There is no free lunch in this world.

In sec 4 I was amazed that certain horrible expressions, after differentiation, gives you something neat.

Then in J1 I was amazed at how this neat expression becomes a horrible expression upon integration.

A convo with my mother on wednesday. I was playing comp at that time(4pm).

"Yang, you've been playing for quite long."
"...quite a while... but I studied from 7 to 1!(not lying)"
"Yar, well... I mean, can I play now?"

rofl.

I have wondered about the difference between a mental image and a "real image"; the difference between an object you are looking at and an object you are thinking of. Think of the colour red. Apparently, this "colour" is not quite the same as one you would see, yet we can make a correlation. We can think of a red ball, but apparently we can conceive of nothing but a "red ball", with nothing else, in the middle of nowhere. We have never seen anything quite like it, yet we can think about it. You can't touch an object that is hot and cold at the same time, but you can touch a hot object and think of cold. You can think of what a person looks like, and still be well aware that the person is not anywhere within sight. You can even have a song ringing in your mind while listening to a lecture.

Apparently, the realm of thought and sense are separate; they seem be independent of each other at any given point in time, and we are aware of it. No matter how one can vividly imagine and fantasize, he is still well aware that the images are not the same as what he would see with his eyes; one can have an imaginary discussion within his mind during an examination and he can be quite sure that he is not listening to something that others can hear. Best of all, one can mentally curse someone in the person's face with a smile, and be certain that the person would not hear it.

My dreams are vivid and uncontrollable. The strange thing is that as I recall from the transition from thought to dream, there is no defining point when things start to appear as sense instead of thought. Perhaps, the ability to distinguish between sense and thought is diminishing as I perceive less sense data. When I close my eyes, I can make myself see my eyelids if I want; I can make myself feel the cloth on a particular part of my body; I can feel myself breathe, but after a while, when thoughts start flooding my mind, I don't sense them anymore. At a reduced level of "consciousness", the distinction between thought and sense become less clear.

But I might have just been taking this ability to distinguish between thought and sense for granted. Apparently, schizophrenic people can't.

I heard the word "system" being referred to a few times today, so I feel like babbling a little.

How can a virus create more damage than a bomb, even though its energy content is less? How can the president of USA affect the lives of more people than a farmer in Ethiopia? How can a million catalyst molecules affect the system to a larger extent than the same amount of reactants?

Let us consider the case for the catalyst. A catalyst can only make the system reach equilibrium at a faster rate, i.e, non-selectively hasten both the forward and backward processes. The catalyst does not provide the energy or the entropy change for the reaction to take place. The energy and entropy change required is already provided by the reactants or surroundings, so whatever that is going to happen anyway, the catalyst makes it happen faster.

The virus is only using the abilities of the current bodily mechanism to replicate itself. The virus itself does not contain enough chemical energy to break the bonds in the crucial organs, but the human body itself does. The energy and entropy change required to kill a person comes from the person himself.

The president cannot make the people what they don't want to do. He only has the physical might of one person, and should the country turn against him, he cannot resist. Thus, a president needs to convince the people to follow him in order for him to have influence. His influence comes from what he can make his people do, not his own ability.

From the personal scale, each person is weak; it is easy for the rest of the population to kill a particular person if they so desire. Yet, we see people unwary of each other. It is so easy to kill and get killed, it is really a wonder that we are living in peace. I don't want to die yet, but I don't know how not to get killed. I can't resist if people want to kill me. For some reason, people aren't trying to kill me. Perhaps conscience, or consideration of consequences? In any case, I owe my life to the current peace I enjoy.

Lots of brute force always wins, but limited brute force may not. As it stands, each of us only have limited strength and power. Most of us would not have the ability to make an event that would not otherwise occur take place. Thus, it is crucial to make use of the system we are in to make events occur. Indeed, we are enjoying the use of many things that we as individuals would not be able to enjoy if we were on our own. To publish this entry, I would need internet access, the blogger tool, a computer, software, and powergrid. To go to school, there must be teachers, educational materials, grading systems, evaluation systems, maintenance etc. I can't imagine how I can have all these as a solitary human being in a forest.

As a person with the might of only one person, it is really not my "right" to have all these. All my "rights" would come from the ability to fight for it. If I can get hold of a piece of ruby, and no one can take it from me, then it is "rightfully" mine. If people are pissed off and they take it away, then it's their to keep until I can get hold of it again, by persuasion or by force. If a person wants to obtain certain things, he might want to learn how he can use the environment to his cause. If one wants a radio, it is certainly easier to work somewhere, earn some money and buy it, rather than to mine iron ore and refine silicon and build one radio from scratch. If one wants water, it might be easier to get it from a tap than to find a river.

The ability to fulfil one's desires comes from the environment, not so much from the person himself. It is helpful to learn the rules of the environment to use its energies and mechanisms towards the individuals cause, but ultimately, we are still at its mercy. We owe our existence to the environment, and what we get is more of a combination of luck and the environment's reactions to our actions, rather than what we "rightfully deserve".

Food for thought.

Someone mistook a namesake for the deceased. That person knew the namesake, but not the deceased, so naturally he was sad. But the moment he realised it wasn't someone he knew, he felt rather... embarrassed.

The interesting thing here is that it didn't matter whether someone he knew really passed away or not. He had enough reason to believe that it happened, and that was enough to make him sad.

Nice. Perceptions matter so much. White lies have a point.

There doesn't seem to be much difference between planning ahead and living for the present. Afterall, you wouldn't be sure of what you want in the future. For example, one might study hard in school for years to be a doctor, just to realise 1 year before graduation that by then he doesn't really want to be a doctor anymore (tough luck if he's not from a rich family. He'll have to push on or lay in some bomb debt.)

So what was the guy who studied hard in school doing all the while? He seemed to be doing just what he wanted to do. He wanted to be a doctor, and he worked towards it, thinking that he would eventually be fulfilled by doing so.

Now "delayed gratification" doesn't make much sense anymore.

There are two kinds of Mrs Lim.

One of them is found in H2 Physics Lecture, who goes, "But don't worry, you won't be asked to derive this."

Another is found in Physics Olympiad training, who goes, "You won't be asked to derive this, we consider it too trivial."

much fear.