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The Environmental Holocaust of Grass Lawns

    Hello, I'm "Penguin" Pete, the guy with the indignant rant about palm trees you all seem to love. I'm back today to talk about an even worse environmental blight, and even more pervasive intrusion on our living space: GRASS!  You don't notice grass. Those of you who live in cities are barely even accustomed to seeing plants anymore, so you never stop to think that our obsession to coat the Earth in a fuzzy layer of green micro-plants is anything abnormal. But we have all grown up used to suburban…
Score: 1.33

Interview Tips

8 Great Job Interview Tips

  Going for a job interview can really make you nervous but being prepared is a great way to stay calm and nail the interview. Here is a list of some great tips to remember for your next job interview.    1. Schedule the interview for around 10:30 a.m.  People are usually at their best at this time. It means they haven't just arrived at the office and they haven't been there so long that they're tired and in a bad mood. Tuesday is the best time of day because that's the day of the week people are…
Score: 1.11
Film Music

Why Are Disney Songs So Catchy - How Disney Songs Hijack Your Brain?

    We’ve all heard them, and they get stuck in all our heads. But why? Why is it that Disney can seemingly create earworms?  Though there’s no such thing as a Disney formula, today we’re going to get close to one. And best of all, this theory is not one that I’ve hacked together to try to show something new and inventive. Not at all.  I stumbled upon everything you’re about to read.  About two months ago, I was asked to do a medley of several popular Disney songs. I ran into a problem.        One of the keys of…
Score: 2.31

How John Williams Creates Emotion

by nick

    “It’s almost cheating when you have John Williams…he writes feelings”   —JJ Abrams, Force Awakens Director (source)   Amongst the film music circle, it’s very well known that John Williams writes emotion better than most (if not all) composers in the film industry.  Whereas Hans Zimmer writes “sound worlds” and Michael Giacchino writes based off an essential chord, John Williams writes the emotional underpinning of the scene.  So this series of posts is going to explain the main three ways that he…
Score: 1.55

How John Williams Creates Emotion (Part 2): E.T.

by nick

     John Williams has earned 51 Oscar nominations, more than any other living person.  In fact, he also has the second largest number of nominations in history, only behind Walt Disney with 59 nominations.  So John Williams may very well catch up soon and beat that record.  But this raises the questions: Why are his film scores consistently good? What makes his scores stand out above the rest?  If you’ve read Part 1, you may be thinking to yourself that it’s because he closely writes music to fit the…
Score: 1.38
World History

Notre Dame Will Be Restored. Look At How These Destroyed Buildings And Cities Came Back

The tragic fire which devastated the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is seen as a symbol of the loss of civilization as a whole by many. But the beloved church, like many historic buildings and structures throughout the world, knows the touch of wanton destruction throughout the centuries. Now that the funding for Notre Dame reaches over $1 billion dollars, there will be no problem with its famed being placed at some point in the future.    A Parisian history of catastrophes By definition, Notre Dame…
Score: 1.06
Blood Donation

Why I Had A Bad Reaction While Donating Blood

  I donated blood for the first time about a year ago. Fortunately, everything went well. I didn't have a bad reaction or anything. So naturally, when I went to donate again recently I assumed everything would go okay this time too. But people can and do have negative reactions. It isn't a big deal though but it can be very unpleasant and even a little scary. I've worked in the medical field so I knew these reactions could happen and I wasn't too freaked out when it happened to me. I was a little…
Score: 1.12
Politics and Pop Culture

Star Trek Is For Liberals, Star Wars Is For Conservatives

    How I Came To This Crazy Conclusion...  The freelance writing business takes you on some unexpected adventures. Over the holidays I was doing research work for this one client regarding the political leanings of corporations, which included punching the names of lots of companies into the site Open Secrets.        It's a strange world there. In the first place, there's some debate as to whether corporations should be meddling in politics on the financial level at all.  But beyond that, the logic behind…
Score: 3.16

How the Conservative Backlash to Women and POC Evolves In Pop Culture

It has been almost five years since Gamergate created a reactionary movement that has made far-reaching effects throughout media. But as the culture changes, so do the war that comes with it. Where does all the vitriol we see and read now show us where it will be in the future?  In 2017, the angry, mostly straight and white men that harassed women who were fans of video games fell into a lull after years of harassment that included death threats, publishing of private information, and end of…
Score: 1.06
Medication

My Experience With Antidepressants

Antidepressants are most commonly used to treat depression in people with major depression or depression caused by other illnesses (such as bipolar disorder). My experience began when I was about 19. I had been depressed for a long time and decided to see a psychiatrist. At first I was diagnosed with major depression but later on, another doctor realized I actually had bipolar disorder II.      The first antidepressant I was given was Paxil. It didn't help me at all. In fact, the only thing it did…
Score: 1.23

What is Gene Therapy? How helpful is it?

According to the research, Gene therapy is an exploratory procedure that uses genes to treat or anticipate disease. It was conceptualized in 1972. Basically, it is designed to acquaint hereditary material into cells to make a beneficial protein or to compensate for abnormal genes.      Gene therapy is the restorative delivery of nucleic acid into a patient's cells as a medication to treat illness. It is the addition of new genes to a patient's cells to supplant absent or breaking down genes…
Score: 1.17

Produce vs. Prescriptions: Natural Alternatives to Synthetic Drugs from my Real Experience

Milestones in Medicine   Over the past century, and more recently, in the past ten years, we found ways to fight back many infectious diseases and illnesses. For precautions, there have also been many vaccinations distributed, in order to prevent any more illness outbreaks. You practically need a physical before joining anything sports or work-related. However, despite all of the prescriptions, treatments, and medical procedures, a lot of people still experience health complications.    It doesn’t…
Score: 1.06
US Political Parties

America's Two-Party Left-Right System Can't Last

    Where do you start talking about American politics?Where do you end?  You can enter and exit at any point in the vacuum of the space-time continuum like a neutrino, heard by nobody and affecting nothing.  The great wasteland of American politics in the 21st century is that way because of the polarized division of everything into two opposite parties. It is an extreme polarization because both parties and all of the politicians in them keep discovering that they can say and do anything and…
Score: 1.05
Amazon

Are You Ready For Amazon Prime Day?

  Amazon prime day 2019, July 15th and 16th  A mote back we put up our guide to US holidays for the benefit of people from other countries, so you can tell whether your American staff need the day off or not. But one day got left off the calendar because it's such a new concept that has yet to be fully recognized. That day is Amazon Prime Day. It's a new kind of "holiday" being pushed by Amazon as a kind of Internet shopping festival.  This year, they even decided to do a full blowout by having a…
Score: 1.06
The Workplace

Sexual harassment discrimination

by Dominus

Let’s imagine a scenario where a man is at his workplace. He walks by a female coworker and slaps her on the butt. That is an immediate case for his dismissal and prosecution as a sexual offender in a sexual harassment case. I find that to be a clear-cut case of a deviant forcing his odd behavior on an unsuspecting and unwilling victim. We have the right to not be touched in a sexual way by someone who we don’t feel attracted to. Now, if the same scenario plays, this time with a woman slapping…
Score: 1.11
social media movements

Trashtag - The Day Social Media Became Self-Aware

    Maybe Socialism works after all…  As you've all probably guessed by now, I'm a Star Trek geek amongst my myriad fandoms. But up until now, there's been one aspect of Star Trek that I have shaken my head at, thinking it was too unrealistic. Well, OK, besides the transporters, warp speed space travel, and Kirk is getting lucky with all those green-skinned space babes.    Beyond the advanced technology, which justifiably may or may not happen someday - never say never! - the one aspect of the Star Trek…
Score: 1.17