tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69992145419216193792024-03-14T01:45:33.642-07:00Aristotle's Mistake“Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.” - Bertrand Russell on Aristotle's MistakeIrishredfoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15335590251655986013noreply@blogger.comBlogger208125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999214541921619379.post-24118627579201286172020-10-25T18:17:00.003-07:002020-10-25T18:17:53.866-07:00Alternitives to the Heroes Journey<p> The idea of the heroes journey and it's relation to how we see ourselves, and stories we tell is a stroke of brilliance.</p><p>What we see is not real. There is a real world we are looking at, but at a physical level it can be argued that we cannot see the whole of the physical world. A dog has less color receptors than me, and I have less color receptors than a deep sea fangly fish. I am slightly color blind, which means shades of green and red look grey and white. Some people experience protective synesthesia, where they see color when a sense is stimulated. People like taking psychedelics because it changes the things they see and changes the way that they perceive things. Many forms of damaging the senses exist, and damages to the way that these senses interact with the brain exist in many ways. When it comes to the question of "what is real" the first question we need to ask is "how does my perception change what I think is real".</p><p>Perception is the only thing we have to figure out the world around us. We are faced with the cruelty of a chaotic world that makes no sense because nature doesn't work with a plan in mind. Trees have a biological reason for growing, we have no evidence that at the meeting of trees they decided it was their duty to grow plenty so there are homes for birds, air for life, and shade. Trees give these things but there was no plan for things. People give meaning to events that are meaningless. And we create this meaning from stories we tell.</p><p>Here is the part that stumps me, because I was introduced to European thinkers that had thoughts on dreams and the dream world, but I can't find the references yet. So for now, lets talk about stories. I find <span class="module__title__link">Dissociative identity disorder </span>fascinating because it's not something I found familiar. I find connections between ADHD, bipolar, autism, and OCD, and it seems that this might because of where they are thought to exist in the brain. There is something in DID I find familiar, but it took me a while to pinpoint what. DID talks about littles, protectors, et al living in a system. To me, DID seems to dissociate internally, connecting trauma, thoughts and emotions to people and a voice that are in them, but when I stress I dissociate onto others. I not only see myself as the protagonist of my own story, but I have ways of describing myself, to myself. I was born and raised in the woods of Vermont, with barely any access to televised media. I am a sharp and intelligent person who is creative, can speak eloquently and know some words of other languages, I can speak on logic and mathematics and biology. I struggle with my place in the world and how to make the most of it for me. I have friends that reflect these things, and I see these things in some or all of them. When I am stressed about forces in this life, like the looming shadow of death and taxes, all I can see in my friends is myself. I cannot see them for the people who have another life with their own values, experiences and moral codes. They are me, but are themselves.</p><p>We tell stories, and not all stories are about a hero who saves the day. We tell stories about the villain, and these stories contain the things we find negative. The villain is someone who acts on the wrong impulses. The villain is Faust who becomes tempted by the devil, they are Darth Vader being guided by his fear and anger, they are that self centered bitch Briana at work who is always being a pain in my ass and is constantly acting for herself and her bitch friends. When I am stressed or anxious or frustrated, I see my negatives reflected in the people around me. There is usually no deeper meaning to these reflections, because these are reflections of human nature, or a flaw I see in myself. I see my lack of focus, organization, and communication of my pain in others because these things may exist as my coping mechanisms, and others are coping to different problems using the same tools. Or we might all be reacting to the same stimuli that exists in the real world, but our emotional perceptions and coping mechanisms are different, causing us to act differently and different is bad. Different is the antagonist. Empathy is realizing that others exist with inner pain and joy separate from our own. Goals and fears that might not be ours, turning into motivations and reasons that we cannot understand. In myself, I struggle with the idea that my motivations are not pure, and I do things for selfish gain, not for the good of all. And I tell myself a story where I am the villain. And I recognize that others don't act in a way that is moral or right, and that they stand directly in the way of my goals. So I tell stories where they are the villain.<br /></p><p>There is the trickster's tale, a story of a clever protagonist getting one over on unsuspecting authority. One upping the boss man and proving that we, the supposed lesser, actually have the leverage and power. Loki the trickster exists as the center of some stories, but he doesn't always act for the good of the group. Can we trust the chaotic neutrals, because they sometimes do the right thing, but we cannot always agree with the reasons. We have stories of tragedy and comedy, both pointing out the sorrow and humor of the world. In stories like MASH or Catch-22, there might barely be a point or end goal to the story, the heroes and their existence are there to remind of us of the hopelessness of the world. We have stories of Justice and Retribution, stories of romance, stories of failure and happiness. We and our friends can be the protagonists of these stories, but we are not always the moral center of the story, and we struggle with the idea that we are not always motivated by good intentions. We are not always motivated in the correct way, because we are more than a character in a story. We are human, and human is a complex stew of emotion and experiences in a world that we don't understand but are trying desperately to make sense of before it eats us alive. We act for the good of ourselves, friends and community, but sometimes we act on emotion in a way that doesn't fit a structure. This structure gives us meaning. Gives us hope and love and a future to look forward to. Because otherwise there is no meaning, and we get lost in the swamps of sorrow.<br /></p><p>These stories are not us though, these stories are told by the emotions and feelings we have. This statement is not a useful statement because not all emotions are caused by something we can control. A toxic person in my life who only exists to point out the flaws and negativity in the world can be thrown away. A flaw in my perception in the world and how this flaw causes negative emotions is a different beast. My ADHD cause me to focus on small things and makes me lose sight of a bigger picture. This woman is speaking to me, telling me what is in her heart and mind but I can feel like something is off. The medication helps me zoom out, so I'm looking at the way she speaks, and dresses, and acts. Sometimes I missed something, and it was something on a subconscious level that bothered me. Most of the time I was really just missing the other details in the rest of the big picture, and missed the truth in front of me. This thing in my head can cause me to focus too long on a problem and not eat, and hunger changes my mood. I get tired, others get cranky, and we let our emotions talk to each other, and say things that aren't always true.</p><p>I tell this to others, and I always say "take your medication". But where are the stories we tell ourselves coming from? My hunger stops me from thinking things through, and I take offense to things not directed at me. My exhaustion keeps me from speaking in full sentences, and I'm only able to speak in short bursts. They are separate from my ADHD, which wonders why my physical environment is a mess, why my brain won't stop thinking, and why my clothes smell like I haven't changed in 3 days. When my hunger speaks, I feed it, when my exhaustion speaks I rest, and when my ADHD acts up I reflect on why, then hit it with exercise or medication.</p><p>Whose voices tell you stories, and are they always heroes stories? Are you a trickster, someone else's villain, or are you caught in romance that struggles against unseen forces in the world. <br /></p>Irishredfoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15335590251655986013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999214541921619379.post-86671689629128386812020-10-24T11:54:00.002-07:002020-10-24T11:54:57.613-07:00What do we learn from Success?<p><span><span></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span><span><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OcULycD0l5w" width="320" youtube-src-id="OcULycD0l5w"></iframe></span></span></div><span><span>He presents "The Hero Story" as a concept in psycho-analytics. I was only aware of it in story telling as a useful tool to create a plot, but here he is presenting it to us in psycho-analytics. We are the heroes of our story, we work to gain what we want, and gaining what we want makes us happy. When we don't get what we want, we are presented with the chaotic nature of the world and are forced to face this chaos. Psycho-analytics is a tool that help dive into the skeletons, old wounds, and the ghosts of failures past that still haunt us to this day by taking the plunge into the underworld to face these things head on. This gives us a way for dealing with failure, but looking at them as opportunity, not as something to get worked up over.</span></span><p></p><p><span><span>To start with, there is his model of learning which bothers me. I'm all about learning and learning strategies, and his statement "All learning comes failure" rings false with me. </span></span></p><p><span><span>He expresses failures coming from actions, like telling a joke that fails, so does all learning comes from actions? "The stove is hot" is not a statement that needs to be acted on by touching it. I know the potential danger of hot surfaces not because of my third degree burns, but because I see how the hot surface acts with other things, and conclude that I shouldn't touch the stove. If I touch the stove, then my perceptions and assumptions of the situation were off. Learning can be done through action, but it can be done through observations.<br /></span></span></p><p><span><span>I point because I'm wondering how do I fail through observation, but still learn? I can watch the failures of others and learn through their mistakes. He went off the ski jump and got really hurt is an observation of someone's failure, and it still forces me to confront the chaos of life. What did he think he could go off of the ski jump? Why did he fail? Would the same thing happen to me if I try that? Isn't it just as likely I can confront these things by watching others succeed? I can make a failure in observation, he succeeded because he drank the right beer. Maybe I can observe as a contrast to my own failures in life, i.e. he can succeed at that but not me because I'm pudgy and never learned how to ski. In my personal case, I can ski and I'm in good shape. Which means why not observe their success and seek to emulate how they achieved that through routines and training they did that might help me if I wished to do the ski jump.</span></span></p><p><span><span>If I decide to do that, then I can start learning through action which brings failure. I think a more accurate statement would be "Learning comes with failure" Failure will occur, but it's not the point we learn from. We learn from making the model.</span></span></p><p><span><span>Here's my model: We gather information, we test our hypothesis, we reflect on our results, and we start again at point one. We will gather information based on our assumptions. We can gather information on cultural assumptions (things we "know" in the US about race and information we get to prove or disprove these assumptions), previous experience (My tire went flat last week, because the tread was gone. My other tire went flat a few weeks before, because the tread was gone. Maybe I should change all my tires since they seem to be wearing out), and observations (this person is into me because they keep talking to me and putting extra effort into themselves when they around me. When I notice people doing that, it usually works in my favor). It's good mathematics and good science to challenge our assumptions and test them. Take an assumption, gather information from a source that doesn't agree with us, test the assumption with the new information, does it fail or succeed? We can do that by reading a book or watching a video or listening to a podcast of a person that has a different view. We need to reflect on this new information and how it fits in with what we know, and sometimes that means confronting a belief that is the core of who we are.<br /></span></span></p><p><span><span>You are at a party, and you tell a joke the joke falls flat. Facing the chaotic nature of the world and asking why you failed is reflection. And I agree with that. You can reflect on success though. A reflection like "why did I fail then but succeed now" is a reflection on success. Looking at the success of others and asking what they did to succeed is a reflection on success.</span></span></p><p><span><span>Does this break and devalue the video and argument as a whole? Not necessarily. I have problems with the presentation of the video, and I have problems with the presentation of the hero's story, and I don't agree with the power of psycho-analytics. This argument about learning and the implications made can be analyzed though, where the other stuff might just be a bias on my part.</span></span></p><p><span><span>We are presented with "a thing that makes us happy", and we the audience will think the opposite is true. However, he shows us that we think of failure as negatives and these negatives are presented to us as stories. He doesn't say stories but offers examples like "Maybe you are not as funny as you think you are, maybe you are not around people that you understand." These are stories our anxiety tell us though. Or the stories our depression tell us. My happiness tells me stories as well, it feeds my ego and reminds me of my greatness. Feelings of loneliness tell me the story of the darkness and evil that exists in the world. I am not my feelings of anxiety. My feelings of anxiety and the stories they tell make up a part of me, because anxiety to a situation is an emotional responce to a situation that is all too human. I am also my happiness, my passion, and my joy and with them comes their own stories. While it is fine to reflect on my failures, I need to remember that I am a sum of both my successes and my failures. The stories are not necessarily the thing that is making me unhappy, the unhappiness might be the thing telling the story. I might reflect on the struggles of my childhood and my failures if I'm in such a mood, but I can also think about the fun I had in the same situation. The memorie I have still exists because of the powerful emotions that surround them, the stories that surround them comes from my interpenetration, and my interpretation may be biased at any given moment. My relationship with my father is something I can switch back and forth on. He taught me to draw, think about history, gave me an interest in how things work and encouraged our creativity. He is also the reason why I walk on the balls of my feet because he would get angry if I stomped around. Do I want to talk about him as an inspirational figure or an abusive authority completely depends on my emotional state. Overall, my relation with him now is good, even if I don't agree with things he says and I find myself struggling to share my new interests with him now. In the real world, he is a person with his own thoughts and experiences, but my perception of him comes in part from the stories my emotions tell me.<br /></span></span></p><p><span><span>What I'm presenting is that these stories are a coping mechanism for the chaos in the world. I failed to get the promotion and now I'm unhappy can be a cause and effect situation. "Why do I continue to fail in my life" can be a thought that pops up as a reaction to failure. Acknowledging how we react to failure is a step to self awareness which leads to growth. He is presenting us with this awareness. What I keep coming back to is that in this video, there is a focus on the negative and the failure. "Why am I so awesome and good at what I do" is also a valid thought that leads to reflection on success. The first statement is a coping mechanism for failure, and in the second case we see it as a coping mechanism to success. You might of succeeded because you have the best stradgey for dealing with all the information, or maybe blind luck has sent you down a series of events that leads to your greatness. That's why we reflect on our greatness, to spend the time acknowledging where we came from, what helped us succeed, and how we might continue to gain what we want, as Peterson says. We can learn from our success, we learn our strengths. And we an reflect on how are strengths help us. I'm not ugly and some people find me attractive, which means people will treat me better then if my face was melted in an accident. I'm actually able to talk about wide variety of topics, which makes me some what charismatic. I'm mostly emotionally stable, which attracts people to me. These are all strengths, as opposed to the weaknesses brought to life by my failures. I tend to fail in planning, organization, and focus. I can get frustrated with the pace of things, which can cause me to react in a way that does not help me. Instead of talking things out with others, I can leap to assumptions and become grumpy and moody. I can snap at people over unimportant things when I feel stressed over things like money and job stability.</span></span></p><p><span><span>I like that there is an air of "you are the master of your own destiny" attitude of the video. I feel that reflection and analysis of your feelings is important. All learning comes from failure is an overstatement, however and that we can learn just as much from ourselves from our success and gaining what we want. Take the chance to reflect on the strengths as well as the weaknesses, and figure out how these things lead to your successes and failures.<br /></span></span></p>Irishredfoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15335590251655986013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999214541921619379.post-69833605448092345612020-10-18T16:14:00.001-07:002020-10-18T16:14:15.366-07:00Flaws and balance<p>Newton was a punk ass-bitch. In my mind, I like to start blog posts with something explosive and aggressive, and I woke up thinking that Tesla and Newton got it wrong. Nietzsche was wrong. A person can only depend on themselves if they are an ubermench, perhaps, but the problem is we are all humans. To be human is to be flawed.<br /></p><p> Anger, fear, frustration, lust too, desire and the rest are human emotions. We can force ourselves not to feel these things, but we miss out on an aspect of humanity, a dirty, disgusting side that is easier to hide away in the dark, away from our eyes. Never bring yourself to anger, lest you become something more. Fuck that. When you are angry, ask your self why. The anger did not make me break, destroy, and harm. A world of mixed messages, illusions, and powers beyond my understanding bombards me everyday, leaving me wondering how to act, or in times how to react. Emotions overtake us and lead our thinking when we don't ask why. In the narratives we like to tell, we fear anger because of the destruction. Anger is motivation, either a motivation to destroy or to propel us into action.</p><p>The grand of emotion of love have driven men mad, and brought the powerful Cleopatra down. Love is destructive, but we celebrate it, get caught up in it's excitement, and feel it's warmth travel through our body, protecting us like a blanket from a world that makes no sense. Anger makes the face hot, and causes speech to stutter. Love makes us blush and causes us to stammer on like a fool without a plan. "Love" didn't destroy Troy, just the base desires of sex, lust, and passion that are tied to it.</p><p>We all are human, and to be human is to feel anger rising from the deepest pits of ourselves. It is to feel surrounded by the warmth of feelings from those around us. We all have stood on the edge and seen the emptyness of it all, and have felt a sense of hopelessness. Feeling that we are less of a person for feeling something that is critical to the human experience is keeping something from ourselves. The wisdom of ancients points out that we cannot stop ourselves from eating, breathing, or drinking without serious physical problems, and ignoring why we feel the way we do leaves an empty, confused feeling. We feel emotion, but we don't look to the cause, and sometimes we make an ass out of u and me about where the feeling is coming from. <br /></p><p>Our reactions to the emotions we feel is what makes us self aware. We think, therefore we can choose our reaction. In the madness of the boil of this stew we find ourselves in, it's our only true choice. The choice can set us up for the next choice, but we have no control over the hand dealt to us.</p><p>To be human is to be weak. Achilles used to be a great warrior, until he took an arrow to the ankle. The stories of man falling to the temptation of the flesh is an ancient tale and as mentioned before, it took the great Cleopatra down too. The wild passions of teenage love exists as a cautionary tale in Shakespeare, and there has to be something in the old testament about someone shacking up with a hooker and loosing sight of what is truly important. To be self aware is to recognize our flaws and our failings, and not to fight them. They might be the motivation to create something more and powerful, or they will pass and are nothing to dwell on.</p><p>Issac Newton and Tesla were punks that didn't understand how to incorporate another person into their lives, and claimed they were stronger without a relationship. And Tesla fought to be recognized in his own time. Another person supplements us, giving us the strength in areas where we are weak. Another person brings empathy, patience, cleanliness, and calm. In a world where things change so quickly, where people and situations flash before us like the fevered nightmares of the dying, popping in and out of focus with no context, another person is lighthouse to focus on, clarity to bring us out of the darkness. A Penelope for Odysseus to work towards, and hopefully a ying to our yang.</p><p>If you are in my life, chances are good you pocess a skill I feel I lack. Am I a sociopath? People are my friends, and I feel empathy and hurt for them, but they are there in my life because they are better at something. In most working relationships, it's organization. Or empathy, or patience, or dance. People come from a world apart from me, so I can become confused when I see the similarities, but the differences compliment me. Does that make sense?<br /></p><p>Action question: How do you connect with others? In a working or romantic relationship, what are the skills that make up you, and you bring to a group.<br /></p>Irishredfoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15335590251655986013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999214541921619379.post-79415745376721556562020-10-17T16:55:00.002-07:002020-10-17T16:55:28.362-07:00So many notebooks!<p> Howdy void, how y'all doing?</p><p>If you're anything like w'all, then chances are you are selling stuff, moving house, moving job, or all three at once.</p><p>It's a good thing w'all learned to be better stoics and Buddhists during the quarantine. And learned to center our minds, clean our space and get motivated to start projects, because who knows what is going on anymore or how to react. </p><p>Anyways, found a ton of old journals. Stuff I've been keeping for the last 10 to 15 years.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img alt="Shampoo For Reference" border="0" data-original-height="1254" data-original-width="2508" height="160" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mtztW1xl9CE/X4t0VY4TL5I/AAAAAAAADNI/a78NTlTs16AXZ62GLw7H-7-fijvU3FZWgCLcBGAsYHQ/w320-h160/12_Years_Journal.jpg" title="10 to 15 years of journals" width="320" /></div><br />Some of y'all might be looking at this and thinking, "That seems small for maybe 15 years." Others may be thinking "Was this taken on a potato? Is that a drinking cup tipped over in the back? I get the shampoo, but the box? It's so cluttered, get your life together and just come back!"<p></p><p>Well, ok, that was a little much of y'all to say to me. Void, that stung a bit. This all the stuff that was, uh, worth keeping? Not shown is a small box full of receipts and bills to bank accounts no longer with us, and possibly a whole box of notes and doodles from high school. My life is clutter, and. So. Can. You.</p><p>I have ideas about things happening. They are mathematical, economical, and political coming from a place that is so logical. Let's talk about all the shit in notebooks I thought was important!</p><p>I have the loose notes left over from the last recession, the one where I spent the summer homeless in a tent. I'm excited to find that one, since I've always want to write about that experience. The magic, the wonderment, the confusion, the magic. I felt like god that summer, and it comes out all the time in those notes.</p><p>I got the piece of printer paper with a discussion on being frustrated about not knowing what to write scribbled in red sharpie. I might have the small short story about the guy who can only wake up in the morning after taking deep breaths from his herb bowl. Maybe I have that one. Or I lost that one and the one saying that I'm sick of waking up in the morning after drinking and having to apologize to everyone. BASICALLY, it was when I came back to my parents after living in the tent, and I was depressed and drunk and just whatever. You know, unhappy.</p><p>I have notebooks talking about being diagnosed with ADHD. One of the biggest changes in the notes is being diagnosed, then Hitchhiking New Zealand 5 months later. Got the New Zealand note books. I found several books to keep me going, one of which was Optiks by Issac Newton. And I spent time trying to work through a few of the examples in the book. Math becomes a huge deal in the note books later. Before, there's just me keeping lists, keeping track of money, and basic things. By the time I left my job in science, my notebooks have programming, research, and a bunch of combinatorics and calculus I can't remember anymore. Not really self taught, just found some smart patient people that wanted to explain this to me.</p><p>I have the notebook that has my first meeting with my Russian pal. 8 years later, and still chatting, and now I know some Russian, have been there twice, and have worked on so many projects together. Women keep showing up in these, but never "I'm working on things with her, things have ups and downs but we are excited!" No, I spent the decade beating my self up because nothing ever worked. Here's something funny: I met an old crush before leaving to NZ. I spent a massive part of the first month only talking about her. I was setting goals for myself, and wouldn't shut up about this, since I was hopping to make it work. Then I calm down and meet a french girl. Still have her note about places to visit in Southern France. I failed there, too, but then I stopped obsessing briefly and start to notice who else is out there. It's temporary, because the original move down to PA was fueled by this. Of course, I didn't tell her this. And it failed. And I spent another notebook bitching about this failure and how I'm always failing and blah blah blah. I was not prepared for that in these notes. I have all the fun things I remember, like "Eulogy for a Bong" then I read it and realize that I didn't know it's 60% me whining about a girl in high school. I fucking swear to god, I'm a highly intelligent 24 year old in foreign country whining about failures with women when I'm sexy just because I was foreign. </p><p>And then I give up! Ignore the fact that I'm sitting in a bar in Boston and this woman is making small talk with me about my job. No, because I'm not up to my standards in my head! So I give up, and just stop trying to date until I go learn Russian.</p><p>So this is going long, but like, who the hell did I want to be? I spend these journals writing about the fact I can't write, whining about beautiful women I meet not wanting to sleep with me because they usually lived in another part of the country, and then I compare it to some nostaligic memory. Then I find the notebook from the nostaglic point and it's like "I have $40! I found maybe $5 more in change! Here is list of the food I can buy! Don't have a car, riding my bike uphills both ways!" You know what a notebook is? A reality check. Because now I find myself longing for the days I worked at Lambert, but at the time I just wanted to get out. This blog has worked as a journal too. So I look forward to the day when I find myself thinking, "Yeah 2020 was hectic, but the memories!"<br /></p><p>There is such improvement though! Again, 2012 is me doing calculus along with Issac newton, 2017 is a ton of stuff I'm not sure how to follow. Fucking combinatorics. I start to come to terms with how ADHD affected me, which includes all the obbsesing over failures with women. Maybe another day I'll post a couple and talk about why my ADHD is doing it.</p><p>And where am I at now? Lost my job, but whatever. I know computers and networks and shit, and Vermont is pretty socialist with it's programs. I can get me an education and certificate. Lost my house, butt fuck it, I lived in a tent several times. One time I used a 5 gallon bucket as a shitter. It's temporary because I have 15 years of notebooks showing improvements. Even if I go through a big personal depression, which I've done twice now, it's temporary. And I come out the other side.</p><p>15 years of watching me working on myself. But hey next time w'all will talk about the roles others have in improving us. Here's an action question for y'all - do any of you know where you end and years of friends, teachers, parents, and mentors begin?<br /></p>Irishredfoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15335590251655986013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999214541921619379.post-74684212300561842492020-09-28T09:46:00.001-07:002020-09-28T10:31:59.730-07:00True choices<p> Buddhism has a feel like stoicism to me, feel in the jazz sense of the word. This feel comes from an acknowledgement that the only true choices we have is the choice of emotions and reactions. Marcus Aurelius spends a section of his Meditations gripping about going to the senate when he wants to be a philosopher or artist or whatever, but finally concludes that it's in his nature to go the senate, and other beings don't bitch and moan about their nature so why should he. It's a passage that I find myself thinking about a lot because of it's contrast to the idea of "self" in Buddhism. Today, though, I find myself thinking about it as a different perspective on a similar tool. To contrast perspective, in the Dhammapada we are introduced to the idea of self as a mirror and how the true self shines through.</p><p>So before we continue, I want you, the captive reader, to listen to me about the self. My American self sits on my ass to watch people more well known and more well off than me talk about humility in interviews with other famous people. In these interviews, it's common for people to wax philosophical about how nobody gets to know the real them, who they feel is the person they keep private for friends and family. In my reading of the Dhammapada, <u>this</u> idea of "the real me" doesn't exist, it's a reflection the people, situations, and expectations that surround us. Yes, you don't act the same with your work friends as you do with your drinking buddies, or as you do with your family. Is your work self your true self, or is the vulnerable version of you at 2 am lying next to your lover your true self? Your true self shines through in moments like these, but you are not hiding a face from the other, your reflecting the mood and the people. My buddies at the warehouse don't need to be impressed with my way of beautiful prose, because I'm not done fucking them and I'm not trying to sleep with all of them. There is a way I want to be seen by others, things I want to be known for. I want to be know as caring, helpful, hardworking, efficient, but not as a push over. Being known as these things is helpful to me throughout all my interactions and gets me the most money/tail/status/power. While I might be more gentle and caring with a lover than with a co-worker, I can choose to bring the better aspects of myself to these interactions, in different ways. To pull away the reflections and illusions in ourselves is to point an analytical eye inwards and acknowledge who we are to those around us. For me to go any deeper than than this would require a discussion on "the axioms of self", what are things that make up personality at a base level. For a TLDR; to know who we are, we must not only acknowledge ourselves, but also our interactions with other people.</p><p>In the sense of western philosophy, we love the self, and in the US we have built entire concepts around individualism. It is hard to truly give yourself to another person, but we continue to try, whether it's giving our soul to a partner or our body to Christ. We have built institutions in the USA based on the time honored tradition that god only helps those that helps themselves.We are more aware of the struggles of the individual, and tell stories of individual struggle against the wider world. The story of the businessman that worked his way up from nothing to have an empire. The man with a stable family life despite being from a poor broken home. The story of survival vs a world that only wishes to see us fail. The people who help us are friends, but the rest of the world pushes against us, keeping us from our true calling of success. The self is more isolated, a force against nature, a rock beaten by the waves of time and society. Or maybe this is just how it feels in the real America, a world of quiet nature that separates us from other people and allows us to reflect on this feeling.</p><p>Back to my man Marcus. I've focused on this concept of the self as it appears, but there is another interpretation of this. True choice only exists as our choice of emotions. The buddha, the story goes, was born to a life of luxury and status, but found emptiness inside. So he left his wife and child to spend years starving himself, denying himself pleasures of flesh, drinking only when important to live, but still found emptiness inside. There are things that make us animals (the need for sipping, sex, and sleep) there are things that make us human (anger, joy, pleasure and obsession) but these aren't "good" and "evil" things. We let anger consume us and eat us alive. We can do this by focusing on a thought and letting the feeling into our gut to make our stomach turn. Then we take that feeling and bring to all our interactions. "Having trouble at work now because I'm bringing personal baggage at home". Pleasure and the quest for pleasure has consumed many for many reasons, but the enjoyment of pleasure is a hit of dopamine in our physical brains, and exists in creatures that have access to dopamine. We can choose to acknowledge these, and not fight the feelings but instead try to acknowledge where they come from, and acknowledge the joy and hardship that these things bring us.. Mindfulness. It's mindfulness you guys. I'm only talking about mindfulness.</p><p>Marcus is really classical in how he writes, in that he speaks about cultural knowledge as if it's world truths. He turns his eye inwards through his cultural lens (and his class appropriation of a slaves philosophy). His meditations are something wonderful because he is using a tool of analytics , not his musings of how hard work and good teachers gave him the status he enjoyed. This analytics exists in the writings of western philosophers, but is not explored on the same level of buddhism. Rene Descartes exists because he thinks, but only takes small steps away from the culture, the situations, and things in the material world that influenced his thoughts.</p><p>Is Buddhism better than stocism? Buddhists and stoics are people, and their ideas areas wonderfully flawed as people. Both give their ideas wrapped in the cultural trappings (the sexism, classism, prejudice, and fear of change) of their environment, but both give us this tool of mindfulness though, a tool of self analysis that works to get past the masks, reflections and illusions created by this bullshit to see ourselves. A tool to see ourselves and our connections to others. With this tool, we can begin to see the person we bring to every interaction, and we can choose emphasis or change for these things.</p><p>Maybe someday soon, we can have a sit down and talk about Emma Goldman, violence, and the use of power. For now, let's just have a friendly smoke sess and talk about choices.<br /></p>Irishredfoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15335590251655986013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999214541921619379.post-55098639856206245082020-09-12T11:23:00.002-07:002020-09-12T11:23:37.633-07:0010 Mathematicians to help make learning FUN!<p>Hey parents! Are you having a hard time getting your kid interested in mathematics? Here's a list of interesting Mathematicians to keep your kid saying "Arthritic? More like Awesome-mitic!"<br /></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4V7aqv83vvA/X1z8k7CTlqI/AAAAAAAADFI/7RZ_pqhickcbWSSz0FishwnbvlU6uXePQCLcBGAsYHQ/s450/Gal-o-is.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"></a><br /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p> </p><ol style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4V7aqv83vvA/X1z8k7CTlqI/AAAAAAAADFI/7RZ_pqhickcbWSSz0FishwnbvlU6uXePQCLcBGAsYHQ/s450/Gal-o-is.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><li>Karl Marx - Whoa there, coming out the gate a little hot here, aren't we? Well, there's mathematics in everything and boy did he ever find them them in his analysis of the working class struggle, Das Kapital. Of course, some of his calculations were made using geometery, which was slowly falling out of fashion by that point. Make learning fun, exciting and alive while you learn about the class struggle and how war is finically inevitable!<br /></li><li>Sophia Kovalevskya -Did someone say Grrrrrl pwr!? Sophia didn't need no man in order to become the first female professor of mathematics in Euorpe, even if it was Russia. Married on paper to the 26 year old Vladimir Kovalevsky when she was 18, they never fucked until they were in their 30's. This allowed Sophia to leave Russia (at a time when women couldn't get a mathematical education and couldn't travel without a male family member to escort you) to get a mathematical education in another country. It also allowed Vladimir to translate the works of Darwin into Russian before Darwin even finished them!<br /></li><li>Galoe.<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4V7aqv83vvA/X1z8k7CTlqI/AAAAAAAADFI/7RZ_pqhickcbWSSz0FishwnbvlU6uXePQCLcBGAsYHQ/s450/Gal-o-is.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a> Gal-law? Gal-o-iss? How do you say <span class="js-about-item-abstr">Évariste Galois? </span>The dude everyone knows, and the one that reminds the world that we are in fact, crazy rockstars that live fast and die young. An old mathematician produces no work, so this punk went out on top in a gu<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4V7aqv83vvA/X1z8k7CTlqI/AAAAAAAADFI/7RZ_pqhickcbWSSz0FishwnbvlU6uXePQCLcBGAsYHQ/s450/Gal-o-is.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Misunderstood bad boy Galois" border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="330" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4V7aqv83vvA/X1z8k7CTlqI/AAAAAAAADFI/7RZ_pqhickcbWSSz0FishwnbvlU6uXePQCLcBGAsYHQ/w235-h320/Gal-o-is.png" width="235" /></a>nfight. He was looked down upon, because he was a son of a politician during the french revolutionary war. But Gal-law he was like, no I'm a mathematician, I don't want to politics, I want to math. Like the chivalrous, gentleman he was, he got into a pistol dual over the honor of a maiden which he tragically died from. Not until after he released his brilliant ideas into the world, which old people never got, just Jimi Hendricks "Electric Ladyland". Why hasn't there been a movie made about this gorgeous young white french dude, but instead mathematicians get Russell Crowe just getting older and fatter?</li><li> Godel. Simple. This one ryhmes with Yodel. He was Einstien's pal. Well, actually, Einstien looked up to him, because Einstien only proved relativity, but Godel proved that 1 + 1 = 2.</li><li>Stephen Smale - Good, finally an American in here. Stood on the steps of the Kremilin in the 60's and told both the Americans and Ruskies to fuck off!! USA! USA! USA! Also had a major breakthru in the field of topology which proved that Poincare conjecture is true in dimensions with more than 3 dimensions. </li><li><span class="module__title__link">Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi</span> - If you remember that he's not a Muslim mathematician, but a PERSIAN mathematician, then you can begin to understand why a man named Muhammad can invent algebra and get the word Algorithm named after him. While little is know about his life, his works have been kept and were the stepping stone from algebraic like thinking during the Egyptian, Sumerian, Greek, and Roman periods to algebra as tool for calculation. Mathematicians don't become legends and gods of the field because people remember the gossip of the day, they live on through the works they create. No one remembers or talks about how Euclid wrote the elements, people barely remember Euler outside of math circles, and Fermat is remember for dying and leaving behind an unsolvable puzzle that has since been solved. Death comes to us all, (Muslim, Christian, Buddhist) and time will make fools of any legacy we leave.<br /></li><li>Leonardo DaVinci - Conspiracy time, kids! Why does this man who hung out with scientists and mathematicians seem to have so much engineering thrown into his work? Who knows! Aliens, a group devoted to the child of Christ, maybe, IDK, fucking lizard people!? The fact that he illustrated a book on a divine proportion and seems really good getting precision and proportion right in his work shows how he was influenced by outside forces.<br /></li><li>Leonardo Fibonacci - It's the number. The important one. God's number. It shows up in everything, from plants to whole financial systems. It's phi, and even Euclid knew about, so it must be important. And Fibonacci mentions the series of numbers as a fun problem about rabbits to teach people how to use the new fangled "Arabic Numbers". That's what he wants you to think though! He was one in the line of people that keeps the secrets of the mathematics that holds together time and space, started by Pythagoras himself it has been passed on. Fibonacci was a failure and released that number as an innocent problem about rabbits. The rest has been kept secret.<br /></li><li>Lewis Carole - Yes, he was a mathematician. And a weirdo. Maybe a pedophile? Someone thought he was Jack the Ripper, too. Oh! And he wrote a famous drug trip that became a Disney film! The man famous for disappearing cats and world's that make no sense, actually was really obsessed about logic. Did a book on linear logic. Also did some mathematical work involving fair voting systems. But he also maybe hated "new" abstract mathematics, wanting to keep "real" numbers and geometry.<br /></li><li>Gregori Peleman - The youngest on our list, he proved the poincare conjecture in 3 diminsions. He also just wants to be left alone, and lives with his mother in St. Petersburg Russia where he publishes no math.<br /></li></ol>Irishredfoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15335590251655986013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999214541921619379.post-7740538995141595832020-09-09T10:24:00.001-07:002020-09-09T10:24:23.352-07:00Determinstic free will, now on the right blog<p> Deterministic free will is the idea that we have choices, but the
choices are limited. These choices can come from genetics,
socioeconomically standing or race. They can be a end point of a Markov
nightmare chain, where every decision is runway train of wrong. We can
look at our choices like a decision tree, where each answer brings us a
grouping of choices. It's an infinite tree with infinite choices, but
each local grouping of choices is finite.</p><p> </p><p> A person can be represented as a vector with a magnitude of time. We
start with V<sub>0</sub> equaling Birth and
V<sub>n+1</sub> equaling death, with n being the number of
events, or "choices" in a person's life. A person becomes a set of
events like marriage, celebrations, traffic accidents, and first
attempts at kinky sex stuff.</p><p>As we approach
V<sub>n+1</sub> and look backwards, each choice flows into
the other in a deterministic way. Things just lined up and happened to
fit that things just seemed meant to be. But we are aware that if we
weren't at the bus station that day the cute little sex addict showed
up, we might have never had the chance at a handy on the Philly to
Boston line. Do we have full free will, and each vector is a beautiful,
unique combinations of our choices that disappear when we die, or do we
live in fear of what a great decider chose for us, a life determined by
genetics, bad spawn points, and the all powerful effects of astrology?</p><p>A
choice in hindsight can appear deterministic due to it's recursive
nature. V<sub>1</sub> affects the chances of what
V<sub>2</sub> could be as well as the possibility of it's
success. Someone who decides that their studies aren't important in high
school might find the next event in life and it's choice limiting if
they want to go to college. It doesn't limit the chance of making a six
figure salary, but it sure as hell doesn't make it easier. While the
choice "Sell all of my possessions and live in the woods" always exists,
if the chooser has never taken a wild risk and feels uncomfortable for
long periods in the woods, it has a low chance of being chosen. They are
more likely to be using their skill set of "15 years of hiding my
stress in a deep place" and continuing to die inside until they are an
empty husk going through the motions until death.</p>It is a
logistical nightmare to sit here and try to run analysis on each
possibility that exists in the midgame of life. Like in chess, the
number reaches high enough that it might as well be considered infinite.
So, let's continue this idea and look at the question of free will
through chess.Irishredfoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15335590251655986013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999214541921619379.post-49501672760858085272017-07-08T17:04:00.001-07:002017-07-08T17:04:27.938-07:00A letter to the pastDear 18 year old Sam,<br />
<br />
This is a letter I've thought about writing for a while, and now I'm awake with at 1:30 am in a foreign country with some insomnia. It's as good as a time as any.<br />
<br />
What have I been up to since I saw you last? It's been a while, so there's a lot to say. Of course, you'll do it all of it as well, but it will be nice to give you a highlight real. Let you know what you have to look forward to, because if I remember correctly you're going through some rough times.<br />
<br />
Do you even think you're going through a rough patch? From some of your journal entries you wrote, it seems that you are having a tough time dealing with Steph. And more importantly to me, you're about 5 years away from being diagnosed with adult ADHD. As it turns out, these things are connected. In the next couple of years you might see that you're not the only person your age that is dealing with the end of relationship badly, but from what I remember, your case comes from a combination of not knowing what that relationship was and having a huge obsession with her. The latter is due to ADHD, apparently. It will make sense in 5 years, but for now all I can say is that you have trouble with hyperfocus, something where you can focus too much on something and it causes you to lose focus on some finer details. It's really hard for me to explain in a few short sentences, and you'll have a therapist that can do it so much better in 5 years. It's something to look forward to.<br />
<br />
On the one hand, I'm excited for you. In the next 5 years you'll gain most of you're wildest stories. You'll go to college for a year and half, you'll live in a tent for 3 months, and during these points you will see and do some crazy and wild things. Now, some of it comes from a place of being young and wild, some of it comes from not knowing better, but most of it will come from drugs. I'm writing to you and not my 20 year old self because you're still at a transitional place where you're trying to figure things out, if I'm remembering correctly right now in July you're probably still doing haying. So even in this year, you'll work at the chocolate factory for 2 weeks before getting fired, you'll work at the Pepsi plant for a few months before deciding to go to college because you don't like the Pepsi plant, shit will hit the fan with Steph a couple weeks after you turn 19, and then there's a whole crazy experience when you're 19. The 20 year old version of us is kind of a mess, I don't think he'll listen to me because he still thinks that he "just likes having fun" and it's not a problem. He's not happy with himself, between you and me.<br />
<br />
In 5 years, you're going to hit a huge new milestone. There's the therapy, like I mentioned before, but what is more important I feel is that for 3 year you were able to come up with a plan, set a goal, and stick with it and it pays off in a huge way. You get to go to New Zealand! That is a two month period jammed with a ton of new, exciting things to do. Hitchhiking, farming, seeing a new culture and at the same time seeing America through new eyes. Again, how does one begin to talk about 2 months worth of experience in just a few words? You'll see it. The bigger take away is a feeling of accomplishment. You've worked hard with a goal in mind for 3 years, the idea that you'll build 3 years of experience and that will give you the experience to go anywhere you want. And it was something you didn't think you would be able to do, because of the small failures and aforementioned drug problem. And this feeling is something you build on. You'll get a small research job for 5 years in the mushroom field and while there begin to try and learn Russian. Which brings me to now. I just skipped over a lot of things, like all the small success you had. You get to be on an album cover for a very small cd release, you get into a music video. At work there's a lot of small things that are great. You get an office, you get your name on a small research piece, you help build and design a brochure, you do get to help with some breeding and you pay off all your debt which gives you more freedom to do things. There's failure in that time too, like you get into an accident and lose your car which forces you to take on a lot of debt and struggle. You'll live in a low cost apartment in a rough neighborhood and deal with a rotating cast of roommates, some of who are cool but others that are batshit insane. It's the nature of the place.There's a lot of frustration in trying to get out and meet and date women, but really everyone finds it hard. In your case, it's money, the place you're living and still learning all of it. I think it evens itself out, the success and failure, or at least you finally gain the maturity to see it that way.<br />
<br />
I can sit here and talk about all the lessons learned like maturity, or responsibility, or what not, but a small truth is that I write this in an apartment in Moscow after 5 weeks of studying and to a degree partying. It's a part of being able to be free of responsibility for the first time in 5 years. I wouldn't out it in the same category as what we go through in our college years. There was a darker undertone to that that comes out more fully 21 to 23, where this is more of a celebration. For example, for the first time in 29 years, I haven't chewed on my fingers for 2 months. I've never seen my fingers look this smooth! And I'm writing to you because I want to put things in perspective. I want to start thinking about the goals I have over the next few years, how they line up with what I wanted in the past, and what I have to look forward to. I think the thing is, we are both looking forward and wondering what's next, but I get the added benefit of having 11 years of really cool adventures and experiences to look back on. You do have some fun things to think about from your time in school, but you want a life of adventure after the feeling of being in school. It's the reason why you've been planning a cross country trip in your mind for a while now. By the way that trip happens, but it doesn't happen the way you plan. That doesn't mean it's a failure though, but I don't think that's something we realize until much later. It's so easy to go into things with a certain expectation of how it will turn out, but it's what we take away from the whole experience is what ends up being important.<br />
<br />
Wow, that's a wall of text. To wrap things up a little: so when you're 22 you come with a 10 plan, and the end of that plan is to start your own business. The mushroom farm ended up being longer than I expected, but now I want to begin to move forward with it. I feel like I have the experience, and being in Moscow gives me some opportunity. Oh boy, and the next 3 years will be a rollercoaster. Here's something funny too. For the last few years, I set goals in my professional life, because it was easy to set and reach. I'm feeling like setting some goals in my love life is something I can actually do now. I remember you spent the last few years setting goals like "By next year I'll get girlfriend" or "I'm going to lose my virginity!" You, my friend, strike me as being a little unsure of yourself. So it goes. Everybody around is unsure of themselves, and it only gets slightly better in 11 years, honestly. Hot damn though, I need to come with those actual goals though. Next time I write, I'll send them your way.Irishredfoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15335590251655986013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999214541921619379.post-40323534436704549522017-06-30T08:17:00.001-07:002017-06-30T08:17:23.321-07:00Friday post on failureLife is for the living. It's cliché to say, but it still has some truth after all these years. After years of being told this by some party animal after 10 vodka shots, sometimes this and other sayings like it echo in my head but its lost it meaning. Right now to me it means to go out and fail.<br />
<br />
The hardest part of getting out and doing anything is the failure part. It feels so hard because there's always this idea that I've blown my chance, and it won't come around again. But then I wake up again the next morning.<br />
<br />
Failure is not a force that stop me, because failure does not stop the world from moving. As long as the sun rises, I will wake up and move on. There's enough in my way to stop me from failure, from lack of focus to procastination to a simple chaotic world that doesn't care. If anything, failure is a time to stop and reflect.<br />
<br />
The hardest part of failure is not having the answer to why it happened, and that answer isn't always there. Many times though it's not an obvious answer, at least not to me. From simply saying the wrong thing in a job interview, not knowing proper etiquette during a date, and sometimes just having a bad day. Or maybe I made a promise to post everyday, then fell behind.<br />
<br />
And depression just sucks the big one, doesn't it? It just becomes so easy to get sucked in and dragged down. Obsessing over the details, letting the anxiety take hold.<br />
<br />
I'm writing about this because I need the pick-me up. So often, I'll look at a task and think "Oh, this will be simple." And it never has been simple. Ever. If I wanted to lay back and just let life pass, then it would be simple. I guess in that instead, I would the type of person who blamed every problem on outside forces, feeling completely without control of my own life. Seeing how I make my own luck, I guess that's not the life for me.<br />
<br />
I am hard pressed to think of getting second chances. There has been at least one, funny enough. I remember taking an AP writing class years ago in high school. I needed the English, but had no desire to take an AP class. It was the only available, and I had the grades and GPA to do it. We were supposed to write 3 papers before the class start. Me being the procrastinator I am, I never wrote the first paper. So I bullshitted it, wrote the other papers on time, and told the teacher that since I was a late comer to the class, I didn't have the time to write the first one. It worked, and I got a second chance to write the paper. Fuck me running, there is something to say for tenacity, right?<br />
<br />
Ha, I just realized the last job I had was a second chance. This one was coming home after the first farm job I had completely imploded. I was looking for jobs, and I actually put an application in at Lambert Spawn. But I was deemed untrustworthy and unexperienced. 3 years later, I was passing through without a job again and was able to land the job for 5 years.<br />
<br />
<br />
In the first instance, I had enough of a smooth tounge to talk my way into it, I guess. I probably had some decent written papers and the teacher had a soft spot. In the second instance, I had to go away, get more experience, and come back to prove myself. So try, try, try try again.Irishredfoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15335590251655986013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999214541921619379.post-10627217944695433052017-06-29T12:29:00.001-07:002017-06-29T12:29:43.646-07:00Small postFinding the perfect work/life balance is the American dream, and even more of a dream if someone comes to you and diagnoses you with ADHD. I'm still getting used to it, and that's my excuse for why getting back to blogging everyday is taking some time getting used to. But here's the thing I'm finding here in Moscow: I'm not having a hard time finding the balance, just getting used to it is what is taking me some time.<br />
<br />
Over the past 5 years, I have been able to develop the habits to be organized. This organization came from work: Today I do this, tomorrow, that, and the next day. Today I'll break my work into these categories, this paper work goes in this folder, and so on. Being able to have a life beyond work was a struggle, and I'm honestly thinking that work was stressful because there was no life outside of work on a regular basis. Nothing beyond watching TV, at least. Going back further to school, my brain let do school or have a social life, but not both.<br />
<br />
Of course, having a work/life balance tips the other way when you don't have a job. There are still things that I can do to be productive though. Writing, programming, job hunting, and studying are all things that I can now find time to beyond just going out every night and drinking. At first, I could feel the divide still exist - My first full week, I focused on going out and seeing the city and getting dates. The productive parts feel to the side. My second full week, I was productive, but getting out stopped becoming a regular thing. I'm writing this now, because in my third full week I can say that I've been productive AND still have been able to get out. And it makes my brain feel elevated to know that.<br />
<br />
I don't have to be out feeling guilty that I didn't get all my responsibilities done for the day, and I don't feel cooped up and crazy after spending several hours inside working on various projects. I can bask in this peaceful feeling of knowing that things are done, and are in place. Maybe my brain is a OCD brain trapped in an ADHD body, it starts to stress when things aren't in the proper place but nothing can ever be in it's proper place because ADHD doesn't let it. Maybe disorder is chaos and chaos is the cause of insanity. Maybe old granny was right and cleanliness is next to godliness. Maybe I'll never try to approach in a scientific fashion and won't try to figure out if organization makes others feel at peace.<br />
<br />
Excitement over a peaceful feeling is a good excitement to have. Irishredfoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15335590251655986013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999214541921619379.post-71374360798954339892017-06-26T11:08:00.001-07:002017-06-26T11:08:11.870-07:00Excitement over learning RussianI have class today, so getting excited about studying a foreign language is the best idea in order to get me ready for the coming week.<br />
<br />
When I was traveling around New Zealand and talking to many people from different countries and reading every book I could get my hands on, I started to realize that while the world speaks English at this point, only speaking English cuts me off from a huge source of information. As I started to get further in the science world, I started to see that while scientists publish the work they want to share in English, that doesn't stop them from publishing their work in their own language. That was my reasoning for attempting to understanding a new language, in order to read more books.<br />
<br />
Now it's 5 years later, and the desire to push myself to new limits has kicked in. After trying to study Russian on my own for 5 years, I find myself in Russia studying the language. My first draft of this was digging online for resources to better master a language, comment on techniques and to come up with new strategies to master Russian. But that's not why I'm excited about learning a language. I'm pushing myself to those limits because I'm excited.<br />
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As an American, Russian and Soviet history seemed so new, foreign, and slightly edgy to a degree. I had friends studying it, but it's an interest that confused people older than me, and that's what's really important. Someday, I will be one of the oldest people, and who will I have to piss off and confuse then? As I dug deeper into the language, then I started finding it was hard to find Soviet books translated into English. I get that Russia is proud of Lolita, but not every book we read needs to be an intense artistic work. Sometimes I want to read a James Bond novel that just reads like some middle-age man trying to work out his mid-life crisis. A forty year old spy is a respected, dangerous cool guy who bangs 20 year olds in exotic locations. Just pure excitement and coolness.<br />
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Anyways, this is a reminder to myself why I'm here. Read books, and chase after exotic women. After all, isn't that what life is all about? Books and tail?Irishredfoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15335590251655986013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999214541921619379.post-14697552602390970182017-06-25T03:58:00.001-07:002017-06-25T03:58:24.278-07:00OMG, this is so fucking cool: Ancient engineering and Mayan countingThis week, I want to let the hyper-focus part of my ADHD run wild and each day write about something that is interesting to me. I don't know at the moment how this will turn out. I don't know if I'll write about something different every day, or write about the same topic each day this week, or even a combination of the two. It's just fells like it's been a few years since I've let this hyper-focus part of me go wild, and the blog posts I loved writing are the ones I could get super excited for.<br />
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I mentioned yesterday that I was made aware of a Mayan Culture lecture coming up near me in <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/862565897228240/?acontext=%7B%22ref%22%3A%222%22%2C%22ref_dashboard_filter%22%3A%22upcoming%22%2C%22action_history%22%3A%22[%7B%5C%22surface%5C%22%3A%5C%22dashboard%5C%22%2C%5C%22mechanism%5C%22%3A%5C%22main_list%5C%22%2C%5C%22extra_data%5C%22%3A[]%7D]%22%7D">Moscow</a>, and now when I start to think about it I want to talk about Mayans to anyone who will listen. Then I realized, I can just write it here! I get the possibility of an audience that might listen to me, and the sweet release of talking about something instead of leaving it bottled up inside.<br />
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Why do I find Mayan culture interesting? The very simple answer is that in the 6th grade, my teacher spent a month or so teaching us about the Mayans. Well, it wasn't as much as "teaching" as much as it was "having us watch 'The Second voyage of the Mimi' on VHS". Fun fact: that show stared a 14 or 15 year old Ben Affleck. And because I love you so much, here is an embed of the first episode on Youtube:<br />
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I currently have it on in the background while I work on this. Oh, pure old school PBS TV. I just don't even know how to describe it to people who never watched 80's PBS in person or reruns. It's too easy to pick on old shows though, and it did introduce me to a lot of interesting things. Like their engineering skills. They were able to build these super flat roads through the mountains. And they had pyramids. These engineering feats are something that become interesting me now after spending sometime learning about Egyptian and Sumerian engineering. Let me elaborate:<br />
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Egyptian architecture is the stuff of legends and is the topic of much discussion and conspiracy theories. Who built these ancient monoliths? A race of creatures from beyond the stars? It couldn't be that these structures stand as a monument to people wanting to push the limits of the world around them. Or it could, I guess. All those boring nerds called "archaeologists" have been taking the fun out of these things for years!<br />
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There is evidence of <a href="https://www.quora.com/Have-pyramids-been-found-from-Ancient-Egypt-that-were-caved-in-or-failed-or-wrong-in-some-way">trial and error of pyramid building</a> throughout the ages. The ability to build a pyramid didn't pop up over night, even if that idea sells books and TV shows to a mass audience. The construction of the pyramid of Giza is a wonder though, since they seem to display some understanding of math that was lost until the renaissance. Mainly the sides are slighty concave, said by a couple of people that they follow the curvature of the earth. Citation needed, since I'm finding some rumors of this this, but no actual good articles on it. This probably because of the knowledge we have of their math. . .<br />
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We do have some examples of Egyptian mathematics today! Sadly, they seem to be more basic problem sets aimed towards students. It does strike me as funny that homework has been around since the dawn of human history though. Thinking about Egyptian and Sumerian teenagers complain about homework brings a smile to my face. As much as I would love to talk about mathematics in these cultures, this is supposed to be about Mayans. I'll wrap this up by saying that while we have some mathematical texts from these cultures and, in the case of Mesopotamia, we have calculations, receipts, and such. But a study of the math of these cultures comes down to a study of the art and architecture.<br />
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<a href="http://l7.alamy.com/zooms/fdac2748d7fe49ef8e731651fecd65a6/mayan-calendar-cw1g2e.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="445" data-original-width="640" height="222" src="https://l7.alamy.com/zooms/fdac2748d7fe49ef8e731651fecd65a6/mayan-calendar-cw1g2e.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Bringing it back to the Mayans, we have the structures, art and architecture to see examples of their knowledge of math. That famous calendar is something fascinating to look at. There is the geometry involved, the number system, and the understanding they had of astronomy. Astronomy and finance seem to be <i>the </i>breeding ground for mathematics. Probably because knowing when to plant crops and how to trade capital is two keys towards having a great civilization.<br />
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<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Maya.svg/248px-Maya.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="286" data-original-width="248" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Maya.svg/248px-Maya.svg.png" /></a>The first part to understanding the architecture an the calendar is the counting system. The Mayan counting system has a special place in my heart because it was the system that helped me understand how counting systems work. All of us know how to count in base 10. Start at 0, count until 9, then at ten we add a new place. 1st grade math gives us the places - 10, 100, 1000, 100,000, 1,000,000 and so on. Add a new zero after 1 to get a new place. Some of us can count in binary, where 1 = 1, 10 =2, 100 = 4, 1000 = 8, 10000 = 16, and 100000 = 32. And some of us that can count in binary, can also understand hexadecimal. How do any of these work, and what do they have to do with the Mayan counting system? Well, in binary, or base 2, each new place has a value of 2^x, starting at the first place of 2^0. The first slot is the 1's place, and any number placed there can be multiplied by 1. Since we start counting at 0, and in base 2 we have only 2 numbers, we only have 2 numbers to put in the one's place - 0 or 1. 000001 = 1 * 1. The next number after 1 overflows into the next place, becoming 10. This next place is 2^1, or 2, and a number in that place can be multiplied by 2^1 to find it's value. 000010 is 1 * 2^1, or 2 and for 000011 we get (1 * 2^1) + (1 * 2^0) to get three. I'll skip over hexadecimal for the moment, and talk about the Mayans. They have a base 20 system, which is easier to grasp than a base 16 system. In the one's place we have 20^0, then 20^1, 20^2, 20^3, and so on. To those of us not interested in figuring this out ourselves, that's 1, 400, 8000, then 160000 and up and up and up. Of course, they used their own number system as well, since the Arabic numbers never made it there. They had a place holder for the number zero, which is very impressive given the time period, and it's what allowed them to do place notation for their numbers. That's really impressive, but might be something to talk about later because talking about how hard it is to try and do calculations with roman numerals is whole discussion in itself. As a take away from this: in 900 AD, the Mayans were using a number notation that wouldn't be used in Europe for another 600 years. With this system, they had ways of doing calculations beyond the algorithms of the Ancient Greeks. By which I mean that European mathematical texts were descriptions on how to use geometry in order to calculate things.<br />
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I'm stopping here, mainly because there's so much more to talk about and get excited about, but it's already long and dense. I want to get excited about the art and architecture of the civilization, and I want to spend a ton of time talking about the math of these people. If I don't stop myself now, then it will become a long rambling unfocused text. That's never good. So I'll put it out to anyone there to leave a comment about their thoughts, because there are a few things I didn't elaborate on, or didn't talk about, or maybe their's something you know that I don't. I would love to here your feed back.<br />
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Irishredfoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15335590251655986013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999214541921619379.post-12224947230128944412017-06-24T05:14:00.002-07:002017-06-24T05:14:56.471-07:00Week 3 end, Week 4 startWeek 3. Ok, well, I seem to have trapped myself into some negativity over the past couple of days. After going over my journal, notes, and things I've said to other people there is this frustration creeping in. The intial glamour has worn off a little, and I'm starting to feel frustrated at school, feeling like people don't want to see me, and the like. I have gotten out this week, and I have begun to accomplish things I can be proud of. Let's start with what I have done.<br />
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I got out mushroom hunting this week. The rain has finally begun to clear up a bit, the weather is warmer, and in it all I got to go explore the woods a bit. I didn't find much, but with this weather I was only expecting spring mushrooms. On top of that, I finally got to work on some math problems in a book I've had for 2 years now. It has some great stuff in it, and could be a great meetup. I've worked on the description and the idea I've wanted to do for the meetup for a couple of days now. It would work well as an online math group, I feel, because it's math, it's programming, and it is something that could be screen captured. And my Russian has kept improving. It's why I'm here. I knew it would be hard and I knew week three would be the week where I might get my programming done but the excitement of a new place would wear off. I would get programming done BECAUSE the excitement would wear off. Also, I have gotten word on a way to make a little money, which will be nice.<br />
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Today, I've trapped myself in the mind set of "getting the excitement back". That might not happen, not by force at least. Instead, it's time to look ahead at the week, and all the things I want to do, see and experience while I'm here. It's great, because I'm in a big city with lots to do and see and experience, it has a big nightlife, and if I want to be a different person, then doing so requires stepping outside of my comfort zone more.<br />
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Let's start with the knowns: tonight is a linux meetup. I'm nervous about this, because I'm wondering how much English I need to speak. In fact, where I am starting on week 4 is that my tendency to keep myself at home combined with a lack of confidence about speaking a new language has kept me from going some places. In an attempt to ease my concerns, I've sent a message to the co-organizer about what to expect. The excitement and the nervousness is the same thing, hopefully it's something I can enjoy. Cool. Feeling a little better.<br />
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There's an English language class I'm getting paid to go to. Nice thing about being an native English speaker here, there are a few events that incintives me to come with money or free food. What I'm hopping for is for this to help build steam in order to find more things. This is my dream, to be able to work in another country. So I've been trying to go out and see things, but again, having a huge language barrier stops me. This is why I want to improve my Russian.This is the reason I want to go into class on Monday and knock it out of the park.<br />
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Oh my god, have you ever had something coming up that you want to get really excited about, and all you want to do is talk to everyone about it? Mayan culture lecture. I learned about the mayan culture years ago when I was 11 or 12, and since then if I find something on them I go. I can't even begin to express everything I find interesting about them. I guess first the math. Learning about their counting system was huge step forward for me in my mathematic development. I guess because base 20 is easier to grasp then something like hexadecimal, the system was able to make various concepts about counting systems obvious to me. I remember learning that they new how to find pi, but they didn't have decimals. Now that I'm older and have seen a bit of Euclid's methods of calculations, along with other other classic geometry calculation systems, I'm begining to realize that these geometric proofs are in their art and architecture. Sort of like classic Islamic art and math. There's the fact they had an advanced knowledge of astronomy, and from everything left over there is proof that they were quite advanced in engineering. What I would love to know is more about their stories, and if anything else has been found on their math. They could build flat straight roads, so did they have algorithms and homework for students, like we've found in Sumeria? Oh my god I'm so excited for this and I want to talk about it to anyone who will listen.<br />
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I'm single in Moscow, and I'm interesting because of various things. This is the part where I plan on stepping out of my comfort zone. Usually when I go out, I go to places where there's mostly guys, things like tech meetings and math and science stuff. It's interesting, but everything here about trying new things and working towards being a person I want to be. Being single is a part that gets me, because yes, I am one of those people who don't know what I want. Well, sort of. For the last 5 years, I wanted money and to get myself out of the hole I was in, so I could begin to enjoy life again. Now that I'm in this situation, I'm working on doing the things I want to do again. I am rediscovering a passion for my interests outside of work, math and music. I want to get out and explore books, art, and the like. It's time to do stuff where I can meet other single people.<br />
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Have I've begun to pull myself out of the crap that I felt at work for the last few years? Yeah, it's slow going, but yes. Feeling trapped sucks, and depression happens. When the two combine, it becomes this whole mindset just focused on getting out of it. I did cool things while there, but it's just been the last few years at work that had me lethargic. The drive and the passion for life was gone. That's what I'm here for, to find that lust for life once again.Irishredfoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15335590251655986013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999214541921619379.post-71394579421949339112017-06-18T10:43:00.000-07:002017-06-24T03:58:05.290-07:00Week 2 reflectionsI've been in Moscow for 2 weeks now, and am starting on week 3. When I first starting planning this trip, I wondered how I would "act" when I'm able to be my own manager boss.<br />
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For context, I always felt that setting my own goals, metrics, and such at my own job was hard, and I was always distracted from various projects. I based this idea off of when my higher-ups left for a month and I was allowed to have more control over my own schedule. Being the scientific and analytical mind I am, during these points I would start journaling my schedule, pay attention to my actions, find patterns, and act on them.<br />
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When the higher-ups left, my first week was spent in a re-adjustment phase. I still spent a ton of time on youtube, I stuck close to the scheduled tasks, but I started to think about what I wanted to accomplish. Looking back on it, I wonder if I did start to try new things during things during this point. Here in Russia, without a job, the first week spent re-adjusting. There was a literal physical readjustment to deal with; in the first few days I had to get used to where things were, take stock of what I have now, and getting over jet-lag. Mentally there is a readjustment as well, as I was spending time being excited about my new surrondings, seeing the work I would be doing over the next few weeks, and what there is to offer, I still spent my time by myself sitting around watching videos. I did start trying new things though. It's more like a horse or an animal testing the boundaries of its living space, but it's an attempt to see what is around. Things like trying to blog again, or testing the dating scene, or trying to leave the house. During this time period, I begin to think about WHAT I want out of the experience.<br />
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When people were gone for 2 weeks, at this point I began to see myself put more time into my own projects. In the past, this was things that were already my responsibility but became neglected. Neglected for various reason, due to "feeling busy" or "being busy" or simply being distracted and ruining the "work flow". When allowed to work on my own projects, go figure I did them in the space of a few days. This begins to lead into the next week, because the analytical part of my brain began to examine the projects and figure out how to make them more efficient. Translated to now in Russia, this becomes learning the goals of class, and obsessing over my thoughts on dates.<br />
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Now I'm starting on week 3, and I've a week to adjust and a week to test my boundaries. The natural thing to do at this point is to look at what I have accomplished, what I want to accomplish, and how to organize myself for 'longer' term success.<br />
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What have I accomplished? Well, I'm not broke. Cooking has become easier here because I know where to go to buy food and what to buy. I already have some tools for cooking, mostly just storage bags. Being able to keep leftovers is cheaper than buying food every fucking night, right? I'm actually finding myself working on my hobbies this week, I found some time to do Math, do some programming, and do some graphic design. Now, the results aren't much to brag about: I spent a couple hours on each but didn't get to a point of feeling completed. In the case of the graphic design, I deleted the file. In the case of the math and programming, I can continue to work on what I have. I went on dates. This is special to a workaholic nerd with trust issues. I started working on the initial steps of building a new resume.<br />
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Let's build off of this by beginning to plan the week out. Overall, what do I want out my experience here, and what are my personal longterm goals? Knowing these now will help me communicate to others. Of course, I'm here to learn Russian. At the moment, my original plan of getting an official certification from the Government has been sidetracked due to the testing center being closed until September. There is another testing institute however, and I need to contact them to see if they are open and able to take people. I want to keep the financial independence I have at the moment. No major bills beyond rent and groceries since last year, but without a source of income I'll be broke. So, it's time to move forward on finding income. Dating wise, I seem to have the pick here for the first time in my life. So let's fall in love and have fun. By just dating I can figure out what I want. The thing is, I still need to find my own identity here and my own activities.<br />
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Well, this a start to the week, at least. I guess next I need to start setting goals.Irishredfoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15335590251655986013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999214541921619379.post-41569862257711215842017-06-11T10:15:00.004-07:002017-06-11T10:15:46.674-07:00Grocrey shopping on budget and in another language.Well, I was going to write something about financial organization and meal prep, but I was struggling with it and realized that instead writing advice for others it would be easier to organize my own thoughts and post that instead.<br />
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Part of this comes from a revelation of the struggles I'm having within the first few days of adapting to a new environment. Learning where to shop, what to buy, and what items are worth my money is something I should be reflecting on. Not having tools to make cooking more convenient and less wasteful. In that case, not knowing the words of said products (I spent a good 30 minutes trying to figure out the Russian word for <i>Plastic Wrap</i> yesterday. Of course I just gave up and tried to find it at the store. Bought a strange form of ziploc bags instead.) Budgeting is always important, but being in a place for a few years it's natural to learn the place to get the best deals. In a new city that speaks a different language however? It's time to reflect and optimize the life lessons learned.<br />
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Luckily, certain types of food look the same no matter what.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Roast_chicken.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="368" data-original-width="480" height="245" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Roast_chicken.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chicken picture from <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Roast_chicken.jpg">Wikipedia</a></td></tr>
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For example, that's a chicken. Thankfully, if your in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere Mongolia, that is still a chicken. The way it's served might be different, but that is a chicken. It might have a Mogolian name, but we all know that it will taste like chicken. The first step to surviving is learning what the natives call food, then. In the US, this was a simple as learning to ask for a "hoagie" instead of "grinder" when relocating from Vermont to Pennsylvania. Ask for a grinder either got me a toasted hoagie at best, and blank stares at worst. In Russia, it's learning to call chicken Курятина. Kur-yeah-tina, perhaps? Whatever, it took me three years to pronounce <i>Lancaster</i> like someone from Pennsylvania.<br />
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The next thing that I have to keep in mind is how to take basic steps to budget. As much as cards are awesome and convient and everyone and their mother uses them, cash is better for budgeting. As my mom used to say, you can't spend money that's not in your pocket, and when cash runs out, then I am no longer able to spend money.<br />
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My challenge this week is to build a grocery list with some Russian words, and set a simple spending limit for it. Short, sweet, and hopefully efficient. From there I can begin to decide what can made and how long it lasts me for. Any other shopping tips out there? Irishredfoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15335590251655986013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999214541921619379.post-45288394260850301292017-06-07T13:29:00.000-07:002017-06-07T13:36:31.649-07:00New Chapter in lifeI decided to start a new journey based on the crazy wild idea of "Quit my job to study Russian in Russia." Well, the "quit my job" part had to happen because I couldn't take a sabbatical or at least get 6 weeks off.<br />
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Man, getting back into the concept of this blogging thing is hard. Of course, I've never stopped writing for the past few years, just nothing seemed to be worth more than a journal entry. Of course, I've read other's blogs, and they seem like journal entries so how hard can it be. Starting now, for the next few weeks the only things that can distract me are my thoughts. This isn't Pulitzer prize winning stuff, mostly just a return to filling up this website with something for the time being. It's also an attempt to tell myself that I do know how to organize myself and my thoughts.<br />
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That right there. This is the thing that bothers me sometimes,<i> am I organized but distractions at work keep me from realizing my potential</i>, or <i>am I still just struggling with this concept of organization because I have ADHD and am genetically flawed?</i> The evidence to the first is that this was similar to a worry I had about finances and money years ago when I was dealing with a mountain of bills. In that case I worried that I knew nothing of keeping my finances straight and that I was just another spoiled millennial that mooched off an older generation of dedicated go-getters. To put my mind at ease, I read every book and article I could get my hands on, and it dawned on me that my parents had taught me all the basics of finances. The problem became apparent that even though I knew how to make a budget, and save, and make a grocery list, and do all the things covered in the literature, the problem was that I didn't make enough of an income in order to afford rent, a prepaid phone, food and bills. Once I got the income straightened out, I soon had enough saved in order to quit my job and go to school to Russia. To anyone wanting to mimic this success, it's easy: Don't date, don't leave the house, and only eat homemade bread, pancakes and rice for three years. It's simple!<br />
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Also in my favor, when my manager would leave for a month to help with the overseas business, I kept track of how productive I was with her and without her. I felt I was more productive, but now I have a slighty different hypothesis, and here is my reasoning. What the difference between setting my own goals and having someone set them for me, is that by setting my own goals, I also create my own metrics to gauge myself on how well I'm doing. Recently I've read "Is it You, Me, or ADHD" by Gina Pera which inspired me to read more about organization in ADHD in general. In her book, she spends a lot of time explaining how ADHD craves stimulation because the ADHD brain lacks the same pathways as "normal brains". And this craving leads to many classic ADHD behaviors, like impulsiveness, tendency to argue, and the drug abuse that tends to affect adults with ADHD. In a few of these cases, there's a chemical release that's happening, from testosterone to dopamine to adrenaline. What I'm getting at is that there are suggestions out there for getting a dopamine fix other than an 8-ball of coke. Making a list and crossing things off it gives a small fix. And looking at that completed list later is a small hit. And all these small hits make up a nice self-esteem boost when you've quit your job to live as writer in Jamaica after saving up the capital to do it. I've gone off track, but my point is that maybe I was just as productive working for other people rather than managing myself, but managing myself felt better because I was able to keep track of how well I was doing.<br />
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Look at this! I start writing and I just keep going! Nobody calling every few minutes about needless things. Before I go, I do want to think about goals I have this week, or at least the ones I can write here. I want to keep up on writing here, even if it's just small things about how my attempts at organization are going. I want to get some art worked on and I want to have some math stuff worked out. Maybe a paetreon for set up? Maybe that's further down the line. I need to think about the goals I have for this Russian course. And I addicted to setting goals for myself. I am a very goal orientated person because goals are my drug! Better for me in longrun compared to acid, at least. Any thoughts out there about organization or self esteem?Irishredfoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15335590251655986013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999214541921619379.post-14161824223482935972016-06-09T05:58:00.001-07:002016-06-09T05:58:39.439-07:00Summer Math in Philly<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-M2P_6setlXg/V1lI6YLLHUI/AAAAAAAAAns/pUy2nnk3Odc1XK3nv8zc6tAplgdlznKIACLcB/s1600/poster3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-M2P_6setlXg/V1lI6YLLHUI/AAAAAAAAAns/pUy2nnk3Odc1XK3nv8zc6tAplgdlznKIACLcB/s320/poster3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
I've been working as a scientest and working on this math phase I've been in, but I figured this would be the first place to show off what's going on in the summer in the Philly Math Counts Meetup. I made a poster, and I'll post what CJ Fernley, organizer of Philly Math Counts, wrote:<br />
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<span id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1465476872559_2160" style="font-family: verdana,arial,sans-serif;">"We
are excited about our next several meetups. One will explore the
culture of mathematics, one will explore the history of statistics, and
several will get into the nitty gritty practice of doing real
mathematics (number theory to be specific). All should be fun! But each
will require some preparation on your part. So we wanted to let you know
what's involved early so you can schedule time to read a paper and a
book and work on some challenging problems.</span></div>
<span id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1465476872559_2160" style="font-family: verdana,arial,sans-serif;">
<div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1465476872559_2205">
Note we open RSVPs for our
events three weeks ahead. So you cannot yet RSVP for most of these
events. We prepare the event descriptions early so you can plan your
time to prepare for the topics you are interested in.</div>
<div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1465476872559_2204">
I wanted to highlight three events in order of more to less preparatory work needed. Check our web page <a href="http://www.meetup.com/MathCounts/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.meetup.com/MathCounts/</a> for a chronological listing of forthcoming topics.</div>
<div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1465476872559_2159">
First, we have a book topic for Saturday July 9th. The book is <em><strong>The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century</strong></em>
by David Salsburg. Is it a well written account of the history of
modern statistics. But at 352 pages, it will take some time to get
through. The book has no formulas, so it will be easy reading compared
with most math books. Look for it at a library or bookstore now so you
have time to finish reading it by July 9th. There is a lot of good
mathematics in the book but it is told from a high-level point of view.
Sam is planning to supplement it by exploring a few formulas and
techniques in more depth to help satisfy our itch for mathematical
details. The main thrust of the event will be a discussion of the
history of modern statistics.</div>
For the full event description on Statistics and The Lady Tasting Tea, please visit <a href="http://www.meetup.com/MathCounts/events/231456913/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.meetup.com/MathCounts/events/231456913/</a><br />
Second, there will be a three part series on Chapter 4 "Induction in
the Theory of Numbers" in George Pólya's 1954 book "Mathematics and
Plausible Reasoning: Induction and Analogy in Mathematics". That book is
free to read on-line. This short chapter (only 15 pages) is filled with
formulas and variables and tables to explore its example problems. We
have split the text and the 26 example problems into three events so
that you will have some time to invest in really delving into each
problem. The brilliance of this book is how Pólya helps us practice the
doing of mathematics with challenging problems that though elementary
(nothing more difficult than raising an integer to a power of two) are
by no means easy. It is expected that even the sharpest participants
will need to work for several hours on the problems over several days of
concerted effort to fully solve all of them.<br />
But you don't need to solve any of them to participate! All we ask is
that you spend an hour or two on each. Then come join us and we'll
crowdsource filling in the gaps and helping to make sure everyone
understands the material. Collaborative mathematics: it's a great way to
practice, learn, and discuss mathematics. It's what we do!<br />
Here are the three event descriptions on Pólya & Number Theory:<br />
<ul id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1465476872559_2277">
<li id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1465476872559_2276">July 23: <a href="http://www.meetup.com/MathCounts/events/231574897/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.meetup.com/MathCounts/events/231574897/</a></li>
</ul>
<ul id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1465476872559_2279">
<li id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1465476872559_2278">August 27: <a href="http://www.meetup.com/MathCounts/events/231554131/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.meetup.com/MathCounts/events/231554131/</a></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>September 24: <a href="http://www.meetup.com/MathCounts/events/231554138/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.meetup.com/MathCounts/events/231554138/</a></li>
</ul>
<div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1465476872559_2280">
Finally, our next event
will discuss an exquisite and very readable 17 page paper by William P.
Thurston: "On Proof and Progress in Mathematics". Thurston's famous
"geometrization conjecture" (no, I don't know what that means either)
led to the solving of the Poincaré conjecture, one of the $1,000,000
math problems. His paper provides a high class response to criticism of
his geometrization conjecture wherein he examines the nature of the
mathematical enterprise, explores the nature of mathematics itself,
outlines some of the key tools and skills of mathematical thinking,
looks at the motivation to do mathematics, and critiques the nature of
proof and mathematical communication. The paper is extraordinary and I
look forward to discussing it with you on June 25th.</div>
<div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1465476872559_2284">
See the full event description on Thurston's paper: <a href="http://www.meetup.com/MathCounts/events/231394480/" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1465476872559_2374" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.meetup.com/MathCounts/events/231394480/"</a></div>
</span>Irishredfoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15335590251655986013noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999214541921619379.post-43350989240032952232016-02-12T15:27:00.001-08:002016-02-12T15:27:59.255-08:00Organization and thoughts on ADHDI have some thoughts on how to organize life. I need something light hearted and friendly because recently it seems the only thing that motivates me to punch out a post is when I'm feeling politically motivated, and honestly that's how I feel now. This should keep my mind occupied and maybe give me some time to prep a well thought out post about radical education.<br />
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Organization. ADHD and organization is a constant struggle for me. First, organization was never a concept that came naturally to me and at 28 I'm still learning basic skills others learned during adolescence. Second, the existence of ADHD is still debated by non-physicians, so I've spent my life dealing with people who think I'm rude, lack discipline, and just never learned how to organize myself. Because in 28 years of life, they are first people to ever come to that conclusion about me. Oh, the memories.<br />
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I don't hate it, I just think of it as more of a misunderstood super power. Have a wide arrange of interests is one of my symptoms, I just lacked the control and organization to use this to my advantage. In the four years since my diagnosis, I've picked up tricks to handle it. The most basic of these is feeding your self and keeping yourself hydrated, problems that cause a lack of focus in people without ADHD. Meditation and the ability to turn the eye inward to solve problems is beautiful. I'm still bad at telling people what I'm thinking, but that's because I can't write to everyone. Writing is a wonderful medium because it forces me to stop and think about what I want to say. Even one of my poorly written texts or posts take some sort of thought and organization. At the end of a post, I can read and edit points that are unclear, something I can't do when verbally communicating with people. It's not my fault people choose inefficient means of communication.<br />
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What I want to talk about today is something that I feel most people struggle with. Lists and organization. Since becoming a researcher that also helps with a math group, I have found the beauty of keeping records. It's better than sex, really, because why else would mathematicians choose numbers over sex? Filling excel sheets with data is a daily task at work. When I first started, it wasn't my favorite job. My favorite job was analyzing the data. I discovered the connections between the two tasks pretty quickly.<br />
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To all the writers out there who spend their time reading regular books and not every book about statistics they can get their hands on, I'm going to let you in on a secret. Data tells stories. Let's take something simple, like a ledger for budget. That little book of numbers contains a journal written in a foreign language. Maybe it says "For 6 months I saved for the Bahamas. It must have been something, looking at all the purchases I made when I got there." There could be a story in their about a loved one's sickness. Or maybe it's just a reflection on the monotonous routine of everyday life.<br />
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It turns out storing data in other ways tells stories. I keep a calorie chart, but not as often as I should. Looking back on it however, I can tell time of depression or when I was low on funds because I stop eating good food from the grocery store and spend more money on take out and pizza. Today I went back through my journal to discover that last year around this time, everyone in my life was on edge due to cabin fever. Just like this year. It has confirmed my thoughts that February is in fact the worst month, and valentines day started as a reminder to not kill each other.<br />
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Which brings me to my point. I cannot tell you how many times I have started to-do lists over the years. I tried it in school, but it never caught on. I try it every three months or so at this job. It usually falls through. I've finally decided to stop using to-do lists and start using a time card setup instead.<br />
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As I mentioned earlier, I have a thousand interests, and I'm probably working on at least two of them at any given point in time (one in the real world and a second in my head.) Picking one task to do in a day is impossible, but keeping track of all my tasks is hard as hell and I usually end up feeling depressed because I'm not working on everything I could. The time Card set up just requires I write down what task I did, when I started and when I finished. At the end of the week I move all the info to a handy color coded table, then I can look at everything I accomplished and decide what and how to change over the next week. The beauty is I stop thinking about what I could be doing, and I focus on what I doing and what I have accomplished.<br />
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The system is large at this point, but I'm interested in hearing how others might organize their time.Irishredfoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15335590251655986013noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999214541921619379.post-9448220841589174312016-01-07T09:33:00.000-08:002016-01-07T09:33:22.726-08:00NSFW: A guide to social and political discorseWe live in a new era of great political and social unrest. The political discussion of today takes place with new technology and new techniques, ideas can be spread quickly through the use of memes and by passing articles around on social media that explain in simple, condescending terms how we as a society should think and act. The issue is, this environment may seem hostile to anyone just entering the world. What I'm offering is a simple guide to political and social discourse to help ease entry. Now to any of those thinking I lack qualifications due to me being a white male, let me assure you that I have attended many sociology classes, read many blogs, seen many memes and meditated quite hard on the lessons taught to me. Also please understand that I have no real dog in this fight, and that I would never result to controversial, simplified political matter in order to drive up views to my blog. I have always felt that knowledge is a tool and a powerful one that should be shared. So let me impart the wisdom of my meditation onto you.<br />
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It's unenlightened, dark age thinking to say "Those dumb rednecks don't understand that niggers, spics, and savages are less than us, and it is manifest density to pull them out of the squalor of their existence." "Some stupid republicans don't realize that African Americans and other minorities live an impoverished lifestyle because they lack white privilege" is how the new age modern man thinks and speaks.<br />
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Women are not "the lesser, fairer sex overcome by emotion, unable to think for themselves and unable to protect themselves." Society does however have to "pass laws to protect them from men who will harm them, as well as to protect themselves from the consequences of their actions they make in an altered state of mind." Confidence and assertiveness comes from body positivity and acceptance of self, not from knowing martial arts and how to defend oneself mentally and physically if ever confronted with physical violence. Society is as fault, not the individual. Except when the individual is at fault, but that's up to you to decide, or when I write an article attacking an individual. Whichever.<br />
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The right to higher schooling for everyone is more important than the right to good, available schooling. And it is more important than the right for good jobs to people with good skills.<br />
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Good schooling is needed for good jobs for good wages, while the affordable transportation for people to get to entry level jobs to learn skills needed for better jobs can wait. Good schooling is also needed for minorities, because better jobs and good opportunities come from college. College, by the way, is a place where anyone should be allowed to go to. This is because there are jobs that are hidden in every small town across America and on the back of every college diploma is map to show people where they are as well as a password to get in. Also, every college grad gets a car to drive themselves there.<br />
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Immigrants are not all criminals coming to steal work from hard working Americans. They are people coming from crime ridden, poor countries that don't have the same opportunities as the US, and are doing the work that lazy Americans won't do. They should be grateful that we are letting them come to the US and clean our houses for less than minimum wage. Lazy Americans don't understand that living in a house under the poverty line full of other family and people is a privilege that makes us greater than other nations. Sorry, not all Americans are lazy. Impoverished minorities without access to good jobs shouldn't do the work that immigrants do like house cleaning and farm work. They're not lazy like the white guys who won't do it, they dealt with years of slavery which exempts them from that work.<br />
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I'm sorry, I'm not being fair at all. Business owners are forced to hire people for less than minimum wage because unions are corrupt and have driven up production costs. Unions need to be a thing of the past because business owners that exploit workers are a relic of the Industrial revolution. Corruption in local and state governments is also a relic of hat bygone era, and money for failing schools and crumbling infrastructure need to come from higher taxes. How would you even begin to audit the state and local government?<br />
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There, a primer for anyone wishing to enter the political discussion of today. For anyone wishing to enter activism, please realize that voting is important, and more young people should be involved. Democracy is and always has been about voting. The big changes of the world came from large groups of people voting, not from large groups of people gathering to voice discontent with a system that may or may not marginalize or change their votes. Any organizing group of people are violent, stupid, scared, and have yet to realize that the current system is perfect for showing discontent. You may organize, just remember that your group is either old fat white men, young entitled people who don't understand the world, thugs, or uneducated rednecks. Any organized group of today doesn't understand the struggles of the past or understand their privileges of today.<br />
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Frank Zappa, play me out.<br />
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<br />Irishredfoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15335590251655986013noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999214541921619379.post-31225600834292908752015-11-16T19:30:00.000-08:002015-11-16T19:30:20.177-08:00A small post to loosen my brain and strengthen the nervesIn December, Puzzle and Game night will deal with the idea of facing anxiety. The motivation for the event will be the concept of an entirety spent alone and never trying to attempt to reach dreams. Is this world real or just illusion perpetrated by others? One will never know until they leave the walls that confine them and venture outside of their comfort zone.<br />
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I like to say we make our own success. What I need to say is that the only failure is being too scared to try. This job is taking my spirit. The people around me convince me that the only life worth living is a life of money and security because being poor sucks. I guess it is, but the fear of staying still and never trying is worse.<br />
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Have you ever had to write something, but your brain is clogged with other thoughts? I mean, god damn, this isn't even writer's block, this is staring at a piece of paper and wanting to write something different than what I'm supposed to. Best way I found to deal with the situation is to write the annoying thoughts, get them out of the way, then focus on the real work. This helps lube the brain and gets the fingers lose.<br />
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God, this works every time. Who needs alcohol when this boosts the confidence just as well? Irishredfoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15335590251655986013noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999214541921619379.post-16735608317189628222015-11-05T06:10:00.001-08:002015-11-05T06:10:02.409-08:009 Books that every dumb person who wishes to be smart should readI really like reading, but I hate book lists. There is a good audience for this, I think. Do you all ever read these damn things and get the feeling the author stopped reading after high school? Like, they got a reading list with Great Gatsby, Slaughterhouse 5, and the Grapes of Wrath then decided that literature both begins and ends with those books.<br />
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I haven't read much Fitzgerald, but I used to love Vonnegut. That never would have happened if I just read Slaughterhouse 5. Vonnegut was what was right with Sci-Fi from the 50's and 60's in that he used sci-fi concepts to explore human nature. Sure, <i>Slaughterhouse 5</i> sticks with it and has aliens and time travel while dealing with the horrors and futility of war, but every time I see that book on a list instead of something like <i>God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater</i> or <i>Sirens of Titan</i>, my soul cries a little. What makes some of his earlier work so memorable in my mind is his wit. His way with words made for some funny scenes while picking apart the world around him. That just doesn't come to my mind when I think <i>Slaughterhouse 5</i>. <i>Slaughterhouse </i>brings out my pretentious side at parties, the hipster part of me that talks about the fire bombing of Dresden and how important that book was in exposing the hypocrisy of people who think that there is just war. You know what though? <i>Rosewater</i> mentions Dresden. <i>Cat's Cradle</i> is a great allegory about the Bomb. To this day though, I think the best introduction to Vonnegut is <i>Welcome to the Monkey house. </i>I may not suggest it to people as much because it's a collection of short stories, but it covers a wide array of his work, so you get exposed to his early style as well as some of his post <i>Slaughterhouse</i> style. You should read Vonnegut, stop suggesting <i>Slaughterhouse 5</i> because your high school English teacher liked it so much.<br />
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John Steinbeck is the same message, just a little harder because every English teacher loves him and all of his work is on every reading list. It's just between <i>Grapes of Wrath</i> and <i>Slaughterhouse 5</i>, it seems these people making lists not only want me to think that they are well read, but they TOTALLY know about history and junk too. God, people who write on the Internet are just so deep and mysterious and I bet they're just like a calm, dark river with a strong undertow.<br />
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I was going to write about Steinbeck, but it would just sound like Vonnegut above. You should read <i>Tortilla Flats</i> though. It would describe the Millennials if you replace 'wine' with 'marijuana'. Or read <i>The Pearl </i>because Steinbeck's best trick is writing an ending that makes you question your life and want to hide in a dark corner and hug your dog. No, instead let us talk books that are fun stories and also about history. Let's talk about <i>All Creatures Great and Small. </i>What a good mix of stories. Funny, heartwarming, depressing, and the whole time talks about life as a veterinarian in a small village in England in the 30's. Usually when I talk books with my dad, <i>Harry Potter</i> and this series comes up. We both have different tastes, I like deep heavy works where you have stop every 5 pages to think, or works of fiction with a deeper meaning behind them. He likes historical books about World War 2 and young adult fantasy and Sci-Fi. <i>All Creatures </i>and the other books in this series has something for everyone and does it well. Seriously, it doesn't challenge the ideas of how a story should be told like Joyce or <i>Grapes of Wrath, </i>but at least one or two of these stories will stick with you years later. Like James Herriot, the author, delivering a foal whilst intoxicated. Or him rescuing a dog that had been abandoned and had gang green along it's hind legs. Maybe try showing your sensitive side off when you talk books.<br />
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You know, the more I work on this list, and the more I think about other lists, the more I just don't like some other lists. So reading isn't something you should do to unwind after a hard day at work, no that's the job of TV. There is only one reason to read and make lists of books that others should read and that is to prove that you are just a much better person. I need books on here that show that I understand what the world is going through right now. Books that show an un-American perspective on current events. Especially in the middle East, because Americans are so stupid they can't even find the middle East on a globe. Something that shows the proud culture of these misunderstood people. Well, I don't have anything like that. But have you read <i>The Koran</i>, <i>The Bible</i>, or <i>The Epic of Gilgamesh</i>? Those books really mesh, and they give the illusion that you once took a class in theology.<br />
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No, I want to talk about Ayn Rand. Her ideas found a resurgence in pop culture a few year back, and I have to wonder if many of you out there read any of her books. Not all of her work, mind you, it's just I have met plenty of people who have opinions on Ayn Rand but not as many who have read her work. Personally, I think you should read <i>The Fountainhead</i> because it's not as long as <i>Atlas Shrugged</i> and it's also the only book I've read by her. The reason why is that I've read plenty of things about Objectivism, so I'm frightened that her other books will destroy my thoughts on <i>Fountainhead</i>.<br />
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I think objectivists miss the point. They really seem more like hardcore capitalists who believe that hard work leads to success, and success means having more money than God. Sure, in the end Howard Roark gets the girl, makes the money and gives a speech, but what has stuck with me isn't that he worked hard, he worked hard at something he's passionate about. Characters fail in the novel because they are either sooth sayers or they do what other people think they should do. Honestly, over the next few months I will probably spend a bit of time talking about radical ideas, socialism, and anarchy because that's the type of stuff I've been reading, besides all the books about mathematics. So if you end up getting fed up with all my hippy bullshit, come back to this and realize that I think well read people should read this book, if not something by Ayn Rand.<br />
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Speaking of hippy bullshit, I rediscovered <i>Deschooling Society </i>by Ivan Illich. He was not a hippy, but you should read this book because I want to talk about it, but it is so very hard to talk about. Long story short, education is the greatest thing that happens to men, but we are always learning and school is an institution that is what is wrong with society. He argues that we need to not just get rid of school, but change our outlook on education. School is not something that allows the poor to rise out of their existence, because the poor don't have the same resources to get a good education out of school. Education should not be a means to end, which is making money and keeping your self in the right class or moving up to a higher class. An actual education is important, but his argument is that any means of school reform is useless, because school is the problem. We need to spend more time meeting with people with different ideas, we need to learn for fun, and travel for pleasure and knowledge, not to wear as a badge of honer to show off to your friends. It's hard to talk about because it's very radical, so read it so we can talk more about it, m'kay?<br />
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<i>The Karma Sutra</i>. I'm worried that this list is looking like the reading list of repressed white nerd, so going with that theme is <i>The Karma Sutra</i>. Famous for naughty pictures, I'm impressed with the way it handles the topic of sex. Forget about the sexual positions, some of those are designed for a culture that includes stretching in their religion. Instead, focus on the fact that the book has tables in it. Tables that show the perfect coupling between the various sizes of vaginas and penises. A religious work on sex that dares to claim that some people aren't as horny as other people. Even in our modern culture where we can talk about sex and use fruit to show that vaginas come in various shapes and sizes, this concept that not every one has the same sexual appetites is still some how lost in that discussion. And <i>The Karma Surtra</i> has tables to help demonstrate these ideas.<br />
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This entire post was inspired by a list of books I read this morning called Books Every Well Read Person Has Read. When it comes to reading, I have no tolerance for pretentious people. You can read thick, heavy tomes that examine what human nature is. You can read ancient literature that influenced the modern novel. Reading is so many things, and it's been around for so long that you can still read the words and first hand accounts of people and cultures that have been dead for centuries. That is not a claim that movies can make, and you can listen to modern interpretations of classical composers, but you will never hear an orchestra lead by Bach. Books and reading do not make you an interesting and introspective person. They help expose you to new ideas and thoughts, but that will never happen if you keep suggesting I read <i>On the Origin of Species. </i>Because of the "Well read person" statement, I was going to put C.P. Snow on this list. When I started talking about his books is when others started calling me well read. But you know what every well read person has read? Some guilty pleasure, sort of trashy pulp novel. It wasn't for escapism. It wasn't to gain new insights to an otherwise foreign culture. It was because they just like to read. Here something everyone should read: next time you're on the shitter, read the back of a shampoo bottle. Maybe read the text on a macaroni box when you're in the kitchen. Don't read for any grand reason or you need a way to impress your next date. Just read for the fact that you can read, and try to find some enjoyment in it. Irishredfoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15335590251655986013noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999214541921619379.post-84397932908696539242015-10-26T16:51:00.000-07:002015-10-26T16:51:36.569-07:00Post TitleI should just write this in seasons. That way. in my mind I could justify taking time off. Man, every job should be like that.<br />
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I kind of miss that when I was farm hand. Summer time was the farm, something I loved to do and wanted to be better at, then winter was time to do something new. A chance to refocus and try something else for a change. Okay, I always like to stop and redefine success for myself, and that is how I know I will have done well for myself in 5 years. If I can take 3 months off and then return to my job to refocus, then I've found my calling in life.<br />
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It's the moeteny that gets to you in life. Waking up every day and rinse, recycle repeat the same pattern. This is not a life I was meant for, a life where I just do the same thing every day. I fought against before, so why accept it now? Why just sit here and let life decide what it wants for me? There is nothing in that except for frustration.Irishredfoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15335590251655986013noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999214541921619379.post-57915526391180628472015-10-13T20:12:00.000-07:002015-10-13T20:12:46.803-07:00Fuck the shit, and fuck your politicsI started watching the democratic debate, and coincidently I started drinking. Honestly, I've stopped watching because 5 minutes in I relieazed I hate real world politics when I start to follow it. So I'll tell you what, Imma gonna make a pot of tea, spike it with more whiskey, and then I'll rant to the void about the anarchist and socialist stuff I've been reading lately. <br />
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For anyone playing along at home, I'm drinking green tea mixed with coconut milk, sugar, and a big dose of Jack Daniels brand whiskey. Yes, that's right, Jack Daniels brand whiskey is the only whiskey recommended by both doctors and pediatricians. If life has got you down and nothing seems to go your way, then try Jack Daniels brand whiskey for a new, IMPROVED, outlook on life.<br />
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What has fueled tonight's concept is drinking, Clinton's comment that capitalism is great because a business person can own there own business, and a small argument with a roommate about what Marx REALLY said. There's a couple thoughts I have right now, first: I've heard that said before, and that's not what make capitalism great. That's not even what makes it unique. Second: If you own your own business, you have pay various taxes and fees to the state and various licensing bodies, as well as trying to make money for your investors, so do you REALLY own your own business in our version or capitalism?<br />
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Did you know that Vladimir Lenin believed in private ownership of business? He did not believe in private ownership of property, but business he felt could help the state because of competition and such. Citation needed, but what keeps me from posting regularly is fact checking, so come at me bro. My point is, capitalism vs communism is not who gets to own the business. There was way more government regulation in the USSR, but that didn't stop people. Aside, I would argue that there was more of punk rock attitude in the USSR during the '70's then the rest of the world. Listen to Aquarium.<br />
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Wait, back up. So what is the difference? The best argument I found is The Capitalist's Bible, who argued that "Like classic economics, Marxian economics is based on the labor theory of value." To you the reader I ask, who deserves the fruit of labor? The best I can do is this: Socialism v Objectism. The value of an object is based on it's value. It's value is based on how much someone wants it. If I go out, and based on my initiative I decide to start selling widgets, because fuck all, whiskey has decided everyone needs a widget. The thing is, in order to produce one of these damn things I need a company. For ease, it's me, a salesman, a builder, and a janitor. Who should make the most money?<br />
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Simple Marxian economics is that the person who produced the most labor makes the most money. Without the builder, then the company is SOL. Objectivism says that since I make the tough decisions, then I should make the most money and fuck the janitor since we can clean our own damn building. Now, I included both the salesman and the janitor since they are both necessary jobs that I avoid like the plague. Sure, good man, good chairs, hard beaten path to his door and all that jazz, but his chairs are useless if no one knows about them. Also, I fucking hate cleaning. The only reason why I want too much money is to pay someone to clean for me. Sure I could sell my own product and clean up after myself, but to me the value of people who can do this better is worth it. This because time saved cleaning and selling is time spent coming up with new and better ideas.<br />
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In modern society, it's more complex. Man has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These are all marketable goods that have been assigned values by economists. Man, who thought that if you have the ability to help others, you should? It wasn't followers of Ayn Rand. It's just those basic human rights have too high of value. Not dieing of dehydration due to my own bad decisions is somewhere around 1500 USD. It's my right to be alive, but that's about as much as I make in a month, before my cost of living. If I can't buy the dollar value of not dieing of dehydration, should I be left to die and keep myself out of the gene pool? That's not even capitalism, that jut a strange concept from the early 20th century.<br />
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Should society meet the rights of the individual, or the should the individual meet the needs of of society? Is personal liberty more important than the greater good? The price of material comes from what value people put on it as well as the labor involved. It's a strange delicate system that is better suited for a different time. That's not the important question we need to ask ourselves. The money entitled to me, as a worker, does that go to an awesome mansion, a new car, and a rocking health care plane? Or does it go to "society" which could be me, or a down on his luck worker, or some lazy bastard who works the system? I don't know, because whiskey and green tea. You figure it out, I'm going to pass out. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SSJbR-s-Ws">Luis Prat</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9c1vSIpHA0">Utah Phillips</a>, play me out.Irishredfoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15335590251655986013noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999214541921619379.post-52105045494618567882015-04-02T11:31:00.003-07:002015-04-02T11:48:22.657-07:00Binary Logic, puzzles and Boolean AlgebraToday, I give you a nice, simple Sudoku like puzzle to start with, called binary puzzle. It comes in 3 sizes: 6x6, 8x8, and 10x10. Check it out <a href="http://www.binarypuzzle.com/puzzles.php?size=6">here</a> and here <a href="http://www.binarypuzzle.com/rules.php">are the rules</a>. <br />
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Simple, fun, something to do and now for an actual discussion on Binary and Boolean logic. Keeping these posts short and sweet is nice, sort of. This will help me practice for some other short posts I need to write on other topics.<br />
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I used to enjoy converting numbers into binary in high school and working with them because it was so damn easy. And it helped me understand how places work. When working with any counting system, the first number on the right is always the ones place, or x<sup>0</sup> where x is the base. 2<sup>0</sup> = 1. 10<sup>0</sup> = 1. 1000000000000066600000000000001<sup>0</sup> = 1. Why? Well, <a href="http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.number.to.0power.html">Dr. Math</a> has the answer. For those looking to just read this before moving on to the next blog, here's his proof:<br />
While the above argument might help convince your intuitive side
that any number to the zero power is 1, the following argument is
a little more rigorous.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
This proof uses the laws of exponents. One of the laws of exponents is:<br />
<pre> n^x
--- = n^(x-y)
n^y
</pre>
for all n, x, and y. So for example,<br />
<pre> 3^4
--- = 3^(4-2) = 3^2
3^2
3^4
--- = 3^(4-3) = 3^1
3^3
</pre>
Now suppose we have the fraction:<br />
<pre> 3^4
---
3^4
</pre>
This fraction equals 1, because the numerator and the denominator are
the same. If we apply the law of exponents, we get:<br />
<pre> 3^4
1 = --- = 3^(4-4) = 3^0
3^4
</pre>
So 3^0 = 1.
We can plug in any in number in the place of three, and that number
raised to the zero power will still be 1. In fact, the whole proof
works if we just plug in x for 3:<br />
<pre> x^4
x^0 = x^(4-4) = --- = 1
x^4 </pre>
</blockquote>
Anyway, back to binary. So one's place is always 1 * whatever the number is. Next to that is x<sup>1</sup>, so in base 10 it's the ten's place, base 16 it's the sixteenth, and the Mayans called it the 20's place. Binary was simple to convert for this reason: 1001001 would be 1 * 2<sup>6</sup> + 0 * 2<sup>5</sup> + 0 * 2<sup>4</sup> + 1 * 2<sup>3</sup> + 0 * 2<sup>2</sup> + 0 * 2<sup>1</sup> + 0 * 2<sup>0</sup> or 64 + 8 + 1 or 73 in base 10. I can't believe I just wrote that out. Just showing my work like a good student.<br />
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Boolean algebra is good stuff too. What to say about that is simple, since I already dug myself this hole yesterday? Well, here are <a href="http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_4/chpt_7/1.html">details</a> about it all. Boolean and binary are not the same, but Boolean can help you build a <a href="http://math.hws.edu/TMCM/java/labs/xLogicCircuitsLab2.html">binary calculator with LEDs</a>. That's all I have today. Come back tomorrow when I try something a little easier. Or celebrate Good Friday, that's okay too.<br />
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Twitter: @aristotlesmstk, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/aristotlesmistake">facebook</a>, you know the whole usual drill.Irishredfoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15335590251655986013noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6999214541921619379.post-3708211602073815932015-04-01T08:39:00.001-07:002015-04-01T12:42:41.035-07:00A* algorithmThe theme for my A to Z challenge is puzzles, games, and algorithms. I already have to spend my time looking for this my math group, so hopefully this cuts down on the amount of brain juice I have to excrete in my day.<br />
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<a href="http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" src="http://i1139.photobucket.com/albums/n547/Jeremy-iZombie/A2Z-BADGE-0002015-LifeisGood-230_zps660c38a0.jpg" title="Blogging from A to Z April Challenge" /></a>To start with A, I choose the A* algorithm. The linked video is "short", about 14 minutes but can be run in the in the background. It explains the math behind this path-finding algorithm.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KNXfSOx4eEE/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/KNXfSOx4eEE?feature=player_embedded" style="clear: right; float: right;" width="320"></iframe>I like computers and making computers and running computers and such, but I never took comp sci so I didn't start learning about A.I. algorithms until the past year or so. What grabbed my interest in these programs are two videos, and for your viewing pleasure I'll link them. Originally, it was videos of slime mold solving mazes. I'm also a mushroom man, so watching videos about slime mold solving mazes really got me excited.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/czk4xgdhdY4/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/czk4xgdhdY4?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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Of course, this was just a novelty video we were showing around work to each other. "OOH! Look at the mold! It thinks it's smart!" It wasn't until I started finding GIFs on StumbleUpon demonstrating the maze solving capabilities of Dijkstra and A* that it changed from "novel curiosity" to "Holy shit, that looks exactly like slime mold!"<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/cSxnOm5aceA/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/cSxnOm5aceA?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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That's the best video I could find to try and show what I'm talking about. Sadly, I'm not as good at saving links I find as I should be, so I can't show the actual webpage that made me excited. Now, wouldn't you rather see this used to control Mario?<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/DlkMs4ZHHr8/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/DlkMs4ZHHr8?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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There was an AI competition where people wrote programs that control Mario in an attempt to complete a level. This is the video that got me interested in learning more about the algorithm, and it was the winner of the first competition.<br />
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Enjoy watching videos as you surf through A to Z today. Come back tomorrow for "Binary Logic, puzzles, and Boolean Algebra". I'll do a better explanation of how this algorithm works on Saturday with "Dijkstra". Also, I'm on the usual social network sites with <a href="https://www.facebook.com/aristotlesmistake">Facebook</a>, <span class="DashboardProfileCard-screenname u-inlineBlock u-dir" dir="ltr"><a class="DashboardProfileCard-screennameLink u-linkComplex u-linkClean" href="https://twitter.com/aristotlemstk">@<span class="u-linkComplex-target">aristotlemstk</span></a> on twitter, and there's a Google+ link.</span>Irishredfoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15335590251655986013noreply@blogger.com10