If a tree falls in the forest

The other day somebody told me that they enjoy my opinions and asked what I thought about the question "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it; does it make a sound?" At first I said yes and my reasoning was that the existence of sound doesn't depend on whether or not there is a ear around, however someone pointed out that sound doesn't really exist until the sound waves are picked up.

The thing about this question is that it hinges on what you mean when you say the word "sound," if by sound you mean the creation of sound waves than of course it makes a sound. If by sound you mean the perception of sound waves that of course the tree does not make a sound. But if this question hinges out what you mean when you say a certain word than I don't think it's really worth very much philosophical or scientific reasoning.

Facebook privacy: The Hologram Card

At my school whenever there was something that needed to be done with every student (such as school pictures, or fliers for parent teacher conferences) it was done via the English classes because in theory every student has and English class. Do I have a problem with that? No, but there was one thing they passed out that I found interesting.

They passed out hologram cards. From one perspective you saw a friendly looking teenage Asian girl with glasses and a caption that said "You think it's her," the other perspective showed a Caucasian man in his 40's with a black shirt, a light beard, some awesome leopard hair, and a caption that said "but it's really him. On the back side of this card the were two bullet point columns, one of them said "Online Resources," the other said "Online Threats."

Seeing this card inspired me to post one of my best facebook statuses to date, I said something along the lines of, "I wonder if the girl they photographed for that online protection hologram card has a facebook account." When I post facebook statuses I see it as a challenge to see how many "likes" and comment I can get, this got a small handful which makes me happy. The thing about this card was that facebook was totally what this card was getting at but it wouldn't be upfront about it because whatever committee developed that card knew that if the card directly attacked facebook the card wouldn't be taken seriously, although nevertheless I don't think it was taken seriously and I'll explain why.

Under the online resources column there were five bullet points that said, (now that I think about I'll reproduce it)

• Brainteasers
• Math Games
• Art Games
• Pioneer Library
• Homework Help

If some committee formed by the state legislature thinks that Art Games or Math Games are going to help people withstand the temptation of using identity theft world or the cyberbullying world that is facebook then they are what I call superficial.

Although I must be fair and admit shouldn't be entirely laughed at, today I was my school's website and there was a link to participate in an event and it asked for my username and password, I wasn't sure if I should put that down so I didn't, later I started writing this blog post and I saw under the Online threats column there was a bullet point that said 'Phishing Scams," I didn't know what that was so I used the ctrl + t function, went to google, typed in "phishing scams" went to wikipedia (I probably should've just skipped google and gone straight to wikipedia) and it said that a phishing scam is when a website that looks trusting asks for personal information, I then thought, "wow, that kind of happened to me today," although to be honest, I'm 99.97% sure that the website was legit and I was just being paranoid. I think the origin of this card was the state legislature felt the had to do something about a kid in the state being cyberbullied. This card felt like the product of some old out-of-touch men living in the world of 2003.

What American Idol needs for it's next judge

Name recognition? Ideally I don't think Simon Cowell's replacement should necessarily need to be somebody you've heard of; I wouldn't know who he or any of the other judges were if it weren't for their role as judges but at this point the show is so big that if they got some lesser known producer people might react by saying "what?" What's important is not how well known they are but how intelligently and creatively they critique. I think the biggest mistake the producers can make is trying to find somebody who's very similar to Simon, in fact if it were my decision I might rule out anybody that does have a british accent. I think what's important is that they are like Simon in the sense that they are not like the other judges and I also hope they find somebody who is just as honest. I once heard on a radio program the Simon does the show a big service because he's the only person who will tell horrible auditioners that they're terrible, I think the next judge needs to be like Simon in that sence but if people get the sense that it's a copycat the rating are going to go down even further.

If I were producer for American Idol and the current judges were all retireing and I needed to find a new panel this is the criteria I have.

• 3 Judges
• 2 male and one female
• One white judge but no more than that, especially not two white men
• A music producer, an artist, and a music critic
• Between the producer and the critic I would want one to be from the Rock spectrum, and the other to be from either somethine like pop, hip-hop, or rap.