Drifter

i knew it was going to happen sometime, or another.
like death, universal and possibly a finality
of course in this case revival is possible
but i don't think so. definitely not likely.
i wonder. do you have something against me?
sometimes it seems so.
because i don't see any explanation if you don't.

the memories come flooding to my mind
many which used to be so nice are now flat
but it's no point lingering here
it's better to move on rather than stay

goodbye.

jk

Epistemological Blur

Some random ramblings from A Math today.

"Just say if you had a subject you really liked, but you're getting an average of 4 points. Would you take it (at IB Level)?" - Russell

"Err... what if you had a subject you hated, but you can do very well in it - 7 or if you slip you get 6. Would you take it (again, at IB Level)?" - Me

My subject option plans are probably going to be as follows
1: English A1-SL
2: Chinese B-SL
3: Economics-(HL/SL) | Geog-SL | Business Management-(HL/SL)
4: Physics-(HL/SL)
5: Math-HL
6: Chem-(HL/SL) | FMath-SL (if offered) | Comp Stud-(HL/SL)

No real subjects I would say I hate in there; and those that I like (actually not much either) I'm getting good enough grades for.

There's a certain emptiness within me now, actually. I seem to be being conditioned toward being machine-like, and it's not what I want but it seems to go on subliminally anyway.

jk

Spelling

One of the newer game-shows on Channel 5, Spell Cast features some primary-school children attempting to spell words to advance in a... spelling competition. The structure of the rounds is OK but could have been done better, in my opinion. I think they should give the children like 20 seconds and make them type in the whole word or something like that, rather than make it 5 for them to enter the missing letter. Why? This is because people who don't know the word often can guess by the pronunciation what the word should be - examples would include (W)RENCH and AUTUM(N). The five-letter anagrams seem easy (especially when they involved a Q, as they wouldn't be so mean as to use Q non-U words, probably). Some of the words are also overly difficult; REYKJ(A)VIK (the capital of Iceland) is a nasty example.

The Tic-Tac-Toe round has many interesting possibilities. It's interesting to note the first square people pick (the common strategy would be 6, 7, 10 or 11) - someone picked 16, I think, as the first square in the game.

If I were to design a spelling test, however, using the Spell Cast format but for an older target audience, you might expect to see something like this:

MCQ
1: reville | reveille | reveilly
2: injira | injera | injerah
3: lutea | lutae | letae
4: silicolocous | silicoloccous | silicolocus
5: illicited | elicited | ilicited
6: Valifor | Valyfor | Valefor
7: Reykyavik | Reykjavik | Reykjavyk
8: muriatic | murietic | muriaitic
9: atalaia | atalaya | atelaya
10: ali | aali | aalii

Missing Letters
1: r?gatoni
2: s?utane
3: rebo?nt
4: adheren?
5: m?nuend
6: caz?que
7: de?rweed
8: c?olate
9: ron?avels
10: unmit?es

I can't possibly do a round 3 format, so never mind about round 3...

Anyway, I best be going off now...

solutions to the above
MCQ:
1. reveille (a morning bugle coil)
2. injera (a type of Ethiopian bread)
3. lutea (plural of luteum (a hormone secreting body))
4. silicoloccous (pertaining to sand)
5. elicited (drawn forth)
6. Valefor (a demon)
7. Reykjavik (the capital of Iceland)
8. muriatic (syn. for hydrochloric)
9. atalaya (a watchtower)
10. aalii (a tropical tree)
letters:
1. rigatoni (a tubular pasta)
2. soutane (a long garment worn by clergymen)
3. reboant (resounding loudly)
4. adherend (the surface to which an adhesive sticks)
5. minuend (in a - b = c, the b)
6. cazique (a tropical oriole)
7. deerweed (a bush-like herb)
8. cholate (a chemical salt)
9. rondavels (a South African round hut)
10. unmitres (to strip of the rank of bishop)

The Barrier

"Right and wrong are not what separate us and our enemies. It's our different standpoints, our perspectives that separate us. Both sides blame one another. There's no good or bad side. Just two sides holding different views."
-Squall Leonhart, FFVIII

I would be inclined to agree with this statement to a fairly large extent, actually. Though from my personal experience my conscience often tells me, or rather attempts to tell me, what is "right" and what is "wrong", I believe it still is important to respect the views of others, even if they are radical in nature. For example, consider what we did quite a while back in IHS. Terrorism. Though I see terrorism as "wrong" in that it is violence against non-combatants (by definition), from their point of view, they could be attempting to fulfil a unique interpretation of a prophecy in their sacred texts, establish a political community of people who subscribe to their beliefs, or otherwise.

Sometimes, I think we are too quick to pass judgments on things. An acquaintance once asked me to show her how to integrate the function ln(x) with respect to x; I willingly showed her the method of Integration by Parts. The moment I wrote the first line, however:

ln x = 1 * ln x

She immediately asked "What's the point of that?". As anyone familiar with the method of integration by parts would know, integration by parts requires a multiplication to fit the formula integ u dv = uv - integ v du. Hence appending a '1' usually works.

Some time back in Higher Chinese class, Laoshi told us of two arguments held by two different Chinese philosophers a long time ago, with regard to human nature being 'good' or 'evil'; and though this is not really related to the problem I'm considering as mentioned earlier, I think it is worth sharing. This also serves to illustrate a point - that "good" and "bad" are subjective; the same situation can result in grossly different interpretations.

What they were considering is actually a very young baby, commonly associated with a period of innocence. The philosopher who claimed that human nature is good would say that people would be kind enough to help the baby when it cries. On the contrary, the one who claimed that humans are inherently evil said that the baby crying is a manipulative act in itself, attempting to get things from others and get its desires fulfilled. Both arguments are relatively plausible (though to me, a pessimist, I am more inclined toward the argument that human nature could be inherently evil).

The choice is yours. Is there such a thing as an objective 'right' or 'wrong'? A subjective right or wrong can be determined; for example, if I say that from my point of view, drink-driving should be punishable by death (not that it's my point of view), it would be 'right' from my point of view, but probably not from an alcoholic. Hence, from my point of view, though infinitely many subjective rights or wrongs may exist, there is not true for an objective right or wrong; I believe no such thing exists.

Additional Maths

Yesterday, amazingly, I did 3 A Math papers in a row.

I worked from about 9 to about 12 probably, so 3 hours for 3 papers is quite good. There's one question which I think is screwed up though.

It asks: What is the definite integral, from 3 to 0, of 1/(1-3x)^2.

The paper claims the answer is -3/8. But I think the answer should be undefined, because at x = 1/3 which is within the range, the function is undefined. In other words, the function is not continuous over the range 3 to 0.

What I did just to confirm...

Holidays, Part I

I've been involved in quite a few things over the holidays since the last time I posted. The main things are the Juniors Camp, the Geotrail and... well homework rushing, I guess. I also have been playing through FFX, actually.

Firstly, Juniors Camp. It was well... interesting though in its own way a little bit crazy. Some of the juniors were involved in a 'war' between the 4 groups that they were divided into - but it got a little too far and we had a first aid case when one guy smashed another guy's hand with a broomstick. It's a good thing the juniors didn't realise that they had some potent weapons *coughDISINFECTANTcoughINSECTSPRAYcough*.

The probable highlights of the camp was the juniors experimenting with field cooking (noodles only though >_>), and their war games on the last day. Being NCOs we had some well, privileges; if someone entered our 'base' we used *special* bombs on them (only soap, we weren't THAT evil). I originally intended to play the guitar but didn't get to because my fingers were overly sore on day 2 when I was supposed to play (I practiced for like 2 hrs on day 1, then my fingers had nasty lines indented in them...)

One key lesson I learnt from the Geotrail is that often our intuition doesn't make much sense when we're deciding reasonably random things. One team member chose to pick the 'yellow' route (actually the worst or second worst) 'because we were wearing yellow'. I didn't bother stopping him (cause it was a random pick and I probably wouldn't have done much better by picking blue) though I found it rather annoying (that is, the qualification, not the pick).

It was tiring; we had to go like first stop Marine Parade, second stop MacRitchie, third stop Clarke Quay and then we went back to NUS rather than trying to mess with going to the HDB Hub at Toa Payoh.

With regard to homework, I haven't done very much so you're probably faster than me >_>

Chinese Yue Du Bi Ji - 14/16 Complete
Chinese Zhou Ji - 0/1 Complete
Core Mathematics Worksheets - 7/7 Complete
Adv Mathematics Papers - 1/4 Complete
Phys Online Homework - NOTHING completed
Chem online quiz - 1/1 Complete
Chem worksheet - Not complete
Geog project - NOTHING done
IHS prepping - NOTHING done

My DDR skills are still... not as rusty as I thought. I managed to lock in a few simple AAs yesterday (SM J4L4) on like Trip Machine luvmix, There You'll Be and Sakura Oni (8, 8 and 9 feet respectively). On CSFIL:SM I only got a B though >_>

I'm a bit envious that so many people can go on holiday overseas. My holiday seems to be much too busy for that; with math competitions and all, it's going to be a rather rough ride.

Till next time
JK

Evening Skies

I'm going for Juniors Camp in about 3 - 4 hours time, will be back on Wednesday night or so.

I will blog about my experience as a Worship Leader when I come back.

Bye
JK