The Cabin in the woods review

On Saturday I had the pleasure to go and watch a movie at the cinema after a long time. The name? "The Cabin in the woods». It supposed to be a thriller but to be honest it ended up being a comedy... Did I enjoy it? Sure I did!! I haven't seen a movie like that for a long time and although the script writers were on weed and LSD at the same time, the result was entertaining!

The Avengers review

I saw yesterday the new , highly anticipated, Marvel's movie The Avengers. The movie had a lot of hype going on and to be honest it would be impossible that this wouldn't happen. It is a movie where you can see a lot of heroes fighting together and each other after all. So after watching the movies dedicated to each hero individually and enjoying all of them I was expecting that this movie wouldn't disappoint me as well. For what I think now after seeing it you will have to read a bit more.

Computer dependency. When enough is enough?

It is true that computers play a huge role in our lives. Their role was to help people with repetitive tasks especially calculations but now they can provide much more than that. They can provide us with information,entertainment even social interaction. I remember the times that something happened to my personal computer. I was completely annoyed until it was fixed. At those moments though I also noticed how much power that machine has on me. Now most people will say whatever I am not like that. Of course you are not until you realize that you cant live without your smart phone. They are little portable computers in a sense aren't they?

The perfect image showing this phenomenon is the following.

Education bubble

Recently I had a conversation with a close friend of mine about education bubble. How everyone has two or three diplomas, multiple masters but still can’t find a job. Is it possible? Supposingly when you follow a master’s program, you do it because you like it and because it will increase the chances to find a job, but why this is not the case?

In industry, you create a product, you make others believe it is mandatory to use and people buy it. The same rules apply to education. You create a variety of courses, you make others believe that your product is competitive and so, you get the money. Look England for example, they have a huge amount of Universities and every year they print tons of papers for degrees. Of course England is not the problem, the same rules apply worldwide, people pay to get a piece of paper that gives them a value.

The question is if this piece of paper really has value. From one hand when you print tons of papers you have inflation, meaning the value of the paper drops since you don’t have the unique privilege. On the other, when money flow to a direction bubbles start to appear.  Since people pay a lot of money to do a master’s program, it is obvious that more schools will appear to satisfy that need. The more schools you have, it is obvious the education level will drop.

So today we are talking about crisis unemployment etc. Except from the fact that global economy has fall in the mud, how is it possible to create jobs for all those people? The more graduates with a less ”serious” diploma you have, it is more likely for them to stay unemployed.

Wrath of the Titans review

Firstly I have to say that when I watched the first movie (Clash of the Titans) I didn't like it. It didn't have enough action,the impressive scenes were not as amazing as I would expect and the 3D part of the movie was so badly implemented that I was dizzy after the end of the movie. Generally when I leave the cinema wondering what more did that movie offer except from the scenes the trailer already provided something is wrong. So I was a bit suspicious when I heard about the sequel. The trailer left some promise, my brother insisted on seeing it and I had nothing better to do. Needless to say I went to see it and here is my point of view.

I blame genetics

Four days ago I saw a study about two genes which have a role on why people enjoy dietary fat.

Here is the description of the study from newswise.com

Description

While high-fat foods are thought to be of universal appeal, there is actually a lot of variation in the extent to which people like and consume fat. A new study in the March issue of the Journal of Food Science, published by the Institute of Food Technologists, reported that two specific genes (TAS2R38–a bitter taste receptor and CD36–a possible fat receptor), may play a role in some people’s ability to taste and enjoy dietary fat. By understanding the role of these two genes, food scientists may be able to help people who have trouble controlling how much fat they eat.

A crime not yet finished

As you may know, this blog is written by two Greeks. If there are some people who know a lot more about what is going in the Greek society, it’s us not the media you are watching. On Sunday, Greeks celebrate their liberation against Turkish occupation and the reestablishment of their democracy. Unfortunately this year is the worst this place has ever seen since then. Our lands are mortgaged as collateral to foreign banks, we have an unelected prime minister, we have a 400% increase in suicides, we didn’t vote for the loans we got, we have over 20% of unemployment and still I believe the worst are yet to come…

Walking. The underestimated form of exercise

One day this year on my way back to home after attending a university lesson a choice came to my mind. My regular way of going back was get the subway and after arriving at the station nearest to my home  a 5 minute walk. That day though i was in the mood of trying to walk all the way.

My train of thought was something like this: my usual time in order to return home by using the subway(including the wait times in between the trains) was 30-40 minutes, with one more hour  i would be able to do this by walking the whole way. I had also planned a running session that day which would take an hour of my time that day. So i came to the conclusion that it would be nice to not run but to combine my return home with my exercise of the day. I started walking. After one hour and fourty five minutes,lots of sweat and roughly twelve km of walking i was home.

Risk vs Reward

One of the most popular advises around is that the best way to win by gambling is to not gamble at all. By using pure logic this is obviously correct. By not playing a game you don't risk the money or anything else you would have to give to join the game. So you keep your initial investment free of risk. I was a fan of that advise until someone I know told me that by doing this you exclude yourself from the potential reward as well.

Survival of the fittest

Yesterday I saw the movie called The Gray. The movie is good but this isn't the topic I want to talk about. The movie is about a group of people who try to survive after a plane crash in a hostile environment full of wolves. In a scene they try to walk through an area full of snow and one of them struggles to follow and he is left behind. Some seconds before the others notice this he is isolated by a group of wolves and not surprisingly he gets killed before getting the chance of being protected. This scene and generally the whole movie got me thinking that we have forgot this basic rule of nature: the survival of the fittest.

The death of capitalism? (part2 finale)

On my previous article we saw a little bit about what's going on in the global scene. Also we saw a bit about the interaction between the east and the west. How crisis from one continent can spread on to another and the cycle of the economy. Today we will see a simple example showing us, why this crisis was created in the first place.

Diminishing returns

I remember when i was playing a videogame that some of the stats the game had were subject to a thing called diminishing returns. It meant that the more you got from that particular stat the less benefit you would get from it. It was there mainly as a way of preventing those stats of being overpowered. The interesting part of this is that diminishing returns are applied to most things in life too.

The death of capitalism? (part1 intro)

In the last year we hear about financial problems and bubbles all over the world, USA, Europe, Japan. Most of the countries are in great debt and are struggling to serve it. Is this the end of capitalism as we know it? Will we see another type of economy in the next years, or a total collapse? If I knew I wouldn’t be writing this article and for sure, I wouldn’t share this info with anyone else, but nevertheless there are some facts which we must see and mark them bold. 

Hugo

After watching the Oscars last Monday I realized that I haven't seen some movies that had a lot of hype that night. One of them was Hugo. The movie took most of the technical Oscars so I expected that the hype that the movie takes 3D one step up should be true. Also lets not forget that it was directed by one of the most brilliant men of the cinema industry Martin Scorsese which most of the times is enough for a movie to be quality stuff. Anyway I watched the film, even though there is some time since it was first released, and here is my impression.

Drug interactions

Last week an unfortunate and near death experience happened to me. After I finished my daily workout routine, I took my multivitamins with lunch and after a while my antibiotic (because of a bad cold I had caught).  It was a huge mistake, maybe the biggest of my life…  After a while my urine turned red and started to have awful pain on my right kidney. During my hospitalization I started having seizures but luckily now; I am alive but one of my kidneys has been shut down permanently…

Caffeine

For most people a part of their daily routine is to start their day with a cap of coffee. You may have heard the usual phrase coffee drinkers use (or maybe even you have said it) “I simply cant function without one in the morning”. Have you ever wondered what makes this magical drink tick? Most likely not because you know the answer. The substance which makes coffee work and gives you the magical benefits of mind awareness and the ability to do all-nighters is ,you guessed right, caffeine.

Hitting the switch

There are times in life where a big and unexpected event occurs. Usually there are no signs for what it’s about to happen and so the “victim” is unprepared, meaning that the shock will be much greater. When this or those events occur, they lead to a total change of life stance (or partial) and then we can say that we have hit the switch. 

Public apathy

Every day we are witnessing many things that give us discomfort. It is easy to hear about a robbery,murders,accidents with lots of deaths in them or even war. The massive wave of information provided by the media and the Internet every day makes this possible. The result of this dose of daily sight of unfortunate events is that people get used to them. You may have witnessed it on yourself. You may saw about a murder on the news and your mental response would be that happens every day who cares. This may be an extreme example and that situation depends on each person's sensitivities but you get the point. Anyway this paragraph just described how public apathy is made.

Clarity might save your life...

Recently a relative of mine had a major accident. He works as a security guard in a public school, in an area where many immigrants live. Recently during a regular check before he finished his shift, he was attack by 3 people furiously. It doesn’t matter if they were drug users or thieves, what matters is that he was left almost unconscious in the dark, bleeding badly and had his nose broken like Lego bricks.

Two months under snow without food.

Last week I wrote about how people don't really know what they are capable of unless they find themselves under extreme situations. Furthermore I mentioned that when those situations are not your choice but are forced on you surviving them gives you the title of truly hardcore. Three days ago I saw this article and I think that it fits perfectly to the essence of the post I wrote.