[busy signaL]
curiouser and curiouser
i. the hempel's ravens paradox
The statement "all ravens are black" is logically equivalent to the statement "all non-black-things are non-ravens". If we observe a red apple, that is consistent with that statement. A red apple is a non-black-thing, and when we examine it, we observe that it is a non-raven. So by the principle of induction, observing a red apple should increase our belief that all ravens are black!ii. the horse paradox
A farmer has 11 horses, and he dies. His will says that his eldest son is to receive 1/2 of the horses in his stable, his middle son is to receive 1/4 of the horses, and the youngest son is to receive 1/6 of the horses. How can the horses be divided?
The lawyer rides to the farm, bringing his own horse. Now there are 12 horses in the stable. The eldest son receives 6 horses, the middle son receives 3 horses, and the youngest son receives 2 horses. The lawyer then takes back his horse.
This paradox works because the farmer, in giving 1/2, 1/4, and 1/6 of his horses, has not given away all of his horses but instead only 11/12 of them. Therefore without the 12th horse, the will gives away 10.083333 horses and leaves 0.916667 horses remaining. Adding the final horse evens out the fractions and allows the 1 remaining horse that the farmer did not give away to return to the lawyer.iii. the unexpected hanging paradox
A judge makes two statements to a condemned prisoner:
1. You will be hanged at noon one day next week, Monday through Friday.
2. The choice of day will be a surprise to you, in that you won't know the day of the hanging until the executioner knocks on your cell door at noon that day.
The prisoner reflects on these statements, and then smiles. If the hanging were on Friday, then it wouldn't be a surprise in the sense announced. For he would know by Thursday night that he was going to be hanged on Friday, since no hanging had yet occurred and only one day was left. So the hanging can't be on Friday.
But then the hanging can't be on Thursday either. If it were, then it wouldn't be a surprise either. For he would know on Wednesday night that he was going to be hanged on Thursday, since no hanging had yet occurred and only two days were left, one of which (Friday) he already knows is impossible. So a Thursday hanging is impossible too. Similar reasoning shows that the hanging can't be on Wednesday, Tuesday or even Monday! He returns to his cell confident in his safety.
The next week, the executioner knocks on his door at noon on Wednesday - an utter surprise. Everything the judge said has come true, but where is the flaw in the prisoner's reasoning?
By believing himself safe, the executioner's arrival became a surprise.iv. the george washington's axe and tin woodsman paradoxes
George Washington is supposed, in an apocryphal story, to have cut down his father's cherry tree. The axe is supposedly on display in an (unverifiable) American museum, although, having had both its handle and its head replaced several times, no part of the original axe remains.Oz' Tin Man wasn't always made of tin. A witch cast a spell on his axe, and it cut off his leg. He proceeded to get the leg replaced with a tin leg, only to have the enchanted axe chop off the other. He then replaced that missing leg with a tin prosthetic, only to have the process repeat itself with both his arms, torso, and eventually head. By the end of the ordeal, he was entirely made out of tin replacements, yet still living, and had become the Tin Man. In a later book, the paradox is further satirized when the Tin Man meets his old flesh body parts, which have been re-assembled with magic glue. His former lover is not sure whom to marry.v. the omnipotence paradox
The omnipotence paradox is an argument that an omnipotent being cannot exist due to the following lines of argument. An omnipotent being is one that can do anything. Assuming there is such a being, one can then pose a question like the following: "Can an omnipotent being create a stone that is too heavy for him to lift? If he can create it, then there is one thing he can't do: lift the stone. If he can't create it, then there is one thing he can't do: create such a stone. Either way, there is something he can't do, which contradicts the assumption that he is omnipotent.vi. the grand hotel paradox
In a hotel with a finite number of rooms, once it is full, no more guests can be accommodated. Now imagine a hotel with an infinite number of rooms. You might assume that the same problem will arise when all the rooms are taken. However, there is a way to solve this: if you move the guest occupying room 1 to room 2, the guest occupying room 2 to room 3, etc., you can fit the newcomer into room 1.vii. the thinking cap paradox
click me.
sige ingat.ü
the dead don't bleed
from csi episode 2-23,
the hunger artist:
GRISSOM: I'm sorry about your sister, Cassie.
CASSIE JAMES: The dead don't bleed.
GRISSOM: True. Death does have some advantages. Would you like me to help you get in a shelter?
CASSIE JAMES: No, I would need a shelter from a shelter. No, no, no. Out here, I can hunt and I can range and I can find the things that I need out here. I mean, you never know what you need until you find it.
GRISSOM: Or until you lose it.
CASSIE JAMES: I mean, all we are is what we try to get rid of. Fat and newspapers and loneliness and cat food cans. And there are going-away people and there are left-behind people but, you know, everybody's secrets ... everybody's secrets are the same.
GRISSOM: Were your and your sister's secrets the same?
CASSIE JAMES: My sister didn't have secrets. Her secrets had her. That ... I told you I didn't ... I don't know. I mean, you know, y-y-you-you can pick through a million lives and never have one of your own.
GRISSOM: Looking for things, analyzing them ... trying to figure out the world -- that's a life.
CASSIE JAMES: You never know what you need until you find it. And the next thing I find it might be the thing that changes everything.
GRISSOM: What will you do when you find it?
CASSIE JAMES: Sleep ... the most perfect sleep.indeed.
sige ingat.ü
dakô
online:
kenley: woah
kenley: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050321/480/ny11203212155
self: omgoffline:
asha: balls ba nung baboy 'yung nakikita ko?
self: oo nga ano.online:
self: teka, bayag ba ng baboy yung nakalawit sa banda pwit nya!?
kenley: OMG!
self: diba diba!offline:
asha: dapat magkita 'yung baboy ramo at si rasputin.
self: tama.sige ingat.ü
headlines
instead of a formal lesson, sir bart had us fill out a survey on our internet habits. the following items so tickled me that i took the time out to copy them down on some scrap paper [namely, my algocom notes]. these are meant to be rated on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the most affirmative:
8. life without the internet is boring, empty, and lifeless.
11. i try to cut down the amount of time spent online, but i fail.
12. if someone asks, i try to hide how long i have been online.
17. i am defensive about what i do online, when others enquire about it.
18. being offline makes me feel upset.
20. i fantasize about being online.
21. i get agitated when the internet is slow and i curse the service provider.
what's more amusing is that most of my answers were 10s. not for any of the aforementioned questions, though.
in sports and leisure, s15 inched past s13 40 to 36, s20 ground s18 into the dust 72 to 47, and cara scored another "00 please stop singing!".
yey?
sige ingat.ü
trish and arun go to sliders
at first i thought the burgers were overpriced, but the taste made up for it. they weren't
sulit, though.
i'd invited her to a malate-sponsored poetry reading, in celebration of women's month. kimber and i were supposed to perform, but she backed out, then it was trish and i, but she backed out as well, so i read some
jeffrey mcdaniel instead. pb read
sharon olds.
following that, trish and i sat on
sabilano's carabaos and talked for a while. the burgers came after, then i joined malate for a beer and onion rings at the w bar and grill.
what a world, where suicide is more likely to happen than pesticide, and where a teaspoon of mayonnaise costs 10 bucks, but ketchup is free.
sige ingat.ü
culture shocks
i. grade school
riding a
zopote zapote bus home with vince [after the s15 and s20+
inuman at gdonya's], we had the misfortune to bear witness to the final episode of
mulawin. good news: it's finally over; bad news: they're planning another
telenovela with richard "
binagsak ko ang benilde" gutierrez as lead.
let's take a moment to study that etymology ['
telenovela', not the moniker i gave richard gutierrez - the source of those words is painfully obvious].
tele- is from 'televised', further derived from 'television', and -
novela is filipino for 'novel', which is taken to mean anything dramatic, and involving estranged lovers, bastard children, a
contrabida who returns after plastic surgery, or any combination of the three. this compound word has then spawned other forms, namely the
chinovela ['chinese novela'] and
koreanovela ['korean novela']. it is amusing to note that in both children, the prefix
tele- has disappeared, and only context will reveal that the entertainment forms being discussed are not in written form.
now, after that lengthy segue, we arrive at the actual point of this topic. i would like to present the following segment gleaned from the
koreanovela following
mulawin, the title of which i am thankfully oblivious to:
girl: may cute na rabbit na nakipag-unahan sa isang napakaibilis na pagong. sino'ng nanalo?
boy: 'yung rabbit.
girl: ding! mali, 'yung pagong 'yung nanalo. napakabilis nga n'ya diba?
boy: ...
girl: o, eto naman. may cute na rabbit na nakipag-unahan sa isang pagong na nakasalamin. sino'ng nanalo?
boy: ...
girl: sige na, sagutin mo!
boy: 'yung rabbit! 'yung rabbit!
girl: ding! mali, 'yung pagong 'yung nanalo. nung tinanggal nung pagong 'yung salamin n'ya, s'ya din 'yung napakabilis na pagong kanina! nakakatawa, diba?
boy: alam mo, para kang alien. bumalik ka na nga sa planeta mo.
girl: kung ako alien, ikaw naman, gold na paniki! ikaw na nga kinukwentuhan, ikaw pa'ng magagalit!to be fair, i did find the alien bit funny, but "gold
na paniki" was still severely wtf. it might be a cultural thing; i'll ask my mother later.
ii. high school
jonat invited me to zobel's end-of-schoolyear concert. 20 south-based and|or zobel bands, including mayonnaise, but by the time i got there, all but two had finished their sets. good bands, but the crowd was a bit too wild for my taste, which is strange considering that they were mostly comprised of zobel high school undergrads. there was even a grade schooler sporting earrings and and blond mohawk. i suppose they are entitled to a little slack, since their schoolyear's officially over, but i really couldn't draw the line where the musical appreciation ended and the posing began. it being zobel after all, perhaps there wasn't any in the first place.
i ran into mikey's cousin pao, but the real highlight of the evening was the surprise guest appearance of victor basa, doing his own version of the
bugabuga dance [read more about it
here]. small world.
after that, i crashed at jonat's for some tequila and a movie. we finished half the bottle and half the movie [
full metal jacket], before hitting the hay.
i really am getting too old for this.
iii. college
paco: O seh. Have place to go, people to do. Ingats.ladies and gentlemen, another sign of the impending apocalypse.
sige ingat.ü
international fucking bank
i'm not angry or insulted, but i just find it very, very ironic that i wasn't considered for an ojt at i-bank on the grounds of my nationality.
"i'm sorry sir, but we don't accept non-filipinos for ojt."
fyi, i'm as or more qualified than a significant number of other applicants, and probably more 'filipino' than them as well.
what exactly are they looking for? fluency in either language? field experience? flexibility? optimism and a good sense of humor? proficiency in song and dance!?
international bank, my ass.
three topics and a consonant
i. loi
"don't laugh! you might think it's funny."
ii. lorax
some books must be read at a young age to be fully appreciated. regardless,
click me anyway.
iii. llama?
duck.
sige ingat.ü
pissed out
it's alright that she does't know how to teach.
sure it is.
it's alright that when i confirmed an algorithm for use in our mp, she ok'd it, only to correct herself an hour before submission.
sure it is.
it's alright that she gave test values outside of the project specifications, then gave us a 75% score because the system didn't run properly.
sure it is.
it's even alright that we were actually only supposed to get a 60% if not for my lightning-quick reflex brown-nosing, which is akin to kissing the proverbial rat's ass.
sure it is.
what's not ok is the fact that i have no choice but to have her as a teacher again next term in one, if not two, subjects.
complete and utter bullshit.
moral entertainment
the following gems were lifted from the blog
masamania.com, authored by a japanese porn director turned guardian of social truth. not kidding. i'm posting them here not to make fun of his engrish [god knows we have too much of that as it is], but because i actually find him very, very witty. see for yourself:
I was born in Japan, grown up in Japan, study English in Japan. This is the reason I can speak Engrish.Please forgive me. Now I study English hard, so i have no time to post new entry to my site. And I also update my site so hard, so i have no time to study English. This is kind of dilenma.When I worked as a porn film director, lots of people scorn my job, and looked down on me. But I know lots of people interesting in fuck. Not only young person, but also old person. And not only barbaric laboric class, but also noble upper class. Not only Clinton, but also Japanese prime minister, Koizumi also like to fuck.Now day, just taking photo become clime in Japan. Some woman angrily call police because I take photo without her permisiion, some hot-blooded guy kick my ass when I try to take a photo. Sometime homeless grab my camera.But when I am caught by police, I never bravely persuade police. I just cowardly run away as soon as possible.Lots of Japanese people scorn my poor english, my amateurish design, my excellent jurnalistic pictures. Thinking themselves is OK but they make a effort to tell me by email or something. fuck you. I really fed up with such assault by clever, Englsih fluent Japanese. I think foregin people also think samething, but they don't mail me or if they say something, at reast I cannot read because my english is poor.This means that if you can enter more named school and higher class university, you are more easyily qualified to enter the bigger mojorer company. What happen after joing such fucking huge Japanese company ? Their life become like a American rap star. They can fuck girls every day. They can get high paid, respects. and authority. and how about the job ? Hey, job is also like a American rap star. No toil no skill, no intelligence.But I tell you this police box is not the entrance of this whorehouse for Jap plice motherfucker honor's fucking sake. But certainly, actually, this whorehouse is on the back of Udagawa police box or in the other words, Japanese police box is in front of fucking whorehouse.Hey, say gain, Japanese fucking whorehouse is authoritically on the back of Japanese police box ! One more time, Fucking plice box is in front of authoriticious fucking whorehouse ! !Yes, of course, it is completely illegal to fuck girls for payment even though here is Japan.. We call it “prostitute.”All every each Jap men know they can fuck if they pay money there. But nobody darely tell it. Jap Mass media don’t tell that. They are busy to tell fucking stupid jap about SMAP, the most popular stupid ass hole singer group, SMAP, what a death hell spell, SMAP, the meaning is, Listen, Yo, don’t laugh, Yo, please, the meaning of SMAP is Sports and Music assembled people !! What’s the fuck !ATTENTION !! I notice that I do serious mistake of wrong spelling regarding to "Soup land". Soup Land is wrong. Correct word is "Soap land". Certainly meaning is similar in other way, you know. but correct word is "Soap land". I am sorry.check out his entry
just a human more than any other people as well, if you have the time.
sige ingat.ü
civil liberties
by ric de ungria
here comes the mailman toting the absence
of letters for me. he grins everyday.
he knows i wait for him. i get my mail
weeks after they're supposed to have arrived.
they come in airmail envelopes doubly
creased or mutilated, or crushed and then
smoothed over. there are days they come postmarked
a month ago, or else stamped assidiously
with the clear soles of size 12 shoes.
when we chance upon each other in the hall,
he turns and throws me looks that say, dear
muthafucka: yer nuttin' but third-class
citizen here. move to de end of de line
ya gotta learn to move to de end of de line
and wait. we got us work here to do, boy.
and his leer i return express service:
dear putanginamo rin: you're some thing
i can't do anything about for now.
a drop in the slopbucket still is slop.
soak in it, brother. and hallelujah! love.
and having met eye to eye and understood
each other, we smile—hard—, say hi
's that stab
in the back and stagger to opposite doors.ah yes, such is
gox life.
sige ingat.ü
girlie
this is going be another 'blast from the past'-type posts.
if you've lived in the philippine suburbs, you'd know that every town has at least one barbershop and one beauty parlor. the barbershop is run by either an old man who sings his own made-up tunes, or a young man sporting a crewcut, or, as in our case, both. all customers are addressed as pogi, regardless of age [a woman thinks thrice before setting foot in a barbershop].
the beauty parlor is run by a
bakla*. the
bakla will either wear unisex
pambahay, or if you're unlucky, something that even most women wouldn't be seen in. the
bakla always has a feminine nickname that can be traced back to a masculine root, like michelle or jaja.
ours is named girlie, from [believe it or not!] guillermo. this is the same girlie who reputedly was familiarized with steve austin's stone-cold stunner after trying to initialize a game of funnybones with some of the local youths.
i only suffered a haircut from girlie once, when the elder barber had died, or moved away, i forget, and the younger was indisposed.
anyway, girlie was dethroned by a less-masculine-looking
haliparot** some years back and simply faded from my general consciousness, until today, when i happened to take the same jeep as him|her and his|her
jowa. there was another guy with them, who seemed to be a friend of the
jowa, and apparantly straight. third-wheeling, i guess. while the
jowa and girlie were making
harot in the jeep, he kept glancing at me, probably because i'd fixed a concerned look on them. they also got off at marcelo, but took a trike in.
funny how, now that i think about it, i'd probably recognize girlie anywhere, even if, save once, i've only seen him|her from afar, smoking by the parlor door. he|she, of course, doesn't have reason to remember me.
sige ingat.ü
---
bakla: this class of person differs from regular homosexuals in that they're obnoxious, either with voice or fashion. since i use the term derogatorily, a funny
bakla is not a
bakla.
haliparot: this is the worst kind of
bakla. he|she makes the mistake of thinking he|she is [1] a woman [2] attractive and [3] young.
stones and steroids
i've currently solved 34 of
thestone.com's 216 puzzles. now if could only get started on the machine projects due tomorrow and next week. or get some sleep. sleep would be nice.
(gotta love that perspective)sige ingat.ü