and senses are prepared to interpret stimuli according to an expected model. UFOlogists see a face on Mars. Religionists see the Virgin Mary on the side of a building. Paranormalists hear dead people speaking to them through a radio receiver. Conspiracy theorists think 9/11 was an inside job by the Bush administration. Is there a deeper ultimate cause for why people believe such weird things? There is. I call it “patternicity,” or the tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise..."

The article continues on explaining the meaning of patterns and how it affects the way people preceives certain things.

Is a reason needed to believe when something is not real when it is?

Source:
Patternicity: Finding Meaningful Patterns in Meaningless Noise - By Michael Shermer

10 / 29 / 2008

"Progress is Beautiful"

Although I don't watch television very often, but there are times when television is intriguing, especially commercials. During the Olympic Summer games (2008), I've noticed a very interesting commercial done by the Automobile Company, Audi. Their presentation of "progress" is simply touching; where it’s not the first time ever to create a flowing timeline scene, but it's something the designers at Audi has done to capture a different sense of progress.

Here is the link / source to the commercial:
http://www.audiusa.com/audi/us/en2/new_cars/Audi_A4.html

So I ask, is progress beautiful? If someone were to create a similar presentation of what Audi did to your lifespan; would you watch it? Would it be: Nostalgic, embarrassing, humorous, painful, to be proud or feared?

9 / 30 / 2008

"Daydream achiever"

"In recent years, however, scientists have begun to see the act of daydreaming very differently. They've demonstrated that daydreaming is a fundamental feature of the human mind - so fundamental, in fact, that it's often referred to as our "default" mode of thought...

Daydreaming builds on this fundamental capacity people have for being able to project themselves into imaginary situations, like the future," Malia Mason, a neuroscientist at Columbia, says. "Without that skill, we'd be pretty limited creatures...

The tales tended to be very tedious and unimaginative," Belton says, "as if the children were stuck with this very restricted way of thinking. Even when they were encouraged to think creatively, they didn't really know how."

The article goes into much more detail, where I have only shared just a small portion of it.
Do you Daydream to escape reality or do you Daydream so it becomes reality?

Source: "Daydream achiever" - Lehrer, John. The Boston Globe.

8 / 17 / 08

"Mirrors Don’t Lie. Mislead? Oh, Yes".

This article was taken from the NY Times, discussing about mirrors. The first half portion explains the beneficial of having mirrors, both psychologically and philosophically. But, towards the end of the article is where it gets quite interesting:

"When we look in the mirror, our relative beauty is not the only thing we misjudge. In a series of studies, Dr. Bertamini and his colleagues have interviewed scores of people about what they think the mirror shows them. They have asked questions like, Imagine you are standing in front of a bathroom mirror; how big do you think the image of your face is on the surface? And what would happen to the size of that image if you were to step steadily backward, away from the glass?

People overwhelmingly give the same answers. To the first question they say, well, the outline of my face on the mirror would be pretty much the size of my face. As for the second question, that’s obvious: if I move away from the mirror, the size of my image will shrink with each step.

Both answers, it turns out, are wrong. Outline your face on a mirror, and you will find it to be exactly half the size of your real face. Step back as much as you please, and the size of that outlined oval will not change: it will remain half the size of your face (or half the size of whatever part of your body you are looking at), even as the background scene reflected in the mirror steadily changes. Importantly, this half-size rule does not apply to the image of someone else moving about the room. If you sit still by the mirror, and a friend approaches or moves away, the size of the person’s image in the mirror will grow or shrink as our innate sense says it should.

What is it about our reflected self that it plays by such counterintuitive rules? The important point is that no matter how close or far we are from the looking glass, the mirror is always halfway between our physical selves and our projected selves in the virtual world inside the mirror, and so the captured image in the mirror is half our true size. "


Source: Natalie Angier, Mirrors Don’t Lie. Mislead? Oh, Yes. The New York Times: Science.


Mirrors are powerful tools. Not only do they reflect our physical appearances, but our mental stability and acceptance of ourselves. Therefore, only being able to capture half the size of our appearance in a mirror; could this change the meaning of how mirrors reflect our social well-being? (i.e. consumer, media, individuality)

08 / 05 / 2008

"Sofas"

“I must have rested two or three times during the old man’s absence. During these breaks, I went to the toilet, crossed my arms and put my face down on the desk, and stretched out on the sofa. The sofa was perfect for sleeping. Not too soft, not too hard; even the cushions pillowed my head just right. Doing different tabulation jobs, I’ve slept on a lot of sofas, and let me tell you, the comfortable ones are few and far between. Typically, they’re cheap deadweight. Even the most luxurious-looking sofas are a disappointment when you actually try to sleep on them. I never understand how people can be lax about choosing sofas.

I always say-a prejudice on my part, I’m sure-you can tell a lot about a person’s character from his choice of sofa. Sofas constitute a realm inviolate unto themselves. This, however, is something that only those who have grown up sitting on good sofas will appreciate. It’s like growing up reading good books or listening to good music. One good sofa breeds another good sofa; one bad sofa breeds another bad sofa. That’s how it goes.

There are people who drive luxury cars, but have only second- or third-rate sofas in their homes. I put little trust in such people. An expensive automobile may well be worth its price, but it’s only an expensive automobile. If you have the money, you can buy it, anyone can buy it. Procuring a good sofa, in the other hand, requires style and experience and philosophy. It takes money, yes, but you also need a vision of the superior sofa. That sofa among sofas.”

Source: "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of The World," By Murakami, Haruki.

Throughout the whole novel, this portion is probably my favorite part. The example using sofa as an analogy to individuals' taste and experience is most humorous, but very real.

Therefore, what type of sofa are you? Do you care more for comfort over style, or sacrifice comfort for style?

07 / 28 / 2008

"Belong to somewhere"

Recently, I have taken a trip to a foreign country for the first time. It was the best experience in my life so far. I was able to see many things, and create great memories that I'll never forget. In addition, it also created much force or drive to think about oneself.. The future, accpetance, comfort zone, relationship are just the very few things that came across my mind quite heavily during my trip. In other words, the trip greatly influenced myself to relfect who I am. When I was creating this artwork, I asked many questions to myself such as "Where do I belong? What does the word home really mean to me?" And so, I ask the veiwers "Where do you belong?" As for me, I am using time to find the answer.