Raihan's DP Blog

In the article, Lisa Feldman Barrett, a Northeaster University in Boston psychologists discusses her theory of how emotions work. She shares the story when she misunderstood her feelings of a guy she thought she liked to become some sort of side effect of her flu. But how could something so irrelevant shape our feelings and emotions of something. She opposes Charles Darwin's "emotion fingerprint" theory in which every emotion creates different body cues. She says no to this theory, the body cues of emotions have huge overlaps with each other. When you feel sad and angry, your face expressions would most likely include a frown in both emotions which suggests that Barrett may have a point. She also theorizes that the body signals such as illness, hunger, anxiety, etc. is based on the circumstance or the situation that is happening, such as what happened on her date when she felt the her stomach churning for her love of the guy.  Barrett theorizes that emo...

The James Lange Theory is a theory of emotion theorized by William James and Carl Lange. The theory suggests that the emotion occur as a result of how the body interprets the physical reactions. Based on the example above, it shows that once you run, your body would react by having the heart beat faster which then leads to the emotion of tiredness. And once you feel tired, you would choose to stop running or slow down. However, the theory also received criticism. One major criticism involves that the theory was loosely based on controlled experiments that were conducted by neither James or Lange. They theory was also not widely accepted or agreed by different people, thus new different opposing theories have emerged including the Cannon Bard Theory where the physical and body reactions are caused by emotions, so it is the opposite of the James Lange Theory. 

Taylor Swift's new single "Look What You Made Me Do" just dropped two months ago and it is not written by the Taylor we used to know and adore. The used to be country singer who kept going on and on about her past love experiences is apparently "dead' now and is rising back up even better than ever. We sat with the "new" Taylor and chatted about her music and the town of her musical roots.  Your new single "Look What You Made Me Do" peaked into the top charts and broke a variety of records. Congratulations on that! Thank you so much. I'm honestly really glad that my new song and it's style turned out great and my fans are enjoying it. Although "Look What You Made Me Do" and my upcoming album "Reputation" shouldn't be a huge surprise to my fans since "1989", my album that dropped in 2014 was also written in a smilier style and it was a huge breakthrough for my career.  Yeah I personally ado...

      "My Block" is a song composed by Tupac, one of the greatest hip hop artists of all time, which revolves around the theme of violence and racism. In the first verse, he introduces the miserable problems and fears of the African American community. He talks about how black people are affiliated with crimes and how they are discriminated and stereotyped as dangerous criminals by society that he thinks that he has "been marked for death". He talks about how African Americans are often arrested for no concise reason "What do we do when we're arrested, but open fire Life in the pen ain't for me, cause I'd rather die.". He prefers dying rather than being arrested for a crime he did not commit. These problems have reached to a point where Tupac, in a desperate and hopeless tone says "I wonder if the Lord still cares, for us niggas on welfare", where he is hesitant whether their existence is even worthy and that if anyone even cared or d...

First Order Knowledge: "Last month, as if to legitimize emoji as a form of expression, the US Library of Congress accepted a 'translation' into emoji of Herman Melville's Moby Dick." "The emoji story begins at the end of the 1990s, when Shigetaka Kurita, then an employee with Japanese mobile network DoCoMo, began working on an idea that he thought might lure teenagers to the network." "Emoji, fir all its detractors, is about embellishment and added context; it's about in-jokes playfulness, of emphasizing praise or cushioning the impact of criticism, of provoking thought and exercising the imagination." Second Order Knowledge: "The vast majority of people over the age of 25 probably think emoji as unnecessary pictures that add precious little meaning to written communication." "Line, the dominant message app in Japan with over 100 million users, allows in app purchases of extra emoji - purchases that reportedly r...

How would you try to explain to a blind person what the word RED means? What does this suggest to you about the limitations of definitions?  A blind person would have never seen the color RED before in his/her entire life. The color RED is bright and vibrant. It stands out of everything else and grabs your attention instantly. It is intense, powerful and filled with energy. With that being said, it does not fully describe the color. A blind person would be able to feel the color but still would not be able to visualize the color based on that description. This suggests that definitions of words are very limited and it is not as effective or advantageous for people who do not know the words as it is known to be. Describing how color looks like is hard because there are no words that is able to describe and express this sort of terminologies. Defining color requires our visual abilities because it is a matter of what we see. We do not "speak" color, we just...

The oldest memory that I can recall of my entire life is the time little Raihan got off the taxi in a foreign country carrying a backpack bigger than himself. Three year old me would have never thought of living and spending my childhood far away from home. Living almost my entire life abroad, there are still some major gaps in my Indonesian, my home language. English and Malaysian were the primary languages of my childhood (3-6 years old). The Malaysian language was easy to adapt as it is almost similar as Indonesian, a language which I knew the basics of at the age of three.  I remembered my first day of kindergarten, the first day I met a foreigner whose a Malaysian. I approached him, introduced myself in Indonesian and started yelling out things that I like to do. "Halo! Aku Raihan! Aku suka main! Suka makan!" which means "Hello! I'm Raihan! I like to like play! Like to eat!". Keep in mind I was only three so that was pretty much the only thing I was cap...

Link to article:  http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/editorials/why-an-eyewitness-account-alone-shouldnt-send-anyone-to-prison-20170828.html First Order Knowledge "More than 70 percent of the convictions that have been overturned through DNA testing nationwide involved eyewitnesses who got it wrong." "The  Philadelphia Police Department has incorporated many of the reforms." "Brinkley was 15 when he was sent to prison for life for allegedly shooting egg deliveryman Charles Haag in December 1997." "Ronald Brinkley confessed to the murder several times over the years" "Two recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings that prohibit life sentences for minors without the possibility of parole" Second Order Knowledge More than 70 percent of the convictions that have been overturned through DNA testing nationwide involved eyewitnesses who got it wrong is reliable as it is based on statistics measured by the authorities. Scores of scie...

Language is a form of communication that humans, and even other organism, use in order to interact with one another. English is the one of the world's most significant language, a global language that is used by people from all corners of the world. They say that knowing the English language increases your opportunities to succeed life. But what about not native English speakers? Does that mean they have a higher chance to fail in life than native English speakers? Not necessarily.  Just like Amy Tan, my parents also speak in broken English and there were times when I was younger where my siblings, all fluent English speakers, would giggle whenever my parents, particularly my mother speaks English. Sometimes they would get offended, but sometimes they would also laugh along. This is because she knows and accepts that her English is bad, and that they are not well educated in terms of the English language. There were times where I would be studying alone a...

The metaphor "The map is not the territory" represents my skills as a critical thinker. The metaphor illustrates that maps does not represent the territories of the world in reality. To me, the metaphor means that our impressions of reality is actually our own interpretation of how reality is rather than reality itself. This is because everyones sees things differently through their own eyes and their five senses. Our interpretations are often inaccurate, just like our maps which inaccurately and incorrectly show the territories of the world because they are based on the interpretation of cartographers (map creators). Representations of reality are created in our minds according to what we feel, through our sense perception, emotion, intuition, etc. but the actual reality is still out there in the bigger picture. The metaphor of the map also shows that in frequent cases, people find it easier to accept the truth that has been told to them than thinking about it criti...