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Food for Thought

Quantum Communication

This has been an idea floating around in my head for a while and I thought I’d post it, even if just to say “I thought of it first.”

One of the biggest challenges facing interstellar travel, and by extension science fiction stories in space, is  communication. Current forms of communication all rely on light in some form, this is fine for anything on or near Earth, but a real hassle for anything on beyond our moon. See, light only travels so fast and the distance between planets is so big that any light-based communication can be seriously delayed. Even communication with anything on Mars is delayed within a range of 4 to 24 minutes depending on how close our planets are. Distances between stars are even more daunting. The closest star system to ours, Alpha Centauri, is 4.3 light-years away. That means any signal sent from Earth would take over 4 years to reach anyone or anything at Alpha Centauri.

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Blog post Food for Thought

Knowledge Artifact

So, on this post we’ve been assigned, I’m supposed to teach you all about something I’m interested. At first I had trouble thinking of something to do, but I finally decided to fall back on something very close and very familiar to  me: Dragons!

For almost as long as I can remember, I have loved dragons. Something about these fantastic and varied beasts has always fascinated me. And I’m not alone in this, dragons can be found across the globe and in thousands of cultures who had little to no contact with each other. In fact, people love dragons so much that this was made:

That’s right, an entire documentary on how dragons could have evolved.

What is it about dragons that makes them resonate so deeply with just about every human on planet Earth? What is it that compels us to create entire…

Book series

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Movie franchises

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And games

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all focused in one way or another around these animals?

Some may say it spawns from the countless ancient myths of heroes fighting dragons. But why do so many cultures have such similar myths with such similar creatures? And now, why do we all want to befriend or become these supposed “monsters” that our ancient heroes fought? Where did the dragon start and will it ever end? I certainly hope that dragons never leave.

Personally, if dragons never actually existed, I believe they were created as a physical mirror of both everything we fear and want to be. Consider what dragons can be: wise, powerful, intimidating, nearly unkillable, possessing breath weapons, and can fly. Every man, woman, and child has dreamed of flying. And who hasn’t wanted to roar and suddenly have flames or ice blast out of your lungs? Yet at the same time, the sky is a vast and scary place, and while fire is useful it is also very dangerous.

We send some heroes to conquer these mighty beasts because we too wish to conquer our greatest fears. Other heroes become or befriend dragons because we too wish to become powerful and feared.

Dragons have been with us since the dawn of civilization and will likely be there till our end because they are everything we fear and wish to be given physical form. This is my theory at least. Though I still hope that, somewhere in this vast universe, they truly do exist.

Thanks for reading! Keep it Reel!

P.S. FUS RO DAH!!!

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Blog post Food for Thought How the Web Works

Nugget Assignment 3

“Here is how people operate, we make time to do things that are important to us.

The Question Should Be: Why are you not Blogging

This is a statement I have always disagreed with. This article isn’t likely to be the last place I see it either. The concept that we just magically make time to do the things that are important to us is silly. First of all, people have day-to-day obligations, which include doing somethings that aren’t important to us but we have to do anyway. Habits too, good and bad, aren’t meaningful or important to us unless your a person who is comforted by routine. If we all made time to only do the things important to us, there would be a lot more writers, artists, and travelers. They wouldn’t necessarily be good at it, but there would be more of them.

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Blog post Food for Thought How the Web Works

“Nugget” Asignment

“Often when schools talk to students about their presence on the Web, they do so in terms of digital citizenship: what students need to know in order to use technology “appropriately.” Schools routinely caution students about the things they post on social media, and the tenor of this conversation — particularly as translated by the media — is often tinged with fears that students will be seen “doing bad things” or “saying bad things” that will haunt them forever.”

This paragraph, from this essay, was probably the one that made me realize the, while we surf the web every day, we don’t actually fully grasp what we can do with it. We flitter from one social media website to another like bees or butterflies, but we don’t really have a nest to call our own. We warn others about the dangers of the web, but instead of teaching them how to deal with it and manage the web, we restrict web access or tell them not to go to one website or the other.

It seems kind of like a pool to me. Bare with me on this analogy. What we do everyday on social media is like frolicking in the shallow end. Not much danger unless someone holds you underwater too long. The rest of the web is like the deep end, but instead of teaching us to swim our parents just warn us never to go to that end of the pool or we’ll drown. They may even put up a safety net or distract you with toys to keep you in the shallow end.

But, if you learn to swim and go to the deep end, suddenly you’ve discovered all new ways to have fun in the pool. Yes you can still drown, but since you know how to swim there is less danger than before.

Of course it’s not a perfect one-to-one analogy, but that’s just my two cents, especially after having built this website for myself. Hope you enjoyed my ramblings! Keep it Reel!

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Blog post Food for Thought How the Web Works

Wandering Cyberspace for Outer Space

So for the next part of the website class I had to track my wanderings through the internet of something I’m interested in. So I decided to look up faster-than-light travel on Google. Here is where the breadcrumb trail led.

First post to use the Read More feature.

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