Yup

Hello!
..I was supposed to do a video challenge thing for not posting for a while, that featured me doing a piss-take of the news.

Instead....

Posting a video 1/11 of the length its supposed to be, and that has completely nothing to do with anything that is to do with anything. YAY. XP
I'msodead
...At least it's made from the same number of photos of the amount of Pokemon in Gen 1. :D
...
.... ;-;

 Forgive the wibblyness, I don't own a tripod. D:

Yup.
No doubt Wefju will now make a super-evil thing for me to do now. XP
As punishment. Unless she's nice.

Here's a picture of an apologetic dragon.


(He's also scared of what Wefju has planned.)

Feminism

Feminism

Define: Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women. 

Many people specifically males’ use the word “feminist” as a derogatory term. However the majority of people in our society are feminist as they believe that men and women should be equal, which to most people westerners seems obvious and would activialy vote for or participate in achieving equal rights for both genders. However in some cultures or groups they believe that women are born fundamentally different than men. This is apparent in most Muslim cultures, several African cultures, gypsy culture and some small indigenous groups. I completely disagree with this thinking; however a lot of those discriminatory beliefs are based on religious beliefs.

What I think women tend to be discriminated on:

1.       Women should “stay home and have children”, this also stereotype also implies that women shouldn’t be career focused and should focus solely on having and raising a family. I think this stereotype is one of the worst as it not only leads women to think that they should give up their career for their family it makes women who do not follow this stereotype  susceptible to abuse. Not only this, they are also unlikely to have the top positions in a company only because they are expected to be at home looking after babies. This is not only ridiculous it is completely discriminatory; it is like saying to a Muslim “You can’t have this job because you are Muslim.”  A statement like that would have the human rights council up in arms. That is why in New Zealand and most first world or western countries they have enforced policy that does not allow women to be discriminated, especially in the office and potential employers are not allowed to ask whether a women is thinking about starting a family in the future or having another child.

2.       Women can’t “sleep around”. This is a huge double standard that males are allowed to have sex with as many women as they like but women should only have sex with a male if they are married or have been in a serious relationship for an extended amount of time.  This is completely barbaric and has no good supporting arguments for this double standard. Infact someone said to me the other day when I pointed out this double standard “Well… It’s like locks. A key that unlocks many locks is a good key, however ever a lock that can be opened by many keys is a pretty crap lock.” I think this is a very unfair comparison and this kind of thinking is bizarre. I think any woman should be allowed to have sex with any man she likes and however many different partners and not be judged.

3.       Women should do housework. This stereotype derived from women always doing the housework prior to the late 20^th century. This is ridiculous and has no grounds…. Also the “get back in the kitchen” jokes are just pathetic….

There are many celebrities who are quite feminist. One that was recently pointed out to me is Nicki Minaj.  If you listen closely to the lyrics of “Starships” or look them up you’ll notice the lyrics “But fuck who you want, and fuck who you like. That's our life, there’s no end in sight.” And there are many others, including some famous historical figures such as Kate Sheppard.

I would be interested in your views on being feminist and other female stereo types. Leave comments if you have any interesting or appalling stereo types. Also let me know if you have any good arguments why women should be treated worse than men. I have never heard a decent argument and I genuinely don’t believe there is one....

DFTBA

A Post on Happiness

Happiness.

Yes, I'm talking about that elusive, abstract noun that all of humanity either seems obsessed with finding and holding on to, or are convinced it does not truly exist.
Happiness.


Good question, Charlie. ^^
So... what IS happiness?
Well, actually... who knows??
(Yes, happiness largely consists of the chemicals serotonin and dopamine in our brains, but I suppose I'm talking more about the philosophical nature. :P )
It differs from person to person, and everyone thinks it's something different... as elusive and invisible as those pixies that live in your garden...
A strange analogy, I know, but I'll get back to that. ;P



But, the fact is, we've all been sitting desperately searching for some way to be 'happy' at some point in our lives.
...so how does one become 'Happy?'
Is it something magical that just happens?
Is it something magical that just floats into our life?
Is it, as the ancient Greek (I think it was Greek, but it could be Roman.) Empire thought, a god-granted luck to be happy? (They believed that you were either born to be 'happy' or to have good fortune in your life, or not. In fact, 'hap' is derived from a word meaning 'luck', so words like happen, happiness etc all have something to do with a certain amount of 'luck'.)
Is happiness something that needs to be earned? That you need to prove you deserve it through trials and tribulations?
Is is just being oblivious to all the negative, sad and terrible things in the world?
(As the saying goes, "Ignorance is Bliss")
Is it a choice?
Is it any of these things? All of them? None of them?



Here's the thing I believe.

Happiness does not actually exist.


Wait, take a moment to absorb that.
...
Now, before you start yelling at me that I'm obviously a terribly pessimistic person who has obviously never been happy, let me first stress that there is a difference between being happy and having happiness,

Yes. I would indeed describe myself as a happy person.
Why?
Because I am regularly happy.
But the thing is; people seem to see having happiness, as having a point in our lives where we are perpetually not-sad, or perpetually not-stressed. Where everything is going just right.


The thing is, that being perpetually in a positive emotional state is actually physically impossible.
Our brain notices that it's getting way too many 'happy messengers' flooding it, and it goes something like this:
(In our brain)
"Oh, gosh. I'm so happy!! :D :D"
*a little while later*
"Yeee! I'm still so happy!~"
*A little while later again*
"...Wait a second..."
"Why am I still happy??"
"There must be some chemical imbalance within me!! D:"
"Quick! Drop the joy levels! This isn't how it should be!"
*We lose that wibbly-wobbly happy-happy feeling.*


So, yes. We actually have an "inbuilt buzz-kill' system! XP
(Note that this does not count for clinical depression/ actual chemical imbalances within the brain that cannot be fixed by the brain (probably because it's so depressed itself) and so need psychological help.)

Another thing, countries /places that are rated 'highest' in 'happiness' also have the highest suicide rates.
But... if everyone's so happy, why is that so??
No, no. It's not the supposedly happy people that are doing this, but those that believe they're not happy because they see all these people that have obviously found happiness and wonder "what could I be missing?? D:"
And then they enter that terrible, oh-so subtle death-spiral where we slowly sink into a more and more depressed state; constantly wondering why we're not happy, (or as happy as them) and what are we missing?

(Trivia, the "Death Spiral" is actually plane-jargon meaning the downward spiral that planes can enter. They cause death not because they're impossible to get out of (they're not), but because, especially way-back-when, when planes had few instruments, the motion of the plane was actually unnoticeable. So the pilot didn't notice they were plummeting towards the ground until they saw it in front of them.)


But the thing is, as my mother's psychic guru preaches, "We should not seek happiness, for that is fleeting and unsure. Instead, we should focus on balance, peace and contentment within our lives."

So instead of wondering why you're not happy, and why is there no happiness in your life, enjoy the moments where there are no terrible things going on directly in your life at that moment.
Like, when you're eating a really good sandwich.
Or you noticed how that one cloud looks a bit like a horse with a mouse's head.

(Disclaimer: There isn't actually a horse with a mouse's head pictured here. Unless you have a really good imagination. These are just really pretty clouds.)


Also, take part in things that make you temporarily smile, or laugh, or be happy just for a moment.
Oh, rest assured, your brain will shut off the happy-vibes, but then, just be content. Or go do something else, that's maybe stress relieving etc.

So, I think, what I'm basically trying to say is... stop focusing on -trying- to always be happy, or wondering if there's something 'wrong' with you or your life because you're not!
Not to be too cliché or anything, but everyone is sad at some point. (Actually, most people, mst of the time.) Not because the world is depressing, not because we have amazing reasons to be sad, but just because our brain seems to have trouble being happy a lot.
That is all.
(If you see people who are happy all the time, they are very good actors.)


(Not a fan of expletives, but I suppose it gets the point across, that happiness is not so much a concept of hundreds of smiling people etc as what you want it to be.)

Life is stressful, hard, unfair, busy, even more stressful, sad, disorganised and basically a great big jumble of stuff. 
The trick is to, occasionally, slow down, remind yourself that, really, it's not all bad and go do something that makes you smile, even for just a minute. 
Oh, and stop searching for "happiness"
But then, there are a billion quotes online for that.






Except that these quotes have one thing wrong: happiness doesn't actually exist. When we stop searching for it, contentment appears, which makes our split-second moments of joy just seem to last longer.
Or maybe the contrast is just less.

Now, as an ending note to this post, here's an awesome picture of a person hugging a seal.

Have a fun day. :P

Quarks

Quarks Explained (hopefully)

What is a quark?

Definition: Any of a number of subatomic particles carrying a fractional electric charge, postulated as building blocks of the hadrons.

So quarks are a fundamental constituent of matter. There are six types or flavours of quarks, up, down, strange, charm, top and bottom. Each flavour has a corresponding anti flavour called an anti quark. For example the up quark, symbol u, has a corresponding anti quark called anti-up, symbol ū.

The “up” and “down” quarks are the most common flavour of quarks because they are the most stable flavour.  As the other quarks, strange, charm top and bottom get heavier they turn into the up and down quarks through a process called “particle decay” which is the transformation from “a higher mass state to a lower mass state”. Strange, charm, top and bottom can only be produced in particle accelerators (such as CERN’s large hadron collider) or in cosmic rays. All quarks have certain properties such as colour, electric charge, mass and spin. These different characteristics determine which quark is which.

So what do quarks do?

You have three quarks in every baryon (The most “familiar” baryons and they ones I will be referring to are neutrons and protons). In a neutron for example you are likely to have one up quark and two down quarks. The up quark has a charge of positive two thirds whilst the down quark has a charge of negative one third. So by having two down quarks and one up quark you have a charge of negative two thirds (-1/3 plus -1/3) and positive two thirds. That means the charges cancel and the neutron will be neutral (this is of course different for particles that have a charge). The principle is exactly the same for other baryons including the proton. The proton has two up quarks and one down quark, their charges cancel to create a total charge of positive one (which we all know from year 9 science is the charge on a proton). This is exactly the same for anti-quarks. If you have three anti-quarks in the same formation as normal quarks then you have an anti-baryon.

Attraction between quarks

Within all subatomic particles there needs to be a strong interaction between the subatomic particles. With all quarks this is done through their colour change property.  In a Baryon such as the neutron we were talking about earlier there are three colours, red, blue and green. Each quark has a colour and its anti-quark and as you may have noticed they are the primary colours so they effectively make the neutron white. The quarks are constantly changing around colours, this allows them have a strong interaction and really this property “bonds” everything together. Once again this is exactly the same with anti-quarks.

You may have noticed the name of our blog is Strange Charm, which you guessed it, are the two quarks. Besides strange and charm being my two favourite quarks, we felt that we resembled those two quarks. Julia gets strange…because she is strange (not saying I’m not strange, just she is more so) and I get Charm because of a long running inside joke.

I hope you have found this explanation of quarks easy to follow and informative. If you have any further questions or have noticed that I have mislead or got it wrong, then please don’t hesitate to correct me in comments. I have only covered quarks and Baryons in this post. I shall cover Leptons and mesons in a later post.  DFTBA.

For further information see YouTube, Wikipedia or Google "what is a quark".
And to listen to an awesome song written and sung by Hank Green go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0kXkWXSXRA

Procrastination!

Procrastination.

Something we all, one time or another, fall prey to. D:

If you aren't familiar with the meaning, the definition of the word is this:

"The act of procrastinating; putting off or delaying or deferring an action to a later time."

In other words; you know that chore or bit of homework you were supposed to be doing, but suddenly eating something, or checking Facebook or E-mails, or even going to the bathroom, suddenly seemed so much more important?

...and then, before you know it, hours have passed, and the work is left undone.

Forgotten, ignored.

I'm sure this is a familiar sensation for everyone. Indeed, I myself have fallen very deep into the pitfall that is procrastination.

I mean, seriously! I've been putting off blog posts for almost a month now!

...and now I have to write two before midnight.

Oh, dear.

Anywho.

The main question, no doubt, is WHY.

Why do we put off things we KNOW are important, that we KNOW need to be done?

That we know if we don't do it that everything just piles up and becomes worse and worse..?

So, why do we do this?

Oh, sure, it's so very easy to chalk it all up to laziness, or the simple couldn't-be-bothered attitude so many of us have.

Or perhaps the fact that you despise the task ahead?

But is that really all there is to it?

I think not!

Yes, laziness may certainly play a big part, not to mention the dull boredom that is often associated with the task being avoided.

However, that's hardly it.

I mean, you may love playing piano, but never seem to get around to practising; something else always seems to need doing instead.

..and perhaps you are not lazy at all! All your other chores seem to get done, and it's not like you sit around doing nothing! 

But, if you love it so much, it's hardly a case of putting it off because you find it a menial task, is it? 

I find the same goes for many things - these blog posts, for instance.

I love writing! And messing about on random topics!

In fact, I love the idea of having a blog!

..and yet, I never seem to get 'round to it..

Rather recently, I found out the main reason for this.

I was attending a careers lecture, and afterwards had some time to speak to the lecturer. I don't entirely know how the topic came about, but very soon, he was telling me that ,"You know what the funny thing about procrastination is?

...it's that it's really mostly prevalent in people with perfectionist tendencies."

I was actually extremely surprised to hear this, (although some of you probably already know this) even though it actually did make sense.

It's because, you see, when one is a bit of a perfectionist, they naturally want things to be very good.

So, who hates the feeling of failure, or being inadequate, more than a perfectionist?

This then means that perhaps the main reason you never want to practice piano, is because you never feel like you know what you're doing, and all those blunders and mistakes not only make you feel terrible, but they look pretty bad, too.

...and maybe I don't get around to posting much, because I have no clue how to write a decent post, and will probably write far too much, or be too vague?

But this is still not all of it. We all have different reasons for putting things off, and I've only mentioned a few! Sometimes it IS simply because the task of doing those three pages of trigonometry questions seems like the most dull thing on the planet. Sometimes it is simply laziness, or the fact that, you know, the house could probably go another day or two without being vaccumed...

The trick to getting over it is really just to give yourself a kick, and make yourself get moving (or, if you're not quite that flexible, get someone else to do it for you!). I've always found check-lists and whatnot only provided more means of procrastination, rather than aiding to stop it.

Oh, and googling "how to stop procrastinating" more than once, at any time other than when you have all the time in the world, counts as procrastinating, too.

So, yes.

Procrastination = not so good for you, but more than just laziness. XP

If you stumbled across this through google... or, actually, if you read all of this, then you are also most likely procrastinating.

Go, go do that thing you're supposed to be doing!!

...I might actually follow that advice myself, actually...

^^"

Cya later!~

^.=.^

The Rights of a Child

UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989

Every human on the planet has rights. But many people don't realise that children have special rights as defined by the UN's convention on the rights of a child. The UN defines a child to be any persons 18 years or younger. When I was at the model UN I chose to go to UNICEF for my ouotreach program (A program designed to give back to the community). At UNICEF I learnt a lot about the rights of a child and why they are important. There are 54 rights of a child however only the first 42 (Coincidence? I think not.) are directly related to the child. the last 12 are governmental responsibilities to do with reporting to the UN how children's rights are being ratified.

Here is a summary of the main children's rights (in no particular order):

1. Children have the right to protection from work that threatens their health, education or development
2. Children have the right to appropriate information
3. Children have the right to express themselves
4. Children have the right to protection in times of war
5. Children have the right to protection from trafficking and abduction
6. Children have the right to know and live their own culture
7. Children have the right to protection from neglect
8. Children have the right to play
9. Children have the right to protection from landmines
10. Children have the right to protection from sexual abuse
11. Children have the right to express themselves
12. Children have the right to survive and develop to the fullest
13. Children have the right to a home
14. Children have the right to privacy
15. Children have the right to a loving and caring family
16. Children have the right to express their opinions
17. Children have the right to meet and share views with others
18. Children have the right to a drug free world
19. Children have the right to protection from guns
20. Children have the right to freedom of thought
21. Refugee children have the right to protection
22. Children have the right to a healthy environment
23. Children have the right to enjoy their own culture
24. Every child has the right to a family
25. Every child has the right to education
26. Children in conflict with the law have the right to be treated with dignity
27. Every child has the right to a name and nationality
28. Every child has the right to freedom of conscience
29. Every child has the right to food and nutrition
30. Children have the right to attention from both parents
31. Children have the right not to be exploited
32. Children have the right to adequate health services
33. Children have the right to develop to their full potential
The list goes on.....

I hope you took the time to read through some of the most fundermental human rights. Many children at the age of 18 or under take all or the majority of these rights for granted. However children, specifically in third world countries are denied these rights every day. It is difficult to do anything about it from our level as in these situations change often needs to happen on a governmental or international scale, however you can do your bit. By getting involved in and organisation such as UNICEF or the newly founded p3 foundation you can help change children's lives. Even by raising awareness about children's right you are forcing your peers to stop and think about their actions and what they take for granted and how they can better our global community, even by sponsoring a child though UNICEF or World Vision you are helping a real person and their community. If you have limited funds, giving a small donation to one of the mentioned organisations or raising awareness is still helping to create a better tomorrow.

I strongly urge you to look into child's rights more and to try helping to make a difference.

UNICEF:
http://www.unicef.org.nz/
World Vision:
http://www.worldvision.org.nz/
p3 Foundation:
http://www.p3f.org/
UN Convention on the Rights Of a Child (1989):
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/pdf/crc.pdf

Blog Rules

Blog Rules

1.       Each of us (Wefju and Dragina) must post at least once a week.

2.       If one of us doesn’t post for a week then they are subject to a “punishment” which has to be a video blog of no more than 4 minutes that can be about something of the other’s choice, though readers may have an input by adding suggestions in comments.

3.       If the video punishment is not completed then it is pushed over to the next week.

4.       If one member has a VALID excuse (To be judged by the other blog member) for why they couldn’t post which is either given ahead of time or is because they were sick all week with symptoms of the flu or worse than they are excused from blogging that week and will not receive a punishment.

5.       If one person has not blogged for 4 weeks with no justifiable excuse then they are subject to a VERY evil video blog challenge (i.e. four challenges combined into one).

6.       Punishments cannot violate dietary or health requirements in anyway i.e. no forcing vegetarians to eat meat e.t.c.

7.       All blog posts must have some informative component.

8.       All blog posts must include at least one picture (With this post as an exemption).

9.       Any new rules must be approved by both members.