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.