Watching education the past few years, I’ve noticed that the system is very broken in a lot of fundamental ways. Sure, the curriculum could use reformatting, the “informing” structure should be changed, and the expectations should be modified to stop forcing students to conform to perfection. But that’s not the real problem that one can find in today’s education. The real issue is a social one.

School creates a structure for life: attend classes, learn, make friends, and get a foothold on the ways of this world before going to a “grown-up job”. Then, without a thought, it rips these things out of our lives. School creates a structured community and then tears students away from everything they’ve grown accustomed to. It begins something that it cannot, with confidence, complete in the student’s favor.

This “community” which school creates is known to many as what life should be like. Sadly, once they graduate, there’s nothing to keep their social ventures going. That’s why people end up in bars, coffee shops, and libraries (I had to). There’s nowhere else they can meet people or find new friends, and since they moved away from their hometown, they need these friends.

(Why do people become depressed? They often cannot sustain a relationship with someone after high school, so they end up living along, eventually finding a wife, and living outside community, without the friends they need in this world. Friends hold you up when you don’t know what to do. They provide the perspective you’d never think of. This is why so many people relate to psychologists: they cannot be vulnerable more than one other person [their spouse would be this one] and eventually find this last resort.)

Of the many problems school poses nowadays, this is the most harmful to its graduates. It answers other questions, too: Why are we so alone? Why do some people have a drinking problem? Why is coffee the number one commodity? And so on. Interestingly, this problem has gotten better lately because of the Internet. I often write about how this global network can hurt so many parts of out lives, but in this one it can actually connect us. I’ve met many people on the Internet in the past five years. It’s amazing how thriving the online communities are. The thing is, communication is fractured at the heart, and even though the Internet is one fix for the problem with community, it only introduces another issue.

What’s the permanent fix then? How can we repair this formula for a generation? Is every man meant to attend college after high school? How can we stop our high school friends from leaving us and forcing us to move on? How, oh how, can we stop this circle we put our children in? There are so many questions it’s overwhelming.

I believe the fix is, of all things, church. It’s always been the one thing that brings people together, whether they like it or not. Religion is not to be confused with church, though. The former is a political struggle and bi-polar mess, the latter an everlasting community faced with the same troubles as any. People shouldn’t be scared of church, but many of today’s churches create fear by being a house of fakery. It’s only pride. Pride is what drives this yearning to show people how good they aren’t. It’ll take a lot of effort to fix this community, but it’s worth it for what such a beaitiful structure can offer.

I could elaborate on many of these issues, but what I really want to do here is get a point across. I want to know what you, the reader, think of this idea. This is all my perspective from growing up in a small town of limited opportunities. Maybe it’s incorrect. That’s for you to say, so please email me!

The interesting thing is, more readers is not the solution to anything. When you receive a comment like “good job”, it feels much more valid when there are fewer people perusing your work. It’s always nice to know you’re doing a good job, but when that happens all the time the novelty is quickly lost. You take good feedback for granted and soon you start doing shoddy work because there’s nothing new to keep you going. But when you get that one person who commends you on your work, it means a lot because it happens far less often than you’d like.

Don’t pray for more, pray for just what you need to keep going. It’s nice to hear “You’re doing well” from someone besides your parents and it’s almost worthless to hear praise from a crowd of individuals. Celebrities may disagree, but when you go for days without hearing anything, one person can light up your day. Just a thought.

Why am I so fearful of actually talking to someone? It could be that I’ve become conversant with emailing, Tweeting, or sending a text message to the person I need to contact. Or maybe I think I’ll say something stupid (which happened a lot in my younger life, leading to fear in the present day). The more palpable cause, though, is probably that I don’t want to let that person know anything about me. I’m scared of being even that vulnerable, and that’s a considerable problem.

When I found myself interviewing a girl for work yesterday, I was beyond panicky. It’s not something I do on a daily basis and it was never in my plans as a writer. But, of course, plans change and I end up in situations like that. I find myself continually faced with the choice of calling or text messaging, and I almost always favor the latter because I tell myself it’s “more convenient” or “better for them”. The real reason is that I’m not comfortable with talking over the phone. I’ll tell people that I don’t use Facebook because “I like interacting with people in real life”, but that’s not true at all. I actually don’t have one because I have bad memories of who I used to be a few years ago, and Facebook is connected to those memories. I also want to force myself to socialize in person.

This grand shambles of communication — in my life, at least — is not appealing to me. Lately I’ve been trying hard to do different things with my time, to stop thinking about what I will do next, to challenge myself to get out of the house more, and to simply do things that are uncomfortable for me. Exempli gratia: I’m getting my blood taken next Tuesday, which is the next step in my great adventure to—oh dear, it’s going to be dolorous, isn’t it?

My point here is that communication in this day and age is broken. People prefer to use virtual characters and emoticons to convey their perceptions rather than using the words God gave them. I can’t accuse any one person of this because I myself do it. It’s hard to take the more undefended road when there’s a phone in your pocket that creates all the walls for you. I must agree, walls are very nice, but we’re people and we don’t need walls to communicate — we need other people by our side in the physical realm. We need people who can delight in our company and not be distracted by their mobile phone every few minutes. We need vulnerability to connect, and when it’s lost, so is candor.

I hope you enjoyed this edition of Jacob’s thoughts, which is a capricious time during which he over-thinks matters to only the greatest extent.

My home is less than a mile from a lake, 15 from a ski resort, and three hours from a city with a Walmart or Jamba Juice. Some would call this paradise, but things change after you live here for nearly 11 years. The beautiful outdoors grows old, the whimsical small-town feel fades away to become bothersome, the people all look the same, and you feel trapped in a merry-go-round of misanthropic activities.

After ten years, I started to think of ways I could leave this town. To this day, I devise grand schemes of holidaying elsewhere. The sea has always interested me, and I must say that rain accompanied by foggy mountains is my favorite of weather conditions. Something like Scotland, or maybe Australia, Whales, New Zealand, Amsterdam — the list goes on. Then I stop to think about something: what is this intriguing allure about where I live? I can’t seem to find it.

I spend days chasing lightning storms, snapping photos of people enjoying silly activities, and even spelunking when I get the chance. But in all of this, I don’t think much of where I live. It’s just the predictable boisterous atmosphere that I’ve lived in all my life, and I think nothing of it. People travel thousands of miles just to ski and snowboard here; fishermen flock to the many lakes of the Eastern Sierras in the summertime; the city folk come from Silicon Valley and Orange County alike to enjoy the hot springs; and everyone who visits Mammoth Lakes seems to have more fun than I have here in my life.

Is it that the novelty has warn off? Possibly. I think the problem lies a bit deeper, though. First there’s the obvious fact that humans become accustomed to the ways which they have lived for a while. This means that they don’t think twice about where they live. It’s a gift from God, yet they dismiss it without a thought. Now, take the average vacationer. He will be much different than this debilitated and restless resident. He will only see the value in a small town like mine, and he would love to make a life for himself here.

There’s a purpose to vacations, then. When you get tired of the boring old place you live, it might be time to take a look at another beautiful gem on the Earth. There are many spectacles within driving distance for some, but they never leave the couch. These people cannot complain about where they live because they’re making it their permanent home and cannot embrace change.

The hard decision is whether to move somewhere more exotic or stay where you are. You could choose the former, but you will be searching for something different sometime down that green road. What’s the solution, then? For some, it might be to make the best of where they live. Instead of thinking about climbing a rock or taking a boat out for the day, these people must actually do the things they dream of. For others, it might be to move somewhere more fitting, where the rain falls every day and the sunsets are ravishing. For me, it might be to remember how valuable life was to me as a child, without worry or care of what people thought. We all need that once in a while.

Things spin off with a flashback. Stark looks back at something he did on New Year’s Day in 2000 which ends up changing his whole perspective of things. The story Tony tells is a solid one. It’s about a hero who invites an attack from a terrorist and ends up losing nearly everything he loves. The problem is, Tony isn’t sure what he loves. Is it his girl, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) or do his hobbies come first? And so the story of love and loss goes. I’ll admit I was surprised with the significant plot twists the writers threw at me, but I won’t say they were all that original.

As with the other two Iron Man films, this one approaches humor like Tony Stark in his Audi R8: relentlessly. Most of it seems forced. The typical Iron Man humor of Stark and his converser is strong as ever, and growing very dull. Some lines aren’t so bad, but overall I got the feeling that this humor just can’t adapt to a different situation. Instead, Robert Downey Jr.’s character resorts to being obnoxious in any situation thrown at him. Yet somehow the next minute he is able to understand how someone feels and finish a serious conversation. It feels like it wants to be a comedy, joking about truly serious matters and even acting irresponsible in terrorist situations, much like a child. Only this time, it’s so immature that the Iron Man portrayed has reached a new low, one that’s not honorable.

The main problem with the whole film is that Downey Jr. only has so many actor cards and the new director here, Shane Black, used up his last batch early in development, leaving nothing for the rest of the film. That’s why you can easily locate scattered fragments of comical behavior and when you try to put together the puzzle, the pieces don’t fit. The Iron Man watcher is not looking for a family comedy mixed with some Django Unchained, but rather chasing the character Robert Downey Jr. created back in 2008. Where has that magic gone?

Most of the character development went well, until it got to the villain. First, he’s given a short backstory at the beginning of the film, but the writers don’t go into much depth. There are clues here and there as to what the man does with his life, but when it’s suddenly revealed that he’s the terrorist the world seeks, things get interesting. Maybe it was terrible acting on Guy Pearce’s part or maybe there’s just a disconnect between the director and writer, because he almost seems like he’s not paying attention to his character. All I saw was a constant circle of throw, smash, choke, and walk away enraged. He had the potential of — and even seemed to strive towards — being the Joker from The Dark Knight, which is a character that every nemesis suddenly must try to be.

Lastly, the soundtrack. I love hearing a beautiful score whenever possible, but Brian Tyler failed with this composition. The music was a noisy, redundant, and even dull kerfuffle. It had its moments of excitement and there were just too many. That could have been the fault of the film itself, which was thoroughly intense, but all this soundtrack did was make me think the film would be better without it. It wasn’t unoriginal, just overly-epic.

Like with the soundtrack, Iron Man 3 as a whole is overshot. It tries to be so great that it falls just like the hero within. Thankfully, it manages to recover most of its parts and reassemble things by the concluding ten minutes. In a nutshell, this film was disappointing. The trailers made it out to be something completely different and it had a hard time succeeding at just continuing the legacy of Iron Man. It’s good this makes a trilogy because there’s not a reason to keep going. Even though its lesson (heroes must fall; terrorists shall rise) has potential, the implementation isn’t all it could be.

Still, after the credits there was a clear message: “Tony Stark will return.”

Score: 6/10.

Fun fact: In an interview with the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), Robert Downey Jr. noted that “nothing has been the same since New York” because Tony Stark (his character) “peered through dimensions and saw things that others had only speculated at the mild possibility of. As a matter of fact, they said everyone who believed in the stuff he saw was a conspiracy theorist. Everything that has grounded him (Tony Stark) in what he thought was and wasn’t real has changed.”

I love the concept of Triage because it simplifies things to the way I do them. If I’m going to send emails with my iPhone, I’ll use the Mail app, but if I just need to quickly check for new ones, why not open Triage? There are no push notifications or anything fancy, but I don’t use those anyway. I just like to be able to find out if any work emails have arrived and then either archive or keep them, or reply on some occasions. The app has functions for all of that, and it’s perfect.

One thing I’d find useful for Triage is a signature feature. Even though I don’t plan to be writing emails in the app, it’d be nice to add a custom signature for when I reply. Also, for the sake of those who do reap the benefits of the feature, push notifications are essential.

Other than those small quibbles, I like the user interface, the feature set is off to a good start, and I can see myself actually using this app, unlike Mailbox.

Download the app.

It’s always easy to click the "Add to Wish List" button because there’s nothing monumental about the decision. You’re basically saying "Yes, I’ll buy that eventually". The problem is that those little choices build up a full inventory of items you hope to one day obtain. Are they necessary? No, but you tell yourself they are when you go to delete them. This is the problem I’m facing.

Before deleting anything, I added a new album to my wish list: Shake! Shake! Shake! by Bronze Radio Return. It’s not something I’d like to buy digitally because I enjoy most of the songs included, so I want a physical copy. My wish list is full of physical CDs, but most of them aren’t for the reason I just gave. Instead, I have a hope of one day collecting all these discs so that they may rest peacefully in my cupboard, though that’s not exactly what ends up happening.

Instead of me purchasing said CDs, I typically put it off to a later date (like with many other things in my life). I keep saying, "Oh yes, buying that later won’t be a problem." It’s always nice to save money for things, after all. At least, that’s what I said when I started a list of "things" I strived to procure. Now I’m realizing that it was all a big waste of time.

If I’m going to buy something, it should be now, unless it’s vastly expensive and absurd to even consider at the moment (e.g. an LG Nexus 4 to play around with). Otherwise I shouldn’t waste my efforts adding such debris to my wish list. It’s only going to make for a longer cleanup job later on.

My question is, why do we always make lists of what we want, whether they’re mental or pages long? (Mine is just an example; everyone likes to collect one thing or another, even if it’s a more familiar commodity like currency. And we even make a list of places we’d like to visit [for the experience].) We do always need goals in our lives, else we’ll not have something to move toward, but that’s no reason to waste hours shopping, browsing, and coveting our way into creating a superficial "wish list". Maybe it’s time to reevaluate.

For me, the hardest part is thinking about what I don’t need because I want it all. I just need to ask questions like "Will I actually read that book?" or "Is an expression pedal something I’ll use on Sunday nights?" What’s your greatest fear of deleting a wish?

Disney says that it has “decided to shift LucasArts from an internal development to a licensing model, minimizing the company’s risk while achieving a broader portfolio of quality Star Wars games.” This move has infuriated gamers of the Internet. Twitter is currently abuzz with talk of what will replace the great LucasArts as other publishers do not own the full rights to the Star Wars universe. One company even said that it was looking for talented game developers who need a home.

Founded in 1982, LucasArts has brought to light some of the greatest computer adventure games of all time. The developers behind this name crafted such classics as Star Wars: Battlefront and Labyrinth. There are hundreds of others, including those based on the Indiana Jones franchise and the Monkey Island puzzle game series.

Thankfully, Disney did inform Polygon that Star Wars 1313 still has a possibility of being released. “The studio will be handing game development to third party developers”, said Tracy Lien of the gaming publication. “The studio confirmed that LucasArts will no longer be handling the development of Star Wars 1313, and it is exploring other avenues to release the game, although the future of 1313 and other Star Wars titles is currently uncertain.”

The Walt Disney Company’s official statement to Game Informer:

After evaluating our position in the games market, we’ve decided to shift LucasArts from an internal development to a licensing model, minimizing the company’s risk while achieving a broader portfolio of quality Star Wars games. As a result of this change, we’ve had layoffs across the organization. We are incredibly appreciative and proud of the talented teams who have been developing our new titles.

As a child, I spent hours playing Star Wars: Battlefront and its sequel. To know that there will probably be no future development in the series dampens the spirits of the youngster who still lives in me.

Source: Game Informer

Developed by Robocat, Thermodo is a small device that plugs in to the headphone port of your mobile phone or tablet. It instantly reads the temperature and then displays it in the developer’s apps. However, anyone can write an app for this thermometer, because Robocat is planning to release an open source SDK for popular weather apps like The Weather Channel and Wunderground to make use of it.

Thermodo began its life as a Kickstarter project on the 7th of March. It is now 772 percent funded and still growing. The developer is offering basic black and white editions of the device for $25, but pledge amounts go all the way up to $2999, which includes early access to the SDK, a t-shirt, sticker, use of the iOS app while it’s in beta, and even an influence on future development — it’s a full investor pledge. Robocat also has “stretch goals”, which are offered once the project has reached a milestone. Once reaching the required amount of $35,000, Thermodo kept going and is at over $270,000 today. The next goal to be unlocked is a limited green edition, which will be offered as an alternative to people who supported the aluminium one that costs $39.

Robocat clearly has a good thing going for them with this bit of technology, but there’s an even bigger picture here: this could be the beginning of crowdsourced weather. If you think about it, weather stations near you are what collect the data you see on your phone. But when you have a full thermometer in the palm of your hands at all times, what’s to stop you from providing that information to others?

In the future, I’m really hoping to see someone develop an app that shares the data collected by these thermometers. Imagine looking at a map and seeing slightly different reports all around. Obviously there would be some problems with this. For example, if you’re indoors the temperature reporting should be switched off because it’s inaccurate. Still, there are a lot of great applications. This tool can create a user-generated heat map, which sounds pretty cool. Will it actually be useful in everyday life? We’ll have to wait to find out.

You should go back the Thermodo Kickstarter project; you won’t be disappointed.

Sources: The Verge (Jepsen)

• It’s good to exercise my memory.
• Music is my favorite subject, so that makes this particular book fun, but overall words are cool: you can learn how to use them daily and bewilder your friends with a fancy new argot.
• I always know what’s coming next. Anxiety has been cured. I just can’t wait until I find out what an equalizer does! (He said, jesting.)
• Also, I have ADD, but I can put the book down whenever I wish and there’s no story to keep in my mind.
• They’re written quite well.
• Imagine how cool you’ll look with a five-pound piece of wood in your hands. Or you could go the pocket route and people might ask you if you’re preaching a sermon or doing ministry for Merriam-Webster.
• Your English teacher won’t be able to resist giving you extra credit points.
• With a monocle you can pretend you’re actually Webster. It’ll be our secret.
• You can tell all your smart friends “Yeah, I know how hard it is to read a book that’s over 1000 pages” without actually finishing it. Legalese.
• Bookmarking is easy: I can just use another book.