#Occupy

Hey Guys,

Sorry I haven't written recently, I'll try to write a bit more often now I'm on holiday for two weeks.

Anyway unless you have been on a desert island or in North Korea for the last year you will know that it has all kicked off.

It started in the middle east with the Arab Spring, there some people in North Africa and the middle east decided that they wanted to choose how they were ruled, most of them had had the same guy in the top job for over 30 years or more so wanted to give someone else a chance. So they protested and fought to choose their leader, though most only got government changes, some counties like Tunisia and Egypt had revolutions and Libya is only just coming out of a civil war.

Then in May young people in Spain, angry about unemployment, how their government worked and the influence of banks, camped out in Madrid's main square to protest. They stayed there in their thousands protesting in the Puerta del Sol square in the centre of Madrid.

Now in the last week or so in cities around the world have seen protests about the influence of large corporate organisations on government and wealth inequality. Based on the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York protesters "occupy" financial districts, sleeping rough in parks and squares to demonstrate their opposition to government corruption.


So what caused all this restlessness and dissatisfaction? Firstly since the global economic recession there have been a lot of unemployed educated young people with a lot of free time on their hands and not much money, this alone is enough to cause protests. Secondly the thing that allowed the protests to spread around the world and topple governments is... the internet. All of these protests have been organised or inspired to a greater or lesser degree by the internet. Protesters meet, plan and gain support for their protests through social media.

That is what allowed Tunisians, Egyptians and Libyans, who were oppressed and voiceless for many years to rise up and overthrow their governments. Social media allowed individual dissidents to unite and showed people that they were not alone and could demand change, no longer isolated under fear of the consequences of speaking out, but united and protesting.

Protesters in other countries can see what other people are doing and copy, this is one of the reasons the occupy protest have spread around the world so quickly. Social media has also allowed protesters to organise and mobilise quickly so protests can now start as easily as flash mobs rather than long planed marches organised by unions or other organisation.

One of the most important effects social media has had on protesting though is that there is now no need for any leader. Before social media protests were organised and led by a small group of people  shouting at others, now they are organised by networks with lots of people giving input making the protests larger and more flexible.

Social media has changed the way people protest, though the protests themselves are essentially the same, the way they are organised and led has been changed completely. No longer do they have to be marches organised by union officials in one city but can be spontaneous, flexible and global. Social Media can unite people who before lived in fear of talking out and inspire people to speak out against injustice and inequality when before they never knew about .

Thanks for reading and I hope you've found this interesting, if you've liked this share this with your friends,

Adiós, please comment with any thoughts,

Dan  :)

P.S.

Follow me on twitter for updates @rollins_daniel

Colour Me Happy- Blog Review

Hey,


This post will be a bit different to my usual's, it is a blog review of  my friend, Laura's, blog... about fashion. Now this is defiantly out of my comfort zone but I promised her a review ages ago (June I think :/) so now I'm going to write it!

Her blog is called Colour Me Happy and it is at http://colourmehappy-laura.blogspot.com/ .

Now I don't know much about fashion but I know a good blog when I see one! This one has a really attractive layout, with an appropriate and colourful background image with shade box and a contrasting light gray font. This, along with a well sized font makes it really pleasant and easy to read.

There are posts about posts about celebrity dresses, designer news and the writers own style tips and tricks as well as reviews of some products. She usually write once a week but sometimes more in a friendly and trustworthy tone. Though you could probably find better writing on a professionally written blog Laura writes in a familiar voice and never sounds remote, giving helpful tips along with a few scattered jokes and amusing comments. All of this provides a really enjoyable reading experience.

Another thing that makes this blog really nice to read is its pictures, there is a nice mix and they break up the text really well. There are pictures of celebrities, actors, all very well dressed and the author models many of her styles beautifully herself!

I hope you all go and check out Laura's blog yourselves and comment here what you think.

Again you can find it at: http://colourmehappy-laura.blogspot.com/

Thanks for reading and hope you enjoy Laura's blog,

Dan :)

The Ultimate Price

Hey Guys,

This is just a short post about a very interesting issue that is getting talk about quite a lot at the moment, the  death penalty. HM Government in the UK has set up a website for e-petitions and a petition for the revival of capital punishment is gaining a lot of support so may get debated in Parliament.

I disagree with the death penalty or capital punishment for a number of reasons, but many people do support it, they argue that it is cheaper to kill someone that to keep them in prison and that some people will never change so should never be let out of prison even after a long sentence.

Though I understand the logic in these arguments I am still against the reinstitution of capital punishment.  First because I think it is very hard to be 100% sure that someone is guilty of a crime and many people who would have been executed under capital punishment in resent times have been released from prison when new evidence proving them innocent.

My second reason for opposing the death penalty is that, as a Christian, I believe people should have the chance to be truly sorry for what they've done and repent. Even if they will never be sorry or change I think they should be given the chance.

What do you guys think, comment below or tweet me "@rollins_daniel" with your thought's on Capital Punishment.

Thanks for reading,

Dan

P.S
This is a link for the e-petition to keep the ban on capital punishment: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/1090

Music for Musing

Hey guys,

Just to tell you I've put a Grooveshark music player on the sidebar to the right. It's called Music for Musing and I've added a few tracks that I quite like and I think are good for musing. Any request are welcome and it will be constantly updated. Just email me at dan.randommusings@gmail.com or comment below.

Hope you enjoy the music,

Thanks,
Dan :)

Music, music and more music!

Hey guys and gals of the internet,

Have you run out of minuets on your Spotify account or want a music service without adverts? Are you looking for a way to listen to music legally for free? Well I have some cool music streaming services for you that let you listen to music for free over the internet.

The first of these is Grooveshark, this is a really good free music streaming service with a really nice display and similar audio quality to Spotify but has several advantages, the primary advantage of Grooveshark is that it allows unlimited streaming with no monthly caps, this means you can listen to as much music as you like not worrying about if you'll run out of minuets (or have to make another account ;) ). 

It also has a slightly wider choice of music from indie rock to classical. If you want to hear it, it's probably there. There are also more sharing options with twitter and StumbleUpon as well as Facebook you don't need to download any software to start listening, you don't even need an account so sharing is really easy, though signing up is no problem and gives you access to extra features and lets you save playlist.

Th Grooveshark Interface 

The BIG advantage Grooveshark has over Spotify is the lack of adverts! There are no adverts between songs and only a sidebar which you barely notice. This gives Grooveshark a massive advantage over other music streaming services.

                                                                                                 

The next music streaming service dosn't have the selection of music that Grooveshark or Spotify has but is a great website for discovering new bands and music, it's called The Sixty One, it's a really good way to discover relatively unknown artist in every genre. 

It is very different to other music streaming services as you can't fast-forward through tracks and can only skip and pause. It has a really nice interface with big graphics making it really easy to use.

Once you've signed up you can make playlist and contribute to the Sixty One community by "Hearting" songs shows which songs are the most popular, you even get reputation points if you heart a song then it does well.
You can then share songs you like on Facebook and twitter so your friends can listen too! 

If you really like the song it even allows you to leave a tip for the artist if you buy some credits that also alow you to buy some tracks though may artist let you download a lot for free.

The Sixty One is a great website to discover new music and artist whatever your musical taste may be, but if you want to find and listen to music you already know then you can't beat Grooveshark.

Feel free to post any questions about the websites in the comment box below and I'll try to answer them as best I can, also any comments are welcome.

Well thanks for reading again and I hope you enjoy listening to music free and legally and discovering new music too,

Dan :)

P.S Please remember to share this blog with your friends or use the sharing buttons below. 

The 2,520,805th Blog of the Day!

Hey guys time for another cool website I've found,

This one is for people who like numbers, the website is called http://www.worldometers.info/. It shows you world statistics in real time, for example at the time of writing there are 6,978,811,095 people in the world, 637,431 books have been published this year and 75,302,375 bikes have been produced this year.
It also has some more serious statistics such as there are 919,437,714 undernourished people in the world, 994,458 people who have died from water related diseases this year and 23,198,451 abortions this year.

All statistics were correct proximally around the time of publication. 

It's quite interesting just watching some of the statistics and how quickly they change, it really gives you a perspective on how fast the world is developing and changing. You could also find it useful if you are making a presentation or report of some sort on an international event, disaster or organisation.

A problem with it is that you have to pay quite a lot of money to subscribe to the statistics making it expensive to embed in webpage, on a blog or share on a social network.

I do urge you though to spend a few minuets looking at all the statistics and thinking about them as well as they impact they have on you personally and the world around you. If you take the statistics on their own they are pretty meaningless and boring but if you put them into some context then they do come alive and become more interesting.


Thanks for reading and I hope you have found worldometers.info interesting, if you have please share this blog with your friends and stay tuned, tomorrow I will be back with another cool website!

Thanks for reading again,

Dan

I'm Back, with some cool websites! (mspot.com)

Hey guys,

Sorry I haven't written in a while, the last term at school was pretty manic and I kinda ran out of ideas...

Now though, It's the summer holidays, though it doesn't look like it out my window, and I have time to write my blog. I've got a few ideas for something to write about now but today I've got some cool websites to tell you about!

First one is http://www.mspot.com/, it is a cloud based music player. This means that you can upload your music to it after making and account and downloading the uploader, and then listen to your music on any computer with an internet connection and even your smartphone and download your music for when you don't have signal! This is great as it means you can go anywhere and your music follows you even if your not at home or aren't lucky enough to enough to have an iPod with a huge memory. Saying that you do only get 5 GB's of storage free which is enough for about 4000 songs but you can upgrade to 40GB (32,000 songs) for only $3.99 a month but need a paypal account if not in the US, however I found the free 5 GB enough for all of my favourite songs and artists.
The problem with this sort of service is that you need to have the music to begin with, now with Spotify and last.fm you can listen music virtually anywhere free and legally, but if you, like me, enjoy owning your music then this will be great for you!



Now I've written more than I expected for that so I think I'll save my other cool websites for the rest of the week so stay tuned! If you have any questions or comments about mspot.com then feel free to comment below.

Also remember you can email any ideas for this blog to: dan.randommusings@gmail.com

Thanks for reading,

Dan :)

P.S Since I've been away a while please share this post with your friends if you like it with the buttons below :)

Not what you say, the way you say it

Hey,

Over the weekend I was at a MUN conference run by my school. For those unfamiliar with MUN it is a simulation of the United nations, or more simply it is pretending to be from a different country and arguing with people (without starting wars :/). A conference is basically when you dress up and and argue with other schools and usually eat an internationally themed dinner.

Anyway while at this conference I began to muse, I thought, “Is it what you say that matters, or is it the way you say it?” 
A place this could be true is when you comment on or discus a serious or controversial issue jokingly, this may give the effect that you might not care or are even ridiculing the subject matter.

On the other hand there are some things that are best not said at all, if you do not want to cause insult, it is generally a bad idea to directly attack a group of people or something that they find important. In these cases it doesn’t matter how you say it, it will cause insult anyway.

So finally, some advise, next time you are going speak publically, or even post on blog , make sure you think about your subject and then about the mood.

Thanks for reading,
Dan