[ESSAY] WHAT IS HUMAN?

       
     Once in a while everybody comes to a moment where we ask "what is human?” What really makes us to be called a human? How this "human" thing is any different from any other living things on this Earth? The interesting part for this question is there is actually no right or wrong answers. Everybody has a different view of things and understands things in their own way of thinking. So the answer to these questions is infinitely many. But here's what I think and I believe it's one of those infinitely many answers. The definitive characteristic of humanity is the ability to remember the past and imagine the future.

   You must be wondering what this ability is called, it’s called the chronesthesia. It is a ability in our minds/brains, acquired by humans through evolution that allows us to be constantly be aware of the past and the future. We use our episodic memory to construct our personal events from the past and also predict future.

   Mental time travel allows us to remember our past.For us, remembering something means to recall our past occurrences. It is one of the most useful things that humans have. Just think about it, if we don’t have the ability to remember the past we won’t know who we are. We won’t remember our childhood, our precious memories that were shared with the loved ones. Also it could be just the basic things like when we were born, in what family we grew up or other important things that happened in the past. But the key feature of remembering the past is remembering the mistakes and avoiding them. If we can’t remember the mistakes we made then we can’t learn from it and can never avoid it in our future life.

   The benefit of recalling the past events is like I said avoiding the mistakes we made before. In social relationships, it can help us to distinguish friends from foes, not to hangout with the wrong group of people and in love relationships not to get hurt easily. In the occupational and food-gathering arenas, it helps us to develop tools that work well and to discard ones that don’t. Also the process of chronesthesia allows people to update information critical to surviving, thriving and dealing with changes in the world. It gives people experiences temporal and emotional dimensions, which make us more believable.


   This one PhD, Endel Tulving, said that " You don't need mental time travel to remember a chemical formula or your mother's maiden name," he explained. "You can know a lot of things without mental time travel, but you can't remember events from your past, or anticipate your future, without it." One of Tulving's patient, who had sustained multiple brain lesions, including hippocampal lesions, in a motorcycle accident. The patient could solve math problems, but he couldn't remember ever taking a math class, or he couldn't even recall how he came to Tulving's office for an interview. The patient was missing the " human ability to project our own past into the future," said Tulving. This ability, he believes, has enabled us to create and pass down a wealth of cultural knowledge through the generations, including how to: plant seeds, make and keep records, formally educate the young...


   Mental time travel also allows us to predict our future. The most flexible memory, episodic memory, is part of a more general faculty of mental time travel that allows us not only to go back in time, but also to foresee, plan, and shape virtually any specific future event. Planning the future is a simple thing. It means to plan tomorrow or next week or it could be next month. We, humans, plan and predict our future everyday, for example plan what to do tomorrow, for students, we plan what homeworks or projects we do tomorrow or we plan on what class we should take to go to certain university. Everybody plans their birthdays before it happens, that's an example of planning the future. Or pregnant women, predict the date of their birth and buy clothes and toys for the soon-to-be born baby. 


   After reading this, you must be wondering are humans alone in their ability to reminisce about the past and imagine the future. Scientists reviewed comparative studies and found out that some food-storing birds have the access to information about what they have stored where and when. This has raised the possibility of mental time travel in animals. But that such data do not provide convincing evidence for mental time travel in nonhuman animals. So in light of the current lack of evidence, however, they maintain that mental time traveling is a uniquely human characteristic. 


  In life, there is hundreds of different qualities that humans differ from other living things. In my opinion, the ability of mental time traveling is one of the most important qualities that humans have. It helps us to rise our cultures, religions, arts and tools we use daily. 

[CE] Shots...everywhere!

 here is the information about the shot : http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/24/BAKB1L94VP.DTL&feed=rss.bayarea

    Im not surprised that someone was shot in West Oakland. But it's kind of weird how he was shot in the morning 11:55 a.m. I thought most shot were fired in the middle of the night cuz thats when crimes happen. But i guess this one is different.
  
    Many scary things happen in West Oakland, if i lived there i don't think i would go outside at night even in the morning. Many teenagers hang out with their friends at night or spend night outside. I think it’s very dangerous anything can happen. If a was a parent who lived in Oakland and if my child was not home by 8 o’clock I would pick her up from where she is and ground her.

    But I don’t think it only happens in Oakland it can also happen in Alameda. Actually it did happen in Alameda. I know this girl who was shot on Halloweens Day at night. And she used to go here, in  Alameda High School. We also have her portrait in our school for her memory. I believe that she was an great example for us not to go outside when it’s dark. Especially Halloweens day is coming, so we should be careful and not hangout at night. Who knows some maniacs can shoot you just because they want to. So be careful guys! Teeheee J

[RE] No one is Perfect

I agree with Gary Chan, we all make mistakes.

    “We all make mistakes. Do we deserve the punishment sometimes? Yes. But what we can do is learn from this and do better.”

    Of course there is no such thing as perfect. There is always some kind of mistake we make. The point were you will have to make important decisions comes to everybody at least once in their life time. Well, actually it will come hundreds and hundreds of times in our lives. We can’t make the right decision every time, there will be times where we will fail and make the wrong decisions. And sometimes we will need to face the consequences of our mistakes and get punished.

    But I don’t think we should blame ourselves or regret what we have done. We make mistakes so we can learn from it and do it better next time. But from the other hand making mistakes is okay doesn’t mean we can make mistakes always. We need to try not to make the same mistakes next time. I think the whole purpose of making mistake is to teach us some kind of lesson in our lives. It’s like if we face the same problem or need to make decisions again, then we can look back and say “ I made a mistake on this one so I should be careful and think what’s the right decision.” But if someone makes the same mistake over and over, I don’t know what to say….Teeheee J

      

[FREE] Some people think cursing is cool

   I personally don’t think cursing is that bad. I think it’s just same as other words. I curse when I’m not in the good mood or did something wrong. I mostly say “ sh*t” or “ wth”. These two words just slip out of my mouth automatically when something bad happens. However, I don’t really say the f word and I try not to say it.

    But I think some people swear just to look cool to other kids. It’s nothing cool when people say the f word every 5 seconds. It makes them look rude and disrespectful. To me it seems kind of annoying and stupid. I also don’t understand why people try to learn bad words first when they’re learning a new language. Some of my friends asked me how to say “sh*t”, “ b*tch”, “ f*ck” in my own language. After I tell them how to say it, they’ll go to other people who don’t know what it means and say those words to them. It’s like a cycle thing, it always happens wherever I go.

  

    I heard this saying, it goes like this “ what you say with your mouth is the seed to your future life”. I’m not sure it is true or not, but to me it kind of makes sense. If you say too much bad words and have negative thinking, your life is going to be like that. Im not trying to judge people here, I’m sharing my opinion that cursing doesn’t look cool at all. Oh yea I made up a bad word in my Spanish class. It’s “ ay shiete!”. It means shit if you can't figure it out. Teeheee J

[BC] Once upon a time in a darkened gym of Alameda High...

 Jenna is a sixteen year old girl and goes to Alameda High School. One day after her volleyball practice she left behind in the gym to practice more alone. But suddenly all the lights turned off in the gym. The room was dark, too dark. She made sure her eyes were open, fearing she had gone blind. She couldn't see her hand, even though it was literally an inch from her face. Jenna gathered her courage to call out a hello again, hoping that someone would answer or someone was playing prank on her. But nobody answered. The gym remained so silent that she only can hear her shaking breath and loud heartbeats like her heart is about to pop out of her.

  

 A cool shudder trickled down her spine. Glancing around nervously, she sees the orange wooden benches, four basketball hoops and the five doors of the gym. Then, out of nowhere it seemed like someone was sitting on the benches and staring at her. Jenna couldn’t believe her eyes, she wanted to walk closer to prove that it was just her seeing things, but she couldn’t move but panic and stand there like she was glued to the floor.  It seemed like a girl that was staring at Jenna. The girl had long hair, skinny and a pale face that kind of lightened in the pitch dark. Cold, hesitant light streamed in through the main door and seemed like someone was walking outside.  When Jenna turned around to look at a door, she saw nothing but more cold darkness. When she turned around to look at the girl again, she was gone, Jenna felt relieved and thought that she was seeing things because she was scared. Jenna remembered that she left her cell phone in the locker room so she walked forward to locker door to check if it’s open but unfortunately it was locked.  Jenna couldn’t help but feel that someone is following her. Whirling around, she sees nothing. 'Turn back' someone seemed to say, but Jenna swallows a nervous whimper and continues into the dark gym...

    All the doors were locked in the gym. Jenna punched, kicked the green doors and yelled for help but no one was outside or cared to come. She sat down on the benches and hopelessly cried with fear and frustration. When Jenna sat up to look again she wasn’t sitting on the benches anymore, she was standing in the center of the gym. Then shadows seemed to swirl around her feet, sucking in. In a burst of panic, she fumbled for a light switch next to the main door. She flipped it up and down frantically, but the gym remained immersed in darkness. Fear settled in and deep down she knew she’s not alone in the dark. Something brushed her back and grabbed her shoulder. Outside she could heart the autumn wind howling, and it almost sounded like laughter to her panicked mind. A low chuckle broke her thought process, directly in front of her. Jenna screamed, but heard nothing in the overwhelming blackness. She was being drawn in, drowned in slumbering evil, where there was no escape...

    The next day Jenna’s friends, parents, teachers and everybody searched for her but nobody found her or any sign of what happened to her. After few weeks, one girl left her jacket in the locker room so she went back there after school to get it. When she was about to leave after getting her jacket, a phone rang in of the lockers. The girl found the phone in a green little locker that Jenna used. When she picked up, some female voice said “You’re next.” Before she could ask what it was about, it was already dead at the other end and the phone was completely shut down. Then the lights turned off.

[CE] Revenge of Osama Bin Landan x_x

I found this interesting video : http://finance.yahoo.com/video#video=26601437
   This video gave me chills because there are people that are going to get avenge Osama Bin Landan's death. So U.S.A can't possibly be calm, at some point there is going to be some kind of attack that kills many people. Gunmen opened a fire on a school bus in Pakistan. But why would they do that to innocent children. I just don't get it. Around five people died and 18 people were injured. I also wonder why Gunmen people are attacking Pakistan when U.S special force killed him not Pakistan.I think U.S should be careful cuz there is going to be many attacks!

[FREE] Dark circles under my eyes...smh

    I know it's been only 3 weeks since school started but I'm sooo tired. It doesn’t seem like I have that much homework compared to students that took bunch of AP and HP classes. But I take longer than them to finish my regular home works. I’m stressing out because of my laziness and slowness. But my biggest problem is time management. I always end up staying all night to finish my few homeworks. It’s like I take 3 hours just to finish one of them. And them I stay up till around 2 and wake up at 7…. I’m sleeping 5 hours almost everyday and I keep falling asleep in the class. Even though I want to pay attention in class and try not to fall asleep, my eyes are just closing themselves I really can’t help it. When I fall asleep I miss out some important things my teachers say and end up not doing my hw because I didn’t hear my teacher's direction.

    

      One day my friend was like “omagaash what happened to your face?”  and I was like “idk what happened?” then she said “ you look very tired, you have dark circles under your eyes.” And after I heard her comment I looked at a mirror and I did look tired. Soo I started to worry about my future, how am I gonna graduate high school, college, universities if I can’t even do my homeworks in my sophmore year. And thinking about these stuff made me more stressful and tired. But I shall learn how to manage my time before things get more complicated and hard. And to people who’s reading this use your time wisely, time is gold and it’s never going to wait for you.

[RE] Girls like Boys...

As I was reading through people's blogs i found this interesting quote from Bridget's blog:

   " Second example drives me insane sometimes, and that's when I see girls cry over boyfriends. For real though, ladies my age don't know much shit about what "real love" is."

   I have to agree with this quote because  lots of girls at our age die to get a boyfriend. It's like all they think and talk about is boys boys boys...I mean, there are more important things other than boys. Im not saying that we can't talk about boys or crush on them. I just think it's too early for us to talk about real love and heartbreaks. I bet the real heartbreak and real love is nothing compared to what we call "love". I see many girls that run after boys and finally go out with them. But after a month or so, the guy dumps the girl after using her. And the girl cries, listens to sad love songs and post sad love quotes on Facebook saying "im heartbroken </3" and other stuff... When I see that kind of quote i wish to say if your heart is really broken you'd be dead, not posting things on Facebook.

    When you least expect a love, love will always find you one way or another. It’s just not the time, as we grow up we will find the “real love” of our life. For right now we should focus on school and other important things. The last thing I wanna say is  NEVER RUN AFTER BUS AND BOYS…ANOTHER ONE ALWAYS COMES ;)))))

[CE] Be happy with what you have...

hello guys...please click on this link to watch the video:  http://news.yahoo.com/video/911-26129757/9-11-babies-10-years-later-26571514.html#crsl=%252Fvideo%252F911-26129757%252F9-11-babies-10-years-later-26571514.html
  

  Okay, so I watched this video and literally cried. It just soo sad and touching…The kids who never met their dad, they only saw them from a picture or heard people talk about their dads. Watching this video made me think of  how selfish and wrong I was. These kids don’t have dads who can tell them what’s right and what’s wrong, scold them for doing something bad, and make them feel safe and warm. So I thought that I should be a little more thankful that I have a dad who scolds me, it kind of shows that he cares about me.

 

    Some of us just hate our dads and wish that they're dead n stuff. But these kids’ big wishes are to just see them. We don’t realize how important and valuable a person is until that person is gone. So I would like to say be thankful and satisfied with what you have. There are people who are wishing to be in your place. If your parents scold you for being late or not doing homework, it means that they care and worry about you. They just want us to be happy and live a good life. We never really do anything for them, all we mostly do is complain about stuff. At least we should listen to them and say how much we love them. And doing this is not even 1% of the debt we owe to them just for raising us.

   

    I hope you guys enjoyed this video and feeling thankful to your parents like I do...see ya^^

[RE] SCHOOL=ACHIEVMENT

   Okay so I was going through the posts that sophomores did and this very true post title got my attention.

        “…the way you act and picture school is what makes a person think that school is stupid or time wasting. I imagine it as a place to make new friends and create some knowledge from the oh so boring thing called LEARNING. School is there for a reason, not as a prison or place to throw crap loads of work at you, the reason why they give us students all this work is so we can learn for reality.”

    I honestly agree with this quote because it’s just true and I can relate to it. People are always like “ oh I hate school, I hate these homeworks, I hate my teacher…it’s soo boring…bla bla bla” Like really? I don’t get why people act like they’re learning for somebody else. This school and learning thing is only useful to us later on to achieve our dreams and live a better life.

 

     To tell the truth me myself don’t like homeworks and all the works that teachers give us. But somehow I still like to come to school, maybe it’s because of my friends or maybe because I think of my future. I have lots of dreams…for example to live in a big luxurious house. but If I don’t learn I can’t graduate if I cant graduate I can’t  go into college if I can’t get into college I won’t have a job if I don’t have a job I wont have a luxurious house to live in. so this is why i go to school. To achieve my dreams.

[FREE] ADDICTION...

   I need help! Yes, is there a rehab center to cure my addiction to, no, NOT DRUGS but KOREAN DRAMAS??? I just can’t stop watching them, it’s just soo good...!!! During summer I watched bunch of them and I still can’t get enough of it. But I keep telling myself that I need to stop watching them. Those who are addicted to Korean dramas, hopefully you guys know how it feels to be addicted.

    I mostly watch romance/comedy/adventures dramas. And I gotta admit that the actresses and actors are so beautiful! When I watch dramas I just get into it and feel like I’m in the movie myself. That’s how concentrated I get when I watch them. Some of the best dramas I watched were: “ Boys Before Flowers” , “ You’re Beautiful”, “ Secret Garden”, “ City Hunter”, “ Personal Preferences”….. If I keep writing l’ll finish my 250 words just listing the names. Also not only Asian people like Korean dramas but also it’s popular around the Europe area.

 

  However, since school started I haven’t watched it at all. I’m kind of relieved that I’m  not going to watch it for a while but on the other hand I’m sad because I want to watch it, but too busy with school and other stuff. Soo yeaa this is basically it for my first post… I have two more to go and have only 42 minutes till Saturday. Why do I always do things in the last minut?! Why why why……?

ABOUT ME

       

       Hey, my name is Enkhlen Khurelbaatar. Right now you must be wondering why I have such a long and hard-to-say last name, it’s because I’m Mongolian. Many Mongolian names are like this, you’re probably familiar with this kind of names if you have Mongolian friends. My first name has a meaning of peace. Many people including my teachers and friends, always pause for a second before saying my name and then ask “ how do you say your name?” , but I like my name because it’s kind of unique and I think it’s cool. So this is it about my name. I have lived fifteen years and it’s so far so good. Here, in the United States I live with my parents and I don’t have any siblings. So it’s kind of boring but on the other side I’m happy to be the only child. All of my other family members are back in Mongolia. Its kind of scary that it’s just three of us in this big country. But we already lived here 3 years. The adventure I’d like to share is when I first landed in the United States of America  with my parents, which was in Los Angeles. We were in LA for about a week and then we went to Washington, DC. There we lived for about 3 months and I attended an American school for the first time. It was pretty exciting but scary at the same time because it was so big and I didn’t speak English that well. I also saw the White house and the Pencil. After 3 months, my family went to New York and saw the Statue of Liberty and the Wax House. Finally, my parents decided to settle down in Alameda, CA after traveling around for a little bit. So this was my little adventure around America.

    Now I’ll talk about my educational history. Back when I was in Mongolia, I used to go to a Russian school. Russian was like my second home language because I even went to a Russian kindergarden and learned all of my subjects in Russian until my 4^th grade. So basically it means I learned Russian for 5 years. But the sad thing is when I came here to learn English, I forgot my Russian. Even though I remember the basic talks now I know English more than Russian. I also studied English grammar in Mongolia for a year. So my writing goal is to speak English fluently, pronounce words correctly and learn more vocabulary.

    I’m not that into sports like many others. But this year I got interested in volleyball for some reason. So I told my parents that I would like to try volleyball, so now I go to a volleyball practice outside of school’s volleyball. And I think it’s the right sport for me because I feel powerful when I play this sport. I’m practicing a lot so I can get better and  play in the team. The weird thing is I don’t know what my hobbies are, I like to do lots of stuff…

    

    The adventures I want to have in the future is finish my high school with A’s and go to a good University of something. And this is it about me for now.