How should we say goodbye?

It’s the news that brings silence and tears to the fans across the world, but the Westlife announced they’re splitting up. After a farewell tour, this Irish boy band will officially break up.

Although it is the truth which is unchangeable, I feel sorrow anyway. They are not just a band. Their music is memory as well as a good company of my youth. Having each of their latest record had been my greatest joy in those days. I am so obsessed because they seem like having the most soulful voice and unforgettable lyric. That song, Season In The Sun, always reminds me the moment when we sang it together on our middle school graduation party, which was also full of tears and sadness. Now, the classmates are spread across the world; the band is going to split up. Things are not they used to be.

We all have our favorite band and singer accompany with our growing up. Do you still listen to their music? Do you have some special memory for them? Do you think it is not just music but already be a part of your life?

In Honor of Halloween...

Halloween is right around the corner I thought I would postsomething in honor of this holiday. There are of course a number of traditions that go along with Halloween including trick-or-treating, dressing up in costumes, and going to haunted houses. I’m sure everyone has experienced a haunted house or a haunted maze but have we ever thought about all the work that goes into making those attractions so scary? This article from The New York Times gives a rundown of what Halloween entails at Universal Studios and other Disney parks. Halloween has become a huge marketing opportunity, bringing profit for theme parks all over. People obviously loved to be scared but according to the article it is taking more and more to do just that. According to the article our generation has been exposed to graphic video games and movies that we’re now more difficult to scare.

To what extent do you agree that our generation is more difficult to scare? Do you think graphic movies and video games really affect us in a way that it takes more for us to be scared or disturbed? Is it really worth all the money that people put into Halloween? Is it worth it to buy a $42 ticket just to be scared for a night?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/movies/at-universal-orlando-halloween-fright-is-a-full-time-job.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2

Occupy Wall Street

It's not the latest news, but it really last for a long time. At first, it is only a demonstration in New York, and then it seems that their slogan "we are the 99%" found an echo in the world. Many similar demonstrations were held in many cities in U.S, and then more people in over 900 cities worldwide also held similar protest.
I followed this protest closely, and I know that New York Times took a survey and found that most Americans have positive impression of the protest. Except for Americans, I also found that many Chinese people are discussing about the protest, and they put forward many different opinions of it. Most of people just concern about that people are free to hold demonstrations, and there are also some people notice the lack of focus of this protest. There are some pictures we can find on the internet, and one of them shows a girl wrote her demand on a board which is “end student loans", many people think this demand is not reasonable.
For my opinion, I think they just vent their emotions. Although there are unequal distribution of wealth and high unemployment rate, but occupy wall street is still not a good way to solve it, so what do you think about it?

We are new here

Today when I walked in campus, I saw some Chinese were looking for their class rooms, obviously, they were new here. They recalled me the days when I first came here last year. I was so nervous and had no idea what challenges I would meet at that time. As international students, campus lives are not easy. We not only need to study hard for every course, but also try hard to adapt ourselves to American lives. Many of my friends told me they wanted to make friends with American students to engage themselves to American life instead of just speaking Chinese everyday with other Chinese students, but that is not easy. When I chatted with American friends, I found it hard to find common topics which can draw the interest for both of us. In most of cases, we just talked about class, homework, which made both of us feel bored. That could probably results from we knew so little about the popular cultural among young people. For American students, do you have any friend who is from foreign country? What you usually talked about with them. And for those students who want to know more about American life and cultural, do you have any suggestion? For the international students, do you have any good American friend? What you can learn from them?

Animals Escape From Zanesville Residence

As you may have heard this week in the news, over 50 exotic animals escaped from a residence in Zanesville Monday night . The owner of the property, Terry Thompson, reportedly let most of the animals out of their cages and then shot himself. The animals left the property and roamed the Zanesville area. Many locals called in to the sheriff's department reporting sightings of exotic animals. Local schools were closed and deputies were ordered to shoot the animals on sight because of the threat they posed to the community. By Wednesday, 49 of the 56 animals had been shot and killed. They consisted of wolves, black bears, lions, a baboon, mountain lions and tigers. Thompson was also keeping giraffes, camels, and chimpanzees on his property. Jack Hannah drove overnight in attempt to rescue some of the escaped animals but only 6 were able to be transported to the Columbus Zoo.

So what do you guys think? Many of my friends have been arguing about what the right thing to do would have been in this situation. Do you think more should have been done to protect the escaped animals as opposed to shooting them? Or was it a necessary action to keep the community safe?

here is a link to the news story
http://www.10tv.com/content/stories/2011/10/19/zanesville-exotic-animals-escape-preserve.html

How May I help you, human?

You might know apple released its latest cellphone, iPhone 4S, which is not the iPhone 5, what most of apple fans expected. At the following couple of days of the new iPhone revealed its vein, most customers felt disappointed about this, because the new iPhone looks the same as its predecessor. Especially for the companies like apple known for its perfect product design, people would have a higher expectation. You may wander why people spend another $200 to buy an the exact same new iPhone. Before you try to sneer they wasted their money, please watch this Siri Introduction video first.

Yes, it’s the new personal assistant program, Siri, blew our mind. Technically, it can help the owner to do all the basic stuff, sending message, telling you the nearest restaurant and schedule a appointment. I have to admit when the first time I watched this video, I was really shock by it’s powerful function. I used to thought using the map app on my phone to search a restaurant nearby is really a convenience. I’ve never thought about one day I can get the traffic information by talking my cellphone when I am driving, all I need to do is telling my needs to my cellphone and let it handle the rest of things. Yesterday, I was even surprised by asking “ What’s the derivative of X squared plus 2X plus X cubed? ” to Siri, It represented a graph of derivative parabola to me. Those days, almost all the new iPhone 4S users are sharing their funny story with Siri on the Internet. They asked their iPhone sophisticated questions like “what’s the meaning of life?”; they let two iPhone 4S talk to each other; I even got a news of a CBS reporter conducted an interview with the iPhone 4S.

It seems humans are stepping into a age of nothing impossible, we can never predict what will happen tomorrow. We know nothing about our potential, and we create technology with limitless. No one can answer what will the future exactly look like. Yesterday, I was writing a paper about my imagery of future artificial intelligence. Today, It’s already applied on cellphone. Nothing is more surprised than this, witness the future we thought it’s only a fantasy.

The Walking Dead

Since we’ve been using a comic image from it in class so frequently, I think it’s time we brought The Walking Dead to the blog. It’s back, and the second season premier last Sunday was as good as I expected. For those of you who don’t know, The Walking Dead is a television show based on a comic; it’s incredibly good. Its high production value and compelling story took viewers by storm last fall. AMC renewed it for a second season after just its pilot episode!

For any of you who do watch the show, how did you feel about the second season premier? Do you think Carl will die? What do you think will happen with the unresolved things from last season (Merle’s disappearance and Morgan and Duane)?

The show is great for many reasons, but I think one of the most profound things about it is its production value; it feels like a movie split into segments. For any of you who have seen it or other shows of its caliber, like Spartacus: Blood and Sand or Game of Thrones, how do you feel about this recent trend in television shows? Also, does it bother you that more and more movies and television shows are being derived from comics, graphic novels, and books? Why?

Beyond all this, I really do recommend the show to anyone who hasn’t seen it. Yes, it has zombies in it, but it’s hardly just about zombies. It is really phenomenal, and totally worth your time.