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Recently I read an article about a 'tiger mother'. The first thing I felt when I read this article was that this person was extremely scheduled, writing a small blurb every hour. She had a meeting from 10-12, then another from 12-2, then office hours from 2-6, then a PTA dinner, then a small party with drinks with her assistants. I can't even imagine having a schedule that huge. I would be exhausted by the end of the day. Also, according to her, she recognizes that once somebody gets good at something, they enjoy doing it. So she once worked her daughter to do a certain piano piece until she could get it right, no dinner, no fun, not even allowing her to go to the bathroom until she got it right. But after a while, her daughter got it, and everyone was happy. Then her daughter wouldn't leave the piano, she was so proud. In conclusion, I think this tiger mom schedule and regimen for her kids does have its advantages.

Today I read an article about the fight to save Japan's Hikikomori population. Hikikomori are people who stay inside their homes for years, exhibiting an extreme social withdrawal. Basically all of a sudden, they decide not to go to school or work or whatever they normally do. They depend on parents or relatives for money, and only communicate with them. Solving the hikikomori riddle has taken on greater urgency in recent years. Sufferers often are men in their 20s and 30s who would be in the workforce but instead are being supported largely by their parents. Government officials worry about who will take responsibility for long-term hikikomori when their parents retire or die. The hikikomori problem sounds like a serious one, and I hope Japan fixes it soon! Really Funny Video: http://www.wsj.com/video/super-bowl-2015-godaddy-ad/3BDC9718-B167-4CBA-9D58-6F86D4A2E4B1.html

Overall, a lot of the comments about this movie were positive and happy, saying this was a great movie. This review, however, was different. One aspect of the movie it said was bad was that some roles were acted really poorly. For example, the role of the wife was supposedly not played very well. She is a pretty young woman who means nothing, who is neither impressive as a character nor poignant nor wholly fleshed out, and every time you see her she is whining at her husband and crying because he is here but not here, he is damaged, he’s got to get with it and be a better father. Also, the baby was a fake, which was a cheap way to save money and takes, at the expense of a more real movie, where the movie is supposed to be a reflection of what the reality is. However, the movie is good because it is so powerful. According to the reviewer, it had the power to leave a mixed audience of different ages silent after the movie, staring at the credits and trying to process what they had j...

Recently I read an article about the Green Bay Packers having a board game night in addition to normal practices and studying others play. This has had a huge effect on the city of Green Bay. But they have managed to squeeze in a highly competitive board game night. They play a game called "Settlers of Catan". Everyone is addicted to the game, probably also because there is nothing much else to do in Green Bay, the NFL's smallest city. The game gets so competitive that when new players join, nobody tells them any rules, and they get screwed because they don't know how to play. The quarterback mentioned it in passing on the news, and suddenly everybody was calling the store to see if they could get a set. I think it is crazy how much people obsess over what their city's football team is doing. The Packers’ embrace of the game become such a phenomenon that the store put a sign up that said “Be cool like Justin Perillo, play Catan!” I think that we should also ge...

Recently I read a news article about locks becoming smart. For example, one lock called the August is a metal cylinder that attaches to the lock, and opens when you tell your smartphone, which is connected to the lock via Bluetooth, to open the lock. Experts say this lock is hard to hack because it does not connect to WiFi, so some random guy sitting in a basement couldn't hack your lock. Another example of a smart lock is the Kevo Kwikset, which totally replaces your whole lock. It adds in a motor and Bluetooth and everything. It also removes lock compatibility problems because it replaces the whole lock. This also cannot be hacked because it is a Bluetooth only lock too. Both of these locks are not widely tested so they could still have problems. For example, someone got locked outside his house because the lock malfunctioned. He had to climb in through the window. However, if the locks run out of battery, there is always a physical key. I think I still wouldn't use these ...

Today I went skiing at Steven's Pass. My favorite run of the day was probably Rock N' Blue, because there was pretty much no ice or exposed rocks. There were also some nice bumps on the side. It was fun to speed off them and fly for a while. Another thing that made me like it was that we came early, so there weren't too many tracks on the snow and you could go pretty fast. The worst run of the day might have been Skid Road. There were rocks all over the place! There was also a lot of ice. It was worse on Crest Trail, though. The plants hadn't been covered up by snow, so nobody went there, because it would wreck your skis. I thought Steven's Pass wasn't the best place to ski because it didn't have enough snow.

Recently I went on a trip to Florida. My favorite attraction was definitely the gator park. We rode an airboat around the Florida Everglades, and at one point, we were going so fast one side of our boat was literally out of the water. It was creepy, but fun. Also, I saw fifteen crocodiles. I wish we took the private tour, though, because it is longer and you go a lot faster. We also went on a snorkeling boat. It sucked. The waves were huge, and there were no fish, even though the water was "super-clear today!" We got dashed against the boat a bunch of times, and dad even got scraped and bled a bit. It was really hard to go up or down the stairs because there were ropes, but you weren't supposed to cling onto them, and there were huge waves that dashed you against the stairs. So one of the people who came with us kept clambering on and then sliding down on the 'non-stick'(sandpaper) stairs because a wave hit him. He said it really hurt. Something that I really h...