Boy Bands

I was given this topic because my tutors know what I think of boy bands. Not much.

So, thanks a lot. What famous boy band should I talk about? Justin Bieber? He isn't a band. How about the Backstreet Boys? They're back, aren't they? Alrighty, then, the Backstreet Boys it is.

Some history first: The Backstreet Boys originally formed in Florida in 1993 with five members. Their debut album, "Backstreet Boys," was released in 1996. By the release of their fourth album in 2000 they had become one of the most famous boy bands of all time. In 2000 they took a break for two years, then regrouped and released three more albums. In 2006 the lead singer left the group to pursue a solo career. The Backstreet Boys have sold over 130 million albums, making them the bestselling boy band of all time (take that, Justin Timberlake and 'NSync).

Now that you know the history, I get to share what I think about them. To sum up the Backstreet Boys in one word: blah. All their songs sound the same and their voices are too similar. Where's the diversity? All the songs are simple, and go like this: verse, chorus, verse, chorus, chorus, smaller verse, chorus. One of the reasons they have had so much success is because teenage girls think they are cute. Do you think a guy with tons of makeup on and a personal hair and clothing stylist who is singing on stage with a bunch of other guys in makeup is cute? Personally, not really, but everyone is entitled to his or her opinion

I'm more of a fan of indie rock artists and bands.

Why We Learn Useless Facts

Some people learn useless facts because they want to appear smarter. The more you know about "stuff," the smarter you are considered in modern society.

Some people learn useless facts because they make good conversation starters. Which actually makes them useful. Say there is an awkward silence between you and someone else; you can take out your smartphone and search for a useless fact. In fact, I just did this and found uselessfacts.net, which had these useless doozies:

• If a frog’s mouth is held open for too long the frog will suffocate.
• A duck has three eyelids.
• Antarctica is the only continent that does not have land mass below sea level.

I guess these facts have to be useful to someone. They're just useless to me. But interesting. So maybe we learn useless facts because they feed something in us that craves information without the pressure of having to do something with it.

Did you know that if you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee?

Didn't think so. But go ahead––feel free to share this useless fact.

Does It Really Take 30 Days to Break a Bad Habit?

I have no clue if it's possible to break a bad habit in 30 days, but I'd like to experiment because I bite my nails ALL the time. I have tried to break this habit through a trigger (snapping an elastic band on my wrist) and bribery (my mom said if I didn't bite my nails for one week she would give me $100). Neither of these worked. So I've checked around the internet, and I'm going to try to break my habit in 30 days, but first, there are some steps I need to take:

1. Admit that I have a problem: "I, F. Dunner, solemnly swear that I have a bad habit of biting my nails.
2. Change your environment. Since I bite my nails when I sit on the orange couch and watch TV in the family room, I am going to switch to sitting on the blue beanbag (I could give up watching TV but if I'm being realistic, that's not gonna happen).
3. Create barriers to that habit. I am going to give my family permission to charge me 25¢ each time they catch me biting my nails ("catch" being the operative word here––no hearsay). 
4. Find something to replace that bad habit. I am going to knit when I watch TV so that my hands will be full. At the very least, I'll get a sweater out of this.
5. Be patient––this could take longer than 30 days and more than one try. 

Wish me luck, everyone!

What Are Three Technologies That Will Be Obsolete in 10 Years?

Many of the technologies I am growing up with are going to be obsolete in 10 years. But my three picks are the landline telephone, fax machine and personal camera.

Regarding the landline phone: yes, we have one. But we hardly ever use it. My mom says it's there for "earthquake protection." Many families have already given up these types of phones because it's just one extra utility bill each month. I'll bet most people under the age of 30 don't even have a landline. We all just use our mobile phones, and since we have them with us at all times, we can be easily reached. Maybe too easily reached, but that's another story.

As for fax machines, the only reason companies still use them instead of email is when signatures are required on documents. But more and more businesses now accept electronic signatures and even better, there apps for smartphones that allow you to sign a PDF document on a touchscreen.

The dedicated personal camera is also going to go the way of the dodo. It's more convenient to use the camera on a smartphone, which people are always carrying with them. And let's face it, even the camera on my smartphone is probably better than anything my parents ever used 20 years ago.

Most of the technologies we use today may not become obsolete, but they will look different. Everything will be newer, faster, smaller––and even more personal. I just hope I don't become obsolete en route.

Annoying Alarm Clocks

Some people have a natural circadian rhythm that sends them to bed at a reasonable hour and wakes them up naturally between seven and eight hours later.

I can safely say that I am not one of those people. I don't go to bed all that late, but I need an alarm clock to buzz me awake in the morning. And since I maybe dropped my smartphone in the toilet and it maybe not be working, I need to buy an alarm clock. After an internet search, I believe I found the three most annoying alarm clocks in the Western Hemisphere.

Clockly physically makes you get out of bed to wake up. If you hit the snooze button when the alarm goes off, it roles off your bedside table and crashes into things in your room. The alarm won't stop until you capture the clock and turn it off. I'm thinking of getting this for my brother just to annoy him.

The Laser Target Gun Alarm Clock requires you to hit a target with the provided plastic gun to turn off the ear-splitting racket, the idea being that if you can do this while barely awake, you're up to facing the challenges of the day.

The Puzzle Alarm Clock makes an annoying sound at the prescribed hour. It also fires three puzzle pieces in the air, which you are required to find and return to their matching holes before you can shut off the alarm. With my luck, the pieces would probably roll under my bed.

I'm drawn to the laser alarm clock. It seems like the most fun way to wake up, although it would probably get really annoying after a month. It would also be aggravating for my family, because I don't have the greatest aim and it would take a while for the alarm to stop.

Rise and shine, everyone!

Hippopotamuses are better than rhinoceroses because...?

I don't know if hippopotamuses are better than rhinoceroses or vice versa. They both call Sub-Saharan Africa home (as well as regions of India and Sumatra for rhinos), they both have huge bodies and short legs, they're both mostly herbivorous, they both can run about 35 km/hr on land. But somehow, rhinoceroses have gotten a bad rap in history. Their two horns, broad snout, assorted humps and scaly body have made them the bad guy in countless children's stories over the past few hundred years. Meantime, hippopotamuses have always come across as more cute and less dangerous than the rhino. "Hungry, hungry hippo," anyone?

Let's not kid ourselves. Hippos are one of the most aggressive animals in the world and often the most ferocious in Africa. They travel in large herds of up to 40, with one bull, many cows and assorted offspring. They spend up to 16 hours is the water a day to keep cool and come out of the water at night to graze on up to 80 pounds of grass. They're huge eaters!

Rhinos, on the other hand, are much less aggressive and more sociable. White rhinos travel in groups of up to 15; black male rhinos travel alone. Land mammals that live in the same areas as hippos, rhinos roll around in mud to coat their skin; the mud acts as a sun block and insect repellent. Females only reproduce every 36 months to five years.

Hippos are lucky––they have no natural predators. Rhinos, unfortunately for them, are valued by humans for their horns, which are used for medical purposes in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, as well as for ornamental dagger handles in North Africa and the Middle East.  This means that there are between 125,000 to 150,000 hippos throughout Sub-Saharan Africa and less than 20,000 rhinos in the world.

I wouldn't say that hippopotamuses are better than rhinoceroses––they're just luckier.

What Are The Top Two Inventions Of All Time?

As a millennial, you probably expect me to write that the top two inventions of all time are the computer and instant messaging. They did cross my mind. But while these are two things I would be unhappy not to have in my life, there were inventions before the computer and instant messaging that made them possible. I briefly considered the wheel, but really, without the wheel we could still get around by our own two feet.

My first vote goes to the telephone. It was accidentally invented by Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Thomas Watson when they started building on the idea that sound could travel through telegraph wires. For this first time in the history of the world, anyone could talk to anyone anywhere at any given moment without physically seeing the person. It also made it possible for people to respond to emergencies––which saved lives. The telephone is the forerunner to the digital revolution of my generation as well: without the phone, there wouldn't be phone lines, or modems or fibre optics or wireless technologies... you get where I'm going on this.

My second vote was going to be for the airplane, but I decided to go with the washing machine after watching Hans Rosling on TED. Washing has always been hard work for women, and don't kid yourself––it's mostly the women who do the washing in both the developed and developing worlds. Before washing machines, women had to wash by hand. It was hard, time-consuming labour, which, unless you had servants, you had to do for hours every week. But the washing machine changed women's lives forever. Women got to load the laundry in a machine and the machine did all the work. This gave women a valuable commodity: time. For the first time in history, women could imagine a life without the hours and hours of drudgery of doing the weekly laundry. So even though people might criticize the washing machine as something that is not environmentally friendly or all that energy efficient, you won't hear that from me. Because thanks to the washing machine, one day I am going to have the time to go to university, to have a career and if I'm lucky, to have a family––and be consumed by things and people who matter to me, and not their laundry.

The Blah Blah Blog

This blog is for a school project called an IDS (independent directed study). I will be writing posts two to three times a week for one term on a prompt that one of my tutors gives me. I have to write 250-300 words on this prompt. The reason for this blog is to improve my writing skills, and work through writer's block. I have to edit my work but each post will not be written as if I am handing it in to a teacher to be marked on my skills. This blog is purely to help me dislike writing less by writing more. I expect all kinds of prompts and it will be unpredictable!