"The Sirens of Titan" Mix

"The Sirens of Titan"

In "The Sirens of Titan," Kurt Vonnegut focuses on themes of pointlessness, illusion of freewill, the emptiness of achieving fame and wealth, and God not having a role in humanity, and he exhibits these themes using quite a bit of satire. The entire existence of the human race and its accomplishments have only been to deliver messages and the part for Salo's spaceship. Winston Niles Rumfoord seems like he has more freewill than the humans, yet he is subject to the same forces that the humans are which is the Tralfamadores. Wealth and fame and luck have no worth in the big picture and can disappear in an instant. It is a bold view of humanity's role in the universe, and claims that it is minuscule in the grand scheme of the universe.

"Money" by Pink Floyd
(Malachi Constant feeling empty despite his wealth)

"Disintegration" by The Cure
(Malachi turning to drugs to fill emptiness and loneliness)

"Born to Lose" by Ray Charles
(Everyone has lived their lives in vain.)

"Freewill" by Rush
(The illusion of freewill for humans, Winston, and even the Tralfamadores)

"Lonely Stranger" by Eric Clapton. 

(Malachi's loneliness, not knowing who he is on Mars, and being exiled from Earth to Titan)

"Lucky Man" by Emerson Lake and Palmer
(Malachi and his father's luck for investing in companies, and the luck running out)

"Do the Evolution" by Pearl Jam
(Earthlings seeming advanced, Church of God the Utterly Indifferent)

"Lucky Man" by The Verve
(Loneliness. No point to being lucky)

 "Behind Blue Eyes" by The Who
(Winston Niles Rumfoord being controlled without knowing as well as sad and lonely)

"Afterlife" by Arcade Fire 

(Salo hypnotizing Unk so that he sees everything working out with Stony in the end. )

Futuristic Song

Futuristic Song

Reflektor by Arcade Fire

Jack and Fabian

3/4/15

Game Design

Elemental Showdown

           Two people face each other with hands above their bowl which is on a table or the ground in front of them. Together they say, "Air-water-fire." as soon as they say the last word, they must either put nothing in the bowl (for air), flip the bowl (for water), or drop in a pebble (for fire). Air beats water (can move it), water beats fire (extinguishes it), fire beats air (burns oxygen). Usually played to best of three. 

QR Code

manifesto

Jack Stefan
2/12/15
Manifesto

Key to Dominance 

I believe that impartial education is the gateway to a superior world.

People are easily manipulated! if they are prevented from learning the entire story. We humans have a natural urge to learn all that we can.

It is our biological advantage over the rest of the animal kingdom. We have been able to survive, thrive, and reach unimaginable heights by using our minds! We have become so powerful that our only remaining predators worth fearing are nature’s forces and ourselves.

Natural disasters, diseases, and humans threatening nuclear war are what will extinguish our species and all our accomplishments. The sole reason humans have risen to such summits and become the dominant species is rooted in our freedom to think, learn, and generate new and revolutionary ideas!

Any hindrance in the flow of knowledge is a sin against the human race. No matter what that knowledge is, if not everyone has the ability to learn about it, then we are automatically at a disadvantage. It is in the interest of humans to spread knowledge due to the fact that everyone will have a different view on that knowledge, and some views will be more paramount than others.

Those crucial ideas cannot be heard if the flow of knowledge is impeded! Many issues will be solved and others will arise, but these new issues will be less primal, less violent, and more civilized. Impartial education will pave the road to a better world.

I decided on an electronic format based on the fact that my manifesto is about education and progress, and if it were not electronic it would be sort of ironic. The red font evokes a little more passion and is eye grabbing, the words in black font are more significant words and are meant to stand out for added meaning. The indentations are just a more attention seeking look to the manifesto in order to draw the reader in. The appearance of the manifesto is meant to be attention grabbing and give exaggerated meaning to certain words for added effect. 

Jack Stefan
2/5/15
Tech Review

Kindle Fire

            I received a Kindle Fire as a gift about three years ago. The Kindle Fire is about 300 dollars cheaper than an iPad. It is smaller, has about the same quality screen resolution, but only has WiFi. The battery life is good too; it can last at least a good six to eight hours. Amazon does not have as many applications on its online store, but your Amazon account is linked with the Kindle and you can access the Amazon store to buy items other than applications, which Apple does not have.  At first, I used the Kindle for games and other random applications. After becoming bored with the games, I bought some e-books off the online store and started to read them. I am not much of a reader, but using the Kindle helped me read more and more. It was more convenient to search for books, I could read the reviews of other readers, and the other readers had ranked the books from one to five stars which was helpful when searching for a book to read. The e-books are also a lot cheaper than regular books, and usually priced around three to seven dollars unless they are new to the store they are. It is easy to read the books too, because there are options to change the page color from white to sepia to black to make it easier on the eyes, as well as the font size.
            Overall, I enjoy using the Kindle Fire. It is easy to navigate, and is more convenient to read books, even though it may not have as many applications as an iPad. It is also takes up less space in my bag if I am going to read more than one book on a trip. 

prophecy

             Humans have grown to be the most dominant species on the planet. We have been able to evolve and adapt to our surroundings, but most importantly we have been able to construct our own environments such as cities. We have learned to manipulate our environment to serve us in the most efficient ways possible, using technologies that continue to advance and become more sophisticated as well as effective. These technologies are made from the earth’s various resources. Resources like wood, metals, oil, and animals are a few main resources that have enabled humans to construct the world we live in today. The issue humans have had is overusing these resources, and a lot of times, we end up running out of them. For example, when Americans began settling west throughout the 1800s, they hunted bison. Bison had a booming population of over thirty million at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but towards the end of it there were less than four hundred bison left in North America. There is no issue with hunting bison, because it is just the circle of life, but the settlers hunted them in excess and also for sport. Essentially, the world humans have created is a world where people take more than they need and it throws off the natural balance of the ecosystem.

            Humans may be able to manipulate our environment the way we please, but the simple fact is that there are a limited amount of resources that the earth provides. And people have been setting a trend of using up all the resources in one place and moving on, such as the bison in North America, or Haiti being over ninety percent deforested making it vulnerable to storms and unable to farm. Farming is another example, because most crops use up a lot of top soil, which takes a long time for the earth to make. This trend of using vast resources and being wasteful is multiplied by the fact that there are too many people on the planet. The earth could more easily handle the wasteful lifestyle that a lot of the population has taken part in if there were more like a billion humans on the planet. But since there are about seven billion people on the planet, the majority of the world population is hungry and impoverished, while the rest of the population have more than they need and are practically throwing away resources. If humans continue this lifestyle, then the earth will run out of resources, and there will have to be drastic changes of people being conservative if they are going to survive. If this trend continues, many people will not be able to survive and the earth will be damaged and at the very least, take a long time to recover.