Wednesday, October 19, 2011

[FREE] Snapple apple




Ever had Snapple before? Well, you should go try some if you haven’t already. Snapple is a brand of juice and tea drinks which is owned by Dr Pepper Snapple Group. The brand was introduced in the year of 1972. Snapple was invented by Hyman Golden, Arnold Greenberg, and Leonard Marsh in New York, in the early 1970s. When it was first invented they only have fruity favors for their drinks. Then later, in 1987, they started introducing their first tea and lemon tea favors. Nowadays, they have 4 different types of Snapple: tea drinks that come in diet or regular, juice drinks, lemonade, and in bottled water. Their drinks were all 100% made out of pure fruits and tea leaves until in 2009, when they started adding sugars to it. Though they still sell the old Snapple drinks but it is becoming increasingly rare. Snapple’s brand slogan is “Made from the Best Stuff on Earth”.
In October 2003, Snapple had begun their sponsorship with New York City school systems. The deal was that they have to let the school sell Snapple drinks to the students; in return The Snapple Company gives them 8 million dollar profit back per year. Then later, Snapple was able to convince the school to ban sodas and other sugary snacks from their vending machines due to childhood’s obesity and diabetes and are considered to be unhealthy. Soon later, Snapple had added facts about the world and some other things you wouldn’t learn from school under their bottled drink’s cap to make it more convenient to the parents to buy the drinks for their kids. 

Friday, September 16, 2011

[CE] Not a pleasant show...


From what had happened back at Reno that 3 people have died and 56 more have been injured from the crash. I think that the aircraft  technicians should of double check or check more carefully of these more  fighter jets, and might have avoided this incident to happen. I mean… I know  shits happen, but this could really be avoided or lower the injuries that had  caused by having the crowd stands in a much much safer distance that when the jet  does crash, the explosion wouldn’t caused much of a damage to the audiences. Though  it already happened we can’t argue that what we should of have done to prevent  this tragedy, but we could for the next similar event and hope for the best that nothing like this will happen again.

From what I have experienced is that shits  happen when you don’t properly prepare for it. It also bring to my mind that back when I was 9 years old, during a lunar festival, I was playing with candles  and fires (it was kinda like a tradition tho is not safe to play with fire but I  did anyways…) but when I was fooling around, I have thought about getting myself burnt  if I keep playing with fire. But in the end I just kept on playing with it,  knowing that it could injure me. Not long from that thought, I did burnt myself, it was one hella painful festival that I have been thru… All in all, shits does happen, but you can avoid it by preparing yourself and thinking ahead…

[FREE] Is there something wrong with your eyes?



Did you know that human eye can distinguish 10 million colors? And did you know that when you are a kid your eyeballs grow? Your eyes are fully grown by the time you are 13, and once past that it will stop. Because that everyone’s eyes stop growing at the age of 13, all adults’ eyes are about the same size maybe just 1 or 2 millimeters different. The eye is made of 3 layers of coats; first layer is covered by the cornea and sclera, then the middle layer consists of the choroid, iris, and ciliary body, then the innermost layer of your eye is the retina.

When your eyes move there is a quick blur between one destination and to another, and that blur is incomprehensible to our brain. Because of it, our visual system just erases the blur from our memory, and by that it replaces the fraction of the second during we move, with the very next thing we see. This leads to an illusion, called stopped clock illusion. An example is when you are in a classroom, darting your eyes back and forward onto the clock, waiting for class to be over. Right when you dart your eyes to the clock, that very first movement of the second hand, once your eyes had reached it, it seems to be longer than every other seconds afterward. Because your brain has replaced the time it took for your eyes to reach the clock with a image of the first thing you saw with the second hand, so that milliseconds from moving your eyes to the clock is added to the length of time of the second hand to move. What is really interesting about this is that, that little fraction of second that your eyeball moves from 1 object to another is lost! And throughout the day those small fractions of time adds around up to 40 minutes per day.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

[RE] There are more... :)

I gained so much more respect and appreciation for police officers as well as firefighters. They are truly heros to that devastating event as well as to everyday life.
I took this piece of writing from Vivian’s blog, talking about the heroes of 9/11 and I really agree to her because the cops and the firefighters had helped out a lot to save tons of lives. But they aren’t the only heroes out there that were helping out at the 9/11 disaster, the Salvation Army have gotten there in less than an hour after the first plane had crashed into the building before the US army can even get to there. The Salvation Army has had provided the nearby people and the crews that were helping out down at ground zero with shelters, foods, water, counseling, and much more. The most important things that the Salvation Army have done was showing the loves and care to the crews that were still searching for survivors after numerous days.
What really have shocked me there was that the Salvation Army had arrived at ground zero before the US army did, and provided the loves and cares that the one that had lost their love one(s) and to the people when they are at their downs. In my opinion, without the Salvation Army’s support the crews would have a much harder time finding survivors and not to lose hope for the sake of the trapped ones. I have included a video of the Salvation Army at ground zero.

[CE] We are all the same in a way...



As we all know the 9/11 event has changed the country or  even the world so much that we have to spend millions and millions of dollars  in order improve the airports securities to prevent another horrible event like  9/11 to happen again. And because the effect of  9/11 most people now look down  at these other cultures such as the Arab Americans and Muslims. As for example, ten years after the 9/11 attacks, most Americans still think that if you wear a  turban, you won’t be any good as other. I really think that this stereotype just  because someone has a turban on them, you can’t just judge him/her as a bad  person that would do no good. And according to the news clip above I think it  is just wrong to go out and kill innocent people just because of their race, which that make us(American) a hypocrite for saying that United State is a country  of freedom and everyone is created  equal. Most Americans are just lying to themselves, because they are the ones  who says everyone has the right no matter what color you are, but they still  judge the colored people. In the end it can’t be helped that because that some of these dumbasses and ignorant will remain dumbasses and ignorant no matter what. But I really hope that this could change one day. Though all of us are from different parts of the world and different personalities we are all still  humans, it doesn’t matter if you are black, white or yellow we are all humans….

Friday, September 9, 2011

[FREE] untouchable?


Have you ever wonder how close can two people physically get? When you put your hands together they are touching… but down at the atomic level they are not really touching each other. And when you are up on your feet you are not really touching the floor you are hovering. It is because between your feet and the ground there is a tiny tiny tiny atomic size gap that is so small that you cannot even see, but it is there. You know why? Because your feet and the ground is made out of atoms; a nucleus surrounded by an outer shell of orbiting electrons. When two atoms that is close to each other and aren’t going to bond or chemically react, they have trouble touching each other. Know why? Is because electrons repel one and another and these electrons have the same charge. Also because this “Pauli exclusion principle” all of its atoms electrons cannot be all pushed down to the same energy level. Therefore, when you are touching something, you are actually not… but down at the atomic level you are pretty close.
Another thing is that when you touch something you can feel like. Why? Is because of the nerves in your skin can feel the repulsive force of the texture or the feeling of the object. Also, for example, when you use a scissor and take a piece of paper, the scissor blade’s atoms is just pushing through the atoms of the paper using the electrons repulsion forces. But the sad thing is that when you are kissing your boyfriend/girlfriend you are not making contact with their matter, you are just feeling the repulsive force of their electrons. After all that said, the closest, people can touch each other is when both your parents are combining their DNA in a chemical way to make you. In a way your parents and your children are the only people that you can know for certain you have come the closest to actually touching.

 

Thursday, September 8, 2011

[BC] Something about me~

Well if you haven’t known me yet, my name is Raymond Chiu. I am 16 years old and currently a sophomore in Alameda High School. I enjoy hanging out with my friends, playing video games, and doing volunteers’ work at SA --aka The Salvation Army--. I was born in San Francisco, CA, but I have spent a little bit more than half my life living in Hong Kong with my parents. When I first enrolled to a school in US was back when I was in 4thgrade. As for myself, sometime I just can’t remember stuff maybe it was due to that I banged my head to a corner of a coffee table by accident back when I was1 and a half. That incident has cost me to have over 14 stitches on my forehead according to my parents.(Not a pleasant thing to have when you were just a 1years old boy)
As for video games I play them whenever I have free time. I think that playing games help me relieve stress, as well as entertainment. I really enjoy chatting and playing with my friends over the internet a lot. When I just can’t think of a solution for math or something to write about in English, I just jump onto “Facebook” and play “Tetris Battle”. “Tetris Battle” really helps my brain to get going and think faster, just as you were playing tetris and trying to drop the blocks and clears the line as soon as possible. It also helps me relieve my stresses, because when I play Tetris, all I care is to focus the game and win. I also play this game call “League of Legends” is action RTS (real time strategy) based game where I can communicate with other players and learn how to lead my teammates into victory. By playing this game it had helped me to improve my sense of leadership to become a better person.
Whenever I chill with my friends, we usually just go watch a movie, hang in the park, play some basketball. Sometime my friends and I just goes over to Salvation Army at Oakland to do some volunteer work. Such as moving chairs, serving elderly food occasionally on these holidays, and packing up gift baskets to the poor. When I help these elders or homeless people with my friends, I really feel the joy just by spending a day of mine and helping out. And it is a great way to get lots of community service hours (have over 700hours already :D). I also help out in the Salvation Army After School Program on some of the day when I don’t have too much homework. When I am there, I teach these kids from K – 4th grade on their homework and teach them how to respect elderly.
By now most of you readers should of known that I have spent a long long time (10 years? idk) living in Hong Kong (that’s how I got my accent :P). Well I have been in HK (Hong Kong) for that long is because at that time my dad wasn’t a citizen in US yet. Therefore, I had to stay in HK with him and my mom. My writing goals for this year is to expand my vocabulary and gets to learn more about sentence transition a bit smoother.