Khan Academy

This isn't a book, but a really cool website for learning things. Khan Academy is an online repository (my stupid computer says "online" isn't a word) of knowledge in the form of videos. It has videos on math, from addition to calculus and statistics and trigonometry, (which I have discovered is fun and not that hard), all ranges of science, lots of things I don't understand on finance and economy, and even a bit about humanities and civics and the like. Also, if you make an account, you can earn badges for doing things like getting a streak of 5000 trig problems right in a row (almost there!(no, I'm not)).

Note: I am not being paid to say this, but I should be :)

So if you have some spare time, check that out.

Philisophical Questions

One of my friends randomly forced a piece of paper containing a bunch of questions titled "Philosophy Questions" and walked away. So now I'm gonna answer them, and you can reply with your answer, and then we'll get into a big debate, and our brains will be smarter. So here are a few from the list of 40 that I have:

4. Should you let little things bother you?
In general, no. If something is really bothering you, then you should find out why, and then the problem will solved and everyone will be happy.

5.Is it your duty to give to charity?
Not really, I don't think you have a duty to help anyone, unless you have promised to. From an evolutionary standpoint (ya know, the survival of the species one.) it could go either way. If you did give to charity, then you would increase the chance of others survival, which would rebound in the long term to help you, but it could potentially endanger your survival in the short term.

7.Should you ever tell a lie?
Yes. Sometimes a lie makes everything go smoother and everyone happier. As long as the end result is the same as if you told the truth, but better, whether that means faster of happier or less sad, lies are sometimes good, when used carefully.

10.Do we control technology or does it control us?
Interesting. In a literal sense, of course we control tech, after all, we're the ones pushing buttons and pulling levers. But in a philosophical sense, well, I don't know. Please comment.

13. Can you doubt that you exist?
Well of course, look at Matrix. That entire movie was about our nonexistence. But I think that even though we can tell ourselves that we don't think we exist, our brain is wired to believe that we do, and that we must be preserved, because if it wasn't, we would all die.

14.Does a tree make a sound if it falls in a forest with no one around?
The only way I can answer this is YES of course it does! Sound is a vibration of air, and air vibrates whether our ear is there to pick it up or not.

18. Can you lie to yourself?
Yes, look at my answer for number 13. You lie to yourself that you believe that you don't exist, but deep down you believe that you do. Or maybe we all lie to ourselves that we do exist, but deep deep down we know of our nonexistence.

20.Can computers think?
Computers use algorithms to figure out what to do. These algorithms can be very simple, or extremely complex and learn that with these parameters present, this method fails miserably. What are our minds but the most complicated algorithm in existence?

22.Does anything ever happen by chance?
Well, my first instinct is that no, if you know all the information and how it goes together, which is literally impossible, you  can predict things. But, when you have a spinner with a 50% chance of landing on blue and a 50% chance of landing on red, can you know which it will land on? Maybe.

24.Are numbers and people equally real?
No. People are something, numbers are imaginary things that we have thought up in our heads to express an amount of something.

28.Do you have free will?
Do you have free will, I love this one. I like the point argued in a wonderful book by Orson Scott Card, Xenocide, which I will review, that all actions are determined by past actions, which are influenced by more past actions, and we are really just playing out a set chain of events that cannot change, and that free will is only a figment of our imagination to keep us playing out this story of the universe. This idea should have a name, such as "The Fate Theorem".

32. Should you always listen to the opinions of others?
Yes, because others are smart, but you shouldn't necessarily act on them.

33. Should you criticize people and their opinions?
If you didn't, how would they know you disagree?

35. Is it always easy to tell what causes things to happen?
Why do humans think? I think the answer is a resounding NO.

39.Can something logical ever not make sense?
This brings to mind and episode of Doctor Who (It's a show about aliens ans time travel, not doctors with no faces) in which they  are investigating a grave that is missing a body. The ground on top wasn't disturbed, the sides of the grave were wooden, and only the bottom remained. Logically, the ground, or something in it, eats people. But does that make sense? No. Actually, it was an ancient race of subterranean lizard people called Sillurians, or homo reptilia. Yes, I memorize the Latin names of aliens.

PI DAY!

HAPPY PI DAY!!

For those of you who don't know, pi is a number that goes on forever. It starts with 3.
1415926538... The digits commonly associated with pi day are 3.14. the date is 3/14/12. Ignore the 12. But small super-nerds in my class (me included) are celebrating pi second! So I will post this post during pi minute for you, because the auto poster thing isn't that precise. (pi minute is 1:59, and pi second is 1:59:26). So, have a very 




HAPPY PI DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 










Oh, and if you want to know more about pi, here are the first bazillion digits: Lots o' Numbers

On the Subject of FunDip...

Yes, you read that right, FunDip. And yes, I'm actually going to right a longish post on FunDip that will be funny, scientific, and captivating. I believe that it can be done. I may be wrong.

I have discovered two fundamental rules of FunDip. They are as follows:

Rule One: Never, I repeat NEVER, put FunDip in a small cup and attempt to lick it out of the cup, followed by a sudden exhalation of air (or any gas) from your nose. This will cause the FunDip to fly up into your face, rendering you blind unless you have sufficient eye protection. You may think that breathing into the cup would force the FunDip down, but FunDip defies the law that atleast one part of any object must be remotely natural, so it may as well defy gravity.

Rule Two: Never, I repeat NEVER, I repeat my repetition NEVER, mix FunDip with water.You may assume that mixing red FunDip with water would make a red sugar water. But FunDip doesn't act according to natural rules. It becomes a murky brown substance, that when drank causes the drinker to gag violently, and when mixed just the right way, to die a horrible death. NEVER do this!!

I have thaught of some other things, namely:

FunDip is not at all natural. In fact, the only way that I can think of to make FunDip is to take some artificial dirt made of plastic substitute, encased in a glass dome to keep out all air, and anyone who enters the dome must wear protective garb to keep their naturalness out, and the must plant fake plastic substitute sugarcane seeds, followed by constructing artificial steel sugarcane, harvesting the artificialness to soak with sugar, and then remove the sugar and add this mix of chemicals that they call "Blue 1." This clearly is a poison that didn't work quite right, or an alien extract. I have to go with the latter.

So I did some research, and I found this quote:

In May of 2007 our son had a package of Lik-M-Aid (also known as Fun

Dip) by Wonka....Within a couple of hours his entire mouth was ringed by an acid burn. 

 

People are getting ACID BURNS from FUNDIP. Clearly this an alien attempt to slowly poison our planet. Yep, I can make a pretty good conspiracy theory, can't I?

According to the Urban Dictionary, FunDip is:

A disgusting American candy popular with hyperactive six year olds. Sugar, citric acid, and food coloring reduced to a powder and served with a candy "stick" to lick the powder off of.

So yes, it IS possible to post a long article with at least two quotes from good sources, a conspiracy theory, two viable laws of the universe, about FUNDIP!!! Yes, it is possible. My work for today is done.

This Idea That I Had...

So I had this idea (never a good thing) about books, which is surprising, as this is a blog about books and I'm therefore not supposed to use it for writing about books, but I had an idea while doing my science homework (just finished, thankfully) about books.

I also just looked back at the last paragraph and realized that it could have been said like this: "I had an idea about books." But that would have been boring.

So the idea is that once an author finished writing a book that he/she liked and everyone liked liked, he/she would go through it and identify points of dramatic and important plot changes and decisions. Then he/she would decide them some other way, and rewrite the book. For example, in a book, you have:
Point of Interest (PoI) A, PoI b, PoI c, etc. Then PoI A would change, making PoI B and so on different, and the resulting book would be called "Book XYZ* (real title) PoI A, Choice 2" because it is still the same book (Book XYZ) but with PoI A altered to Choice 2, because the original would be choice 1. But eventually, you would have PoIs within these choices, so it would be something immensely complicated, something like "Book XYZ, PoI A, Choice 2, PoI A.a, Choice 5, etc." And all the titles would be in little tiny lettering so that it would all fit on a book cover.

Maybe it needs a little bit of refining. But so do all brilliant ideas. But maybe...

Maybe some author came up with this when the constitution was being written, and the constitutional people kept getting notes from this guy saying things like "The Constitution, PoI A, Choice 3, Certain Death to America." If I was writing the constitution:
A. I would ignore these crazy letters, because unless I had thought of it, which I might have, they would make no sense.
B: I would invent computers and abolish itchy wig things that look stupid and occasionally mutate into evil beasts.
But I'm not writing the constitution, which is probably a good thing.

This post has got out of hand, hasn't it? It's like like those wigs, mutating into ravenous beasts of random writing and thought.



*After I had posted this, I looked up Book XYZ, and there is an xyz book store, and a book called the ABC's of XYZ. So what do ya know, it is a real title!