Stress

Having to study about stress for my Extended Essay, it’s made me think start to think if we even need stress? All stress is a bunch of hormones to activate our flight or fight responses. It activates and when we get past the stressor that is stressing us out, it stops releasing those hormones and we go into a recovered phase. If the stressor is still there we continue to flight or fight until we become exhausted, however the hormones will continue to release until the stressor has been dealt with. Now that humans have evolved to have imaginative minds, able to think of hypnotical situations, that stress response has turned against us. While it is able to increase our sense perception, dilate our pupils, get more blood pumping in our body, increase in blood pressure, these all result in effects that would be useful when in the Savanna running from lions. While in today’s world such things would just never happen, yet we still get the same effects when we trigger our stress response, in conjunction with our creative minds, makes for an unhealthy mess of side effects and health problems. As with our minds we are able to think of anything as potentially stressful, which means as we’re thinking of those exams coming up, our stress is triggered because we can view that situation as alarming and something that needs to be done with now. So, our bodies activate the stress response, that’s why we get the sweaty palms, shacking hands, increase in sweat. Because our blood is pumping and getting ready for it to flight or fight. Which is not useful because we have to concentrate on writing an essay or studying yet we can’t focus because our bodies, as primitive as they are, think we’re trying to run away from a lion in the Savanna. 

Alien and Aliens review

Being born at a time where all best movies were released well before I was born (expect Mad Max) is an exciting position to hold. I’m able analysis how a particular movie has influenced not just movies but all parts of the media. Due to this, there are obviously many movies inspired by those classical pieces, however; those classical pieces for this generation become not something new and exciting but something typical as we see parts of the plots, characters, and ideas from those movies in new, sometimes better movies. While classic movies usually never are forgotten, or become redundant, as those films will stand the test of time as the panicle of a genre and they were the ones that have influenced most contemporize media and have revitalized entire genres by themselves. It doesn’t mean that those movies are any more interesting now, epically if something within the plot becomes a TV trope. Take Star Wars for instance, when it first came out its story was revolutionary. However today that kind of story is a tired TV trope within today's movies.

Take Alien (the first movie) and Aliens (the second movie); both are classical pieces of their respected genre (The Horror genre for Alien and the Action Genre for Aliens). They both have both been a part renewing interests in their respective genres at the time of them realize and have influenced many forms of media from their releases. However, as I’ve watched them both recently with my dad, I must say for me, there isn’t anything too special about them. While I did enjoy Alien and Aliens quite a lot, the plot of Aliens isn’t anything new or exciting, and the idea of the Alien in Alien (this gets confusing for me even to write) is nothing really terrifying to me as its design and concept has been repeated in so many types of media and different places. The movie (Alien) still managed to scare and frighten me due to its excellent pacing, soundtrack, and plot, while some of this I can say is because it is a great movie, but I would also consider that the horror genre is all that huge. Whereas a film like Aliens felt to me a tad bit too slow and adding unnecessary sub-plots or attempts to pull at your heart strings (such as the whole thing with the little girl still alive in the camp). Because I’ve seen it all done better in other films, while Aliens is a good movie, it felt like watching movies that I’ve seen before.

So, while the classics are good (that’s why they’re called classics) because they are good they influence the media. Thereby creating movies that copy the classic in some way, sometimes creating a saturation within the market of that plot hook, ending, a particular character. From that it makes it so that a generation which didn’t have that classic movie come out while growing up, makes the classic less valuable and wanted to the newer generation.

So in conclusion, Alien 9/10, Aliens 6/10.

'False' life

Recently scientists have created the first synthetic DNA in Microbes. A couple of Biologists edited some DNA within a Microbe, making an artificial living being, and it has lived and been functioning as an ordinary Microbe. For right now, all this can do is edit the way protein is handled within the body. Shortly though this breakthrough in science is a huge discovery regarding in what can happen from here, improving human lives, better and more 'real' Artificial Limbs. As they can be crafted to people with missing limbs to be able to live better, or the entire line of more humanoid robots can be crafted to help with a shrinking workforce. However, there are also large ethical issues that society has to come to a point on. For example, should we even create any more synthetic DNA due to it's 'unnaturally' state, or what of the harm that synthetic life forms can bring? Some famous Sc-Fi films such as Terminator, The Matrix, Alien (the first one), and 2001 A Space Odyssey, explore the issue of robots taking over our lives in some aspect whether that be robots taking over the world or enslaving humanity, most films about robots show how they are evil. These movies might have even inspired the general feel for societies hostility of robots. Some of the issues are legitimate, though. However, all these matters have to be evaluated and seen if they are real threats that should stop this line of science or that the risks are small enough to create something for the betterment of humankind.