Watch this space

*sweeps cobwebs away*

*blows the dust of the keyboard*

*Starts typing* 

Well it has been awhile friends, My blog has been missing the reoccurring deliberations I usually scribble down. 

Exciting news has kept my attention for the past month or so, I'm going traveling through Europe...in 4 days. Starting in Italy, going through germany, switzerland and sweden then down through france, spain and jumping over to italy to fly back home after two and a half months.

I will be doing normal blogs and video blogs while I am over there so if you enjoy this blog or want to see some sights around Europe, watch this space.

L.A. Fairburn

Yet again

I think a lot about the world around us, my friends would probably get sick of hearing me rant on about atoms and special relativity even though they would never tell me, they would just nod and try and amuse my weird geeky brain. The truth of the matter is I rant on so much because it is what I love to talk about, 'The great Insolubles' as I like to call them, I have a couple to blow your mind and then I will try and piece your mind back together but a nice summary. Okay here goes:

1. The entire population of the earth is the size of a sugar cube...

Pretty crazy to think about but to the extent of my knowledge it is true, and it all has to do with the make up of an atom. Put quite simply, atoms make up EVERYTHING, if you half an orange and half it again and keep on halving you will get and atom. Atoms are made of a nucleus in the centre and electrons spinning round it, In between the nucleus and electrons there is just empty space but quite a lot of it, to put it into perspective if an atom is the size of a football field the nucleus is an apple in the middle and the rest of the field is empty space until you get the the electrons at the stands;). Now back to the sugar cube, if we were able to take out all that empty space so the nucleus and electrons were touching it would make atoms a great deal smaller, so small in fact that the entire human race would be about the size of a sugar cube. Make sense? If not I'm sorry you must be an air head...(Get it, atoms, empty space, in your head, ah I crack myself up).

2. .........................................................

Actually I think ill keep it at one and save some more for next time, let me know what you think if you liked what wrote about leave me a comment if you fell asleep half way through from boredom and hit you head and left a bruise leave me a comment or if you didn't understand what the heck I was writing about because my explaining skills arn't the best leave me a comment.

Anyway hope to hear from you.

L. A. Fairburn

Imperfections

The brown soggy snow crunched into James’ tread. As he ran to the nearest shelter he could fell the freezing wind hit his face and curve around to enter his ears. The day was almost over when James sat down to rest. Around him the ground was stained with red blood. A red trespasser on the white blanket. He could not feel his hands as so for the last few days, the last happy image he remembered was of his wife curled up in his bed awaiting a normal day but the day was as far from normal for James.

 

Only when he saw the first man go down did he realise what a predicament he was in, not fighting for his country but for his life. Could the war be a means to an end, like the papers say or is this another of many that will be crippling families through out Britain. Taking time to check his gun’s magazine, his thought could not help but go back to his family.

“If only they knew, if only they knew what was going through.” He grunted. The words sounded harsh but he could only feel punished for what he did to them. With his back up against the frost bitten boulder his thought drifted. His eyes glazed over and he found a place of peace knowing that his family was safe, his thoughts were tediously interrupted by the melodious fighting that was taken place just in front of him.

 

James searched the area, scanning for hope in a bleak field that cast a shadow of death in every corner. James saw one single man detach from a group only to be shot down. One bullet to the thigh, the next into the shoulder and as he was going down the third bullet pieced his skull leaving a defined mark resembling downfall of Britain society since the war began. James began to get up; eyes swelling with emotion, heart reaching out to stop him but it was no good. Facing a wall of enemy soldiers that lined their targets on James, he shot repetitively until the magazine reached the last bullet. In the open, he felt exposed and bewildered; his emotions drove him into stupidities that would result in death.

 

The morning James had to leave, it was all organised and his family would not know that he was going to war; his wife said that if he went he could never return, this was the only way. His twin Jake took his place as father of his own house. The two were inseparable.

“Thankyou” was all that could be said by James as he walked out the door.

“I’m not doing it for you,” Was jakes reply “I’m doing it for my country.”

With that the door closed and James stepped out into the White blanket of snow.   

 

One, two, three bullets fired from the enemies guns, targeted on James, He felt the life drain from him but not disappear, he stood there on the snow as a uniformed statue. From nowhere a body dove at him smothering him in brown and white imperfections.  An unclean trespasser on the white blanket.

wiki fun facts pt. 3

The N400 is an event-related potential (ERP) component typically elicited by unexpected linguistic stimuli. It is characterized as a negative deflection (topologically distributed over central-parietal sites on the scalp), peaking approximately 400ms (300-500ms) after the presentation of the stimulus.^[1]

The N400 plays a significant role in language processing. It was "discovered" in 1980 by Marta Kutas and Steven Hillyard, in a study that is considered to have first introduced the concept of using ERPs to study language processing, and one of the first studies in what is now the field of neurolinguistics.^[2] The N400 response is often elicited by semantically inappropriate words in an otherwise acceptable sentential context,^[3] and has also been shown to occur in response to words at the end of a sentence when there was a problem earlier in the sentence.^[1] In general, the more difficult it is to "integrate" a word into the preceding context, the bigger an N400 that word will elicit.^[1] In models of speech comprehension, N400 is often associated with the semantic integration of words in a sentence context^[4] and general "wrap-up" and decision-making processes at the end of a sentence.^[1] The N400 remains a common topic of study in neurolinguistics and psycholinguistics.

Contents  [hide] 1 A typical experiment 2 Scope of the N400 effect and the underlying process 2.1 Processing costs 2.2 Music and N400 2.3 N400 and pictures 3 See also 4 References

[edit]A typical experiment

A typical experiment that demonstrates the N400 might be set up as follows:

• The subject is presented a sentence one word at a time, and advances through each word by pressing a key.
• Some sentences will be semantically unmarked, e.g., "I enjoy walking in the evenings" (a control condition)
• Some sentences will have unexpected or deviant ends, e.g., "I like my coffee with cream and dog"
• By recording the subject's neural activity using an Electroencephalogram and comparing the effects between the expectable and the unexpected words, the N400 can be measured. It will be seen as a wave-effect on the EEG curve peaking approximately 400ms after the unexpected stimulus.

[edit]Scope of the N400 effect and the underlying process

The N400 is one of the most researched neurolinguistic topics with many papers on the subject. It is generally a very stable finding. In which conditions it is found and what exactly its finding shows is a hotly discussed topic.

[edit]Processing costs

It is generally observed that the amplitude of the N400 effect grows with stimuli that are harder to integrate semantically. That means that in a context where, for example, "lions" would be assumed ("The zebras ran away, chased by the ..."), "rabbits" will induce a greater N400 effect than "tigers", but smaller than "bicycles" or "Walkmans". This is interpreted as showing greater cognitive processing costs for the integration of some words—it is harder to conjure up a meaningful context with rabbits chasing zebras, and zebras in general, in particular chased zebras, leads one to think about lions. Researchers are not in full agreement about the syntactic associations of the N400; some report findings, more don't.

[edit]Music and N400

Music cognition researchers find N400-like effects in response to the relation between pieces of meanings and words that can be interpreted as being in some way descriptive of this music. That would mean that music is often at least partially interpreted in a semantical way. Words, sung or not, can elicit an N400, but comparison of results in the following cases shows that the N400 may be caused not by the music but by the word: (1) Songs sung correctly with the right words and the right notes; (2) Songs sung with non-N400-eliciting words but with a wrong note; (3) Songs sung with an N400-triggering word as well as a wrong note; and (4) Songs sung correctly but with an N400-eliciting word. Further research could also consider pure music with unexpected notes.

[edit]N400 and pictures

A clearly observable phenomenon is that nonlinguistic stimuli can elicit N400s, too: Pictures with expected or unexpected meanings in sentences (like the picture of a dog instead of the word in the sentence "I like my coffee with cream and dog") can be used to show that the effect is not exclusive to linguistics, but has to be in some way related to general semantic processes.

More broadly, cognitive scientists believe the N400 is not limited to linguistic stimuli, but instead an effect showing the processing of semantical formed and structured information in general.

Back up... what's with that??

Lately I have been very interested in space, well when I say lately it would be for the past three or four years. I find it so fascinating the 'bigness' of it and the complex formations taking place every second. I could talk about it for ages but ill save you guys the bore and move straight to the point.

I was driving along today, in my company car, the old but reliable combo and I had one thought that stood out from the normal random my mind conjures up from time to time. The universe is very big (I think most of us will agree with this point), so why is it that God did not make us bigger...?

I believe from no evidence what so ever but just by thinking logically that humans will not even come close to exploring the whole universe before Jesus comes back so why is it that God put it there if we don't discover it. If we were bigger (or the universe smaller) we might have a chance or at least be able to discover more right? 

Just an interesting thought for you, if you have an answer I would be very interested in hearing it.

Have a good night

Luke Fairburn.

Coca cola add

I made this with my mates ages ago. We actually made more than this but I am still editing together the rest. tell me what you think :)

Another paling in the fence

I haven't blogged in a while, mainly because I have been too busy organizing things in my church, but I have been wanting to write one for a while.

The other week I watched an amazing film by rob bell called 'everything is spiritual' and I recommend that if you haven't seen it, go out straight after reading this blog and buy it, It is quite a brilliant masterpiece. I guess the film really sparked my 'road to recovery' if I may call it that. For the past few months I have been doubting God and considering that if there is a God out there he isn't making himself all that know. Being brought up in a christian home, the message has always been there so I think deep down I always knew that he was there. I just needed some evidence to support my argument so I went searching to find some evidence that God exists. My results were frivolous however.

After watching the rob bell video I discovered that I cant prove God's existence (at this stage), that sunday at church I decided that I would stop searching for God as an outsider and I would start searching as a insider. I guess that means I would stop trying to prove His existence while not believing he is out there, I should rather dedicated my life to him and while studying and meditating on him I will learn what I need by what he reveals to me.

Thats the conclusion I came to anyway, but this is not the end of the journey, it is in fact the start. The start of what I hope to be a fulfilling and awe inspiring journey with God.