Ever had a friend who thinks their clever because they learnt about the Serial comma also known more famously as the Oxford comma.
Well, they aren’t sorry. Make sure you point it out.
Simply put – You don’t need it.
Put the pitchforks down grammar police and hear me out…
It is a very useful comma and helps to improve readability. That being said…You don’t need it.
Now, raise your hands, how many of you have used the Serial comma just to say “Well I use the Oxford comma, you really should too you know”, you smug little…. anyway.
For those of you who don’t know the Serial comma, also known as the Oxford or Harvard comma, is a grammar style choice that helps with breaking up text to be more easily readable. In it’s simplest explanation…
Putting a commabefore the and in a list. For example:
“I wrote a letter my parents, David and Santa Claus.”…
Your parents are David and Santa Claus? Perhaps you meant…
“I wrote a letter to my parents, David, and Santa Claus.” This leads to four separate people, not 2 people being named.
While this maybe very useful in explaining yourself more clearly, you could also argue you’re being lazy by not simply rewording the sentence…
“I wrote a letter to Santa Claus, David and my parents.”…
In American English is can be a mandatory requirement depending on your region, as well as at some universities such as, you guessed it: Oxford and Harvard as a part of their referencing style guide.
It really doesn’t matter if you want to use it or not, however, if you do use it, like all good grammar, you must use it. You don’t spell some words in British English and others in American English, so don’t do it with grammar either. Consistency is what is key to good grammar…ignore mine…what?…
Anyway, that’s my venting done for another day.
What do you all think? Serial comma, yea or nah?
Despite my works I am quite fond of the serial comma…never seen a hypocrite before…anyway…
I noticed that I hadn’t actually posted any of my new blog posts in quite a while.
Why?
Because I seemed to be stuck in an over planning kind of rut.
Recently I have been trying out so many new things and focusing so heavily on not wasting time that I decided to plan my time out perfectly for everyday. Seems easy enough right? I get up, exercise, work, lunch, work, study, study some more, dinner, study a bit more and then bed. Easy.
Not surprising to most of you reading this but, being up from 7a.m. to 11p.m. working and studying isn’t really sustainable but that’s for another time. I wanted to optimise my time.
Having preached to you all about not wasting time I decided to take my own advice…and then some. I planned out exactly what I would do, at what time, Yes, including how long I could take to shower, eat, study specific topics, the list gets more graphic so I think I’ll stop there…for now.
It actually worked like a treat, until I started to lose momentum. I would get frustrated when I over ran as I lost time on studying other topics or increasing my exercise. Being annoyed then made it harder to study and more time and effort to absorb information.
Long story short: Over Planning leads to less work!
Don’t get so flustered with using your time “efficiently” that, you don’t use your time efficiently. I spent so much time planning and tweaking to get the most effort for my day, that I wasted lots of them, before and after.
When I started using the plan, I worked myself to the bone and failed, leaving me exhausted and needing time to reset.
Don’t be an idiot.
Just Do It!!
Shia LaBeuof
If you want to know a fairly sustainable pace then I found separating my time into 1 hour slots worked well.
Just like your body you need to work other parts of your brain. Topics can become tedious more so than interesting if you force them, let it flow.
If you’re on a roll, keep going, hit a wall, change things up. Make a cup of tea, stretch your legs between each topic, get your body and mind linking there habits together, this will make things far easier to sustain.
I actually found doing a study topic, then my exercise, then another topic worked excellently and prevents TV procrastination.
Anyway, that’s my sob story for today. (worlds tiniest violin plays)
I’m sure most of you now will have heard of this model, maybe not by name but, definitely by practice. Put simply the VARK model is: a breakdown of the learning process; it’s how you learn.
VARK
According to this model there are 4 basic styles to learning:
Visual – graphical summaries of given data; charts, graphs, etc.
Auditory – listening to aural (verbal) information.
Reading / Writing – reading documentation and taking notes.
Kinaesthetic – performing the physical action; playing the sport or conducting the experiment yourself.
You’re learning wrong
Now, this is where the trick comes in…
Effective learning comes down to efficiency; you need to learn the broad content quickly and logically to retain it – effectively. The VARK model directs you to your best learning method.
Studies show that preferences and actuality don’t always match.
A recent study (Jurenka, et al., 2018.) shows that subjectively, students chose auditory learning as their preferred method however, test results showed students had greater results with kinaesthetic learning.
The current generation does seem to follow the general trend of preferring kinaesthetic style learning, as opposed to the older generation preferring reading/writing styles. This is down to the change from traditional eduction to newer modern standards.
How to learn
Schools use a combination of different methods that invoke each learning style. This is to help students to learn, despite their individual styles, but also to aid them in recognising how they learn: Most people don’t fully understand what method is best for them.
Learn Smarter
If you wish to learn efficiently and easily, take a simple VARK test – you will thank you.
Below are a few links if you wish to do a little more digging for yourself.
So, what type of learner are you?
Are you different from what you thought?
Feel free to leave a comment, anything more, Leave a Q.
You speak a language, just the 1, makes sense. Why bother with another language?
I mean seriously, with all of the technology out now, who needs to speak more than their mother tongue. I could point my phone camera at a sign and it would translate it for me. I could even leave my phone on a table and it would translate, aloud, what someone is saying to me. Brilliant.
Sure, that may be true and be enough for holidays, but with more and more people travelling, personally or for work, and even emigrating, the world is becoming a much smaller place.
Let me add a local point, especially for those with the English mother tongue. How many more jobs could you get if you spoke a second language, even at a basic conversation level. I would be willing to bet it doubles, yes DOUBLES.
“But that’s absurd” I hear you cry. …Why?
How many times have you been at an interview and not got the job despite having the exact same skills as everyone else. It comes down to personality and other “irrelevant” skills at that point. A language will be right at the top of the list even if there is no need for one.
…Why?
It shows you not only have a very difficult skill to attain but have a more extroverted personality with, being able to speak to people who don’t know your mother language, or perhaps struggle with it. You would be a perfect fit for any “human” based companies where you talk to clients or even internal staff members as someone who understands and has an interest in other people and cultures. It would put you in good standing as a leader or manager and not just “another grunt”.
Now, that might not be true for you, but that’s what it looks like on a CV, …just saying…
Anyway, on the more advanced side, a language shows that you have a very adaptive mind.
Languages are stranger than you think. There is plenty of research that shows how drastically your brain chemistry alters in comparison to a monolingual. You form new connection to the same ideas you already hold.
As a side note, what do I mean by ideas?
If I said the word "Book", you instantly know what I mean, but why? The word has an association in your brain to your senses. That's why you get a feeling of nostalgia when you see or smell certain things. An old book smell could bring back a time of reading as a child or seeing a pebble reminds you of a holiday, these examples are more drastic associations of the idea you have of that specific thing, but back to words. Standard words like: dog, book, ocean, tree, will likely instantly give an image in your mind, not necessarily clear but you have a significant understanding of what it means.
That is where languages make things really interesting….
Take someone who speaks a Germanic language, such a English, and an Asian language, like Japanese. The way these languages function are so drastically different that your brain literally works differently when thinking in 1 language to another. This is down to the different pathways formed within your brain to be able to link different ideas in your mind.
Example:
English: I went shopping yesterday.
Japanese: 私は昨日買い物に行ってきまし
Romaji : Watashi wa kino kaimono ni ittekimashita.
The Japanese literal translation would be along the lines of:
I yesterday shopping went. With shopp’ing‘ and ‘went‘ being muddled together at the end. Logically, Japanese is a ‘simple-ish’ language to grasp, with specific rules for each thing.
to go (present/future)
(行きます)ikimasu
to do
(します)shimasu
not go (negative)
(行きません)ikimasen
not do
(しません) shimasen
went (past)
(行きました)ikimashita
did
(しました)shimashita
These are just some examples, how logical it is despite being complex. Basically, each word is the same, but a different ending changes the tense.
The syntax of the Germanic languages works completely differently to the Asian languages. The ideas people have in the mind for each word will be similar, but how they are connected to each other will be different.
This leads to a different way of thinking, and potentially, even a different personality depending on the language you use at that time.
This means that problems could be solved much more efficiently by a multilingual due to their brains being able to match similar ideas in different ways.
Think outside of your language limited box.
2 Languages means “3” times the amount of people
What?….How?……
Now, obviously this number is subjective. Logically, if you speak 1 language you can speak to anyone who speaks your mother tongue, yes? Therefore, speaking 2 languages means you can speak to twice the amount of people right, everyone who speaks either of the two languages you can, your mother tongue and their’s, following me?
Well, what about other multilinguals. Around 70% of the global populous are some degree of multilingual.
Hypothetically, let’s say you can speak English and Japanese. You can speak to someone who speaks either English or Japanese, yes? Including those who speak different combinations of languages. You can’t just converse with English and Japanese people, you could speak to anyone who knows either language, follow? What if you met a person from Brazil who speaks Portuguese and Japanese. This may seem fairly obvious but expand it a little more. You and your new friend become a translator for anyone who speaks English or Portuguese too, by using your common language, Japanese.
Now this might sound a little drastic but it goes to show just how wide your world can grow by simply knowing another language.
Sure, languages are hard at first, but once you understand the logic behind them you can progress faster and faster as you are able to use it more and more. Watching movies, talking to new people, playing games. Not only do they allow you to do these things in other languages but expand the amount you can do; new games, new shows, new people.
The world is a much smaller place and it is getting smaller. You are far more likely to meet someone who doesn’t speak your language than ever before with everyone being able to explore everywhere.
Or are you?…..
With around 65%-75% of the global population being multilingual, monolinguals are a “dying breed”, you could even argue inferior, if you want to start getting cynical. You are less adaptive, more isolated, and with most businesses being international you would be unable to even have a conversation with a large proportion of those you “work with”.
Hmm, perhaps I should brush up on my languages.
Anyway, what do you think?
Am I being too harsh on monolinguals?
Are languages boring and pointless with technological developments?
Will Elon’s ‘neuralink‘ brain chip mean you won’t even have to speak?
You find yourself in a job you hate, understandable. Welcome to the club, current member count, 7 billion. In our club new or “rookie” members get treated like children and are given lots of work for poor pay. Where as our long standing “veteran” members have to deal with the same old …rubbish… different day.
Now, here’s the kicker, the answer, the number 1 rule to enjoying work…. [insert generic rubbish here]…
Yeah, there isn’t one sorry, thanks for listening.
….what?
…still here?
Okay. So here is my answer. It all comes down to how you perceive your job, for which, there are 2 choices in the entire lifetime of a persons career. To you personally, is your job:
A job that is your love and passion?
or
A job that pays for your love and passion?
Now, the first option is always the preferred choice, but, for everyone to be happy, the odds that there is someone out there that actively enjoys each available job, is quite slim. Even if everyone on Earth actually enjoyed their jobs that would not last. Why? The population keeps growing and jobs don’t. The competition for those jobs adds stress, killing any sort of enjoyment we scrape together.
That leaves us with 2 main problems with work (I know another 2): unneededstress or mind-numbing boredom.
I would be willing to bet that every single person who has read this has experienced both in there working life. I know I have.
This is why peoplehate there jobs, we need enough pressure just to keep things interesting but not so much as to make associate a job with discomfort orstress.
Everyone is capable of working under pressure, just different amounts. When we reach our limit, that’s when pressure becomes stress.
As of the time I am writing this there is a pandemic which, rightly so, adds the extra stress to you work life, reducing the amount of extra pressure we can endure.
Is your current job the issue or is it stress from your personal life melding with work stress. Some of my previous jobs were excellent with nice little perks which kept me content. But, I know that I would have up and quit, with them being front facing jobs, as my personal stress would have been unsustainable with work life.
Anyway, let’s leave that annoying 2019 associate there, that might not concern you.
Now, back to jobchoices.
Since I was young I have chopped and changed what I wanted to be so many times I developed an odd miss match of skills and interests leaving me a bit of a Jack of all Trades and, unfortunately, a Master of Non. But, this has left me with the realisation that it is far easier to get a job that funds what I enjoy doing than getting a job I enjoy.
This may sound sad to some of you, but please stop and think about this for a moment. All jobs, whether you love it is or hate it, have their ups and downs, let me give you an example.
How cool would it be to be a stunt-person. You’re physically fit and talented enough to perform awesome fight scenes, jump over cars and all of the crazy stunts you wanted to do when you were just a child. You also get paid to do this, whilst hanging out with famous actors. Awesome right…What about injuries? Being contracted to do stunts you have never done before, that are potentially fatal, if you get them wrong. Must be stressful, no? What about the old adage, “Never meet you heroes”, turns out your favourite movie start is, a piece of work, upsetting, no?
Now, think of something that is widely considered boring…accounting. Looking after spending documentation of others enjoying there money. Boring, no? Well, accountants get paidwell. With most accounting you…
Do the job, then go home.
Lots of my points sound silly, but the amount of people who don’t consider these things carefully are immeasurable.
“A job you enjoy is not a job at all”…
…Sure, but that also means you are always thinking about work. A stunt-person has to ensure they are always at the top of their game, physically and mentally, to perform well and safely. An accountant, whilst being an incredible difficult job, that’s not even up for a debate, will get very good at their job due to the more repetitive nature of data science roles, meaning they can work through logically and finish at the end of each day.
For me, there is no job that I could do, with my current skill set, that I would say is “so excellent” that I would give up a job to do it. I am happy with what I do now because it gives me time to do things I enjoy. Like all jobs there are ups and downs, but nothing that would stop me from doing my role or think, “I can’t do this anymore”.
Anyway, that was a long tangential ramble, let me try again.
Is it better to find a job that you love or find a job that pays for, and gives you the time to do, the things you love? I will always argue the latter. Especially for people who don’t know what career path they wish to take, yet….
Finda job thatallowsyouto do the things you love.WorktoLive!
Russell
For me, I wanted to be able to travel the world and explore everything and learn all I can. For that I need 2 main things (really 2 again): money and time. So, I am always looking for jobs that give me enough money to support myself and give me time to use it on the things I want to do. Which, honestly, when you simplify life, is what everybody really wants.
Now that I think about it, it almost seems to good to be true…
Anyway, just something I am always surprised no one thinks about.
A job that you enjoy or a job that pays for what you enjoy. Both make work more bearable, but 1 actually separates your work and your life. That balance is the most important of all.
So, what do you think?
Should you enjoy your job like a hobby?
Do you agree with me?
Do you like your job.
Leave a comment below, any questions please, Leave a Q!
With the pandemic going on I, like a lot of people, had a sudden reaction as if I was back at school during summer holidays. I was being paid to simply stay at home and doing all I can to help keep others safe. So, I stayed home, used all my free time enjoying the piece and quiet, played games, caught up on my anime and TV shows and slept the rest of my day away. By end of the first lock down I had left my home a grand total of two times, in 6 months.
It wasn’t until I realised how long had past that I suddenly felt sick with fear. How much of my time had I wasted of my life doing literally nothing. Despite the misfortune of so many, we were granted a great gift of time. Time that I could have spent improving myself or furthering my career.
What could I have done with my 6 months.
Learnt a Language – Being an English speaker I could have learned any of the Germanic or Romance languages to near fluency, including; French, Spanish, Norwegian and even Swahili.
LearntComputer Programming – There are numerous methods for this available such as an online learning platform like Udemy or Team Treehouse. A 100 hour course could give you all of the knowledge you need, as long as you read around and practice. You could even simply use Youtube for free.
Got into Fitness – Improve my health and mind by exercising, improving my strength and confidence.
Or Literally any skill I wanted – and be a ‘good’ 6 months ahead of the game. Most people will do no more than 1 hour a day after work, what about a 9 to 5 equivalent of training, or even just studying something interesting when I would have gone to the pub.
It wasn’t until people began going back to work and meet their friends that I realised how foolish I had been, not using my time to the fullest. Now, I feel frustrated every time I don’t do something to improve myself, I feel as though I am wasting my time.
This was truly the point when it finally made sense to me. All those years as a child being told to: “work hard”, “don’t leave it to the last minute” and, “time goes faster when you’re older”. I now find there isn’t enough time in the day to do everything that I want to do.
So,What am I doing now
It seemed like the right time to quit my previous job as a member of front of house staff. At this point in time, I am working online as an ESL (English as a Second Language) Teacher. Fortunately, or unfortunately, this isn’t a 9-5 role, but it does give me lots of time and enough money to survive. With my free time I keep myself in a ‘9-5ish’ routine but add in studying.
So, I am currently;
Working as an ESL Teacher
Exercising – I no longer have the ‘tired’ excuse and I need to be healthy to travel well
Studying Japanese – for travelling Japan and Asia
Leaning Web Development – to supplement my income, and a role you can travel with
Blogging – to establish a semblance of presence for developing an online business
In any case I can say whole heartedly, “I have learned my lesson”. I refuse to waste my time. If I want to make my life easier in the future, why waste the time I have been given now, especially with a second lockdown coming into play.
What do you think? Are you wasting your time? Learning new skills? Got a new job? Please let me know. If you have any questions then Leave a Q.
Climate change. Yes, I am going to explain this topic, just like the millions of; bloggers, Youtubers, journalist and comments section enthusiasts before me. However, I have done actual research into understanding geology and climatology so am able to offer a simple and easy to understand explanation of the main issues.
What is Climate Change?
Climate Change is literally the average planetary climate (weather, temperature, humidity, rainfall, etc) changing. Simple right!
What’s the problem?
The problem is that the climate is increasing in temperature. Each climate zone, be it snowy tundra, forests or deserts are all getting hotter. That’s it.
The planet does this anyway what’s the issue?
Your right, the planet does go through cycles(Milankovitch Cycles) over the course of 10’s to 100’s of thousands of years, from going hot to cold. Due to a series of 3 primary factors, the Earth’s; tilt(obliquity), how circular it’s orbit is(eccentricity) and which direction the pole is pointing(precession) e.g. the north start(Polaris). These changes happen slowly over time and when they match up, around every 400,000 years it leads to very cold and very hot periods in the Earths history.
What people don’t seem to realise is that Earth’s primary climate is cold. There is generally a longer period of cold, or ‘Ice Age’, than a period of warm weather.
An Ice Age is easy to define- A period of time when there is solid ice on the planets polar regions. At this point some of you may have realised that, yes, we are in fact in an Ice Age right now.
So………
So this is where the problem comes in. We are forcing the Earth out of it’s natural climate with pollution. This is far more impressive when you recognise that the Earth likes being in a cold state and it struggles to stay away from Ice Ages. Don’t miss understand me. When we say Ice Age we mean, Ice in our polar regions, this has the effect of cooling the overall temperature by reflecting some of the heat from the Sun’s light back out into space, the Albedo effect, keeping the planet cooler. Although, there have been instances of the planet going into a state known as “Snowball Earth”, simply meaning that the ice was so expansive that it went from each pole and met in the middle at the equator. These are very difficult to break as the amount of heat reflected is very high, snow has an albedo of uptown 90%, so 90% of the Sun’s light is reflected back out into space, how do you melt it?
If you want to read more about this phenomena and Ice Ages, a great book, for the layman, is Snowball Earth by Gabrielle Walker.
So why is the Earth getting hotter a big deal then if it does it all the time?
There are several major, major issues that people don’t either understand or aren’t explained.
Climate is significantly important for life. Every organism on the planet has adapted to their specific levels of temperate, rainfall, humidity, etc. As climate gets hotter, organisms will gradually migrate further towards the poles to follow their natural environment, in essence, the climate they can live in moves. Yes, this will leave room for new organisms to evolve and fill this “space”(niche), but it will become far to hot for large organisms to survive and the deserts will expand.
With more deserts, there is less space for food to be grown as well as people to live in. The liveable planet space is, essentially, getting smaller.
With the hotter weather, water will also be more readily evaporated meaning less to drink and give to crops. Those of you who understand greenhouse gases will recognise that water vapour is the primary greenhouse gas, not carbon dioxide, although our carbon dioxide release is adding fuel to fire so to speak. More water vapour in the air means more heat is stored on the planet, meaning it gets even hotter. This causes a rather unpleasant, runaway cycle. The hotter the air, the more water vapour can be stored, the hotter the planet gets. Again, don’t miss understand, it is our release of extra greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide which allow for the Earth to heat up and begin this cycle.
The water cycle, something everyone learnt at primary and early secondary school. However, the more complicated idea is studied in hydrology, the ocean currents, and can get a little complicated.
Let’s start with ice on the poles. The South Pole is the big issue with it being Continental Ice. This means it is ice on top of land, not floating in the sea like in ‘Titanic’. When this melts it adds more water to the oceans increasing the global sea level (The north pole ice won’t change sea level due to buoyancy). This means coasts will become flooded and less land will be available for living and farming as most farm land is built next to rivers for irrigation. This is the least of our problems. The real issue comes in when you recognise that it’s fresh water.
So…, water is water isn’t it?
Nope. If you change the amount of salt(salinity) in the oceans it will not only kill lots, and I mean lots, of marine life, things we eat, but it will change the ocean currents. What people may not realise is that there is enormous currents that circulate water all around the planet. These currents are controlled by the winds as well as rising and sinking of denser and less dense water(less dense goes up, more dense goes down). The water density can be altered either by temperature (hot and cold water) or salinity, such as say, billions of litres of cold, fresh water flooding into the oceans from the polar icecaps. These help to do many things such as control the temperature of regions and “mix” the water. For example, the UK should be significantly colder and much snowier that it is, but due to the Gulf Stream from the Gulf of Mexico, the warm water heats up the UK making it rainy and miserable, but not freezing cold.
The really strange thing is this isn’t true, yet. The local affects are actually more salty and more fresh in each region, strange no. Well, this is because the hot weather evaporates more water. As salt isn’t evaporated the percentage of salt to water goes up, meaning the sea is saltier. Also, as more water is evaporated more rainfall is produced keeping the rivers (fresh water) cleaner of pollutants and other minerals.
Finally, an idea that I have personally never seen explained anywhere or even pointed out. Fossils fuels where made in the Carboniferous by the collapse tree into swamps. Trees and other plants are able to absorb carbon dioxide which they use to grow. When they die this stays in there “bodies” until they are broken down. However, the fungus that decomposes trees had not evolved in the Carboniferous period. This means when trees fell in the swamps, they stayed there, they piled up and, over millions of years, they became buried and crushed into solid “lumps of tree” also known as coal.
This means that the coal we are burning has not been accessible to the atmosphere for 100’s of millions of years AND we have no way of removing it. Once it’s burnt, that’s it, unless we can progress technologically enough to absorb and store carbon to keep it isolated from the atmosphere the climate is irreparably altered. Planting trees can off-set the affects of the carbon dioxide, but when each tree dies that carbon is released again.
When did this start?
The industrial revolution. Yes, it once again has the blame fall squarely on the western industrialists when we began to progress rapidly but burning this miracle rock for energy. It is even notable in the geology record through Ice cores and some modern sedimentary(dirt) deposits. All of the complaining about other countries burning fossil fuels is, honestly, quite hypocritical and unfair if you ask me. Yes, no one should continue to burn fossil fuels, however, unless the infrastructure is developed, unless the technology is shared and advanced together then how can we refuse them. Do you want electricity or not, the answer will always be yes which, for now unfortunately, means burn.
