September 4th

Question Of The Day

10. People are watching us. What do they see?

I think they see a weird lazy person. I think I am very different with my friends and my family. To my brother, I am the "big bro" of him. To my friends, I am "the comedian". I'm the one who's always being witty and funny, always with a joke to tell. But to people of my acquaintance, I am a  funny person, always being lazy and fooling around. 

Obviously, we can't ignore what people think we are in social networks, for example, Twitter and Facebook, the only ones that I have. I don't check them much, because people's posts make me facepalm all the time. 
The biggest part of my social interactions through Facebook base on commenting or liking people's updates, because I don't make many status updates. 
I use Twitter less than Facebook because of what we call "indirects" (or indireta in Portuguese). It consists on saying what they want to say to a person, but not mentioning who they are. For example, they say "I don't like you" on their updates, but don't complete the sentence with the "target's" name. The right way to say is with their names: "I don't like you, Deborah", for example. In my opinion, these "indirects" only show that people are cowards and don't actually try to understand the people, but rather criticize them (it's ironic that I'm criticizing them in this post). Almost all the time, I'm only reblogging Bento Ribeiro's updates, that have no sense at all, but is funny. 

To conclude, I think that people have lost much of their privacity through social networks (even though they create Facebook accounts by their own will, and they allow that privacity to be invaded). Also, through those networks, people don't only expose themselves more to acquaintances, but also to other people. They "add" more "eyes" to watch them. 

August 31st

Question Of The Day

10. Did Joe send the 50 dollars?

No, because logically, if it's on the news, the guy didn't pay. But if I was Joe, I would give the money in the next morning, because robing is not part of business. Also, the buy would know my phone number, or any other information, so he could denounce me to the police and tell them I didn't give him the money.

August 29th

Question Of The Day 

9. How do you react to people with a facial disfigurement?

We tend to judge people by their outside features: by their appearance, how they dress, how they look like and how they're different from us. When I spot a person with facial disfigurement, I try not to stare, because staring at the person can make her/him uncomfortable. So I try to distract myself. When our eyes meet, I give a cheerful smile. :)

August 27th

Question Of The Day

8. What would you like your teachers to know about you?

I would like them to know that I was bullied at a young age (but I'm still very young). I have those memories, like dreams that haunt me. I remember of the day like a photograph (I can "see" it when I close my eyes and try to remember it). I was hugging my legs with my arms, in a corner of a big room. I saw nearly eight faces. 16 eyes, each one of them pointing to me. There were smiles on their lips. And from their smiling lips, words came out: "You jerk", another lip spoke. "Get away from us. We don't like you". It's funny that they were around me, so I couldn't get out. Some were leaning over their legs, and some were with their arms crossed. All of them had long straight hair, the fashion trend between kids at that time. They were laughing. It was an awful laugh.

I put my head between my legs. I didn't want to hear anymore. But I couldn't block the noises."Oh, she's scared. Poor her". It tasted a little sarcastic and bitter. Very bitter. 
  
Because of this event, I have a fear of starting a conversation with people. Even if on the outside I may not look like, I'm scared in the inside and trembling. Sometimes, I feel comfortable talking to someone, but most of the time, I don't feel pleasured talking. I have a fear of people. I have a repulsion against them. I often force myself to talk to people, and that is done very reluctantly. I would like the teachers to make less group works, but it would only make the class more boring.

I used to have long hair. And I think that from that day, I always used my hair as a "protection" against people. I always had my hair in my face, so I could have a "wall" between me and them. That's why my nickname in Elementary days was "Miss Curtain". 

"Good morning miss Curtain!". I liked it. 

August 23rd

Question Of The Day

7. We are most happy when we do the right thing. Comment. 

I agree. The most important point of doing the right thing is that we are free of guilt. Guilt makes us unhappy, and weighs on our conscience. When I hear the word "guilt", I picture a condemned person, dragging a heavy metal ball tied to his shin. He has ragged clothes, a miserably thin body, and a weary face. His eyes are half open, a half-open mouth. He sees things, but doesn't look at them. He walks with a shrunken back. 

Once, I was doing my doing my physics test one week later than other students, because I was absent during the day of the test. I nervously extended my arm, and now the test rested on my  hands. I went to the class right next to mine, and started doing the test. After I finished, I took a look at my test. "Good", I thought. I found myself extending the same arm to give my teacher the test, when in a matter of seconds, something had caught my eye. It was a corrected exam, lying right next to me. "Well, he's busy explaining the subject to other students. You can take a look. He's not going to know. Just say that you have to check something else on your test. Read the answers and put it in your sheet. No one is going to find out.", I heard it whisper to me. 

On that moment, I remembered of Raskolnikov, a character in Crime and Punishment, written by the famous Russian writer Dostoevsky. Even though he committed a perfect crime, he couldn't bear the fact that he killed two people. He tells himself that he is "superior" to the people that he killed, and that he was worthy to kill them. However, he goes insane because of the killing. 

"No. I'm not doing that.", I heard myself say in my mind. By now, the paper was already being held by the teacher's hand. It was done. I handed it over. I sat in my spot to hear his explanation.   Then, I felt happy. The guy wasn't following me.  

August 21st

Question Of The Day

6. What can failure teach?

Failure has taught me that we always learn something from it. 

There was a Brazilian inventor  that wanted to fly airplanes. His 
first one crashed, not even rising 10 meters from the ground. His second one also failed. And so was his other thirty-eight tries. In his 41st try, he succeeded. I don't really remember what was the 41st plane's name, but it had the number 41 in it. 
The discoverer of the blood types who I don't remember the name also passed through a lot of failures. And expensive failures, even costing human lives. At that time, the vast majority of the patients who got transfusion of blood died before doctors could do anything. Then, the discoverer who has his name completely erased from my mind researched about it, and found out that certain blood types were not compatible with some others. Then, blood-transfused patient's mortality dramatically decreased. 

Failure can teach also teach that nobody is really perfect. When I was at Elementary School, I used to have perfect grades, being the second best grade in my class (the first place was always being disputed by two geniuses). And that also was my reality during the first years of middle school. But then, when I was at 7th grade, I was so convinced that I could take a test and get good grades without studying, that I did not study. In the day before the test, I pretended that I was studying and used my time to play games in the computer. Two weeks later, I received the results. I was devastated. There was I, in my spot in the classroom, staring at a 4.75 written in red pen in the right upper corner at the first page of the test (and I remember; it was a Science test in the second quarter of the year. My score was a 4.75 out of 10). By that, I learned that I wasn't the person that thought I was, and also that I am not perfect, therefore I must work for what I want. 

Sometimes (or always), failure can hit us without a single advice. It makes us feel small, crushed, haggard, and miserable. But there will always be a way out, like a maze.

August 17th

Question Of The Day

 5. Does a person in his right mind have the option to take his own life?

Yes, because he technically doesn't want to end his life, but his suffering.
Also, before those 5 years, he was probably a normal person living his normal life. He could walk, talk, run, lift things, and do everything that he wanted. He probably didn't know that an almost-lethal accident would ruin his life. And he didn't ask for this.
But now, 5 years later, he can't. The liberty equally given by nature to all the people was taken away from him, because of an accident that he had. Living 5 years tied in to a wheelchair means that he passed those five years, or 1826 days regretting of what he did in a day five, or 1826 days ago.

He would also be very humiliated. People around the world commit suicide every day, but he didn't, because he couldn't even move his body in order to take his own life.

In my opinion, he thinks that death is the shortcut and the best option to extinguish his pain. And I also think that many people commit suicide because of that. By constant sufferings, physical or mental, people desire an end. And it is not something people fight against with. It is no longer something that people fear, so they can avoid it. While people eat organic food, medicine, exercise, do a monthly cancer check, avoid eating fast food, eat cancer-avoiding organic fruits, those same people know that they're going to meet death someday, but they don't want to and run away from it.

To conclude, I think that people who commit suicide are one of the bravest, and also the most cowardly people that exist (or existed, if you know what i mean). They don't avoid death, only make it come faster.

August 15th

Question Of The Day

4. Given unlimited resources, what scientific or medical problem would you investigate?

 I would investigate the brain, even though it's not a disease or a medical problem. The brain, unlike other organs of the body, has a big mystery hiding in it. We don't exactly know how it works to store memories, for example. We don't precisely know how the brain works, even though we achieved a big part of the knowledge about the brain,  i still has unsolved mysteries. So if we find out how the brain sores information, we can improve the quality of education by taking shortcuts of teaching kids what we teach in school. Then, the education would improve in a short time, and it would consequently improve our lifestyles, making the world more advanced in all fields. Also, it would be giving a second change to mentally disabled people, who can't get goodly paid jobs because of their unfairly limited capacity, that wasn't even their fault. 

August 13th

Question Of The Day

 3. You can't control what other people think of you. Comment.

I agree, but not entirely. I can't really control what other people think of me, but I can influence it. For example, I have an acquaintance that hasn't got big respect among the people. Once, after breaking up with her boyfriend, she started to frequently go out with boys. But that was not the problem. The problem was that while she was romantically involved with one, she was also with another. And to worsen her situation, she "changed" them monthly. She dated one, two boys for a month, and broke up with them and involved again with other ones for another month. She did that for more than half a year. Soon, people around her started to turn their faces away when she was near. Even people that didn't know her heard about these "rumors" and avoided talking to her.

But what if she didn't do that? What if she didn't start that scandal? What if after breaking up, she stayed quiet and tried to overcome it with another method? Probably, and almost certainly, she wouldn't be where she is now. She wouldn't have lost her respect from the people. She wouldn't have to hear all those whispers around her. 

I think that people's minds is not something easy, because I can't also control what I think of myself. But if we avoid doing things that we know we're going to regret, then things are not going to get as bad as her situation.

August 9th

Question Of The Day

 2. What's so bad about a boy who wants to wear a dress?

 In my opinion, nothing is really bad about a boy wanting to wear a dress. It is not written "THIS IS FOR FEMALES ONLY" in dresses, only in people's minds. Of course, it'll cause a little uncomfortable situation when he's present, but people wear not only to cover their bodies, but also to express themselves. Expressing ourselves is art. The way people talk, their opinions regarding certain subjects, their handwriting, the way they eat, and the way they dress is art, and not only taking a piece of paper and draw on it. Art is culture, therefore nobody should be prohibited to have access to culture because they dress differently. 

According to my hypothesis which I invented during class, the "don't have to, but can" became the "must have to, it's an obligation". 

During the starting years of humanity, people from both genders worked in different areas. For example, men used to go out and hunt to bring food home, while woman stayed home and took care of the children, and also did housework. Over the years, the clothes they used got adapted to the work that each gender did. Men wore pants because of their need to ilimitate their movements, while women wore dresses because they didn't need to ilimitate their movements as much as men. Thus, men could wear pants, and women could wear dresses. But over the years, the word "could" changed to "have". Women HAD to wear dresses, and men HAD to wear pants, because by that time, the differentiation of clothing by gender was an unchangeable part of culture. Their styles were maintained by so many years, that people no longer knew why they were different. And by that, discrimination started to rise only because a person wasn't wearing clothes that the his/her gender obligated him/her to wear. 

Nevertheless, in the 21st century, where things got much better for both men and women, people are being more respected than before, because of the advances in human science. A boy wearing dresses today wouldn't cause a huge scandal as it would two hundred years before. 

General Questions About Morality

What is morality?

It's the skill of a person to distinguish right from wrong according to their previous experiences on their lives.

What is happiness?

It's the well-being of a person that owns it for a certain period of time.

August 7th

Question Of The Day

 1. We are not shaped by the people we believe in; we are shaped by the people who believe on us. Comment.

 I disagree with this statement. I believe we are shaped by both people: who we believe in, and who believe on us. I had a person that I admired very much. She presented of one of the few TV programs that I watch on TV. Soon, I was picking up her way of talking without even noticing.

Another example that proves this statement is false is the relationship with my mother. We have a mutual belief; she believes on me, and I believe on her. In my point of view, she has much more belief on me than I have on her. She is an adult, an independent grown up (well.. a little more than that) living more than 18thousand kilometers from her entire family. So she must be relying on me more than some other parents. But just because of her "bigger" belief on me, I didn't get much of her influence. I was rather shaped by people on the outside: colleagues, friends, teachers, and even strangers. 

I believe that we’re shaped by all the people around us. But we’re mostly molded by us, ourselves. We’re what we think, and we’re what we live. By mixing those outside stimulation and inside thinking, we’re molding ourselves each day, becoming a better (or worse) person.

Statements

1. 5

2. 2

3. 5

4. 4

5. 3

6. 5

7. 4

8. 4

9. 1

10. 5