After reading the Ensign article “Family History via the Internet”, I found out that a lot of genealogy tools are available online . Surprisingly, this article was written like a manual, not like counsel (as it generally happens in Ensign). The article thoroughly explained how to do family history work rather than saying why we should do it. The advantage of family history via the Internet versus traditional ways is that you operate not only using the information received from your relatives, but using the information from people you possibly don’t know, even though they may be your relatives. Online genealogy also helps to find relatives around the world. I was born in the Soviet Union, but possibly have relatives in the United States, whose ancestors immigrated here after the October Revolution and during the Russian Civil War. After the rise of Soviet Union no foreign correspondence was allowed, so the contact with those immigrants was lost forever. Online genealogy services are the only way to find lost relatives and connect family trees of the families in Eastern Europe with the rest of the world.

Yesterday Apple presented to the world a new “revolutionary device”, iPad, which turned out to be a big version of the iPod Touch. Apple claimed that the new device is good for reading books, playing games, watching movies, and browsing the Internet. But how good is iPad for word-processing, for spreadsheets, for databases, and other currently existing applications we use everyday? I believe, iPad is not better than the iPod Touch. Not many existing applications will work properly on the iPad. People will have to develop them, or port existing applications to iPad. I will not be able to connect an external monitor, a USB keyboard, a mouse, or a flash drive to iPad to comfortably work with it. Also, iPad doesn’t have stylus, which means I will not be able to draw pictures on its screen. I would appreciate much more if they just took their MacBook Air and added a touch screen and a stylus to it. Apple disappointed me with their new and useless toy device. If they surveyed people before designing the iPad, they would come up with a more useful device. This is yet another example how customers’ expectations and a good image of the company can be brought down with the incorrect approach to understanding of the customers’ needs.

I completely agree with Title IX and its enforcement, which provides completely equal opportunities to both male and female students. However, if it’s in force and working, and women simply don’t apply for science, math, and technology majors, why should we make a big deal about this law? It would be better to concentrate on the ways of making those majors more attractive for women. Wyden talked about creating and enforcing an equal opportunity for women in science, math, and technology; however, that equal opportunity is already created. Whose fault is it that women just don’t apply for the technical field degrees in the same proportion as men apply? Equal opportunities for women were created since Title IX was passed. Maybe they aren’t enforced as well as the author would like, but they are there.

Recently, Google announced that Chinese hackers broke into their servers and stole some intellectual property from them. The author of the article passed us an interesting idea from Trevor T, the author of the Dark Visitor blog about Chinese hackers, stating that China may stay behind the U.S. in military achievements, but it developed capabilities to offset this disadvantage through hackers. I’m sure the U.S. government trained some military and intelligence hackers too, but is it enough? I still see U.S. Army officers recruiting on campus for Air Force, Navy, and Marines, but not for the cyber-warriors. Besides, no legal organization in the United States promotes hacking; in fact, punishment for hacking is severe. On the contrary, hacking in China is popular, and the Chinese government, with all its totalitarian control, allows people to publish hacking-related technical papers on Chinese websites. U.S. would give its citizens the right to bear arms (United States Bill of Rights, Second Amendment), but won’t give them freedom to develop viruses and other malware, hack computer systems with restricted access, and practice amateur hacking to prepare the nation to face “red” hackers in a cyber war. Due to those different approaches to hacking we are most likely going to lose the cyber war with China, and will have to physically fight using the ancient methods of the 20th century. I believe, in this country of liberty the second amendment to the Constitution – the right to keep and bear arms – has to be modified for arms to also include the hacking literature and sets of hacking tools legally available for each citizen who wants to learn hacking to protect themselves and their nation from a cyber attack.

Neil Postman mentioned that invention of the printing press and printing the Bible undermined the authority of the church during the Dark Ages. In similar ways, our scientific and logical thinking, influenced by computers and technology, undermined our beliefs in things that cannot be explained by pure logical reasoning. We fly in outer space, but still don’t know why Egyptian pyramids can cure the diseases of the people who stay there for some time, why food doesn’t get spoiled there, why blades are getting sharper, etc. With modern medicine, we can cure a various numbers of diseases. However, we still don’t know how to cure epilepsy patients, while magicians can help them just by murmuring spells to the water and giving it to the sick people. Intelligence uses cutting-edge technologies to find out information about people, while ESP practitioners can easily tell not only about the person’s past, but also about his or her future. Some people say that it’s all myths, but there are facts confirming this information. We are simply ignoring these facts because we can’t follow it with our logical reasoning, inherited from computers and stimulated by scientific and technological progress. We tend to ignore the paranormal things just because we cannot fully comprehend them. Instead, we should accept and preserve them, just like we accept God and preserve religions. What would happen with our society if people start to also ignore God just because they can’t fully comprehend Him?! We will end up looking at church buildings just as some of us looking at the pyramids, and seeing only a structure of a rough cold stones standing in the middle of nowhere in the world infected with logic.

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