Personal Reflections – Page 24

Lady Gaga Key of Awesome parody — This year's April Fools' joke (NOT brought to you by)...

Visitors who came to my blog yesterday would’ve, quite unexpectedly, found themselves being redirected to RA RA AH AH AH ROMA ROMA MA GAGA OOH LA LA. Did elicit a few “Yo maan yor blog bin hacked lol” emails / messages being sent to me, but I assure everyone that no personal details would’ve been stolen as it was merely a spur-of-the-moment idea of a joke. It sounded a lot more hilarious when I staggered home at 6am.

The first of April. Ah, that day. The day this blog shifted to WordPress. The MAD TV releases prank-ing videos for. The day technology companies around the world vie to make the best jokes. Sources assure me though that Photoshop CS5’s content-aware fill feature is not an April Fools’ joke intended to ‘content-aware fill’ your homework for you. (If it could do that, I’d buy it the day it was released.)

It’s also the day when many of you who’ve applied for US colleges and universities would get your application decisions. Much joy and exasperation will follow, and I wish all of you best of luck. Rejection letters seem doubly bitter when served on this day. Whichever way your decisions swing remember this – the best few years of your life are soon to follow. 🙂

South Park - Fantastic Easter Special — Easter bunnies are privy to a conspiracy...

So, Easter break has started at my university. When I expand on this definition and tell you that ‘Easter’ break is a whole goddamn month long, you’ll wonder whether the definition of the holiday has been redefined here. Last heard nobody’s complaining though. This break is also meant for students to revise for the exams…which come six weeks or so later. We also have an electronics design project to work on, where we have to build a specified device from scratch. Prior to the Easter break, I also got a pleasant surprise in that I was one of the students who got the departmental international student scholarship. UK universities, being government-run and funded institutes (UK residents essentially don’t pay upfront; they pay it back after they graduate), don’t offer much support to international students but as a gesture it’s nice.

Image representing CollegeHumor as depicted in... — Image via CrunchBase

I quite fancy travelling a bit during this break but will see how everything works out. For one, I’m working at SCEPTrE on a week-long national education conference. I wonder how much time I’ll have left for anything beyond within-borders travelling, given that I must revise my academic stuff and work on my project too. I’ve a whole pile of books ordered from Amazon that I need to devote my attention too too, and I’ve slowly started attacking that pile over the past few days. Expect some book reviews. Those heading off to US institutes (well, even UK too) should definitely buy The CollegeHumor Guide To College – you will find it full of utterly hilarious and ultimately useless take on college/university life. 😉

I’m addicted to strudel too now. And I’m listening to these songs on repeat currently: Are You Gonna Be My Girl by Jet; Supermassive Black Hole (cover) by Tiffany Page; Team Drama by The Automatic. Also, I never noticed until now that that Moldy Peaches song mentions the Konami Code.

If Online April Fools Pranks Had Balls (cracked.com)
April Fools 2010: The Definitive List (TechCrunch) (techmeme.com)

The hypocrisy behind ‘Earth Hour’

: Image via Wikipedia

Another year, another day when what I consider to be one of the most hypocritical events of the year takes place – Earth Hour. The well-oiled marketing machinery run by World Wide Fund for Nature and other environmentalist radicals would’ve ensured you’d have heard of it.

The concept behind this is that people across the globe pledge to switch off lights for one hour on a specified day “to raise awareness about energy consumption and climate change“. Which is indeed a noble objective, except that this form of quick-fix activism usually means the participants get a false sense of having ‘achieved something’ without really making any change.

In the larger scheme of things, what really does switching off lights for one hour going to accomplish? Not much. Being aware, using energy-efficient devices when you can is going to help. Don’t get me wrong – many people who participate in Earth Hour would be aware enough to do these things too. But when you bring a mass-market campaign, you risk giving a lot of people that false sense of having made changes. Here’s a typical call exhorting people to participate:

All you have to do is switch off all the lights at your place for one hour starting 8:30 pm (your local time). That’s it!

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 29: This combinatio... — Image by Getty Images via Daylife

This is similar to joining a Facebook group ‘fighting for removing world hunger, poverty, and bringing unicorns back’, or ‘clicking to feed a child in Haiti’. And Earth Hour. These actions require such a small amount of effort from our end, but don’t have any measurable, tangible impact. What you have, instead, is chest-thumping cries afterwards of having ‘done my bit to save the planet’.

Want proof? Look at all those holier-than-thou comments flowing like a river on Twitter. Take, for instance, ‘countries and cities participating in Earth Hour 2010‘. Pray, tell me where these countries / cities have officially signed up for such a thing? Promotional material behind the event gives an indication of this mindset too. Watch this video below.

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Sorry to break your bubble, but last year’s Earth Hour was not “the biggest action ever on climate change”. It’s the countless number of people and corporations who bother to make informed decisions every day who deserve that title. That’s what we need, not a bunch of hippies burning candles and dancing for an hour.

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