Undergraduate / Carnegie Mellon Supplement-The Human BOdy vs Computers [4]

I pressed the stub on my computer's power button, giving it life. The bootstrap, a small algorithm, fetches the Operating System work, allowing all of the computer's hardware to communicate with each other, much like the brain of our human body. The circuits act like blood and connective tissues, flowing through the motherboard to other parts of the computer. It works like a complex machine, all of its components have to work together to create a perfect system. Insulated wires in the computer imitate the neurons in our body, padded with myelin sheath. Our brain, the processor, is the manager of the system, and makes sure that all the devices and organs are working in perfect condition. Antibodies act like an antivirus, designed to remove any foreign objects from the body. We speak through the speakers, listen through the microphone and see through the monitor. Input to the computer is like oxygen to us, the computer is useless without it. It outputs information to us, much like how our ideas, emotions and doctrines provide the world with knowledge.

What's so baffling is how humans are able to replicate the system of the human body into computers. Just as how the four nucleic acids in our DNA are capable of creating the whole human body, the most basic part of computers consists of two numbers, ones and zeros. The biological and computer world do not stand very apart from each other, the most notable difference being their sizes. The world of human biology is huge, and we are yet to discover every continent on it. The computer world, however, has a variable size, as we are the ones in control of it. The more we discover and learn new computer technologies, the bigger its world becomes. And since we have an amazing ability to reproduce an electrical machine from the biological processes of the human body, I feel that the more continents we discover in the human biology world, the bigger the computer world increases in size. The human body fascinates me as equally as computers do, hence I feel that my curiosity for human biological processes will allow me to discover new computer technologies or even use that knowledge to prove or disprove computer science theories.

Looking through Carnegie Mellon's Computer Science department, I felt very fascinated by the different approach to thinking used in the department; I feel that the "Computational Thinking" method will be very effective in theory problems such as "P versus NP". This theory asks whether a problem whose solution can be checked by a computer can also be rectified by the computer itself. This problem would not be a hassle for the human body; if there was a foreign body in the blood, information will be sent to the brain to direct killer-T cells to kill the cells infected by the body and lymphocytes will engulf the bacteria, removing the problem. I want to use the knowledge of such processes to solve theories in Computer Science, and by taking an additional minor in Computational Biology, I am sure that Carnegie Mellon will be the perfect fit for me as I am for it.

Undergraduate / STANFORDS SUPPLEMENTS- faith in god + grasshopper + reflections [4]

1st topic:
What matters to you, and why?

I am neither a freethinker nor am I an atheist. There are many philosophical disputations about the existence and belief in God. Some people don't believe in Him, because they think that He does not exist, and vice versa. Some people feel that he exists, but they remain not to be bound by any religion as they see unfit the set of rules created by that particular religion, or even all religions. And at least one person believes in the religion he and many generations before him has followed, Sikhism, but doesn't believe in the existence of God. Me. I don't strictly follow any particular religion, but I am a Sikh (My grandmother 75 years old , she has been a priestess for almost 40 years and still is, I really don't want to give her a heart attack). I feel that at most, religion is a moral class for society, to allow us to differentiate between right and wrong. Of course, we are all at liberty to make our own decisions, whether right or wrong. But I do not want to avoid doing things that are considered wrong because of the fear of damnation, rather I want to avoid doing something wrong because a part of my mind tells me it is wrong, and this part of my mind come from my moral class-my religion. So to answer the question, what matters to me is faith. I have faith in God and pray to Him when in need of help or when I am nervous about something, and because I believe that he will help me, I am able to confront my problems, even though God could have done nothing. Our minds often plays tricks on us, and I can always convince myself that if I hit rock bottom, God will never give on me as I will never give up on him. My faith in Him helped me when my father passed away 5 weeks before the most important examinations in my high school life and I was underprepared. I excelled with straight A's. I call Him Babaji, and whenever I pray, I just ask Him to make life at the very least manageable.

2nd topic:
Future roommate

I actually have problems describing myself to others, in fear of either under or over evaluating myself, so I'm just going to write about the first night with my ex-roommate. It was my second year in that school, and Jason and I were already close friends, but this was the first night of us being roommates. Our trials were coming up, so he was studying at his desk whilst I was studying on my bed. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something green and fast flashing past me. There was this huge grasshopper flying across our room and I was freaking out! Mind you, I'm not a coward, but if things start flying, they have this amazing tendency to hit me. Naturally, I hid under the covers while Jason was already on the bed laughing his head off. The grasshopper landed on the wall across my bed, just 5 feet away from me. Jason took my squash racket and tried nudging it towards the door, but it just flew to the other side of the room. Suddenly I gained enough courage to try to scare it off, but of course I was going to use my squash racket. I kept nudging it whilst keeping my distance, as if I was trying to pick up a 6-foot cobra with a stick. It kept flying under beds and behind cupboards. Finally I managed to get the grasshopper on my squash racket .It has this majestic look on its face, just as Simba had when he was standing on Pride Rock. Our room had two doors, one at the front to the corridor and one at the back, to the balcony. Slowly, I moved outside the back of our room and swung the racket into the open air; the grasshopper flew out, returned back and hit me on the leg! Again, Jason had his knees on the ground, his eyes tearing up. I picked it up again from the floor and moved back into my room. "What are you doing? Don't you want it out?" asked Jason. "NO, I MUST I FACE MY FEAR!" I shouted half-heartedly. I moved across my room to the corridor and closed the door, my racket still keeping the door ajar. Slowly I pulled the racket and closed the door, leaving the grasshopper outside. It was already close to our lights out time, so me and Jason were already tired and flung ourselves on the bed. Before we slept off, Jason just sighed and said "Dude, it's going to be a fun term."

3rd topic:
Intellectual vitality

I could hear my heart pounding loudly in the quiet bathroom, the air still damp and heavy from the shower I just took. I looked at the reflection in my mirror and decided that I might as well do it now then procrastinate any longer. I expelled as much air from my lungs as I could and stepped on it. The scale rotated clockwise quickly and stopped, the meter showing the digits 109. Sigh, 109 kg at the age of 18. Yes, one might say I have a 'slightly' bigger build compared to my scrawny Asian friends. Since 'that label' had been placed on me, I always had a grudge on mirrors and the whole idea of reflections. I hated the fact that one's reflection immediately creates this identity among society, and that the mind automatically groups people according to their exterior looks. People change their reflections so that they are better accepted in society, and in the process they change themselves as well. To quote Robert H.Schuller, "I am not what I think I am. I am not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am." But I asked myself, why should I succumb to society's perception of a good self-image? Being fat made me slightly insecure with myself, but my shyness made me into a good listener. I learned how to take feedback from others and listen to their ideas and opinions. My friends see me as this optimistic and jolly teddy bear. I take pride in myself when I am able to swim or jog the same amount of laps as my friends do. I no longer judged people by their looks, on the contrary, I admired those who showed their true identity. I hope that society can remove this compartmentalization of people so those who are fat, short, weird or physically disabled can live free lives. For example, I am around 6 feet and 3 inches tall, which categorizes my BMI as 'slightly overweight'. My broad shoulders make me look like a bouncer than a potato couch. Read my essay again and you might have a different image of me in your mind.

Thanks ahead for any comments or critique :)

Undergraduate / Significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken - about acting [6]

yello:) my first thread WOOT!
alright, here's my essay, please let me know what u think of it:

TOPIC:
I believe it falls under question 1:
Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.

A lot of my family members, mostly my elderly relatives, ask me, "Why do you like acting so much? Why don't you have similar hobbies as those of your cousins?". "Because I don't want to do something that would make me just like milk," I reply. This usually results in them shaking their head, perceiving my answer as something what a small kid would say that doesn't make sense.

Have you ever heard of the 'Magic Milk Experiment'? Try getting a container of milk, and place a drop each of food colors red, yellow, blue and green at four different corners of the container. Then, dip a toothpick into liquid soap and touch the corners of the container. The soap will break up the fat globules of the milk and spread them across, creating movement in the milk. What is seen is beautiful array of four different colors swarming up from the corners into the middle of the container and blend, creating a mix of emotions. Anger shown in the red, comes creeping quickly yet silently, along with the smooth swiftness of the calming blue, exuberant prances from the happy yellow, added with the slight tinge of an envious green.

Many people feel that acting is instead an introduction of completely different colors- purple, orange, even grey perhaps- that it is just a replacement of one's personality; a medium to escape from the real life a person does not want to confront. To me, acting is a way to express parts of yourself that society might not accept on a stage or in front of a camera. It is used as an excuse, a filter that automatically makes one's action or personality acceptable. It is a way to completely let loose of your emotions and familiarize yourself with them as well as manage them. You let your mind speak for your decisions instead of your emotions and feelings. It allows people, such as me, who bottle up their feelings to paint the screen as vigorously and creatively as they want to.

Many people think that the emotions felt by an actor are not the same as that experienced in real life. Would any person in society be able to experience the fear of being chased by zombies? The exhilaration of being able to fly through the air and look at the city's night lights below? No, but what might be felt is the fear of a self-denial person confronting a certain problem. Or the exhilaration felt when getting a promotion or getting accepted into a dream university. Acting allows a person to act rationally when being faced with a situation where feelings come in the way strongly, because these feelings, however new in the real life, have been experienced by an actor on stage. Think of it as doing much harder practice tests for an exam till the exam itself becomes a walk in the park.

I do not want my life to represent the symbol of milk-dull, insipid and plain white. The four food colors could only reveal themselves through the act of a medium-soap. And to me, I feel that I can portray all my emotions to an audience with my own act of a medium-acting. Acting is my 'soap', and with it, I can confidently show my colors to anyone I want.

Im applying to Stanford, CMU, n Cornell, if it helps in any way:)