Friday, February 13, 2009

The schools aren't what they used to be, they never were...

Einstein once said 'Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.' but then again when he was in school he didn't get the best of grades. I've been thinking a little about the types of intelligence that are most useful.

I always think that the type of intelligence which is thought of by society to be best, knowledge, is in the end the most useless. It's probably just the one that's emphasised because it's easiest to test, and thus find who has the most factual knowledge. For me, memorising factual knowledge doesn't show that you are smart.

I think smarter people are those who can use logic, the kind that Solomon displayed when he worked out who owned a baby by offering each woman half. He could have had spies all through the city and thus known how to solve this type of problem by having the knowledge of who owned the baby, he would not then have been renowned for his intelligence. Instead he used logic to work it out.

I like to think that I have a fair amount of logic, I use this to try to use my energy economically, I'm not talking about going green, I'm talking about when I'm doing work, doing it the way which will make me least tired by the end. Perhaps it's not overly logical to some to be lazy like that, but for me it works, using logic and obtaining different results does not mean the other person is wrong, they've just got different motivation.

There are also other types of intelligences, like artistic, social and personal/emotional intelligence. My first thought for artistic intelligence is that it's useless, but it can have it's uses I guess, influencing other people with art is quite a complex and scary thought. I hear that they use certain types of music and colours in shops that make you more likely to buy things. Those strategies don't affect me much, I don't shop enough to care, but clearly the concept could be applied to other aspects in life.

Social and emotional intelligences kind of go hand in hand, it's about being able to tell how others feel and how you feel. It's all about interactions with other people. Not one of my strong points, but useful for many people.

The conclusion I've come to is that whatever you're good at is fine, as long as you capitalize on your strengths for the benefit of yourself and others, but the stuff I learnt at school is still largely of no use to me, which is lucky because I don't really remember what I learnt.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

What fits into your busy lifestyle better: 1hour of exercise 3 times a week, or 24/7 death?

I've started doing Karate again, which is pretty rad. After 2 years of doing next to nothing physically it's difficult though. I remember a lot of the stuff though, which is surprising, many people talk of having a memory like a seive, sometimes I wish I had a memory that good...

Last night's session was led by the resident fourth dan, (which is the fourth grade after the garden variety black belt, so he could kill you about 100 times before you hit the ground, if you even end up hitting the ground... yes, he's that good) needless to say I have some sore muscles today. Curse my laziness up to this point!

I've also been doing a bit of bike riding lately since near the end of last year, not regularly though, nothing too excessive, except how I nearly died trying to ride up a quite steep hill when I already had some sort of flu type disease. Curse you disease formally only explained by passing comets!

Been doing some swimming too, no worries with that, it's all been fun. The swimming isn't doing much in the sculpting and toning of six packs though, it's much more just a relaxing soak.

I figure I'll try to start doing more bike riding when it's cooler. Or I might get back into another lazy pattern...

Sunday, February 8, 2009

lol fail om nom nom cheezburger


Why do people need to copy jokes of other people? Are we so void of creativity that we can't think of any more good ideas? Perhaps we're too lazy to bother thinking.

Every time I go on the internerd these days I always see mainly the same things; motivational posters, people failing at various tasks and lots of storm troopers. I don't even want to talk about the stuff on youtube...

I guess that people are finding it hard to find anything to satirise as generally the only things not plagiarised are non-sequiturs.

I feel kind of bad about complaining about people trying to make others laugh, but really if they're stealing the idea it's not going the be funny. N0 matter how many time my younger brother repeats my or my father's jokes they are never funny for us again, just repetitive and annoying, so I guess the main reason the kids repost these things is to try to make other people think they're the first ones to do it and to make themselves look awesome.

Most of the stuff isn't even funny in the first place... but I do like the stuff about ninjas.

ps. check this goldenpages joke out!

You've all been owned!

If all your friends wrote a blog about jumping off a cliff...

So, I'm finally taking the plunge into blogdom, I kinda hate that term though: blog... I'm thinking that I'll get over it though, it's not that big of a deal, but til then I'll just call it my lame attempt to fit in with all the other kids who write blogs, some of which become famous. I probably won't bother telling anybody about this thing though, so this is quite unlikely to make a star.

It turns out I am subject to peer pressure and that I haven't overcome it yet, I did go a fair while without starting this thing up, and I still don't do the facebook thing, a fact I'm quite proud of really. I do have a myspace account, but it's laying dormant. I only started it to talk to Tripod, they're one great band, but now that i've pretty much said all the things I can think of to say to them and they've replied to my messages it serves no purpose.

Even though I doubt that many, if any, people will read this, if you do please write some stuff done somewhere, I'm assuming that there'll be some sort of comment place. If you are more computer literate than me, which you probably are, then you might be able to give me tips on how to improve things. At this stage I'm not happy with how it looks, so advice. Also I'm guessing there'll be some that are more literate than me, not as many as with computer literacy, but still some. I don't want your advice, I'm happy with the occassional gramatical error.

Anyway, enjoy or don't, I don't mind, let me know either way.