Nature VS Us

It was always said that natural disasters greatly impacted out lives, and that we have little control over it. However, does nature really affect our lives so much? Personally, I believe that we have more impact over our lives than nature does.

Let us first compare two thing with similar effects: volcanic eruptions vs Indonesia's annual forest fires.
From the most recent volcanic eruption, we know of its devastating effects on the health of people, as well as on the economy. Planes have to be grounded to prevent accidents from happening as a result of the volcanic ash. We have many, many people complaining about this and that, about how troublesome the volcanic eruption was. But doesn't the annual forest fires in Indonesia (started by humans) do the exact same thing?

We may not have control over nature, but we definitely have control over our own actions. We cannot choose when a volcano will erupt, but we can predict when it would happen. On the other hand, we can do something about our own actions, we can do something about what is done annually in Indonesia, something which has an impact as great as a natural disaster.

Of course, there are also things that happen which falls in the grey area between these two categories. The recent oil spill, for example, is not completely natural or man-made. It was an accident. Similar to natural disasters, it is impossible to control when it will happen, but we do have a certain extent of control over it. However, why is it that people are blamed for such incidents more than those which are completely caused by men?

Another example would be in gaming. Excuses include:
My mouse is acting weird.
I was experiencing lag.
My computer hung.
My keyboard key got stuck.
My computer self-destructed.
etc...

I believe many of us refuse to blame ourselves for anything bad that happens. People do not like taking the blame for an event that negatively impacted anything. We choose to blame it on things we cannot control, or blame someone else for failing to do something. It is rather unfair to say that accidents and natural disasters are the things that we should blame the most. We should be blaming ourselves for some of the things that are happening to us.

And I blame the distractions around me for making me forget about posting this earlier.

New York Times Bans the Word "Tweet"

So I read this article in the papers. Here's a link to a rather similar article.

Personally, I believe this is a rather valid decision. Standard english and standard english alone should be used in newspapers, so using the word "tweet" would mean that the word has already been classfied as an english word.

Ever since the internet started becoming a large part of our lives, we have started using internet slang regularly in our lives. Many of the words that used to be slang has "evolved" into an english word. An example, as stated in the article, is the word "e-mail". It is very likely that you'll find the word in any dictionary you may look up.

Language is always evolving, new words are added everytime something new is discovered. Now, its not just discovery that brings about evolution in language, we have the internet.

Internet slang is probably one of the only kind of slang that evolves into actual words. I believe this is due to the massive population that is exposed to the internet. In most cases, the internet knows no bounds. People from all over the world are free to access it and its wide database of information. Anything that is on the internet can be viewed by anyone.
Ultimately, we are the ones who created the language, and we are also continuously adding to this. Soon, the words we now use on the internet may become words the future generations use in composition tests.

However, until then, it is important to remind everyone that internet slang should stay what it is, slang. If the newspaper continues to use the word "tweet", it would be sending the wrong message.


Somehow, all of the above made no sense, so let's talk about something else.

If you are someone who has been involved in the internet/computer games, you would have realised that the many games that succeeds thrives on the community. Many games that succeed are due to the users that play it. Some of the things that users do to make the site/game successful:
-Feedback. This is a must for anything to be successful.
-Direct contribution. When a user directly contributes content, an example would be the popular mod DotA Allstars. To be honest, I feel DotA is one of the few things that is keeping Warcraft 3 afloat. It is constantly being updated and Blizzard Entertainments (the creator of Warcraft 3) doesn't even have to do anything.
-Referring friends. More users = more popularity = more users = more popularity = ...

There's only so much the owner of the game/site can do. However, there is so much more that the users can do. The internet is like a campaign, people reach out to you to help, you benefit from it so you want to help. It is rather amazing what can be accomplished this way.