Random stuff:

Why are the words that you are supposed to shout when you are in an emergency so difficult to shout? For example, in English you shout "Help!" which ends with a "p", so it doesn't carry. In Mandarin you shout "Jiu Ming" which is even worse. (Although Mandarin has an advantage that you can add an "ah" at the back, so "Jiu Ming Ah!" is still proper mandarin, but "Help ah!" just sounds weird.) Perhaps, when we need help, we should just shout "AHHHHHH" since it is probably an exclamation word in every language, and it is easier to shout.

Horlicks contains as much calcium as 5 glasses of milk, as much vitamin B6 as 48 bananas, and as much iron as 3 kg of spinach! Wow! I'll bet sea water contains more of these. Of course, that would depend on how much Horlicks and seawater you are comparing. (Don't you think "Horlicks" is a rather provocative name?)

As I browsed through NTUC aimlessly, I found out that they stock palm margarine, sunflower seed margarine, canola margarine, olive margarine, and extra virgin olive margarine. Wait, canola and olive margarine? Aren't canola and olive oil considered healthy oils because of their high monounsaturated fat content? So when you hydrogenate canola/olive oil, wouldn't you get really expensive margarine that has as much monounsaturated goodness as palm kernal oil? But that's not just it. Theoretically, hydrogenation is reversible, so some dehydrogenation should take place at the same time, and by Saytzeff's rule, you should get some extra trans fatty goodness too!

So theoretically, canola and olive margarine should be more expensive and contain more trans fats than palm margarine, since palm oil naturally contains more saturated fats and thus need to be hydrogenated to a lesser extent. However, it turns out that from a comparison of the nutrition value chart, the proportion of trans fats os as follows:

Praise(Palm) > Canola > Olive > Planta(Palm) > Extra Virgin Olive

Quite surprising. But once you consider price, Planta owns all. And it doesn't even need to be refrigerated.

I was somewhat against ranting about people not blogging despite the fact that A levels are over (assumption is correct as none of the blog-owners whom I read from take H3 Econs), since my math teacher used to say, "When you point a finger at others, four more are pointing at yourself." Thus, if I didn't blog despite my A levels being over, then I would be a hypocrite. But wait, the very act of ranting against all the others who do not blog after A levels constitutes a blogging action, and thus I am immunized against the tetraretrophallanx attack. Hence, I continue.

When blogs close down and become inactive as A level approaches, one would suspect that the approach of A levels is the cause of the inactivity. However, the converse of the hypothesized cause, i.e., the end of A levels, does not reverse the trend. Blogs remain dead. It is possible that blogs have a certain natural lifespan, because the creator gets bored after too long, regardless of whether he has other important things to do. In normal times, you see blogs dying, then getting resurrected, or new people starting to blog, with no regular pattern. CT 2 come, they start dying. But unlike neopets, dying blogs do eventually become dead when nobody visits it anymore.

So will blogs resurrect after A levels? I hope so, because they are sources of entertainment. However, some blogs may die for a long long time as the creators have something (or someone) to occupy themselves with, and thus are far too busy to blog. Oh well.

I think Stephanie Sun's "ASEAN Rise" is nice.

I was feeling lethargic before the A levels were over, because there was this nagging feeling that I should study despite me not wanting to. Now that the A levels are over, I hear people making self-improvement plans, and stress starts again! This signals the end of the competition for grades, and the beginning of the competition in life. The end of A levels doesn't really feel that great after all. When we were preparing for A levels, there was an end in sight, and we could look forward to it, and expect ourselves to be truly free from our sole responsibility of study. Doesn't it seem so? Regarding anything that bugs you in a couple of years time, you are told that "It's okay, focus on your A levels first." Now that A levels has ended, it starts to dawn on me that "WTF it's just the beginning!" There are still some 60 years ahead, and the supposedly best part of life, teenage, is over. Perhaps, reminiscing the old times would make it seem more wonderful than what it truly felt like at that time, because our memories are fallible, and people prefer to share the happier moments with others. Thus, as time passes by, the bad events fade out of our memories and the happy memories get exaggerated, distorted, and reinforced. Moreover, as past events are communicated in language and not in terms of emotion and sensation, the value judgment on an event would change as we age, since the connotations of words change as we use words differently.

It is a rather scary thought that the way we alter our memories of the past implies that past can always seem like a better period than the present or future. Wouldn't it seem like life has always been getting worse as one ages? From Dan Gilbert's TEDTalk, it seems like we can rationalize our joy and pain away, such that a person who is paralyzed and a person who won the top prize in lottery would feel just as happy in a year's time (it doesn't sound convincing here, but go watch the talk, it's good). As such, even though we strive towards what we believe to be our sources of happiness, our rationalization ensures that once we get there, we'll stop being happy, and we are back to square one in terms of happiness. Happiness that we aim for is not the happiness we get.

Yet is there any source of happiness that the mind cannot rationalize away, such that we can constantly rely on it as a source of happiness despite making no actual progress? I think the answer lies in a certain part of the brain that can be triggered by an electric impulse. Sounds amazing. That person getting treated by the impulse may be rendered useless to the society as he may simply work towards the trigger, but he'll be very happy unless the people who give him to electrical impulses decide to use him as a remote controlled human. He'll probably feel like a slave to his passions instead of being a real slave who is forced to do the things he don't want to do. If you pity this guy, maybe you should pity those who are in love as well. It doesn't seem like they have a choice either.

I digress much. Therefore I win.

I can see how crocodiles and hippos survived the Cambrian Explosion that killed the other dinosaurs, but what about elephants? They couldn't all have been in the water at the time it happened. And they were too big to be underground with the small ratty mammals from whence we evolved. Why do we still see elephants today? --Fuhghettaboutit 01:15, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Dug from Wikipedia. Entertaining.

You are a

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For some reason, the popiah store in teck whye has always been a good source of random inspiration.

My mother asked me to da bao 2 popiahs for her, but she said that she wouldn't be able to finish it, so I'll need to eat half of it for her (which is simple, considering that this popiah store cuts its popiah into 6 parts, remember?). However, I'm having a sore throat, so I decided to buy one with chilli and one without chilli. Then, I had this idea. I recalled that in RJ Philo circle some teacher told us that "According to chinese philosophy, with yin there must be yang, and in music the yin and yang are silence and sound."

In Dao De Jing, this corresponds to a verse that says something like "Where beauty is defined, ugliness is implied."

So, if non-spiciness is defined, would spiciness be implied? I decided to try it out.

"Auntie, I want two popiahs, one not-spicy. Packet."
"Ok. One spicy, one not-spicy issit?"

Result: Positive.

Random.

Some advertisements are so good that it grabs more attention than the TV shows that are supposed to hold your attention long enough to get you to watch the advertisements. MOCCA adverts. Sure enough, the car advert and the partner seeking adverts were quite different from the rest of the advertisements shown, but that bodybuilder advertisement is seriously attention grabbing. I think there are more people talking about it than there are people talking about the TV shows.

Some advertisements are so standard that you don't even consciously realise that it even exists... until 5 years later, when you see the brand and you remember the jingle or catchphrase. It's kinda like subliminal messaging; it subconsciously affects your preferences and decision-making, which leads to a higher probability of you buying their product, but you don't remember paying much attention to the advertisement when it was being broadcast.

But the UIC advertisements are seriously horrible! I shall summarize it for you. "Omg our washing powders suck!""Yeh, it is so difficult to clean stuff!" Protest, protest! Then a man-in-white comes along. "Don't worry, use UIC cleaning chemicals!" And everyone is happy about his solution(no pun intended), and the man-in-white saves the day. (Yes, I can see that a society like that really needs a paternalistic government indeed.)

Then you have another one about a daughter going to get married, but she's worried about the housework. Then her mother reassures her, and they sing the jingle "UIC oh UIC, clean and green for you and me!" "If, with the help of UIC, your mother and your grandma have no problems managing the household, then neither would you!" "Ahh yes, we must thank UIC!" (No dear, that's not the point. You are supposed to thank your mother and grandma! Afterall, it's they who do the cleaning!)

The two advertisements are painful to watch. I'll change channel when I see them if the remote is in my hand.

Maybe I've been talking more about advertisements than TV shows, which might make you wonder if I turn on the TV just to watch advertisements. Actually, if there's nobody else in the house, I hardly turn on the TV. It's my parents who watch TV drama. It's perhaps rather silly to actually practice what I learn in KI, but when I watch TV drama, I have to watch it, attempt to understand the storyline, and also actively suppress any beliefs that I gain from it which I may later generalize to the real world. There's this part of the brain that says, "For goodness sake, you are watching drama! Suspend your disbelief!" Then there's the other part that asks me, "What is the producer trying to convince you to think? You are supposed to think that this guy is in the wrong, because everyone else in the show thinks so, but what is the assumption here? In real life, would this person really behave this way?" It's quite tiring. But when I watch advertisements, I know that their purpose is to convince me to buy their wares. There's no suspension of disbelief, so I can carefully line up the arguments involved. Besides, advertisements keep repeating, so there's less memory work too!

Have been randomly surfing youtube. For the sake of efficiency, I shall not post the videos here.
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Superheroes usually have some superpowers based on some scientific phenomena, like "Magneto" or "Electrika", but hey, where would science be without math? Here we have a superheroine, Math Girl!

Math Girl: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgMSgJdr4k0

Go ahead, cringe at the cliched storyline, and the moral of the story thinly veiled in the battle against adversity, "I must pay attention during every math lecture from today onwards!"
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Masochism Tango: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TytGOeiW0aE

Don't worry, it's not really a video about SM. It's just a guy playing a piano and singing a song.

On a random note, some American schools, noting that Singapore topped the TIMSS Math, tried to use the Singapore math textbooks as a teaching resource. They call the math in it "Singapore Math". One website abbreviates it as SM. Compared to American Math, it's a pretty apt abbreviation, I must say. (Some of their criticisms of SM is that there's not enough drilling. Drilling you want? I welcome you to send your child to South View Primary School. If we can finish 3 exam papers per day 7 days a week, so can your child!)

I remember that at this time of last year, I liked to blogsurf, and read how people are dying for Promos. Now, I don't get the joy of doing that anymore because people either stop blogging altogether, or improve a great deal for Prelims. Probably the only person to consistently blog about his results is Ivan, which is demoralizing every time you read it. Inevitably, he'll mention Shang Hui's results too, which demoralizes you even more.

At this point in time, people are working very hard. People are also preparing uni applications, such that all of a sudden the person sitting next to you seems damn imba.

Rather demoralising, really.
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I still don't know what knowledge is.

The most common definition of knowledge is "true, justified belief". I'm not sure if "truth" and "justification" are necessary conditions.

And now the problem becomes: "What is true?"

Correspondence theory: If a statement describes an object, and the object is really as it describes, then it is true. I think it is a trivial description, because unless we are talking about a fictional world, there is no way for us to know what that object "really is like". If you attempt to extend this theory of truth to metaphysical concepts, it is only possible for you to know if a statement is true only if you somehow have access to this realm of "knowledge of what statements are really true". At the end of it, it really just means "a statement is true if it is true."

Coherence theory: If the rejection of that statement entails the rejection of many other statements, then that statement is likely to be true. Note that unlike the correspondence theory, it doesn't try to define truth, doesn't assume the existence of knowledge about what something is like, and doesn't guarantee that what is coherent is true.

Pragmatic theory: If you can use that statement to do something, and it works, then it is likely to be true. Problem is, it is difficult to evaluable how "pragmatic" a statement is, especially certain aspects of pure math.

In response to the skeptical attack, I question the viability of the correspondence theory of truth. The only statements that are certain is transcendental statements, and regarding everything else, you cannot be sure that there exists an external reality, where true statements can be made about it, and you cannot be sure if your reasoning faculties are working fine. An implication of this is that if one were to subscribe to correspondence theory of truth, the only truths are transcendental statements, and nothing else, including mathematics, can be considered as knowledge.

Clearly, we use the word "knowledge" to include many other things, such as scientific knowledge, mathematical knowledge, and general knowledge. Since the definition of knowledge given above would not consider "scientific knowledge" and "general knowledge", we can conclude, it is either that "scientific knowledge" and "general knowledge" are misnomers, that the definition of truth is inadequate, or that the definition of knowledge is inadequate.

Suppose we use, instead, the coherence theory of truth in the definition of knowledge. Since the coherence theory of truth does not say what is true, but rather what is likely to be true, there is a certain degree of fuzziness in the boundary between the set of statements that are true and the set of statements that are not true. Since truth is one of the criteria in the definition of knowledge, it must also mean that there is a certain degree of fuzziness in what constitutes knowledge, unless the justification and belief criteria are much more stringent than the truth criterion. Belief is pretty much a universal set, so that leaves us with justification, and let's see if the justification criterion is more stringent than the coherence truth criterion.

The problem with justification is that it must be a way with which the infinite regress of justification can be arrested. Three methods of stopping infinite regress: foundationalism (branches into empiricism and rationalism), coherence, and pragmatism (deja vu?).

Foundationalism is based on faith. Ironically, there is no good reason to believe in rationalism rather than empiricism or religious fundamentalism. Why do we not doubt our reasoning faculties? If it has failed us once, it could fail us again (although that is actually an inductive argument, but never mind that), so why should we use it as the basis for justification? Why should we reject what we sense in favour of what is reasonable? If our basis for knowledge is faith, I think there is much to worry about (appeal to consequences, but let's not go into that too).

Perhaps you are questioning, "Can't we use some common sense to tell us which faith is more reasonable than others?"

I'm reminded of a quote from George Carlin.

Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man -- living in the sky -- who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do..And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time! ..But He loves you.

But some other things we wholeheartedly believe nowadays are pretty absurd too. Science has convinced people that friction is caused by the complex intermolecular forces of attraction between the billions upon billions of rugosities of two surfaces, and when they slide across each other, the bonds formed between the rugosities of the surfaces continuously form and break. Yet, the frictional resistive force is simply proportional to the normal force that each surface exert on each other. Or that when you take the limit of (1-1/n)^n as n tends to infinity, and then you take that number to the power of product between the ratio between the circumference of a circle to its diameter, and the square root of negative one, you get exactly negative one! Brilliant, but it's not a lot more common-sensical than religious doctrine, no?

So let's cast aside foundationalism as a means to stop the infinite regress, and consider coherence. Amazingly, it is the pretty much same thing as the coherence theory of truth, that is statement is likely to be justified if it is coherent with other beliefs. The implication of this would be that a belief that is coherent with other beliefs is likely to be knowledge.

However, there is a big problem here. As I've mentioned before, the set of statements that people can conceivably believe is the universal set. This also means that for any belief, if I hold strongly onto it enough, such that I generate many other beliefs that cohere with it (e.g, conspiracy theories), then it may end up being more coherent than many other beliefs, and it is conferred the title of "knowledge". Surely, we would not accept that anything can become knowledge as long as we will it to be, we cannot use the coherence as a test of how justified a belief is.

We have ignored our good old friend "pragmatism" for quite a while, and we'd revisit him now.

William James: "the 'true' is only the expedient in our way of thinking, just as the 'right' is only the expedient in our way of behaving."

Somehow, I kinda like that. But I can't justify it.

Heck.