District 9

I was talking systems with a coworker today, he had just finished watching District 9 and we were talking about it. He said that it was unrealistic to have that many aliens live on a planet for so long and not have an uprising. I then countered this with the 'drift to low performance', my new favorite type of system failure. If aliens came to earth and lost their one resource needed to have their weapons and modes of transportation then after a while more and more would feel hopeless and just start to give up, until they reach the point where practically no one cares anymore and they just go on with living with the available resources. But of course since it is a movie there has to be a few left who are able to be the heroes. :)

Work. School. Homework. Cat. Clean. = My Life.

     Lately I have gotten into the habit of painting my nails, I used to hate doing it as a kid but now I can't get enough of it. It got me to thinking about body image and body image in itself is a system. It seems to have all of the parts to make it one; elements which can be seen as clothing choice (hair style, make-up, etc), rules which the society lends in order to say what is in and what is out, and the purpose which is to fit into society and societies norms. If someone does not work ideally in the system then they are considered an outcast, people will make fun of them and mock them because that is what society tells us to do. If this system was to fail, how would it happen? What is it's breaking point? Why is this system still in place if it ridicules people just by how they dress?

Guns, Germs, and Steel: China

I read my chapter for Guns, Germs, and Steel yesterday during work. I did chapter... 16....? I don't remember right now but it was about how China has always been Chinese. I thought it was very interesting and though I did do my summary on it I feel really motivated to write more, so here it is.

China is one of the largest and fastest growing countries in the world. If my history classes in high school taught me anything, it was that China had many things going for them almost from the beginning. The chapter in Guns, Germs, and Steel talks a little about this but I kept thinking, "if China was so advanced compared to Europe early on why didn't they travel abroad as much as Europe did?". This is one of my questions asked along with my summary but I just can't figure out why they wouldn't travel out. Did they not feel the need to travel like the Europeans did? What would have happened if China conquered the world?

These are all additional questions to what I put in my summary, what do you guys think?