MicroBrain’s

Archive for March, 2008

It’s classic story about controversy between religion and music. This post doesn’t intended to be a justification, just give you some idea of what several musics have ever convey. This review quoted from MarloByDesign’s writing on HubPages.

Madonna - “Like A Prayer”
In 1989, Madonna released her fourth album, Like a Prayer. The video for the song “Like a Prayer” was very controversial for its time. Madonna kissed a black man (who is either a saint or Jesus), dances seductively with burning crosses in the background, cuts herself with a knife, and witnesses a rape. A white man had attempted to rape a woman - and an innocent black man - who had attempted to save the woman, was arrested. This video is controversial commentary on race and religion. The video draws a parallel between Jesus suffering on the cross, and a black man suffering by being wrongly accused as well. Madonna makes a bold statement and the video was met with protest from many religious groups.

R.E.M. - “Losing My Religion”
Possibly one of the best songs by R.E.M. of all time, Losing My Religion hit the charts in 1991. The song reflects in losing religion, God, and faith. People have commented that this song describes a feeling when you have lost control over your life, and trying to seek seeking love and truth.

Joan Osbourne - “One of Us”
In January 1996, Joan Osborne’s song “One of Us” hit the Billboard Hot 100 number 4 positions. This song is very beautiful, and brings religion into music be questioning God’s presence on Earth. Joan ponders whether of not God is one of us, just a stranger on a bus, in night and day … is God among us? She asks, what would God look like if he had a face? You cannot help question if God is physically present and around us everyday.

Depeche Mode - “Blasphemous Rumours”
In 1984, Depeche Mode’s video brought the issue of blasphemy to light. The song depicts reflects God in a negative way, as sung in the chorus: “I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumors but I think that God’s got a sick sense of humour, and when I die, I expect to find Him laughing.” Considered very offensive to some, the song tells a story of a 16 year old girl’s suicide attempt and a 18 year old girl hit by a car.

(click the image for the detail list)

Another birthday gift for me. Congratulations to Reinhart, Verlin, Virgie, Danny, and Adhie who have passed the 1st selection of informatics olympiad (OSK). Actually, from their report soon after the contest (Thursday, 27) I have predicted that they will passed this one and they really did! Not only passed, but also ranked high. Anyway, this is only the beginning of the fun, next steps are facing straight in front of you. Just keep practicing! Good luck for the 2nd selection which tentatively will conduct on 9th April! The ultimate goal is big-5 for all of you. Trust me when I say it’s possible! You will have my prayer.

Happy birthday… Happy birthday… Happy birthday to me…

Hehe… Thanks a lot to all of you who remember this-maybe-special-day. Most of all, thanks to someone who have an international phone at zero hours. I was surprised, I thought you’ll just send me a message, hehe… Thanks to Belva, Dilla, Nia as well who have accompanied me through the midnight in tutorial room (thanks for the video). Thanks to Wina and Eyin, a phone call woke me up this morning mentioning a packet and I exactly knew he isn’t courier! Thanks to Krishna, my room-mate, I didn’t think you’ll remember my birthday (I only told you once). Thanks also for Ivanna, is it a real card or edited one? Last but not least, thanks to my family (my dad’s message is right at zero hours, it’s a coincidence, hehe…).

Well, this is my last year in “teen” age (seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, hehe…) and hope this age will be one of my best time.

Some resolution for my 19th age: URECA, GPA>4.5, Yellow Rate TC, ICPC Regional Winner. (Amin)

 (my “HW001 English Proficiency” oral test preparation)

Good afternoon everyone. Today, I’m going to talk about a unique sleeping schedule named Uberman sleep schedule. It’s a  kind of polyphasic sleep. Polyphasic sleep is a practice of sleeping multiple times in a 24-hour-period. Usually more than two, on contrast to normal biphasic sleep that we usually do. Uberman sleep schedule, which is named by Dr. Claudio Stampi, a chronobiology researcher, is adopted by many animals sleep behaviour. Instead of sleeping in long chunks of time, such as the eight hours a night recommended to humans, certain animals sleep for short periods of time throughout the day and night.

Uberman itself propose 6 times of sleep in a day of 24-hour-period. Each of them is 20 minutes long and separated 4 hours after another. In total, people doing Uberman schedule only sleep 2 hours in a day. If you do a searching on google about it, you will find that todays more people doing this sleep schedule. Anyway, every type of sleep schedule has its own pros and cons.

There are at least four pros why people doing Uberman sleep schedule. First, you have a lot of time to do everything you want. With 22 hours a day you may feel like superman since more things can be done compare to normal people who only have 15 up to 17 hours. Secondly, you will not lose every phase of your day, because you will be ready every time. You willl see the morning, the afternoon, the evening, and even the dawn. Thirdly, for those who want to have a diet, this kind of sleep schedule perhaps will help you much. Lastly, some resources say that many geniuses have this type of sleep. For instance, Leonardo Da Vinci and Thomas Alva Edison are said to be success having Uberman sleep schedule. So, maybe you will also become genius, if you do so.

Read the rest of this entry »

Congratulations to SMAK 1 BPK PENABUR Bandung who have another great “headline” this year for Aldrian’s success.

This morning, Aldrian was chosen to be 1 of 6 students from Indonesia who will compete in the annually International Mathematics Olympiad in Madrid, July 2008. Moreover, Aldrian placed at the 1st rank among those 6 students. We’re looking forward to hearing another good news from Aldrian soon. Good luck!

Funny derivation from engineer about woman, hehe… No offense, for myself this is not true, hehe…

This is terrible, they will convert 30% of all rooms into triple rooms. I think my room now is not big enough to accommodate 3 people. Hopefully I still get the double room next semester.

An Indonesian-Singaporean terrorist escaped from jail. Please contact the police if you see him! (maybe police will give you a big amount of money)

(just wonder, if you want to make your biography on wikipedia, being a good man is not the only way, check this out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mas_Selamat_Kastari)  

¹Cell phones have made our lives worse, not better. ²Remember when you could eat in a restaurant without hearing the obnoxious ring of someone’s cell phone? ³From restaurants to movie theaters, cell phones violate peace and quiet. ⁴And not only do they disturb others, but they also distract the people using them. ⁵Have you ever driven behind someone talking on a cell phone? ⁶You can tell that the driver is on the phone because of the changing speed and swerving. ⁷The crazy thing is that people think cell phones have made their lives easier. ⁸The truth is, they have not. ⁹My sister, for example, uses her cell phone to call her office for messages. ¹⁰She works twenty-four hours a day now, thanks to her cell phone. ¹¹Then there are all the mental burdens of figuring out how to carry the phone (belt clip or phone bag?), remembering to take it along, keeping it charged, and finding a place with good reception. ¹²How do I know these things? ¹³I was once a cell phone user, but I saw the light and broke free from cell phone bondage. ¹⁴You know, it’s not called a cell phone without good reason.

(taken from http://www.mywritinglab.com/)

Adobe - came from name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the house of founder John Warnock.

Apache - It got its name because its founders got started by applying patches to code written for NCSA’s httpd daemon. The result was ‘A PAtCHy’ server — thus, the name Apache

Apple Computers - favourite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computers if the other colleagues didn’t suggest a better name by 5 o’clock.

C - Dennis Ritchie improved on the B programming language and called it ‘New B’. He later called it C. Earlier B was created by Ken Thompson as a revision of the Bon programming language (named after his wife Bonnie)

CISCO - its not an acronymn but the short for San Francisco.

Compaq - using COMp, for computer, and PAQ to denote a small integral object.

GNU - a species of African antelope. Founder of the GNU project Richard Stallman liked the name because of the humour associated with its pronuniciation and was also influenced by the children’s song ‘The Gnu Song’ which is a song sung by a gnu. Also it fitted into the recursive acronym culture with ‘GNU’s Not Unix’.

Google - the name started as a jokey boast about the amount of information the search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named ‘Googol’, a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After founders - Stanford grad students Sergey Brin and Larry Page presented their project to an angel investor, they received a cheque made out to ‘Google’!

Hotmail - Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in ‘mail’ and finally settled for hotmail as it included the letters “html” - the programming language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective upper casing.

HP - Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.

Intel - Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company ‘Moore Noyce’ but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain, so they had to settle for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.

Java - Originally called Oak by creator James Gosling, from the tree that stood outside his window, the programming team had to look for a substitute as there was another language with the same name. Java was selected from a list of suggestions. It came from the name of the coffee that the programmers drank.