Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from September, 2013

Procrastination 101

What is procrastination? For instance, it’s the temptation to check your email, your social media accounts, or simply just to check the latest viral video in YouTube in the middle of your work or tight deadline. Of course we are all familiar to this circumstance, right? We let our work target slipped but you convince yourself that you will start again tomorrow, and if it slip again you’ll decide to start again on the next Monday, and so on, and so on until you freaked out because you are so close to the deadline. Procrastination is not always about work, it can be your new year resolutions, such as losing weight, read more books, or simply just to clean up your messy room. From its origin, the word procrastination itself can be defined as ‘putting off till tomorrow’. It is a complex psychological behavior where the procrastinators usually know what they should be doing but they keep on delaying instead. But procrastination isn’t solely about a poor time management

US Military Presence in Southeast Asia: behind Paranoia and Hidden Agenda

200 US Marines had just arrived in the port city of Darwin, Northern Australia on Tuesday (03/04/2012). The first 200 marines is the first batch, which will be followed by another 2,500 Marines and US Military Aircraft on November through the northern city of Darwin. The US military deployment aimed to protect its national interest in Asia Pacific from China’s military rise. It is not a surprising report even though US will not explicitly state that they feel threatened because of China’s maneuver. Since China has become the world’s largest military spender in 20 years, which followed by its ambitious military objectives, subsequently US must be sensed a deterrence concern. China investing in such military capabilities like thousands of accurate land-based ballistic and cruise missiles, modern jets with anti-ship missiles, a fleet of submarines (both conventionally and nuclear-powered), long-range radars and surveillance satellites, and cyber and space weapons technology that

Scam or Truth?: the controversy behind KONY 2012

An almost thirty minutes film and campaign, entitled as “ KONY 2012 ”, which being uploaded on Youtube by the Invisible Children Inc (American charity non-profit organization) account on March 5 2012 has reaching its successful publication by gaining more than 70 million viewers worldwide by only six days. KONY 2012 has been dominating people’s discussion especially in the social media. On twitter, even celebrities talked about it: Oprah Winfrey, Justin Bieber, Kim Kardashian, and many more. The film itself talks about Joseph Kony, an Ugandan guerrilla group leader, Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The LRA kidnapped tens of thousands of children and youth for use as soldiers and sex slaves. As quoted from the film: “Kony stands accused of overseeing the systematic kidnapping of countless African children, brainwashing the boys into fighting for him, turning the girls into sex slaves and killing those who don’t comply. His forces are believed to have slaughtered tens of thousands of peopl

Reveal the Science of Luck: How to Make Our Own Good Fortune

Can you be categorized as a lucky person? Or perhaps you feel very unlucky instead? What is luck? Based on the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, ‘luck’ can be defined as: 1) a force that brings good fortune or adversity 2) the events or circumstances that operate for or against an individual Perhaps we always know that one person who has a very good fortune in his life. For instance, “Oh, did you hear that Andy had passed the final exam? He rarely attended the class, he didn’t even study at all!” or “Anita is so lucky! That big company hired her even though she wasn’t one of the best graduates in her college”. I bet you have heard of those things, haven’t you? Or if you haven’t, I’m sure that you are that lucky person then *wink*. Here’s something for you to understand. The luck factor isn’t a miracle even though it seemed so. We can create our good fortune. Being lucky is a state of mind! Richard Wiseman is a professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology