Labels: Brainstorm

Posted by Farewell, Free Will at 12:01 a.m. | Permalink | Comments

Labels: Brainstorm

Posted by Farewell, Free Will at 7:00 p.m. | Permalink | Comments

Believe me when I type that there are things going on behind the scenes here at Farewell, Free Will. FWFW's collection of readers recently held a vote (by secret ballot) and it has been passed by a majority vote (2-1-and I won't say whether I was the "1") that this blog is to greatly increase output to attract new members (and here you are now). So in the wake of this decision, and in lieu of the customary press conference, I will now answer just a few of the questions that the readers' committee has put forward to me over the summer months. The questions were selected to fit answers I wanted to share in order to make this post as educational as possible. If there's one thing I care about, it's your being in the know.

Are you still alive?

Yes, I am still alive.

Are you still making a ridiculously massive project out of some silly video games?

Yes, I am still working my way through all eleven (11) official Final Fantasy titles as recognized by Farewell, Free Will (i.e., no XI).

Shouldn't you be done more than just four games by now?

Yes, the Final Fantasy Marathon is going very slowly.

Are you going to start blogging again?

Yes, I am still going to be maintaining your favourite blog. (Oh, you thought this was my only one?)

Are you going to make another albums list for 2007? / Do you still listen to music?

Yes, I am still listening to music. (I obviously dropped the monthly top-ten idea.)

Can the human race ever conceivably improve upon the crop of good music released in 2006 within the next million years?

Yes, the top albums of 2007 are going to be even better than those of 2006.

Are you staying in school?

Yes, I am completing my four-year Bachelor of Science degree with a major in mathematics.

Are you ever going to make any songs?

Yes, I am still working on a "secret" musical project.

Are you really that much of a loser?

Yes, I am still in love with spreadsheets.

Do you still like the Cansucks even though Luongo let in a bad goal lolz?

Yes, I am struggling through the NHL's off-season.

Can you write something about your personal life?

Yes, I am typing this on my new laptop and this will have been my first wirelessly-published post.

Are you going to keep writing about that dumb sport than which even football is more exciting?

Yes, I am still considering beginning a hockey site/blog with collaborators.

I missed my opportunity to prove that I'm smarter than you. Are you ever going to do another hockey pool?

Yes, I will be organizing a hockey draft for the 2007-08 regular season, and

Yes, I will provide detailed information when the time draws near.

Do more blogs!!!......?

Yes, I will do more blogs!!! (Many more, in fact, in rapid succession.)

Do you believe in God?

Yes, for Farewell, Free Will has been resurrected. Praise the Lord!

Do you think you're funny?

No, why would I?

Labels: Brainstorm

Posted by Farewell, Free Will at 10:38 p.m. | Permalink | Comments

I’m a notoriously bad decision-maker. Rather, I take a long time to make decisions; I have seen no evidence to suggest that the quality of my decisions is proportional to the time I take to make them. My oft-crippling decision disposition seems less for fear of risk than for craving for verification. “Perfectionism” sounds nice and innocent, but it is a great obstacle to achieving creative goals, and the hand that tries to help in the more concrete matters of truth and logic never ceases to punch in the face those who attempt to engage in social interaction with me. Despite efforts (real or imagined) to live a less calculated and cautious existence, I cannot shake this nature of mine; therefore, I must embrace it.

There are several ways in which I can use this nature to my benefit. Consider a situation that demands repeated discipline over a long period of time. I am the type of person who may not see any instantaneous marginal benefit to performing the action itself, but missing crossing a day off on a calendar, for example, would be hard for me to live with. I can trick myself into doing things to bypass my cost/benefit scale in this way by adding to one side to tip the balance. Tragically, this ploy has been greatly underutilized. Lately, though, it has begun to emerge more and more throughout my thinking on life.

During my employment this summer, I have learned a few things and realized a lot of things. I am beginning to understand the importance of formal organization in all areas of life, particularly of data and ideas. I now use spreadsheets for everything; the rational arrangement of any kind of information, whether consequential or not, gives me a good feeling. Arbitrary locations, numbers, and letters frustrate me. Order and reason are pursued whenever possible. I have realized these things about myself on a higher level, a super-conscious level, and they have changed from suspicions to facts. It’s as real as anything can be.

I now know that in order to complete any of my projects and accomplish any of my personal creative goals, logic is not enough. It really doesn’t matter that in order to accomplish my lifelong dream of creating and performing music full-time I need to write songs. I know this fact and this congizance has not produced any songs on its own, nor has it caused me to write any. Since I cannot drive myself with logic, I must exploit my own weakness: a well-organized spreadsheet. I will do anything that it commands. Before its perfectness I am powerless—powerless, that is, to hold myself back any longer. I’m tired of being my own worst enemy. I’m thinking a huge chart like that guy had on Little Miss Sunshine would be a great idea. Maybe I just won’t speak for the next two years. Yeah, he was quite an inspiration for me.

It must be tremendously liberating always to act on a whim. But are the many euphoric moments worth it in the end? How can one not worry about the future? How can one pretend to expect that things will just work out? How can one not live in fear of being stuck in a job one hates, or even just doesn’t love, for the next 30 years? If I do not prepare now, I know that I am going to run out of time and see my window of opportunity close before my eyes. Maybe I am alone.

Of course I have many other hindrances, and I don’t expect that mere logic and an extra helping of foresight can solve all of life’s complex problems for me. I wouldn’t wish it; enough of life’s whimsy has already been snatched from me as it is. But there are things in life that I cannot bear to leave to chance, and I have to work with what I’ve been given, whether it can be considered a gift or not. I can take some comfort in the words of Dr. John Nash in the movie A Beautiful Mind: “As you will find in multivariable calculus, there is often a number of solutions for any given problem.”

Someone once told me that “life isn’t an equation.” I sometimes secretly wonder if some of us are even members of the same species.

Labels: Brainstorm

Posted by Farewell, Free Will at 6:14 p.m. | Permalink | Comments

No. You’re not.

I’m sure I shouldn’t place the blame solely on him, but I'm suddenly in a pretty sour mood.

The episode is not yet over as I am typing this, but I already know that today's contestant gets to the $1,000,000 question. Why? This is the only way they can get people like me (who watch the show for research and journalism purposes) not simply to flip to the next channel after five seconds. In fact, they reveal this important information very early in the show.

Worse yet, the guy that's on is supposedly a graduate of Yale University. This seems strange to me. Firstly, why on Earth would a corporation that takes itself seriously (though it is FOX) want to give away $1,000,000 for no reason? Surely the show doesn't get enough viewers to offset the cost. Secondly, if this guy really did graduate from Yale, he is either extremely intelligent (probably in the top tenth of a percentage of the population or so) or filthy rich... so tell me again why he is on this show instead of me, not that I would embarrass myself either (and that's what the show is about, isn't it?).

And what makes them think they can drag this on for two full hours? And networks want the NHL to abolish Stanley Cup Playoff overtime?

Anyway, what am I doing working for half of my waking hours for the next four months for a small fraction of what I could make in twenty minutes on that show?

Well, the show's over now and FOX got what they wanted: people tuned in to watch, they only had to give away $25,000 to this guy who ate up most of their air time, and they got an alleged Yale graduate to lie to millions of people on television, saying that he isn't as smart as ten-year-old kids.

Everybody wins, especially you because you read this.

Labels: Brainstorm

Posted by Farewell, Free Will at 8:17 p.m. | Permalink | Comments

I’ll admit that when I first heard about this show I thought it was a pretty stupid idea, but after watching it a few times it has completely won me over with its realism, good humour, and, most importantly, its entertainment value. What a great show! Wait—scratch that; reverse it.

This is a new low in television. Surely nobody plans their night around this show. The screening process for contestants must consist of a sound wallop on the back of the head with a surgical two-by-four: average people are not this dumb. I’ll leave alone the fact that most contestants are probably from the Southern United States.

And if that’s not enough, they needlessly put recent university graduates on the show to try and convince people that they are stupid, too, despite doing more academic work in a term than any kid will do in their entire elementary school career. While researching to prepare for this post (i.e. I had to watch the show), they had a guy on there who had recently graduated from university, and he was a terrible actor. I’ll cut him some slack, though; I’m sure I wouldn’t know how to pretend I didn’t know what 5 x 2 was, either. Add to that the fact that he needed help to answer the question “How many E’s are there in the phrase ‘Pledge of Allegiance?’” and you have a recipe for a powered-off television. This guy left the show with $100,000 in prize money.

Perhaps the worst part about the show is that they make the contestants stall for time. Even if they know the answer immediately (and are allowed not to pretend they don’t), they have to stretch it out to try to manufacture some type of suspense. At least on “American Idol” it is suspenseful when they say, “We’ll tell you after the break,” (even though most of that suspense is lost in annoying commercials), but here it is just enraging: “We’ll tell you which country has the longest border with the U.S. when we come back!” The contestant guessed Mexico.

Heck, even “Deal or No Deal” is more exciting, and I could write a computer program in about a minute that would fare just as well as any contestant. First, it would generate a random number between 1 and 26, then either jump up and down or get really upset, depending on the dollar amount that showed up between $.01 and $1,000,000. After that it’s pretty easy: just look at how many cases are left with values below and above the bank offer, and analyze expected value to make decisions. If you have time, use calculus.

Anyway, I found this poll on the “Are You Smarter than a 5^th Grader?” website, and I found it pretty interesting. I added some statistics of my own.

This show’s premiere episode was the highest-rated premiere on any network in eight years. I guess that’s what having the slot after "American Idol" will do you for. I don’t know if it’s because I got about a 95% average in Grade 5 while reading the Hockey News more often than not, but this show is just bad.

I never thought I’d say this, but if you’re thinking about watching “Are You Smarter than a 5^th Grader?” please just go read a book instead. If aliens found us and discovered this show, I shudder to think what they might do.

Labels: Brainstorm

Posted by Farewell, Free Will at 3:00 p.m. | Permalink | Comments

For those of you who don't know, in university-level math courses, professors like to choose a few types of questions that represent roughly the material that has been covered in the course, and then from those they select the most difficult questions possible of those select types. Being math professors, one would think that they should understand that this is not a way to accurately get a representation of students' ability and progress in the course.

Say I can perfectly do 90% of the problem types. Chances are that, on average, I will get about 90% on my exams. I might get lower than that by virtue of silly mistakes, and I will only get higher than that if that 90% I can do is represented by more than 90% of the exam questions.

Now say I can do 100% of the problem types, but only up to 90% of their maximum difficulty. This is probably where most students stand -- they know the concepts, they understand the material and can set themselves up nicely enough, but they get stumped by the trick questions. And in university-level math courses, it seems that every question must be a trick question, or at least an extremely difficult one. Therefore, on the average test, in this case, my percent grade will probably end up being the same as the percentage of questions of the exam that are at 90% difficulty or under, which is often around 50%. Even if the tests aren't multiple choice, sometimes you can get nowhere on a solution and end up taking a zero on a given question. This has happened on problem types at which I've been 90% proficient. That missing 10% of ability ends up costing 100%.

I understand that they want everyone to be the best they can be (so they push harder than expected), but I shouldn't have to know how to integrate the most complicated thing in the world in order to solve a problem that shouldn't really be testing how well I can integrate complicated irrational logarithmic functions in the first place.

What I think would be better is to put more weight on weekly work. A lab period every week could be used to give an assignment or test on a smaller amount of material, ranging from easy to difficult. This way someone could still manage a 90% on the test while being 90% good at 100% of the problem types. Exams would still exist, but they would certainly not account for 100% of the term mark, which may end up being the case in my calculus course this term. I don't have the time to put in the effort to become 100% perfect at every possible trick professors could conjure to throw my way.

I could and would throw some solid statistical arguments out there to show that this method of test-making is fundamentally flawed, but I'm too mad and worn-out from studying and doing assignment after assignment assigned as though every professor thinks that I'm taking just one course this term. Maybe somebody else can help me out with these statistics. Vince? Just kidding.

Labels: Brainstorm

Posted by Farewell, Free Will at 4:19 p.m. | Permalink | Comments

For a while now, this question has been somewhere in the back of my mind. My life has definitely become a bit too formulaic. I tend to see everything as mathematical equations (thankfully, though, not as binormal vectors or linear recurrences). The advantages to this are great, as I mentioned in a previous post; it accounts for efficiency in a lot of areas of life, though I am still not a good decision-maker. Perhaps the only real downside is that life can just get boring when I feel like laws of nature are making decisions for me. Well, I’m also just a more boring person for it. And that certainly isn’t something I foresaw for myself.

I can guess what you’re thinking. But being quiet or shy doesn’t constitute a boring personality. In the past I know that I have been obscure at times, even enigmatic, but I’ve always managed to at least entertain myself. I always got my own droll, subtle, off-the-cuff remarks, and that was enough for me. But even my prepared writing seems to have been lacking the wit I have often displayed spontaneously in the past (people other than myself have occasionally found me funny, too). I think it probably all comes down to the fact that I haven’t been exercising those muscles lately, and I haven’t really found myself in enough social situations to do so. Of course I am going to university away from home, and haven’t done much to make friends here (I don’t like trying—I prefer when it just happens). In fact, I don’t hang out with or really talk to any guys here. Inconceivable! This is coming from a man who never spoke to a girl until high school.

Besides, my being shy has nothing to do with it. I’ve been shy for my whole life, and it hasn’t hindered me in any way from being cool—or uncool, whichever it is that I have been or am trying to be. This summer at work I was often at my wittiest (I just knew I’d think back to that horrible experience with fondness), but that’s because I was around people with whom I was comfortable. To people who intimidated me, and there are many, I was probably just known as the quiet guy.

I have played floor hockey here semi-regularly since September, and I’m pretty sure that I’m known within that group as the guy who doesn’t say anything and always gets frustrated with himself, or maybe as the guy who seems to have lost his scoring touch lately. It probably doesn’t help that one of the other players shares my name. I think I sometimes leave those games disliking my personality, and not even necessarily because I got upset. It’s hockey, and it’s with people who love hockey almost half as much as I do; I should be more sociable and bore myself less. At the same time, though, I am glad that my tacitness sometimes, though not always, prevents me from saying some of the careless things that even respectable people let slip from their lips unnoticed.

Now, since you’ve been subjected to my complaints and stuck it out, here are some things that I do want in my personality:

1. I want to be an honourable yet fierce competitor, without necessarily putting holes in church walls.

2. I want to be the eternal pessimist—“This is the worst day ever: first this happens, and who knows what else might happen”—while remaining the eternal optimist (Vince has promised to draft me with a late-round pick when he becomes an NHL GM. I swear I have it in writing somewhere).

3. I want to be the genius who comes up with such gems as “Dog brings home Stanley Cup,” and the entire “Vote for Thomas” presidential campaign, which was a thousand times better than “Vote for Pedro” or even “Vote for Rory” (thanks go out to my brother, my mom, and James (see attached image at the bottom—whether it made any sense in the campaign is debatable)).

4. I want to be the guy who goes out late at night, grabs McDonald’s, and plays highway soccer with Corey on Manitoba’s #6 (70-stretch for the Thompsonites).

5. I want to be the guy who will quote the The Matrix in its entirety at any given get-together (I realize that I am the only one who wishes this—except maybe Vince…Vince, you reading? Of course you aren’t).

6. I want to be the guy whom people want to always have around, and the guy who earns and keeps their respect over the course of many years.

7. I want to be the guy whose jokes nobody gets, but who gets full entertainment value from them himself—especially when being interviewed for the YC:Fusion testimonial video.

8. I want to be the guy with whom parents want their kids to associate, to be the guy whom they can think of as a role model, and to actually deserve it.

9. I want to make my mom spit out her drink on a student's test paper, that she hasn't yet finished marking, just one more time.

10. I want to try not alphabetizing something, just to see how it feels; but I won’t start with this list.

I wouldn’t normally do this, but I just heard somewhere that you all wanted to read another somber self-reflection piece. You’re welcome.

Labels: Brainstorm

Posted by Farewell, Free Will at 3:12 a.m. | Permalink | Comments

My life thus far has been a battleground for my sense of duty and my eternal desire to create. I have come to wonder if I have any conscious control over the struggle’s outcome at all, because it is hard to think of major life choices wherein my decision mirrored my inner desire. I guess the thing that really confuses me is why I should feel a greater sense of duty to solve complex differential equations like a common machine than to write the music that only I can write. In fact, my greatest fear is that I will ultimately be a cruel master to my potential, never letting it out of its cage and forcing it to stagnate.

One of my favourite questions in the world to be asked is “So, what do you want to do when you’re done university?” My favourite answer so far has been “I want to turn 21.” Another is “So, what are you going to do with a math degree?” To that I replied, “Music.” They asked if math would help with that. Could math help with music? Hmm. That’d be quite a stretch. Do people actually think that I’m taking math on purpose, knowing I’m going to pursue a career in music? Wait a minute… if that’s not what I’m doing, then just what is?

I do owe mathematics a lot. It has aided immensely in my understanding of the world and how everything works. My self-acclaimed reasoning skills in particular probably owe more to mathematics than any other area of my life, and that is worth more than I can express. Math also kept me company through some lonely teen years (well, not exactly, but Vince and I had quite a time trying to figure out how to compute cube roots by hand – until I gave up and looked it up online). For what it’s worth, math allowed me to graduate with honours with distinction, and probably won me a $3000 entrance scholarship to the University of Saskatchewan. But math doesn’t make me feel excited about the future, and therefore it fails the litmus test I should be using to determine whether it is an acceptable career option.

The shortcomings of music as a career lie in unpredictability and its high disaster potential. Ten years down the road I might not necessarily be overwhelmingly happy, but I might be thankful that I completed my B.Sc. in Mathematics. If you discover that I have not changed courses over the next year, then you can safely assume that my sense of duty has defeated my sense of adventure and my caged desire yet again. You can also continue to wait patiently and in great anticipation for my upcoming CD.

The really big decisions in life are often governed by the smaller ones; they may even be consequences of them. Before we know it, we can be two years into a degree into which we don’t even really know how we got in the first place. I think that it is important to realize that every decision that is made is intended to be the best decision possible. A great way to learn from our mistakes is to recognize questionable decisions and use their results to adjust the criteria on which we base our decision making. That way, we can understand why we made certain decisions and learn to live with them, while also helping ourselves not to make the same mistakes in the future.

In conclusion, yes, it is exam time, and I have had two enormous math-related exams on the schedule (one down, one to go), so the posts have been and may continue to be sparser ‘til all is over.

Now, inspired by the ridiculous midterm exams of my calculus professor, Dr. John Martin, I will proceed to offer a multiple choice question to end things off. Any one of the answers is probably right.

Q. So Why Did I Start a Math Degree, Anyway?

a)

b) Math can be pretty fun.

c) I’m afraid of actually putting everything I've got into a pursuit of a music career.

d) I have absolutely no backbone.

Cheers.

Labels: Brainstorm

Posted by Farewell, Free Will at 4:00 a.m. | Permalink | Comments

Genesis 2:15-17 (KJV)
And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

When I was very young, my sister Ladonna and I were in our family’s old van, a 1980-something Ford Club Wagon, sitting in a driveway while my mom had run in to the house for a few minutes. To this day it puzzles me, but before my mom went in, she specifically instructed Ladonna not to let me get to the front of the van. Now I am fairly certain that I was two years old at the time – three at the most – so I suppose it’s possible that I already had a history of mischief behind the wheel, but one wouldn’t think so. Oh yeah, and it is worth noting that the vehicle was running and that the brake pedal did not need to be depressed to shift from park. To shorten the story, everyone involved was uninjured, but the garage door needed to be replaced. It is also worth noting that this was not our house. Yet I don’t think that anyone necessarily acted irresponsibly. If you disagree, then I would like to also hear your interpretation of God’s role in the fall of man.

If today we were all granted the gift of free will for the first time, I’m sure the response would be fairly positive. “Great,” we’d all say. “This is much better than the vibration of one-dimensional strings in n spacetime dimensions deciding what is best to come out of my mouth next.” But what would be any different? It is probably true that if we suddenly lost our free will, we probably wouldn’t even know how to tell the difference. So why does it matter?

Free will is important because of accountability. Without it, there would be no such things as sin, morality, or righteousness, and respect, love, and kindness would be mere illusions.

I don’t believe that the key to the original gift of free will was that humans could make relatively trivial life choices such as whether to learn a trade or get a college degree. Important as those decisions are, the fall of man is clearly a much broader issue. To understand what free will really means, one must understand that infinity cannot be found in nature; in other words, everything we know has limits. The examples are endless but obvious. One way in which free will has changed over time is that those limits have increased in number since the days of the garden. Adam and Eve had the free will to decide whether or not to live an eternal life in paradise without knowing sin. That was the original gift of free will, and we no longer have that option.

Thinking back to that incident in the van so many years ago, I imagine that I wasn’t even aware that there was something wrong that I could do until my mom mentioned it. That probably put the thought into my head, though she didn’t mean for that to happen. This causes me to speculate that, if He had wanted to, God could have done more to prevent the fall from happening without violating free will. I’m sure he could have kept the serpent out of the garden. He could have hidden the tree far away or made it a hundred feet tall. Whether or not we are talking about an actual tree is irrelevant. By telling Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree, he was not only warning them, but also giving them a choice; the ball was in their court. And like we all continue to do, they failed.

The responsibility that comes with such a gift is overwhelming. Just thinking about the scope of it makes me timid. If one simple act of irresponsibility can turn human and spiritual history upside-down, then what sort of catastrophe might I induce? Would I sacrifice the gift of freedom to ensure that the blame for such disappointment and regret never falls on my shoulders?

On that note, I hope that the right decision has been made to create this public eyehole into my mind. We often don’t act rationally even though we try to. With that in mind, instead of pointing out that I have fallen into the vortex of a social phenomenon with a high risk of pretentiousness, I would ask you all to ignore that this collection of articles will be hosted by a service called "Blogger."

Thank you for reading, and enjoy.

Labels: Brainstorm

Posted by Farewell, Free Will at 6:18 p.m. | Permalink | Comments