Donations: Good or Bad?

So, the McDonald's corporation has donated $500,000 to the earthquake victims of Haiti, in order to match a donation from the company, which operates nearly 1,700 McDonald's restaurants in Latin America. This donation is projected to amount to approximately $1,000,000. They are also donating 50 cents off every sale of Big Mac's and Big Mac Extra Value Meals.

McDonald's have always been one to help out people in need. In Denmark they have their Ronald McDonald Houses, which are located by some hospitals, to help families with children in the hospital. While the child is lying in the hospital, the family can stay at the Ronald McDonald House, so they are always near their child or sibling, if something happens.
However, set in perspective this donation of approximately $1,000,000, is only $31.25 per McDonald’s restaurant in the world. Considering the fact that many of the restaurant franchises have a yearly revenue of millions of Dollars, some might say that McDonald’s should donate more, while others would focus on the fact that $1,000,000 is a lot of money in itself, and that McDonald’s is only a fast food business, and therefore shouldn’t need to donate more than some small countries.

Personally I feel, regarding the whole charity scene, that we should all help out, if we can, when a natural disaster occurs, like the earthquake in Haiti, or the Tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004. We need to come together and help these wounded nations get back to their previous state. We can’t have nations going back to the Stone Age, just because they were unlucky enough to have one of the biggest earthquakes in recent years. We need to donate money, if we can, to get the injured cured, and rebuild the countries, to make them functional again.

However, donating endless amounts of money to countries in Africa is pointless in my opinion. For decades the western world has donated money to help Africa become an industrial continent, like the European and American continent, or even the Asian continent. The only continent, which has failed in every attempt to become industrialized, is Africa. Every time they get close to a solution a civil war breaks out and several tribes starve to death. I just can’t understand why we keep throwing money into this financial black hole.

In my opinion, we need to realize that Africa is a lost cause, and just let them sort out their own problems, by themselves. If you keep throwing money at a person who can’t take care of himself, then he will, at some point, stop trying to take care of his own life and just rely 100% on other people’s help. Let me refer to an old saying: “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for 1 day. Teach the man to fish, and he’ll eat for the rest of his life.” This is what I think should be done to Africa. Instead of always sending doctors down there and just cure the sick, and sending food down there to feed the starving tribes, just teach them to do these things themselves. I know the doctors are trying to teach the locals to practice medicine, but people are still relying on Red Cross and other charities to feed them. I think we should teach them to make food for themselves so they won’t have to rely on our help.


So, to conclude.. I think that the fact that companies like McDonald’s donate to help out wounded nations like Haiti, is a good thing, and that more companies should do the same. But donating to help industrializing Africa is pointless…

Heello

So, the guys who created TwitPic made this new website called Heello, a twitter copy, which is more about chatting than following updates.. Instead of following people you are listening to them, instead of tweeting you ping, and instead of Re-tweeting you echo a persons Ping...

I like it a lot, since you get to connect with people you don't know, and otherwise wouldn't have met...

Gaming and Summer Vacation

This one will be a little update on what I've been up to lately... (Couldn't find anything to complain about lol)

Back in August, on my 18th birthday, I got myself a PS3... Been playing by myself on it a lot until April, where I got into a clan called VoX (Very old 'Xperts) where we've been organizing a lot of matches.. this is totally different from playing by yourself.. It's always better to play with friends or people you know in general.. And in the clan we're all friends and we have so much fun when we play games together... Socom 4 was a game very anticipated in the clan so I got it... And I must say it was disappointing.. I mean, it was fun at first but after a while it is quite boring.... But the game has a co-op part in which we have had hours of fun. Mainly because everybody dies and yells for people to revive them :D

On the clan forum I have been getting on image editing again... Fittingly me joining the clan, and getting into making signatures, fell into the same period where we were learning about using PhotoShop at school... Or.. the others did. I kinda knew it all before.. :D

The clan was formed back in the middle of March and have now grown to have about 100 members, which is amazing! Other clans have been around longer and some even have less members others have around the same amount... :D We have great alliances with other clans like TNW, PGO and DADs Army.. In cooperation with them all we have been working on a new system for clans all over.... To set up a site with members' games lists and clan events where the other clans can go to find information about other members and clans... THis will be great and will mean full games with people you know. :D

And now that I'm done with school on this side of summer and still unemployed I will have a lot of time to play games and do images in photoshop.

Btw. my PSN id is GunNut92 if anyone is interested... :D

Homefront live stream

Future weapons and warfare

Today America has satellites which can track and eliminate enemy missiles. With lasers! Yet, America and the UN spend millions of dollars on military resources like soldiers, weapons and tanks.

Why do they not simply turn the lasers downward and eliminate the enemy bases or enemy troops. They could also just send up some new satellites with small missiles or machine guns to eliminate the enemy. Then soldier could tag the enemy with laser markers and then signal the satellites to attack.

This would make future wars and battles go over quickly and safely (for the "good guys"). The enemy would attack but destroyed before they could make any real damage.

If they put a lot of resources into researching these types of satellites and weapons they would probably save a lot of money in the long run. It would also be a way to scare people who want to attack USA and her allies. In the future there would not be as many wars because people would not dare to go to war with America & Co.

The Shining: Review

Okay, so I have just watched The Shining. It has taken me some time to get around to do this but now I did.
The plot of the movie is basically:

A man, Jack, takes a job as the caretaker of a hotel in the mountain over the winter. He, his wife and their son moves in at the hotel. The boy can, for some reason, communicate telekinetically with other people who have the gift (the shining).
After a month's time Jack starts to get a bit crazy. He is trying to write a book and his annoying wife keeps interrupting him. When Jack makes his way to the bar and receives a drink, which is all in his head btw. When he later returns to the bar he meets a previous caretaker, who went crazy and chopped his family into little pieces with an axe. He tells Jack to "correct"(kill) his family. Then Jack hunts his kid with an axe into the giant labyrinth in the yard. The boy out smarts Jack and escapes the labyrinth and leaves with his mother in a snow cat. Jack gets lost in the labyrinth and freezes to death.

Notably bad things:

1. The wife.
   They have casted an extremely ugly (read: gross) woman to play the wife. She ruins the experience of what could have been a great movie and almost turns it into garbage
   
2. Tony
   The boy have an imaginary friend called Tony who lives in his mouth. WTF? When this friend talks the boy looks at his finger which Tony apparently talks through. FAIL. It looks stupid.
   
3. The ending
   In the end we see a photograph of a ball in 1921 where Jack is in the front of the picture.
   
   Maybe I'm just stupid, but I don't get it. Is it supposed to show that Jack is in fact a ghost from '21 or is it a magic picture of all the caretakers, who have gone mad after 1921? I don't know.
   

Notably good things:

1. Jack Nicholson
   He is awesome in this movie. He has that evil/creepy look that the character needs to make his point.
   
2. Jack's reaction to the boy's bruised neck
   When his wife finds the boy with a bruised neck she accuses Jack of having done it.
   Jack just looks at her like he doesn't understand and just doesn't give a tine rat's ass.
   
3. The first bar scene
   His wife tells Jack about a crazy woman the boy had seen and Jack has the greatest response ever: "Are you out of your fucking mind?"
4. The blood
   The boy keeps seeing visions of blood coming around a corner and down a hallway. It looks great and I love it.
   

I wish someone would make a spoof of this movie where, when the boy sees the two girls he would just run them over on his tricycle an yell: "Get out of the way bitches!" or something like that. I would watch that movie!

If I had made the movie I would only change like one thing: The actress playing the wife; she is ugly and she can't act and it is because of her people say you shouldn't run with a knife in your hand.
When she runs her arms are swinging a lot and she should have stabbed herself with that knife many times.
 
The Simpsons have made a great parody of the movie, where they have included all the important things:

Danish Radio Stations SUCK

Here in Denmark there are no good radio stations for people who, like me, want to listen to rock. All the stations play pop or techno! This means that you have to either turn to your own music or search the web for stations from other countries.

After many years of just listening to my own music I bought a great little box called a ROKU SoundBridge which you can use to play music from your PC’s music library wirelessly. Now, this box had a function which would allow it to receive internet radio stations. I searched the Roku Radio website for good rock/metal stations and found an American radio station from Seattle called KISW, which had an online player.

This station has really impressed me. I thought it was just going to be another bad radio station which would play some soft rock songs like the standard Danish radio station but it turned out to play great music. It plays everything from old school rock to rock songs by new artists. And this is just the music I like; it’s Metallica, Alice in Chains, Disturbed and all that kind of music. They also have some great programs like The Mensroom, where four guys talk about the news and what they think about it (funny as hell) and the Hookup, where you call in and request a song which start with the letter that the last song played ended with. This is a great way to incorporate the listeners and the Danish radio stations could learn something here!

Whenever I have friends over and we play Playstation 3 I put on the radio station in the background and they all think it is a great station!

It can definitely be recommended for people who like rock which is harder and heavier than the kind they play on the pop rock radio stations in Denmark!