Sunday, December 16, 2012

a little something about cuneiform


Writing is a method used to express language in a visual form. The history of writing shows how visually expressed languages have developed over time from their predecessors. The first writing systems were not invented during the early Bronze Age but rather were a development from even earlier forms of symbol systems containing ideographic and mnemonic symbols commonly called proto-writing. In the late Bronze Age true writing emerged. True writing differs from proto-writing in that it could be encoded by a reader and be reconstructed. One of the earliest forms of writing was cuneiform.
Cuneiform writing emerged through pictographic proto-writing in the Sumerian civilization during Mesopotamia's “proto-literate” period, which spanned from the 35th to 32nd centuries BCE. About 10 millennia ago, before cuneiform was developed, the Sumerians used clay tokens as counters and shaped them into various three-dimensional forms. Each clay token represented an item of agricultural and manufactured goods. In the 4th millenium BCE, clay bullae were developed to contain the clay tokens like an envelope for transactions, etc. The first step in the development of a true writing system occurred when clay tokens were imprinted on the bullae, although often the three-dimensional tokens were not clearly imprinted and had to be fixed by hand. At the end of the 4th millenium BCE, new signs were created and most of the new signs did not have three-dimensional counterparts; only about 12 did. Thus, a writing system was developed as pictographs. The pictographs were written with a reed as a stylus on unbaked clay tablets. The end of the blunt reed left wedge-shaped marks on the clay, giving Cuneiform its meaning: wedge-shaped.
Along with the writing system, a counting system was also developed. Instead of inscribing all of the same symbols, the Sumerians realized that they could use the same symbol to represent a certain number of items. The counting system was used by Sumerian scribes, people who wrote documents and helped keep track of records such as the number of cattle that a particular person owned. The counting system was based on the numbers 1, 10, and 60, and was written in a logical manner. For example, 70 cattle would be represented by the sign for 60 followed by the sign for 10.
Many of the symbols had multiple meanings. A picture of a foot, for example, could mean “to stand”, “to go”, and “to bring”. More complex meanings were expressed by combining two pictograph symbols, such as woman and mountain, which would give the meaning female slave. By about 2800 BCE, the Sumerians advanced in their writing by realizing that the same syllabic sounds could be used for different words. For example, the sound for arrow, pronounced “ti”, would also be used to represent the word for life, “til”; similarly the syllable “ha” for fish could be used for other words as well. To easily know what a word meant in a given category, a system of determinatives was created to indicate how to pronounce it and to know what symbol it was used for. Early Sumerian cuneiform contained 1,000 texts but as the years progressed the writings became simplified and more abstract so that the number of texts decreased to 400. Early cuneiform was written vertically, up and down, but changed around 3000 BCE to horizontal, left to right. The earliest texts of Sumerian cuneiform come from the cities of Uruk and Jamdat Nasr and date back to around 3300 BCE.
Cuneiform did not only exist in Sumerian civilization but was adopted and adapted to create other scripts for the Akkadians, Assyrians, Elamites, and the Hittites. It also inspired the old Persian alphabets. In 2500 BCE, Akkadian cuneiform was adapted from Sumerian cuneiform and many words were adopted straight from Sumerian. Adapting the Sumerian script was similar to how Chinese scripts were adapted to write Japanese. There were between 200 and 400 symbols and many of the words had multiple pronunciations. Like the Sumerian writing system, the Akkadian system had determinatives, which added about 400 more symbols. By approximately 2000 BCE, Akkadian cuneiform went through important modifications. The signs were reduced to a higher level of abstraction and were composed of only five wedge shapes: horizontal, vertical, two diagonals and an angular hook. Also many of the signs became distorted to form new phonetic values. In the 1st century CE, Akkadian cuneiform became extinct.
Assyrian cuneiform was a mixed method of writing during the Babylonian and Assyrian empires. Assyrian cuneiform was further simplified as time progressed. In 1800 BCE, Hittite cuneiform was adapted from Old Assyrian cuneiform. A layer of Akkadian logographic spelling was also added but the pronunciations of many Hittite words written in those logograms are unknown.
Elamite cuneiform was the third writing system for the Elamite language. Elamite cuneiform was adapted from Akkadian cuneiform around 2500 BCE and had a simplified form by 1000 BCE. Elamite cuneiform had the least number of symbols, as there were only 206 total, and only 130 of those symbols were constantly used.
Old Persian cuneiform was written with simplified symbols created by 520 BCE by Darius I. It used far fewer wedge strokes than the Assyrians, with logograms mostly for words like god and king.
Cuneiform originated in the Middle East in the Sumerian civilization and influenced many other civilizations to adapt their writing systems to that language. Cuneiform writing is difficult to interpret because there are many symbols and multiple meanings to those symbols, so an interpreter could get the wrong meaning. It is also difficult to convert to another script because one has to analyze the many meanings that can be used for a particular symbol. One thing that has remained the same in cuneiform is the counting system based on 1, 10, and 60, which we still use today.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

peace to you to


What do I believe about world peace

I think that world peace is a very long process and wont happen till thousands of years later. It is possible but very difficult to actually have world peace. There are many things that are stopping world peace such as wars, religious conflicts, and disagreements. Since the beginning of the human race there has been wars. A lot of the wars are caused by religious conflicts such as the wars between the Christians and the Muslims. Disagreements between two countries or places also cause war. The revolutionary war is one example. The settlers in the New World wanted to be independent from Great Britain and because of the war broke out. Some countries have tried to bring peace without declaration of war but over some time later there had been some military conflict to settle out problems. With threats of military power it defeats the purpose of world peace because lives are in danger as well as society. There are many other things that prevent world peace and one of them is government systems such as Democracy and Communism. I think that Communism is a cool system if it actually were to work. The idea of everyone gets paid equally and such is cool but there will always be people that will be lazy and not commit to their works while the others will. There are laws that promote equality towards everyone but even with those laws close minded people will of course not accept equality as they think that they are superior over the others. White supremacist hate black people as well as other races. This is racial conflict.  

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

world hunger


What is the solution for world hunger.

First of all, with the worlds rapid population growth rate ending world hunger will be a very challenging problem to conquer. Some countries government wont even allow aid for its own starving people which is a bad thing. So things like that will prevent solutions for ending world hunger. I think that one of the solutions for ending world hunger would be through the lab. Genetically engineer food for rapid growth and space efficiency. Gene splicing is a real thing and scientist have already done it. Like say take a potato and a watermelon for example. We all know that the potato grows in huge quantities and they require very little room. If we can take the gene from that of the potato and put it in watermelons, we could see rapid growths of watermelons everywhere. One occurrence of such gene splicing was when scientist made “golden rice” containing vitamin A to help those countries with people that don't take in a sufficient amount of vitamin A. Another solution for world hunger is to end wars. When war is occurring plantations and land get destroyed and those foods in thats farms and plantations are gone, unable to supply the people that eat out from there on a regular basis. Establishing foundations that support countries with insufficient amount of food will help the problem. Donations of food will help a lot. Food companies can build farms and ranges in places where the people need food thus creating jobs for people and people earning money can buy food. With the worlds economy today, people are losing their jobs therefore they can't earn the money needed to support themselves or family. Having green projects can give people jobs such as building windmills, dams, and solar panels. One problem with the earth is global warming. Because of high Co2 emissions, global warming is becoming even more dangerous every year. If we can get the establishments of green projects there will be less Co2 emissions and more environmentally friendly power supplies. People will have jobs thus having money to support their families. Not only that, global warming has been messing up the worlds patterns and there seems to be more natural disasters such as typhoons and hurricanes. Those destroy land and even farms that people use to produce food. And of course without land to produce food people will starve. I read one article about wind energy and how they modified the turbines to collect moisture from the air and convert it to clean drinking water. That is a great idea. Companies can plant these wind turbines and place them in isolated villages where not only they will get power but also clean free clean drinking water.

secret santa


Secret santa about the gift

I'm participating in this thing called secret santa. First we wrote our fake names on a small strip of paper than piled them all together. We then threw the papers to the ground and each person had to pick up a piece of paper. Some of the people got their names so we had to redo the process. Some people then found out what other peoples name's were and we all had to re-write a new fake name. After writing the fake name we then again compiled everything and everyone had to pick up a name. The gift that we have to get for our person has to be around $15. I don't know what to get the person but I'm thinking of buying them a binocular.I had many other things in mind to buy the person but all of them are either more than $15 or a little weird.
For example:
I would have bought that person drumsticks but no one in my class plays the drums, unless they broke their sticks that came with a game called rock band.
I would have gotten that person a shirt but I don't know what the person looks for in a shirt and I'm not sure whether it's a boy or a girl. I don't have their measurements and because people are different, they either like their shirts loose or tight.
I would've bought that person a new car but that's to extreme of a gift from a non-family member. A car is way over the $15 budget and chances are he or she does not have a license yet.
Maybe a fedora is a good gift? Nah fedoras are not stylish and they seem pretty unattractive.
I was thinking, why not just give them your old junk? You know that saying, someone's trash is someone else's' treasure? It could be that my dust magnet piece of junk would be the best thing he or she ever wanted.
How about deodorant? It's cool for keeping the body clean of odors. Hopefully if i ever do buy someone deo they wont be offended.
The first thing that came to my mind about giving someone a gift was to give that person $15. I don't really know what that person appreciates but I'm sure they'll appreciate money. They could buy something on their own that they like.
Instead of buying a gift why not a gift card? From say Mcdonalds or subway. I would love to get free food. If I got a $15 gift card I would by a Big Mac meal with a large strawberry shake. If it is for subway I would get 3 footlong sweet onion chicken terryakis.
Maybe I'll just get them binoculars. Binoculars are cool. You can see things far away.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Song I play.


One song i want to learn to play.

I have learned a lot of songs that I've been interested in playing for the drums, but of course i would also like to learn the guitar parts and bass parts of those songs to. So for the song that I want to learn all of the instruments it would be The Aftermath by Origin from their album Antithesis.. Origin is a technical death metal band and they are known for their blistering faster drums, guitar and bass. There are a lot of sweeping in this song for both the guitars and bass as well as long double bass parts. I know I can't get vocals down but I know i could get the guitars and bass. For the drums I have developed enough speed and endurance for my hands to keep up with the drums but for the double bass parts I still need some work. I only started using the technique that John Longstreth uses about a month ago and can only reach the 240 bpm mark. Back when I use to do single strokes I could only reach 230. To get the speed and endurance necessary to play The Aftermath, I have set up a training plan for a month. I practice rudiments with my feet, singles, doubles, paradiddles, and so on. I practice with a metronome most of the time and when I do I start at 200 bpm and go up by ten every minute or so. With the pearl eliminators it is quite hard for me to reach a tempo at 270 with my feet because of the slave pedal. The slave pedal in the drumming community is known to have the footboard lower than the master pedal and you need like an extra centimeter down stroke to get the note. When practice my drumming I focus more on my left foot than my right foot because of this problem with the slave pedal. For the guitar parts I need to do a lot of speed training and exercises. There are tons and tons of sweeping for this song and sweeping is one of the hardest things to do for guitar or bass. Which then leads me to have fretboard accuracy which will take time to develop. For the bass guitar. Mike Flores is just a monster in that song. He as well does the sweeping and he has really quick fingers using his index and middle finger. He can probably play notes with those two fingers faster than I can play with all four of my fingers. I need to do a lot of exercises as well do cope with the speed.

I like space

I think that there are many good thingsabout have the space organizations be run privately. The good things include more resources and more money and people for the job. A lot of rich business people are interested in this private space organization that they formally were not a part of due to the organization being government run. Because of the switch from government to private, the space organization has had an increase in the number of people currently contributing to the cause. This influx in people is good because it means that with these new people, new money has begun to spill into the organization. These new private organizations have allowed people that are not working for the government who are interested in space to start getting involved. Before, when the space program was limited to the government, only government associated highly qualified officials could even think about going into space. 
Today, this privatization has allowed common people who do not work for the government to start finding ways into space. Another exponential key factor that this new privatization has brought is new ideas about Mars. The moon has begun to bore these scientists. It is kind of a “been there, done that” kind of thing. People want something new, something exciting. Because of this, Mars has begun to become quite popular. It is in fact, one of the main projects that these private organizations have begun to work with.
One major issue of having this space program change from government to private and is the issue of two things. The first one being the problem that all this money and time is going to end up being used for weapons that will eventually get discovered by other nations that have the potential of threatening our own. The second one being that fact that all this money and effort should be going to people in need. What great is going into space really going to do for us in the long run? Some people might argue that this money should be going to people who could really use the money, people in need. These problems are the main issues of the space program becoming a private organization. Hopefully this change will bring new discoveries that are for the good of the people. 

bio


 My mid 40's was the time things in my life began to slow down. My music career finished after the band played the last shows on our farewell tour where we played the top 5 songs off of ever album. I remember all of our fans screaming and shouting out of saddness and joy that we were no longer continuing as a band and that they had the chance to see our last show. My wife would always tell me how shes not used to me staying for more than a week at home because of all the touring I did in the past, but now she seems to be getting use to it and she's happy that I'm home helping her with some house work and spending more time with the kids. It's been a tough week for me to adjust back to this regular life style without getting calls from the manager saying that there's a gig we have to play at. I now give private drum lessons every tuesday and saturday in my neighborehood.
While I was away on tour I left a house that was so plain and simple. When I came back after my tour my wife hired a renovations company to change the way the house looks. But it wasn't only the looks. She changed a lot of things. Now our room has a walk in closet. How cool is that! More space for my body to move in. Not only that she also change the kitchen. It is now bigger with a bigger refrigerator and a dish washer. No more dishes to be done but we have to clean the dish washer which is easier than the dishes themselves. We now have a swimming pool in our back yard. I think it is pretty neat. It has a slide and a dive board. What made me really impressed is that I now have my own room for all of my records and things I got from touring. All those records hanging on the wall, posters everywhere and my signature equipment.
My kids are in high school. They're pretty popular among everyone only because their dad is a rock star. I remember during the first month I was home my daughter told me that boys were afraid to ask her to a dance. From time to time my son would bring some friends home to jam some music in the music room. I haven't heard him play the drums in a while, the last time was when he was still in middle school. He has improved a lot. From the tempos to the beats he really reminds me of me. Even my wife told me that he wants to be a professional musician like I am and tour the world. I told him that if he wants to be good at the drums he needs to accept every form of music and learn from them. I'll admit, I wasn't like that when i started to play. I was so into only the metal genre but I had to open up and what do you know I ended up being popular amongst all of the drumming communities. Learning many genres of music will shape your playing and make you be a better musician overall.