the moon :)

The moon 

Maybe it is weird that a 19- year-old guy writes this, but the moon is that companion that even though it doesn’t seem like it, it helps me a lot and it gives me inspiration and it helps me open my mind and get to know things about myself that I didn’t know before, how to take a look at it in moments of high stress and it helps me find serenity, I forget about my problems and my routine and I can submerge in a sea of calmness, in which only my thought exist and my questions that normally are: what am I doing? Am I happy with this life? What can I do to be better? I can last hours observing that white sphere that sticks with me through every dark night: my good friend.

She helps me forget, but she also brings me memories that maybe bring sadness to me, because they were really happy moments that I would like to have a time machine and go back to that moment in which my life was so different, with its bad moments but also with a lot of happiness. I don’t mean that things have changed giving a bad turn, but it just means that my happiness was different. I love to observe it, as well as she observes me and is witness to everything that happens in the dark. I know that she will be with me through anything till the end of my days and that is why I speak to her, even though she doesn’t listen to what I do, because she is my inspiration and tranquility.

I really enjoy writing because it’s my way to express what I am feeling in determined moment or what I am doing and this way I can “immortalize” it, because your mind forgets it a lot of the time but when you write your thought they stay written forever. I recommend you to write often, whatever, whenever, just let your mind lose, even if your ideas seem silly. I look forward to reading your comments, thank you so much.

The Stanford University Experiment

Stanford University Experiment

This experiment also known as Lucifer effect was a psychological study that went through in Stanford University in 1971 in which the plan was to create a prison like ambiance and the conducts that man develops being under these circumstances like the marine corps of the United States. The people that were part of it were chosen with an ad posted up for a job offering a salary of $15 per day for participating in an experiment. Out of 70 persons that applied to the ad, only 24 were chosen, the ones with the best conditions in physical and psychological health. They were all college students.

The group was divided into guards and prisoners, and a rumor started that the students assigned to guards were chosen because they had more physical strength, although they were really chosen by flipping a coin so that there would be no preference.

The prison was built up in the basement of The College of Psychology in the same university. The guards were given military uniforms and shades so they wouldn’t cross eyes with the prisoners, which were just given robes without any underwear and flip-flops and a stocking over their heads in order to create an aspect of inferiority between them and the guards, and the prisoners were called by numbers instead of their names and they also had a chain on their ankles as a reminder of their imprisonment.

One day before starting the experiment, the guards had a meeting in which they were explained all the rules and procedures they had to follow, which were al focused in humiliating the prisoners as well as intimidating them in a way of letting them know that the guards were the ones that were in control of their lives. The prisoners were only told to wait for a visit in their houses. Without any notice, they were arrested by real cops that cooperated in the experiment and they were transferred to the fake prison and this way the first real part of the experiment was done.

The experiment came out of control really fast because the prisoners were so trapped in their character that they accepted the sadistic mistreatment they were given by the guards who didn’t even follow instructions and little by little the prisoners started suffering big emotional traumas only by the second day of the experiment. As the time went by the participants of the experiment forgot that it was only a research experiment and this caused a big problem; the guards separated the good prisoners and bad prisoners making them do denigrating chores like cleaning the bathrooms with bare hands as well as homosexual acts particularly at night when the guards thought the cameras were off.

Two of the prisoners had to leave the experiment because they started showing too big psychological traumas. After 6 days, the experiment had to be canceled because it was getting out of control. It lasted only two days of the scheduled 2 weeks.

This experiment was kind of an impact on me and this is why I decided to share it with you. Hope you liked it. Thanks.

for fans of Metallica: Cliff Burton, a legend of heavy metal

A LEGEND OF HEAVY METAL: CLIFF BURTON

It has been 25 years since one of the best bass players ever left us in a tragic way, the great bass player from Metallica: Cliff Burton. Considered by a lot of people, me included, Cliff was one of the best musicians in heavy metal and trash metal.

What pushed this man was his love for music and his brother’s Scott memory, which died when he was only 13 years old. Cliff was a pianist but when Scott passed away he decided to turn to a bass player in honor of honor of his brother. He wanted to be the best bass player in the world, and he got it. He nearly missed the cut into the band, but if it was not for the idea of going to San Francisco, he would have never been able to play with Metallica. From 1983 to 1986, Cliff became the life of the band and that is why Metallica owes him so much, in fact a lot of what the singer (James) knows about writing and rhythms knows, he knows because of Cliff. They were like brothers. He was the most affected by Cliff’s death, and he became an alcoholic and ended up needing psychological help.

Cliff died at the age of 24, on September 17^th in 1986. The bus, on which he was going back to his hotel while on a tour in Sweden, flipped over. The band’s guitarist (Kirk) tell about how that night he had made a bet on a card game with Cliff that whoever lost would sleep on the back of the bus, and Cliff won with pocket aces. Approximately at 6 a.m. Kirk was awoken by a tire screeching followed by some shaking; it were the back tires drifting in the highway and moments after, the bus flipped over. Everybody was out of the bus shocked by the accident without even knowing Cliff’s body was lying lifeless under the bus.

As it was expected, Cliff marked a lot of this band’s fans and he was a great role model to a lot of today’s musicians.

I hope this little post about this musician was entertaining to you. This great musician showed everybody that no matter our age, if we set a goal we can be the best in whatever we want, if we truly do it with all our heart and our passion. In my opinion, I love music and I spent a lot of time on it because someday I would like to become a great musician and that’s why I chose to write about this person who dedicated his life to music and that being so young he accomplished being world-wide known. Thank you.   

F.R.I.E.N.D.S

On this blog post I will be talking about my favorite TV series. This show is called FRIENDS. The story line is about 6 friends, three boys and three girls that live in Manhattan and about their daily lives. This series first aired on September 22, 2004, and then it lasted for 10 years. This series started off as all the other series do, just as a test, but it gained popularity really fast.

Most of the episodes take place on one of the girl’s apartment, but the most popular place for all of the friends to be is in this little coffee house they’re always at called Central Perk. I will describe a little about each character:

-Monica Geller (Courtney Cox): She is a really bossy girl with an obsessive-compulsive disorder. She always has to be cleaning, and everything has to be perfectly organized. Her parents prefer her brother Ross and this always comes up. She is a chef. She is always being made fun of because she used to have a lot of overweight in high school. She ends up marrying Chandler Bing.


-Chandler Bing (Mathew Perry): He is the funny/sarcastic guy of the group, but his personality is because he uses humor as a self-defense mechanism. He has always had bad luck in relationships, because of his problems with commitment. His parents got divorced because his father turned out to be gay and now stars a burlesque in Las Vegas. None of his friends now what his job is until he quits and gets a job in advertising. Everybody teases him for being the only smoker of the group.

-Rachel Green (Jennifer Aniston): Daddy’s little girl, high school cheerleader, typical popular American girl. Used to be Monica’s best friend in high school, but lost contact until she appears looking for her and asking for her help after walking out on her wedding day. She starts working as a waitress in the coffee house, but ends up working in what she really likes: fashion. She has a baby with Ross Geller.

-Ross Geller (David Schwimmer): Smart, boring guy of the group. He is a paleontologist who works at a museum and as a teacher. He is preferred to Monica by his parents. He is always being teased because he was married and his wife ended up leaving him because she was a lesbian and also because of his number of divorces which are 4 in the show. He is always correcting people. He has had a major crush on Rachel since high school, and end up with her, and they have a baby.

-Phoebe Buffay (Lisa Kudrow): The weird girl of the group. She is a twin sister but hardly ever speaks to her twin. Her mother killed herself, and Phoebe is always using this to try to get things from the other. She plays the guitar and sings on Central Perk, but her songs are really weird and not common. She is also a masseuse. She never had a real relationship until she met Mike and married him.

-Joey Tribbiani (Matt Leblanc): The womanizer of the group, always going out with tons of women. He is an actor who struggles a lot to get jobs and auditions. His biggest role ever was playing Dr. Drake Ramoray in a show called Days of our Lives. He loves to eat. Food is one of his passions. He falls in love with Rachel, but things with them don’t work out because of Ross.


So, the story begins when Rachel comes looking for Monica because she walked out of her wedding, and as they used to be best friends in high school she asks for her help. There she meets all of the other guys because they were all together in the coffee house. She becomes a part of the group very fast, and here is when Ross’s feelings from the past come back.
The most important things you should know about friends are:

·         Rachel and Ross start dating in season 2, but have a problem and break up after one year. They have a baby called Emma in season 8, but don’t work things out until season 10 and they get back together.

·         Monica marries Chandler on season 7, but they can’t have kids. They undergo a big process of adoption and end up adopting twin babies.

·         Phoebe becomes a surrogate for his brother and his wife, and ends up having triplets.

·         Rachel and Joey tried dating for a while at the beginning of season 10, but neither of them could stop feeling guilty because of Ross, so things didn't work out.

·         Joey’s career finally pays off and he ends up having a great job at a soap opera, and he wins a big award for it: "A Soapie".

·         Phoebe ends up marrying a guy Joey set her up with, something she never thought she’d do because she never had a real relationship.

My top 3 episodes, and the ones I totally recommend are:

·         Season 3: “The one with the Football”

·         Season 7: “The one with all the Candy”

·         Season 7: “The one with the Baby Shower”

I hope you take the time to watch it, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

MY DEBATE EXPERIENCE AND MY REAL OPINION ABOUT ABORTION

Abortion – an ethical act?

 

The last sentence was the motion of the debate that took place last Friday on my English class, of which I was a part of. We had to talk about whether we thought abortion was an ethical thing to do in case of an unexpected or an unwanted pregnancy. We were to discuss the facts, opinions, statistics, etc., that we researched and thought were crucial at the moment of knowing you are pregnant, and want to make an informed decision. 

I belonged to the team that supported the motion, which means that we were defending the act of abortion. We had approximately 6 days to prepare for our debate, and honestly none of us wanted to go on with the debate because we were really nervous, we thought it was very little time to get prepared. But still we went on with the debate, and had a really good experience. I think we got a little carried away and got really into it, but then again, that was the whole idea, to defend your motion as well as you could.

To make this debate we had different motions, and my main motion was malformations during pregnancy and how it gets mixed with religion. This means, the different points of view and opinions the different religions have on abortion depending on the case. 

My main focus was on the Jewish religion, which is the most flexible on this case. According to the Jewish Talmud and the Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Ethics, a mother can abort its fetus it she is in danger of death, if multiple fetuses compromise the mother’s health, and if the product is less than 40 days old, as it is only considered just fluid.  

What amazed me the most is the flexibility of other religions compared to the Catholic one. Some of them allow an abortion when the baby is product of a violation, some of them if the mother is in danger of death, and some of them have a debate to see if the request is valid and acceptable for abortion.

Apart from this I also made statements about Women’s rights for complete freedom.   

But even though we found some really good argument on the internet, that were enough to make the audience decide that those of us going for the motion had a better outcome, I would like to say that I am not pro-abortion. I think that you cannot have a really valid opinion until you have been on that position and even less judge a person for taking whichever decision she felt comfortable with.

Everyone can have an opinion on abortion, but then again, who are we to judge on something we don't know?

Walt Disney

In my last blog post I wrote about how an author and the magic of his books and I thought, why not write about someone that expresses his feelings and his magic in movies? In this blog post, I am going to talk about Mr. Walter Elias Disney or Mr. Walt Disney and tell you a little about him.

Walt Disney was born in 1901 in Chicago, but he grew up in Missouri, always with a big interest in art. He was part of a very humble family. When he was 16, he left high school and tried to enlist into the army, but he was rejected because he didn’t reach the required age so instead he joined the Red Cross. After joining, he was sent to France for a year to drive an ambulance, and it is said that he decorated the ambulance entirely with his very own cartoons. 

When Walter went back to the US, his interest in animation grew more than his interest in art itself, and he started showing his cartoons, in a theater, which he called Laugh-o-grams, but unfortunately that wasn’t really successful and it didn’t stick, and he ended up owing a lot of money, totally bankrupt. 

After his failed attempt, Walter and his brother went to Hollywood and set up their own little cartoon studio and this time it did work for them. They created a cartoon series called “Alice’s Adventures” which was a big hit and worked really well for him, but a little while later, he lost the rights to a very important cartoon he had created “Oswald the Rabbit”. 

It is said that after losing his rabbit rights, he felt the need to create something to replace him, and here is where, I think, and I’m sure a lot of you will agree with me, he created MICKEY MOUSE. He was based on a pet mouse Walt had, and it is said that even the mouse’s personality was based on Walter’s, and he voiced him.  It started off as a silent black and white silent cartoon, which then turned to a colour, voiced one, and this was the cartoon that won him his first ACADEMY AWARD. Mr. Disney won a total of 22 Academy Awards.

Later on, he moved on to film-making, and started making SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN-DWARFS, but he didn’t have enough money to finish it, and the Bank of America gave him the money to finish it and it was showing by 1937. This movie made more than $100,000,000.00, and he continued in the movie industry. 

In 1955 de opened an amusement park he called Disney Park, and it was located in California.

 

By 1966, Disney started having a bit of health problems and was diagnosed lung cancer, due to that he was a smoker. He later died of shortness of breath. A rumor was very heard saying that Walt Disney was frozen, but he was cremated and that was just an urban legend.

Even after his death, his legacy still continues to be, and continues to charm and bring happiness to all the people in the world. Mr. Walt Disney was a truly creator of magic, and he will never be forgotten.

Like I said in my last blog post, I grew up reading Dr. Seuss’s books, I used to and still love them, and I think not everybody used to read them like I did, but Disney’s movies are also part of me growing up and I can ASSURE that they are part of everybody’s childhood too.

Dr. Seuss

"A person's a person, NO MATTER HOW SMALL!" -Dr. Seuss

In this blog post, I am going to talk about a man whose books I enjoy a lot: Theodor Seuss Geisel, also and better known as Dr. Seuss. 

Dr. Seuss was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. He was a really famous writer, and cartoonist, but most importantly, he was world-wide recognized for the children's books he wrote. He had a unique technique on writing his books. His technique made his books really entertaining for little kids, but at the same time it left a great deal of knowledge on them.

I have been reading Dr. Seuss's books since I was a little kid, and I have always enjoyed them, but I have always interpreted them not only as a writing that leaves you with knowledge, but I have also thought that some of his books have some kind of self-motivation catch.      

Although I was born around the time of Dr. Seuss’s death, these books were a part of my childhood; they were the literary works that I enjoyed a lot as a little kid, but the curious thing is that I read them now and I enjoy them as much as I did back then, or even more if it’s possible.

Dr. Seuss wrote 48 books, and a lot of his creations were and are still being adapted into films, like: "The Cat in the Hat", “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”, “Horton hears a Who”, and “The Lorax”.

I have read that a lot of people have thought that Dr. Seuss’s books are wrongful to kids because they seem to think that they have some kind of subliminal political messages in them. They consider it as a form of children brainwashing, but I think that actions speak for themselves, and if these books are still very well read today, and movie makers still make adaptations of his books, there is no reason to think they are harmful to kids. 

My personal favorites and the books I want to recommend are: 

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind!” -Dr. Seuss.

Anorexia nervosa

Is a eating disorder, specially more usual on women, is a disease where the person looks extreamly skinny and his or her weight in under the normal, they don't want to eat and actaully they have and image distorted and a famous image about it is this one:


Even when they have this disease they don't know it, they seem it well, and they have a fear to gain weight, the stomach of this persons is physically prepared to not eat, they're satisfied with small portions of food.
  
The root of this problem is that us the young people take as model the artists, singers or famous persons, and must of the time we copy all we seen, only to look a like them. Also there's alot of persons that gave us a really good example of how to behave. And there was a time when a girl gave a conference about it at school and she said that she suffered that disease and now she is in treatment and she went there to tell us about a place where they help to cure this disease.

Favourite Movies

One of my favorite movies: Across the universe

I would like to talk a little about this movie because it passes in one of my favorite times: the 60’s.

The movie is a musical that talks about the love story of Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood) and Jude (Jim Sturgess) and the psychodelic 60s in the U.S., Jude travels to this country in order to look for his father but he is beaten for the big changes in that time and here is where he falls In love with jude, a pretty rich girl and the sister of his best friend: Max  who a time ago is called to sign up to army and fight in the Vietnam war, but thereafter he was injured and sent back to home. Tired of the changes and movements of that time, they decides to start an amazing travel with Sadie, Jojo and Prudence on the Dr. Robert’s famous bus called “the beyond”.

Many of the characters are based on real artists of the 60’s , starting with “the quarry men”, it was the band thas was used as the foundation for The beatles, and the Sadie and Jojo characters that were inspired in Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. The bus in wich this crew  of friends were traveling also existed and was called  “the furthur” in such a group of persons  called “the merry pranksters”.were traveling.

I really recommend this movie to all those persons  whose loves  that time and the beatles because all the soundtracks are compositions of them, I hope you to watch this movie and enjoy this post =D thank you.

My Favorite Book: "The Giving Tree"

My Favorite Book: "The Giving Tree"

How many of you have read a book that maybe made you change or want to change for good? A book that made that you never thought would have much of a meaning but after understanding it would make you see things in a better light?  

On this blog post, I would like to talk about my favorite book. A book I hope some of you have read or at least heard about, or that when you read this, you want to read the book too. It is a book called “The Giving Tree”. Author: Shel Silverstein.

 

When I first read this book I thought: “Just another book for little kids.” I didn’t really get the meaning of it, I didn’t read through its lines. I thought it was nice but it didn’t touch me like it did several months before.

Last year I had the great opportunity to assist to a retreat from a local church from where I come from, APSON. One of the topics was about parents. They talked about how we should appreciate our parents and everything they do for us, about how we have to cherish every moment we have with them and to be really grateful for having them. The essence of the topic was based on this book, The Giving Tree.

When I got my hands on this book again after that experience, I read it from a totally different angle. I read it but not only thinking of my parents, but also thinking about everything you have and don’t appreciate at its time.

I think that what the author tried to teach us in this book, is to never always we thankful for what we have, but to be even more thankful to those who give us ALL they have, because there are some people who are willing to give you everything they have and even more if they can.

I really recommend this book. I hope everyone that gets to read this post takes the time to open the link I will leave in a comment, so you can read it and hopefully you’ll enjoy it as much as I do every time I read it.

“The work of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it” –James Bryce. I can personally say I carried away from this book so much. I hope you do too if you read it.