WARNING: Long and intellectual post ahead. Proceed at own risk. I will not be held responsible for headaches, migraines and what nots. And that means I'm not buying you Panadol or Advil.
It is going to be a very good day (well, night actually). I can feel it.
Tonight is going to be D-Day for a super excited but also super nervous friend. Tonight is the night where Juwita Suwito is performing in Melbourne with Orchestra Nouveau conducted by none other than Yee Meng. A performance blending with a band with an orchestral accompaniment is something that is rarely seen even till today. And fearless Yee Meng decide to spearhead this one straight on. I can't wait to see what is installed for tonight.
OCF last night was interesting, even though I wasn't there for the main event of the panel of mission workers for a question and answer session. Helped the people preparing supper and in the midst of that, I got into the a very interesting problem in game theory courtesy of Daniel (no, not the Hobart one). That was a brain stimulating question involving a bunch of kids and their mother and mud. After arguing and reasoning it out every aspect of it, we finally got to the right answer. But we know that this would never happen to a real bunch of kids and mother and mud. The kids would have to be super smart in order to figure that out and they'd have to be completely ignorant about their own stuff. Yeah, very idealistic but fun question. Maybe I should have been more hardcore during my undergrad days to attend game theory subjects in the Economics department. I would probably need a slightly more realistic problems to jog my brain a bit more. Crap, now with so many things that I can learn, I'm stumped for choice. Physics has always been at the back of my mind and want to pursue that (and want to complete my grand evil scheme), Chemistry is also something I liked though it's the experiments that make all look science-y but cost a lot in materials and certain aspects of Biology (no plant/animal or ecological biology) are also interesting. And that's just the learning side of things only. Medicine, Economics especially game theory and a few other areas are good for overall problem solving, just what I like. So many things to love, study and learn but so little time. Maybe I should not get married and just devote to learning all these things =P Anyone care to donate to the Help-Juwen-Learn-Everything Fund?
After that, had a long session of pool again. This time however, games weren't as economical as we could have been. And not to mention a great source of frustration. We played on a different table than what we normally played and it turned out to be a really bad table. The pockets were so unforgiving that if a ball hit the inside pocket cushion with a fair amount of speed, it will just bounce out. I had about 10 of those shots and that really made my blood boil. Worse still was that the cue ball was in the right position for the next ball all the time but the stupid ball wouldn't go down the pocket. Normally, a standard pool table is that if a ball hits the inside pocket cushion the ball would go in regardless of the speed it came in. Only really fast shots may have a chance of bouncing out of the pocket. The table we were at only allowed balls that were on a gentle roll before it goes it, anything faster it will just bounce out. Grrr. I'm boycotting that table.
Java and C. They never end. Time to crank up the workload. Enough said.
And now, the news of the week:
Please, oh please implement this on the iPhones...
Wow, a cheap point and shoot camera used to take pictures of Earth from a helium balloon. And it was done with US$150. Did I mention that it was also done by 2 students from MIT?
Pink grasshopper. Huh.
I'm sure by now that everyone has heard of that outrageous stunt that Kanye did on the MTV awards on Taylor Swift. I find it interesting that it is so outrageous, that internet memes have sprung up all over the place so fast. Just within hours of the incident a website has come up where people send in Photoshop-ed pictures of Kanye and various other subjects/people and roughly using the same lines he used on Taylor when he did it there. Some of that are hilarious, others were like "?". It is a very interesting thing to think about. We all have seen viral videos of some sort whether it was the Star Wars Kid, the Numa Numa video, some videos of cats but what makes them viral? It might be argued that due to the celebrity status of Kanye and doing a stunt like that in front of millions around the world makes it easier to go viral but the question remains, what makes something viral? There have been many outrageous stunts performed by many celebrities and some of them are equally funny or downright stupid like Kanye yet they are not as viral. Even more interesting, is that how does a viral video turn into an internet meme? Not all viral vids morphed into an internet meme. For example LOLspeak. It came from people taking pictures of cats doing or looking funny and decide to spell wrong and have atrocious grammar. It went viral through e-mails, IMs etc until it has got to a point where it is almost a language of sorts. No standardized rules of LOLspeak but everyone knows that it is LOLspeak. It has evolved to the point where they have translated the entire Bible into LOLspeak (very funny but some is a bit much) and a programming language based on LOLspeak. And now, looking at the things they are now, Kanye's response to Taylor award winning speech has become an internet meme. Interesting how social groups on a global scale to work these things out.
Speaking of viral videos, there is one which is particularly used. One scene from the film Downfall detailing the last remaining days of Nazi Germany where Hitler bursts into anger among his high-ranking officers about his defeat. This one scene has been taken and subtitles have been replaced to rant about various topics such as the ridiculously high price of the Nikon D3X, Xbox and others. Even current Malaysian political events and Kanye's outburst is not spared from this scene. Although I must say that in terms of realism of the subtitles to the German dialogue in the scene, the rant about the Nikon D3X is the most believable but in terms of context, the Malaysian political scandal of a murder is the most appropriate. Some people either have no life or boundless creativity.
Some thing to think about colleges in university before actually taking the plunge to go there. Not as straight forward as one might think, especially us Christians.
Some people really have no common sense in naming their children. I'm sure we've all heard "horror" stories about these things.
Coming back to economics, trade is very important to any country. It is interesting how some items up for trade may seem insignificant, like chicken feet, can have such a huge impact on their own country and the countries trading with them.
This may bring me one step closer to actually achieving my learn-everything-goal. And right in the comfort of my own home in front of my iTunes.
Sex with robots, says a guy who did his PhD thesis on. In the future. Something that has been long talked about but never had the technology nor the AI advancement to actually do it. But he says it's very much possible. The Japanese are at the forefront of robotics and AI and some are going down this area. As if having sex outside marriage wasn't enough, now we are talking about sex with inanimate objects that simulate a real person's sexual behaviour. What is it about sex that drives these things? I suspect it's from Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Right at the bottom of the needs triangle is the one where we as humans need the most. According to common sense, it's food, water, shelter and, surprise surprise, sex. And interestingly enough, it is before intimacy which is the middle rung of the triangle. That means that we need to satisfy our need for sex before we can even start to satisfy intimacy. Don't you think this is a bit topsy-turvy? From the Bible, humans (aka Adam and Eve) satisfied their need for intimacy before sex and that seems the way that God ordained it to be good. So why this reversal? Textbook answer is sin, but let's extrapolate that to something a bit more concrete (not that sin is not concrete...oh you know what I mean). Maslow seems to have taken on an evolutionary stance of things. In an evolutionary view, we grow from a basic functional level to a higher functional level. At the lowest part, animals require food, water, some shelter and the need to procreate ie. sex to ensure survival of the species. Assuming we humans are also "animals" we need these things before we can move on to something more since we are capable of such transitions. So it sort of works like this: create, protect, feel, belong and "nirvana". While this hierarchy of needs "may" work on an animalistic creature, but we humans are different from the word go. We are created in the image of God (Genesis 1), something unlike any other creature in existence. So I don't think we should strictly follow the hierarchy since we follow a different set of need hierarchy because we are different from animals. In a way, our structure is the other way round, replacing "nirvana" with God. So back to the topic and the textbook example of sin, Maslow or some may even point the finger at Darwin, just say we are no different to animals. We just happen to be better of than them. So we need to satisfy one of our most basic needs. Sex. We need sex! Sin has twisted the needs of a human being.
OK, I'll shut up now and will compensate for it next time with pretty pictures. Hopefully.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Your photos were lovely. Hurry up and post them!
There's more than 1 Hobart Daniel...