DISCLAIMER

I am not trying to be fancy or whatever by putting up this disclaimer, but I figured this might help clear out a few things to the visitors of my blog... as well as possibly helping me in avoiding problems that can potentially show themselves up in the future.

Some of the materials posted here in this blog were written wholly by me, from my own mind, with my own fingers, with no interference whatsoever from any outside sources: this is especially true in regards to the posts relating to my personal opinions about whatever topics I had in my mind. However, some of the other materials posted here I gathered from various sources spread through-out the Web, with the help of the good ol' Google, especially with posts containing facts about certain things that I do not have any authority over (such as the post about the amazing creatures in Earth.) I have never, however, blindly copy-pasted things that I have found in the Internet, since I always tried to add my own writings and flavors to anything that I posted here.

Regardless, if there is something in this blog that any of you feels should not be here because probably I violated any copyrights or whatever else, please feel free to contact me in activatethesmile@yahoo.com. Tell me the reason(s) why I should remove the materials concerned, and if your reasons are making sense, then I will immediately remove the questioned materials from my blog, no questions asked. I will also make a public apology for it in my blog.

Best Regards,

Rangga Satrya

AMAZING CREATURES OF THE EARTH, PART ONE

You know, many people are so downright fascinated with the prospect of alien life out there in the huge, expansive space, and this fascination brought forth all kinds of things from the movie Alien until NASA Space Program. Of course, that kind of fascination is not wrong, but we should not also forget the fact that Earth is also filled with numerous amazing living organisms that are often even beyond our wildest imaginations. I want to dedicate this post to inform all of you about some of those living organisms, and by knowing this information I would hope that you would appreciate our Blue Planet and all the amazing things inside it a little more.

This is the first part of my next series of posts with this topic.

The first animal on my humble list is the Stripe Polecat, or Ictonyx striatus for those of you that like to get fancy with scientific names. This animal lives in Africa, and it has the ability to emit extremely foul-smelling secretions from its anal glands, which allegedly can be smelled from a distance of almost seven football fields away O_o This is used as a method of self-defense, but this animal also sometimes likes to play dead to fool its enemies. What’s so surprising that some of the natives in the Africa actually use the foul-smelling substances as perfume to mask their bodily scent when they go hunting. Well, I don’t know about you, but I am not planning on wearing that kind of perfume any time in my entire life… even when I want to go hunting myself, if you know what I mean ^_~

The second in my list is something so small that, individually, you can’t even see it without any visual aid devices. It is called Cyanobacterias. It is amazing in the way that these bacterias are responsible for creating considerable amount of oxygen in the Earth we live in. In fact, it’s these creatures that were responsible for stabilizing the Earth’s atmosphere during the Archaean and Proterozoic Eras, making the atmosphere habitable enough for us humans to start springing into life ^_^ Not only that, but these bacterias were also responsible for the origin of plants, which is of course an extremely crucial factor for our survival as a species. Also, the fossil form of these bacterias are known to be the oldest fossil of organism ever recorded–it’s about 3,5 billion years old. What’s so amazing about them is their ability to survive and adapt to their surrounding environments: from billions of years ago, they are still around up until this day, and in fact they are the most abundant and one of the most important bacterias to exist in this world.

The next in line in this personal list of mine is the Poison Dart Frogs. These amazing creatures live in humid, tropical environments of Central and South America. It may be a surprise to you to know that such petite, colorful, and seemingly cute animal is actually the most poisonous known creature in the whole world. The bright color combinations of their skins serve as a warning sign for anyone… or anything, for that matter, to stay away as far as possible. The potency of their poison is as such that it is said that it can kill 30.000 mice or 150 people at the same time. But perhaps even more amazingly, there is an animal that has developed an immunity against a poison of that magnitude, and uses the frogs as dinner menu… that animal is the Amazon Ground Snake (Liophis epinephelus)

Best Regards,

Rangga Satrya

NO, YOU ARE NOT BETTER THAN ME >:(

Just recently, I watched a vampire flick titled ‘30 days of night’ on HBO, starring Josh Hartnett and… uh…, everyone else that I could not bother to remember. It’s a pretty decent movie… by decent, I mean, on purely technical terms, the movie was rather well made. Of course, the movie was not Oscar material by any stretch of imagination, but every once in a while it is nice to watch movies where all that you need to do is just sit there, in front of the screen, munching popcorns and/or snuggling comfortably on your girlfriend/boyfriend/cat/dog/pillow. Of course, it is also nice occasionally to watch movies such as No Country for Old Man, Slumdog Millionaire, Juno, or Frost/Nixon, but if I really have to choose between those two kinds of movies–like, if someone is pointing a gun to my head saying that I can only choose one type of movies over another or he blows my head off–then I will choose the popcorn flicks over the Oscar movies any time of the day.

Which brings me to this: there is a type of person that I truly hate, the type that I wouldn’t be able to stand directly next to for more than five seconds flat. This type of person I like to call as ‘Condascending Bastards.’ Men or women, it doesn’t matter, but it seems like there’s always one nearby when I am in the mood of talking about movies or music or what have you. The type that would say stuff such as: “WHAT? WHY WOULD YOU READ/WATCH/HEAR/ENJOY THAT? IT WOULD HAVE BEEN MUCH BETTER IF YOU READ/WATCH/HEAR/ENJOY THIS INSTEAD!”, and then if you don’t follow their suggestions, they would not hesitate to cast that annoying condascending look towards you, as if you are a lesser human being when compared to them just because you like something different than their taste.

And as if I have not enough of them yet in the real life, the Internet is also teeming with that kind of people also. I have seen, and unfortunately, experienced that kind of condescending behavior quite a lot of times during my somewhat frequent visits to numerous forums all across the web. Maybe it’s because of the sense of security provided by the Internet that people won’t be able to do anything meaningful to you regardless of what you say about them, but the Internet is so chock full of people that always think that their opinion about everything is better compared to anyone else.

I usually just ignored them, but sometimes the way they acted or worded their subjective opinion towards me got me aggravated I felt like punching my poor monitor all the way to the moon, while at the same time cursing numerous unholy words towards the people behind those bloody screen names.

Best Regards,

Rangga Satrya

THE ANTS AGAINST THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING

So, let’s talk about something serious for now. Take a look at the next two pictures, and be honest with yourself… what do you feel after seeing them?

This is the size comparison between our beautiful blue planet, our home, Planet Earth, against the crimson star of our Solar System, the Sun. As you can see from the image, the size of our planet when compared to the size of the sun is like tiny, tiny ants in front of the Empire State Building. The Earth’s diameter is about 12.756 km wide, while the diameter of the Sun is 1.392.000 km… approximately 109 times the Earth’s. To put things into perspective, if the Sun is completely hollow inside, the room inside is large enough to cater to approximately 1.300.000 Earths. Yes, you read it correctly, you can throw one million three hundred Earth inside the Sun and our mighty red Star can still have enough room to contain all of them. This fact alone greatly enhances the sensation that in the grandest scheme of things, Humans really are nothing but tiny, insignificant creatures that can do nothing in front of the Grandness of the Universe.

Now, let’s proceed to the next picture……

The picture on the right, on the other hand, is a picture of size comparison between our Sun that can hold 1 million Earths inside it against the largest known star in the Universe, the gargantuan VY Canis Mojaris. As you can see, the Sun is nothing but a tiny, almost impossible to see dot when standing side by side with the almighty Star. The diameter of this star is approximately 3,063,500,000 km, or about 2.200 times that of the Sun, or 240.161 times of the Earth. If the Sun can hold up to 1 million Earths inside its own body, the VY Canis Majoris can hold up to 7 Quadrillions Earths. Quadrillions is 15 zeroes, so its 7.000.000.000.000.000 Earths. I don’t know about you, but that’s really the first time I see a number with 15 zeroes behind it O_O

So yes, the Universe is such a place with immeasurable Greatness that we are so insignificant when compared to it. I am saying this because I have seen for too many times the events of a human feeling like he or she is the most important being in the universe… or the things that people willing to in order to be seated in that chair, in order to be revered and praised by others around him or her. Also, it is incredibly heart-wrenching for me personally to see how there are still things such as wars in this Earth when the truth is in the end for all that we gain for ourselves by doing such atrocities are so minuscule in the grandest scheme of things.

I am not saying, however, that you should not pursue your great dreams. I am not advocating the thought that says, “Hell, since we all in the end are so insignificant, why bother doing this or doing that?”. Hell no. Go out there. Go make a crapload amount of money. Go score yourself beautiful/handsome girlfriends/boyfriends. Go conquer the world! All I am saying do not try to define importance of yourself by gaining as much money as possible, or by obtaining the highest seat in the office or something like that… define your importance by making sure that you are always trying to better not only yourself, but also those around you, and the world you are living in.

Best Regards,

Rangga Satrya

ONE... TWO... THREE... *BANG*!

So, this marks the beginning of my own personal and humble blog. For whatever reason, I don’t know myself why I haven’t tried to blog yet up until now. The pieces are all there: I am an avid internet user (one might say I am kind of addicted to it), the knowledge of blogging phenomenon has been long known to me, and I myself have visited quite a number of blog during my frequent surfing sessions. I don’t know, but I suppose it has got something to with the fact that I am quite a lazy bastard >_>

Anyway, I made this account in BlogSpot a long time ago, but it is not until now that I decided to finally use it. Why, I like writing stuff, and if there is a chance for me to express myself openly without fear of retribution (*cue dramatization music*), then why not? And hell, I might be able to share ideas, make new contacts/friends, or just providing some entertainment for someone out there in the process.

As to what this Blog is going to be focused on, to be frank, I have no idea myself. Quite frankly, there are a lot of things that I would love to write about, and to strictly focus on just one particular theme for my blog is going to be kind of restricting for me, and I don’t like that. So I suppose, this Blog is about “everything that I want to write”… in other words, in one occasion you might see me writing highly sophisticated and philosophical stuff such as world peace, global warming, terrorism… (yeah right), but on other occasions you might see me trying to pick the highly difficult choices of who is the bloody most beautiful actress in Hollywood today… or video games… or movies… or whatever else that I can think of that had nothing to do with the goodness of mankind ^_^

I should introduce myself first, I guess. My name is Anindita Rangga Satrya. I am a 25-or so years old guy living in Indonesia, with a rather unhealthy dream of being able to go to Japan someday. I am still single… >_>, and my hobbies are writing, reading, watching movies (and tennis), and…… well, that’s about it actually. I am a pretty ordinary guy, likes ordinary things, and my life is filled with lots and lots of ordinary stuffs. In any case, I just want to remind you people that since I am an Indonesian, English is not my first language and I have never actually specifically learned it in an English School or things like that, so do not expect to see flawless demonstration of grammar or any Shakespearean vocabulary here. Part of the reason I am writing this Blog in English is to improve my skills with the language, after all.

Anyway… that’s all for now. See you all in my next update… which hopefully will be quick since I am, once more, SUCH a lazy bastard >_<

Best Regards,

Rangga Satrya