Well I was planning on heading back to Japan today, but it seems that plans was thwarted as a result of some technical difficulties of the plane that was supposed to get me out of Switzerland. On the upside of things is that I did get a free stay in the hotel near by the airport in Geneva for an extra day and went into town for some shopping and got some free meals. Yum.
I did learn something though, and that is when getting off the plane from a cancelled flight, it is critical that you get to the rerouting counters quickly, the thing being is that the waits for these lines are long and it is critical that you try and get rerouted as soon as possible. As the day wears onwards, the problem is that there are less and less flights available for you to get rerouted.
Well, I will be looking forward to getting back in to Japan tomorrow to unwind and upload some photos later on of Denmark and Sweden.
On a side note, there is this hot girl beisde me that is sort of competing against me in terms of typing speed. We are totally hammering on the keyboard to see who can type the fastest. It's hilarious!
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Well Played: How I got Scammed
It's not often that I get scammed. The only time I lose money is by doing something stupid and perhaps getting scammed is one of those things. But still, it was an incredibly good lesson to learn and I have no qualms about it.
There is a saying in poker: "If you can't tell who the sucker is, then you're it" and that was exactly what happened.. all in the span of about 5 minutes.
So what exactly did happen? I'll get into that right now.
Walking along the streets of Copenhagen, there was a crowd surrounding this one man on the street. A small cloth covered there street where he had 3 little boxes, no bigger than size of a credit card. A ball a placed under one box, he moved the boxes around and then you have to guess which box has the ball. It's a classic "cups and balls" game that you see in movies set in New York. But still, the presentation was brilliant.
I walked by the crowd and watched for a little while. The table host moved the ball around underneath the little boxes. One guy guesses at the wrong box and loses and another person guesses at the right box and wins. I stop and watch for a while longer and the pattern continues.
Looked easy and obvious enough to me. But it gets even better and I learned a great lesson.
During the play, one guy flips over one of the obviously wrong boxes and loses. The host takes the guy's 500 DKK and shoves it at me and in a sort of a Russian sounding accent
"which box has the ball?"
I point at the box.
"Okay, show me the money."
"Naah"
"Come on, show me the money and it's yours"
I watched the game meticulously from the start and it was obvious that I knew. So I figured, what harm? I pulled out the cash, flipped over the box and found *nothing* and disbelief, he flips over the other box and there the ball was. The guy cracks a smile takes the cash and goes back to the game.
The crowd standing there tells me, "no no no" you gotta put your foot on it next time so he can't change it on you. They go through another set and I watch. The host stops, one guy walks up, gives him some cash, flips over a box and gets the cash.
A second set gets played, one guy plays and flips over the wrong box. The guy looks over at me again, which one is it? Reactively, I flip out a little more cash, put my foot on the 'right' box and lose. Even I was surprised at how fast I reacted.
I immediately walk from the game and started thinking, "how the hell did I lose!?" I was astounded and part irritated. I walked through the street a little more and found a few more of these guys playing the same game along the street but I ignore them and walk past.
Then the whole gravity of the situation made perfect sense!
I walked back to the other guys playing the same game and there was a crowd at each and everyone of them. Each of them playing the game in the same way. The host stops, one guy gives him cash and flips over a box and loses. Another player gives him cash and flips over the obviously right box and wins. The game keeps going and going. There are at least 3~4 people surrounding this guy and they keep playing they don't leave. Then some outside person joins and he plays a few rounds and loses all the while one person in the group "takes a loss" and the table guy gives the new face an "easy chance" to win... and yet he loses.
Its a scam! Beautifully played scam!
I pull out my camera to take a photo of the setup. One guy, walk out of nowhere at me and says "I'll give you some money if you take a photo of them." It sounds absurd and too good of a deal but I refuse, I got the picture I wanted and started walking. The guy chases me, briskly walking beside me, "wanna go 50/50?" I tell him "nah, I don't have any cash."
I caught you guys! It's obvious, the whole thing is a setup! All the people that got caught in these traps simply walked away after playing not giving it a second thought. But I did and figured out the whole scheme.
But still, the scam was brilliant and yet somehow I still respected them for it in some way. Compared to other ways of stealing money, they picked the best method-- a technique with not violence, they used their brains and were creative. The losers just packed up and left with the scammers keeping the money. Tricked, playing a fair game; a beautiful irony, isn't it?
I also was incredibly amazed at how they made a great appeal to my logic. Every single time that someone won, the ball was in the obviously right spot. Then when it came to my turn to play, the ball wasn't there! But still, how could it not be there!? Slight of hand? Magic? Something was obviously going on that I didn't get... but the beauty of it is that they managed to trick me on something that looked blatantly obvious. I was amazed at how they fooled me.
This experience has rocked my foundations on what I can take for granted. The way that he could move the ball around to trick me was unimaginable to me. I learned something new and there will always be unimaginable ways for a person to get caught.
I got played, perfectly. They made an appeal to logic, made me confident and tricked me at the end. This was an awesome lesson in human psychology.
It sounds so obvious when I write this out and perhaps some of you will laugh at me for getting caught. But you have to live in the moment to fully understand the impact of how your thoughts and feelings get manipulated leading to making this terrible decision. You never really understand the true art of a scam until you feel it and most of us never do.
I lost $200 without realizing it. Dealing with exchange rates is messy to which also caught me of guard.
But I'm glad about this experience. I'd rather screw up for $200 than get scammed for $1000. Now if I was truly evil. I'd come back the next day with some extra cash and flip over the box that they weren't expecting. I might lose the first round, but I always strive to win the second.
I think that everyone in their life should experience getting scammed at least once. There is much more to it than words can explain.
When you travel, you will be exposed to things that might never be able to imagine. Amazing isn't it?
There is a saying in poker: "If you can't tell who the sucker is, then you're it" and that was exactly what happened.. all in the span of about 5 minutes.
So what exactly did happen? I'll get into that right now.
Walking along the streets of Copenhagen, there was a crowd surrounding this one man on the street. A small cloth covered there street where he had 3 little boxes, no bigger than size of a credit card. A ball a placed under one box, he moved the boxes around and then you have to guess which box has the ball. It's a classic "cups and balls" game that you see in movies set in New York. But still, the presentation was brilliant.
I walked by the crowd and watched for a little while. The table host moved the ball around underneath the little boxes. One guy guesses at the wrong box and loses and another person guesses at the right box and wins. I stop and watch for a while longer and the pattern continues.
Looked easy and obvious enough to me. But it gets even better and I learned a great lesson.
During the play, one guy flips over one of the obviously wrong boxes and loses. The host takes the guy's 500 DKK and shoves it at me and in a sort of a Russian sounding accent
"which box has the ball?"
I point at the box.
"Okay, show me the money."
"Naah"
"Come on, show me the money and it's yours"
I watched the game meticulously from the start and it was obvious that I knew. So I figured, what harm? I pulled out the cash, flipped over the box and found *nothing* and disbelief, he flips over the other box and there the ball was. The guy cracks a smile takes the cash and goes back to the game.
The crowd standing there tells me, "no no no" you gotta put your foot on it next time so he can't change it on you. They go through another set and I watch. The host stops, one guy walks up, gives him some cash, flips over a box and gets the cash.
A second set gets played, one guy plays and flips over the wrong box. The guy looks over at me again, which one is it? Reactively, I flip out a little more cash, put my foot on the 'right' box and lose. Even I was surprised at how fast I reacted.
I immediately walk from the game and started thinking, "how the hell did I lose!?" I was astounded and part irritated. I walked through the street a little more and found a few more of these guys playing the same game along the street but I ignore them and walk past.
Then the whole gravity of the situation made perfect sense!
I walked back to the other guys playing the same game and there was a crowd at each and everyone of them. Each of them playing the game in the same way. The host stops, one guy gives him cash and flips over a box and loses. Another player gives him cash and flips over the obviously right box and wins. The game keeps going and going. There are at least 3~4 people surrounding this guy and they keep playing they don't leave. Then some outside person joins and he plays a few rounds and loses all the while one person in the group "takes a loss" and the table guy gives the new face an "easy chance" to win... and yet he loses.
Its a scam! Beautifully played scam!
I pull out my camera to take a photo of the setup. One guy, walk out of nowhere at me and says "I'll give you some money if you take a photo of them." It sounds absurd and too good of a deal but I refuse, I got the picture I wanted and started walking. The guy chases me, briskly walking beside me, "wanna go 50/50?" I tell him "nah, I don't have any cash."
I caught you guys! It's obvious, the whole thing is a setup! All the people that got caught in these traps simply walked away after playing not giving it a second thought. But I did and figured out the whole scheme.
But still, the scam was brilliant and yet somehow I still respected them for it in some way. Compared to other ways of stealing money, they picked the best method-- a technique with not violence, they used their brains and were creative. The losers just packed up and left with the scammers keeping the money. Tricked, playing a fair game; a beautiful irony, isn't it?
I also was incredibly amazed at how they made a great appeal to my logic. Every single time that someone won, the ball was in the obviously right spot. Then when it came to my turn to play, the ball wasn't there! But still, how could it not be there!? Slight of hand? Magic? Something was obviously going on that I didn't get... but the beauty of it is that they managed to trick me on something that looked blatantly obvious. I was amazed at how they fooled me.
This experience has rocked my foundations on what I can take for granted. The way that he could move the ball around to trick me was unimaginable to me. I learned something new and there will always be unimaginable ways for a person to get caught.
I got played, perfectly. They made an appeal to logic, made me confident and tricked me at the end. This was an awesome lesson in human psychology.
It sounds so obvious when I write this out and perhaps some of you will laugh at me for getting caught. But you have to live in the moment to fully understand the impact of how your thoughts and feelings get manipulated leading to making this terrible decision. You never really understand the true art of a scam until you feel it and most of us never do.
I lost $200 without realizing it. Dealing with exchange rates is messy to which also caught me of guard.
But I'm glad about this experience. I'd rather screw up for $200 than get scammed for $1000. Now if I was truly evil. I'd come back the next day with some extra cash and flip over the box that they weren't expecting. I might lose the first round, but I always strive to win the second.
I think that everyone in their life should experience getting scammed at least once. There is much more to it than words can explain.
When you travel, you will be exposed to things that might never be able to imagine. Amazing isn't it?
Copenhagen: First Impressions
I landed in Denmark, Copenhagen yesterday. The roads here are incredibly wide, the buildings are made out of bricks and look fairly sturdy, many of the buildings might even be mistaken as warehouses at first glance. I've milled about the city core for a few hours after getting in and I have to say that the interior design and decor of the apartments here are pretty slick from what I saw-- marbled walls in some buildings, nice lighting and beautiful furniture.
The city is beautiful. Though most of the buildings have a sort of rectangular shape to them. The buildings are adorned with sorts of character giving embellishments; designs on windows, artistic metal gratings and more.
Big
Other things that struck me was the sheer size of the people, huge, gigantic, but in a tall kind of way. Me, being fairly tall guy for Vancouver (and Japan), I felt like a midget when it came to the towering height of Danes. The women here are my height! The men are at least another head taller than I! Even the buildings here are big. I arrived at the train station for central Copenhagen last night and looked up to see a vast open space leading up towards the arched ceiling of their train terminal.
Tough
The people here look hardy, perhaps even gruff. Even their food tells you that they're tough. I had dinner here yesterday night and the portions were pretty big. A big chunk of meat, somewhat tough, with a salad topped with a kind of mayonnaise. I had breakfast this morning and the salami, ham turkey meat slices and cheese slices were big. I cut through some bread buns that screamed "tough." I could feel my jaw muscles straining as I ripped through every bite of the bun and every time I chewed. It almost feels like that you could simply become tougher just by living here. But that is not to say that the Danes aren't friendly. Actually, they're pretty damn lively.
Lively
These people laugh, a lot. Not just your usual, "ha ha" laugh, but a kind of hearty loud laugh that would echo through the street. I walked through the streets at night, it was nearly all that I could hear, either that or the sounds of lively conversation. Even as I write this entry in my hotel room, I can see the Danes sitting outside, perhaps 30 of them all enjoying breakfast (if you call it that now that it is about 11 am) smiling and eating. Even last night, there were fireworks *in the city* going off at midnight from an amusement park with a loud "crackle and boom." What an interesting place, I like it already.
The city is beautiful. Though most of the buildings have a sort of rectangular shape to them. The buildings are adorned with sorts of character giving embellishments; designs on windows, artistic metal gratings and more.
Big
Other things that struck me was the sheer size of the people, huge, gigantic, but in a tall kind of way. Me, being fairly tall guy for Vancouver (and Japan), I felt like a midget when it came to the towering height of Danes. The women here are my height! The men are at least another head taller than I! Even the buildings here are big. I arrived at the train station for central Copenhagen last night and looked up to see a vast open space leading up towards the arched ceiling of their train terminal.
Tough
The people here look hardy, perhaps even gruff. Even their food tells you that they're tough. I had dinner here yesterday night and the portions were pretty big. A big chunk of meat, somewhat tough, with a salad topped with a kind of mayonnaise. I had breakfast this morning and the salami, ham turkey meat slices and cheese slices were big. I cut through some bread buns that screamed "tough." I could feel my jaw muscles straining as I ripped through every bite of the bun and every time I chewed. It almost feels like that you could simply become tougher just by living here. But that is not to say that the Danes aren't friendly. Actually, they're pretty damn lively.
Lively
These people laugh, a lot. Not just your usual, "ha ha" laugh, but a kind of hearty loud laugh that would echo through the street. I walked through the streets at night, it was nearly all that I could hear, either that or the sounds of lively conversation. Even as I write this entry in my hotel room, I can see the Danes sitting outside, perhaps 30 of them all enjoying breakfast (if you call it that now that it is about 11 am) smiling and eating. Even last night, there were fireworks *in the city* going off at midnight from an amusement park with a loud "crackle and boom." What an interesting place, I like it already.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
US Interest Rate Cuts and the Falling US Dollar
Back in July, I made a prediction that the US dollar will continue to devalue against other currencies. 2 months later to today, with the collapsing home lending market and the cut in the Federal Reserve interest rates by 0.5% to 4.75%. It seems that my predictions are coming to fruition (sorry, Sacha) with the USD coming to historical 30 year low against the CAD, which will likely bring the CAD to USD parity in the coming months. The USD is also at a historic low against the Euro and things do not look bright for the US economy.
With the easing of interest rates and the hopes of preventing drying liquidity in the markets, the Federal Reserve has opted to reduce interest rates to ease the pressure of businesses operating on loans. This may make it easier for the general public to borrow money which might stimulate the economy.
Tactics such as this is incredibly dangerous, as increasing the money supply leads to inflation and further devaluation of the US currency when the fundamentals of the economy have not changed, especially when it comes to looking at the US trade deficit. What I believe the Federal Reserve is doing, is reducing interest rates to keep the financial institutions that borrowed money for sub-prime loans afloat. This, may in turn slightly reduce the interest rates people further down the borrowing chain (ie. the mortgage borrowers) pay.
My opinion on this matter is that rate cuts will only buy time for the US economy from a recession unless something incredibly good happens within the economy. The primary problem the US faces is the number of people that took on mortgages, adjustable rate mortgage loans (ARM loans) in particular, while were not in the position to manage the repayment of these loans. The contracts these people signed, included a significant interest rate increase after a grace period of a few years, which drastically increased their monthly payments to unmanageable levels.
The Federal Reserve rate cut will allow these financial institutions that made these bad loans in the hopes of big profits to hang on for a while longer while they reorganize and find other markets to invest in. Unfortunately, I believe that the largest damage done is to the sub-prime mortgage borrowers that have or will be financially ruined, resulting in a tightening money supply of disposable spending leading to reduced business for other companies.
Though I cannot substantiate my arguments more concretely with statistical loan data, my opinion is that the US dollar will continue to fall and we have not seen it's value bottom out yet. I believe that the US economy will continue to deteriorate until US local manufacturing and production improves to reduce their trade deficit. I would continue to advise that people with US denominated portfolios look towards investment markets denominated in the CAD, EURO or other currencies to prevent loss financial loss from USD erosion. For stability, I would look to Europe, for growth I would look to Asia and the emerging markets.
With the easing of interest rates and the hopes of preventing drying liquidity in the markets, the Federal Reserve has opted to reduce interest rates to ease the pressure of businesses operating on loans. This may make it easier for the general public to borrow money which might stimulate the economy.
Tactics such as this is incredibly dangerous, as increasing the money supply leads to inflation and further devaluation of the US currency when the fundamentals of the economy have not changed, especially when it comes to looking at the US trade deficit. What I believe the Federal Reserve is doing, is reducing interest rates to keep the financial institutions that borrowed money for sub-prime loans afloat. This, may in turn slightly reduce the interest rates people further down the borrowing chain (ie. the mortgage borrowers) pay.
My opinion on this matter is that rate cuts will only buy time for the US economy from a recession unless something incredibly good happens within the economy. The primary problem the US faces is the number of people that took on mortgages, adjustable rate mortgage loans (ARM loans) in particular, while were not in the position to manage the repayment of these loans. The contracts these people signed, included a significant interest rate increase after a grace period of a few years, which drastically increased their monthly payments to unmanageable levels.
The Federal Reserve rate cut will allow these financial institutions that made these bad loans in the hopes of big profits to hang on for a while longer while they reorganize and find other markets to invest in. Unfortunately, I believe that the largest damage done is to the sub-prime mortgage borrowers that have or will be financially ruined, resulting in a tightening money supply of disposable spending leading to reduced business for other companies.
Though I cannot substantiate my arguments more concretely with statistical loan data, my opinion is that the US dollar will continue to fall and we have not seen it's value bottom out yet. I believe that the US economy will continue to deteriorate until US local manufacturing and production improves to reduce their trade deficit. I would continue to advise that people with US denominated portfolios look towards investment markets denominated in the CAD, EURO or other currencies to prevent loss financial loss from USD erosion. For stability, I would look to Europe, for growth I would look to Asia and the emerging markets.
A follow up to the IQ Test
As a follow up top my previous post on IQ testing, I have decided to answer as many questions as possible incorrectly to see if these tests inflates IQ scores. I have taken and found the test at IQPE inflates the posted IQ score which yielded a score of 98 after answering all of their questions incorrectly which indicates to me that their test is complete garbage. The test posted at iqtest.dk yielded a score below 79 after answering all of their questions incorrectly. Suffice to say, one should be weary of the IQ tests provided online and a legitimate offline test administered by a respectable organization should be done instead.
Mensa has a few sample questions of their tests posted online for people to try. I have found their questions to be significantly harder and different compared to the online tests I have tried thus far. I have no interest in attempting to join the Mensa organization as I am quite happy with the company of people I keep, whom are incredibly fascinating, though might not be meet the qualifications of Mensa.
Mensa has a few sample questions of their tests posted online for people to try. I have found their questions to be significantly harder and different compared to the online tests I have tried thus far. I have no interest in attempting to join the Mensa organization as I am quite happy with the company of people I keep, whom are incredibly fascinating, though might not be meet the qualifications of Mensa.
My Displeasure with Acer
For a rising star in the laptop industry, currently ranked 3rd in the world in terms of market share, Acer could stand to make laptops with less defects and better robustness from the experiences I have had.
I am currently on my second Acer laptop, after the catastrophic failure of my Acer first laptop after 1.5 years of use by December of 2006. The problem with my last laptop was the result of a hardware failure while streaming data from an external hard drive. The failure occurred several times occurring in several system crashes which could finally end with my laptop not being able to boot up.
A 1 year warranty on the system had made the laptop ineligible for any free servicing. Repairs would have cost $800, when a new laptop costs $1100. I decided to purchase a new laptop instead, which turned out to be another Acer laptop for about $1100 with fairly decent specs. The other laptops on sale at the computer store with similar specs ran for an additional $100.
Unfortunately, the new laptop I got was not without problems of its own. The LCD monitor flickers somewhat when I open and close the laptop and just recently, one of the mouse buttons on the touch pad has come loose and now sits with a tilt on my laptop making it awkward to use.
Hardware problems occurring twice over a span of 2 years is unacceptable, especially when a computer is quite important for many of my daily life routines. I have contacted Acer about the problem and they have informed me that it will take at least a week for them to have the problem fixed. In addition, I would have to pay for shipping costs of my computer to the repair center. I have since sent them an e-mail asking if this cost could be waived since it the computer is still under warranty, but I have had no response from the maker since. I find that to be a little bit offensive for a company to not respond. I have found in the online documents that Acer stipulates that the customer is responsible for shipping costs of the laptop or computer to the repair center, but still, simply ignoring my e-mail is unacceptable for a company.
As of this point, I have learned a few things about owning a laptop and the first would be to make sure that you have a secondary computer (preferably a desktop) in addition to having a laptop, as laptops are prone to hardware failure. In my lab, several of my friends (3 of them) over their 2 years of work here have had their laptops fail on them and repair times have
ranged from 2 to 3 weeks. As computers have become ubiquitous in our daily lives, living without one for such a long period of time is incredibly inconvenient. My reasoning for having a secondary desktop computer prevents a person from going without a computer should their laptop have hardware problems and desktops are far easier to maintain compared to laptops.
Should the problems I have faced with all of my laptops occurred on a desktop, I would have had them rectified in no sooner than a day or two by simply replacing parts on my own. A bad monitor connection could be easily fixed and a defective mouse could have been quickly swapped for a new one, both which are extremely hard tasks to accomplish for a laptop.
I am currently on my second Acer laptop, after the catastrophic failure of my Acer first laptop after 1.5 years of use by December of 2006. The problem with my last laptop was the result of a hardware failure while streaming data from an external hard drive. The failure occurred several times occurring in several system crashes which could finally end with my laptop not being able to boot up.
A 1 year warranty on the system had made the laptop ineligible for any free servicing. Repairs would have cost $800, when a new laptop costs $1100. I decided to purchase a new laptop instead, which turned out to be another Acer laptop for about $1100 with fairly decent specs. The other laptops on sale at the computer store with similar specs ran for an additional $100.
Unfortunately, the new laptop I got was not without problems of its own. The LCD monitor flickers somewhat when I open and close the laptop and just recently, one of the mouse buttons on the touch pad has come loose and now sits with a tilt on my laptop making it awkward to use.
Hardware problems occurring twice over a span of 2 years is unacceptable, especially when a computer is quite important for many of my daily life routines. I have contacted Acer about the problem and they have informed me that it will take at least a week for them to have the problem fixed. In addition, I would have to pay for shipping costs of my computer to the repair center. I have since sent them an e-mail asking if this cost could be waived since it the computer is still under warranty, but I have had no response from the maker since. I find that to be a little bit offensive for a company to not respond. I have found in the online documents that Acer stipulates that the customer is responsible for shipping costs of the laptop or computer to the repair center, but still, simply ignoring my e-mail is unacceptable for a company.
As of this point, I have learned a few things about owning a laptop and the first would be to make sure that you have a secondary computer (preferably a desktop) in addition to having a laptop, as laptops are prone to hardware failure. In my lab, several of my friends (3 of them) over their 2 years of work here have had their laptops fail on them and repair times have
ranged from 2 to 3 weeks. As computers have become ubiquitous in our daily lives, living without one for such a long period of time is incredibly inconvenient. My reasoning for having a secondary desktop computer prevents a person from going without a computer should their laptop have hardware problems and desktops are far easier to maintain compared to laptops.
Should the problems I have faced with all of my laptops occurred on a desktop, I would have had them rectified in no sooner than a day or two by simply replacing parts on my own. A bad monitor connection could be easily fixed and a defective mouse could have been quickly swapped for a new one, both which are extremely hard tasks to accomplish for a laptop.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
IQ test
Moving on from the previous post in terms of character type, I decided to do an IQ test which I ran into online. The IQ test website is based in Denmark, which supposedly tests a person's general IQ (are there other kinds of IQ's? I'll have to look into this). Anyways, I decided to take it for fun and I scored a 122 with a ranking in the 92.8%th percentile. I also took a second test with a score of 126, ranking in the 95.8%th percentile. The results of these tests seem fairly consistent.
I also should note that IQ tests are also supposed to be correlated by age (which these tests ignore), and some people have argued that with out this information, the test is meaningless. I would argue this is true for young children scoring very well, however for people above the age of 20, the age factor effecting the results of these tests should be less prominent.
Of course, I should note that these tests only measure the relative intelligence between myself and my peers based on the distribution of results. These tests posted online, use only 30-40 questions to calculate your IQ score and I am somewhat skeptical on how well (and with what resolution) these tests are able to calculate one's IQ. Of course, I am not certain about the significance of these tests without further data, in particular the average score and the final score distribution.
For example, if the average score was 20/40 and 99% of people scored +/- 3 of the average, then the variance would not be very large and just answering 1 question over the average would significantly bump your IQ score up, but the overall intelligence of the surveyed population could possibly have a small variance.
Given the results of the 2 tests taken, for the time being, I might be confident to say that my IQ is approximately in the 122-126 range. Note, if you score above 130, only about 2.3% of the population might be more intelligent than you (that is, 2.3 people out of 100).
I should also note that having a high IQ is not the "end-all be-all of everything," but it does help for situations for logical reasoning and there are also other kinds of "intelligences" which may include aesthetic and kinesthetic components, which are not easily measured (it would analogous to assigning a score to something abstract like "creativity").
In light of these ideas, the pressing questions which I would like to think about are:
1. What are the kinds of possible "intelligences"?
2. How can they be measured?
3. How can they be improved?
I also should note that IQ tests are also supposed to be correlated by age (which these tests ignore), and some people have argued that with out this information, the test is meaningless. I would argue this is true for young children scoring very well, however for people above the age of 20, the age factor effecting the results of these tests should be less prominent.
Of course, I should note that these tests only measure the relative intelligence between myself and my peers based on the distribution of results. These tests posted online, use only 30-40 questions to calculate your IQ score and I am somewhat skeptical on how well (and with what resolution) these tests are able to calculate one's IQ. Of course, I am not certain about the significance of these tests without further data, in particular the average score and the final score distribution.
For example, if the average score was 20/40 and 99% of people scored +/- 3 of the average, then the variance would not be very large and just answering 1 question over the average would significantly bump your IQ score up, but the overall intelligence of the surveyed population could possibly have a small variance.
Given the results of the 2 tests taken, for the time being, I might be confident to say that my IQ is approximately in the 122-126 range. Note, if you score above 130, only about 2.3% of the population might be more intelligent than you (that is, 2.3 people out of 100).
I should also note that having a high IQ is not the "end-all be-all of everything," but it does help for situations for logical reasoning and there are also other kinds of "intelligences" which may include aesthetic and kinesthetic components, which are not easily measured (it would analogous to assigning a score to something abstract like "creativity").
In light of these ideas, the pressing questions which I would like to think about are:
1. What are the kinds of possible "intelligences"?
2. How can they be measured?
3. How can they be improved?
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Personality Review
The last time I did a personality test was about 3 years ago. The results have been logged on an older blog which I used to run on my own server, a long time ago. The exact date of that posting was on March 28th, 2004. I did 2 personality tests, one at humanmetrics.com and at socionics.com which both resulted in an ENTP result.
For those that aren't well versed in the Meyer-Briggs personality tests. A person's personality is categorized into 4 traits that are dichotomized. The category break down is performed in the following manner:
Extroversion vs Introversion (E vs I)
Sensing vs Intuition (S vs N)
Thinking vs Feeling (T vs F)
Perceiving vs Judging (P vs J)
For detailed information about these categories, I suggest looking at the wikipedia article on these categories, but I will cover them in passing during this post. I will be discussing my result further in this post.
Fast forward 3 years later after my arrival into Japan and living here for nearly 2 years now, I have begun to notice some personality changes since the leaving Canada. I attribute these changes from my living environment changes which has resulted in me adapting my lifestyle and the way I do things.
The interesting result of this change in environment is that I have come to realize that my ability to rationalize has improved and the ideas I generally come up with tend to be more complete in the sense that I am more able to pursue pending questions or thoughts arising from a single train of thought until it is comprehensively concluded. Also, since writing has become my main mode of thinking (as opposed to talking with people, due to some limitations of my language skills), I am far better at refining my train of thought to make it more logically consistent (something very hard to do verbally, due to memory constraints).
This is quite different from people that, say, tend to think through talking and bouncing ideas off of other people. The problem with continually bouncing ideas is that a single train of thought is generally never concluded as much of the verbal thinking progression is based on unsubstantiated information which can be cursory agreed or disagreed upon while following through some kind of argument. In addition to this problem, the original conversation is often lost while exploring some tangential discussion following a different objective.
As a result of this, what I have found is that I generally like to think on my own as opposed to asking other people questions (unless of course, the person I am talking to is a good source of definitive information). This has led me to wonder if I have become more introverted since coming to Japan, leading me to wonder if some of my personality traits have changed in any measurable way.
As mentioned before, the last time I took this test, 3 years before, yielded an ENTP result. The breakdown is that I was extroverted, intuitive, thinking and perceiving. The parts of this result that might not immediately be understandable are the remaining 3 ( intuitive, thinking and perceiving) parameters. I will discuss these in detail next.
Extroverted - Social and outgoing (obviously... in the sense of the meaning and myself as a character)
Intuitive - Means that I tend to use theoretical/abstract thinking with ideas that show a consistency or connection between each other.
Thinking - My decision making skills tend to be governed by rational thought as opposed to a gut feeling
Perceiving - My actions tend to be open ended and less fit to a rigid plan or a framework, but rather evaluating along the way and flexible to change.
I have since revisited these tests to see if my personality traits have changed in the last 3 years, in particular my extroversion qualities, which has not changed. What I have come to realize that I tend to be introverted when dealing with complex thought but still enjoy the company of people.
Further testing, especially at socionics (which I think is fairly comprehensive) indicated that I am strongly extroverted and intuitive, which I think is very true of myself. The remaining characteristics from these tests are less pronounced as the results indicate that I don't have a strong affinity to either "thinking vs feeling" or "judging vs perceiving."
Unfortunately, what these personality test neglects is that mode of thought and action depends on the situation. Meaning that the questions I answered, say, regarding empathy vs logic will conflict against each other, thus canceling them out. For example, when it comes to the emotional needs to a person, I generally say that I am quite empathetic, but when it comes to my inclination to using logic to optimize benefits in situations, my affinity to say yes to both questions will cancel out biases to either sides.
The same unpronounced results occurs for the "judging vs perceiving" characteristics as it depends on the situation. For example when I am quite knowledgeable in a field of knowledge, I tend to be very judging and decisive with my actions. In the reverse case, I will be perceiving and update my decisions on the fly while I gather information while doing something.
These results thus indicates to me that I am a combination of ENTJ (The Executive), ENTP (The Visionary), ENFP (The Inspirer) and ENFJ (The Giver) characters. After reading these character traits, I do believe that a combination of these 4 characters is a good representation of myself (with a slight affinity to ENTP).
For those that aren't well versed in the Meyer-Briggs personality tests. A person's personality is categorized into 4 traits that are dichotomized. The category break down is performed in the following manner:
Extroversion vs Introversion (E vs I)
Sensing vs Intuition (S vs N)
Thinking vs Feeling (T vs F)
Perceiving vs Judging (P vs J)
For detailed information about these categories, I suggest looking at the wikipedia article on these categories, but I will cover them in passing during this post. I will be discussing my result further in this post.
Fast forward 3 years later after my arrival into Japan and living here for nearly 2 years now, I have begun to notice some personality changes since the leaving Canada. I attribute these changes from my living environment changes which has resulted in me adapting my lifestyle and the way I do things.
The interesting result of this change in environment is that I have come to realize that my ability to rationalize has improved and the ideas I generally come up with tend to be more complete in the sense that I am more able to pursue pending questions or thoughts arising from a single train of thought until it is comprehensively concluded. Also, since writing has become my main mode of thinking (as opposed to talking with people, due to some limitations of my language skills), I am far better at refining my train of thought to make it more logically consistent (something very hard to do verbally, due to memory constraints).
This is quite different from people that, say, tend to think through talking and bouncing ideas off of other people. The problem with continually bouncing ideas is that a single train of thought is generally never concluded as much of the verbal thinking progression is based on unsubstantiated information which can be cursory agreed or disagreed upon while following through some kind of argument. In addition to this problem, the original conversation is often lost while exploring some tangential discussion following a different objective.
As a result of this, what I have found is that I generally like to think on my own as opposed to asking other people questions (unless of course, the person I am talking to is a good source of definitive information). This has led me to wonder if I have become more introverted since coming to Japan, leading me to wonder if some of my personality traits have changed in any measurable way.
As mentioned before, the last time I took this test, 3 years before, yielded an ENTP result. The breakdown is that I was extroverted, intuitive, thinking and perceiving. The parts of this result that might not immediately be understandable are the remaining 3 ( intuitive, thinking and perceiving) parameters. I will discuss these in detail next.
Extroverted - Social and outgoing (obviously... in the sense of the meaning and myself as a character)
Intuitive - Means that I tend to use theoretical/abstract thinking with ideas that show a consistency or connection between each other.
Thinking - My decision making skills tend to be governed by rational thought as opposed to a gut feeling
Perceiving - My actions tend to be open ended and less fit to a rigid plan or a framework, but rather evaluating along the way and flexible to change.
I have since revisited these tests to see if my personality traits have changed in the last 3 years, in particular my extroversion qualities, which has not changed. What I have come to realize that I tend to be introverted when dealing with complex thought but still enjoy the company of people.
Further testing, especially at socionics (which I think is fairly comprehensive) indicated that I am strongly extroverted and intuitive, which I think is very true of myself. The remaining characteristics from these tests are less pronounced as the results indicate that I don't have a strong affinity to either "thinking vs feeling" or "judging vs perceiving."
Unfortunately, what these personality test neglects is that mode of thought and action depends on the situation. Meaning that the questions I answered, say, regarding empathy vs logic will conflict against each other, thus canceling them out. For example, when it comes to the emotional needs to a person, I generally say that I am quite empathetic, but when it comes to my inclination to using logic to optimize benefits in situations, my affinity to say yes to both questions will cancel out biases to either sides.
The same unpronounced results occurs for the "judging vs perceiving" characteristics as it depends on the situation. For example when I am quite knowledgeable in a field of knowledge, I tend to be very judging and decisive with my actions. In the reverse case, I will be perceiving and update my decisions on the fly while I gather information while doing something.
These results thus indicates to me that I am a combination of ENTJ (The Executive), ENTP (The Visionary), ENFP (The Inspirer) and ENFJ (The Giver) characters. After reading these character traits, I do believe that a combination of these 4 characters is a good representation of myself (with a slight affinity to ENTP).
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Dropped the Ball -$200
At the beginning of last month I registered for a conference for Denmark and at the same time put down a deposit on for a hotel, recommended through a company that is coordinating the conference. I vaguely remember checking the prices and doing the conversion from the Denmark kroner to Yen to find that it was about $100/night to stay and left it at that.
I would come back to check on the price again a month later to find out that the hotel I booked and came to realize that just today that the price per night was $200 and I would be staying there for 5 nights... ouch! Fortunately the lab is covering hotel costs, however only up to $100 per night meaning that I would be in the hole for $500 should I have gone that route.
I quickly sent off an e-mail to the coordinators to have my reservation changed to another hotel on their list that was in the $100 range. The problem, however, is that changing the hotel would cost me my $200 deposit and I would have to pay a new deposit on the next hotel I reserve! I was aghast! More over, they told me that the $100 room that I wanted was not available and they told me that a next class up room was available for $120.
Figuring that I had enough of this, I did a search through the net looking for a phone number directly to the hotel I wanted to stay at and gave them a ring. They told me that the room I wanted was available for $100. I told them yes and took the room; no deposit or anything required. The coordination company would have swindled me out of an extra $100 over 5 days had I left it up to them.
Yes, they had a policy that I would lose the deposit on their website if I canceled my reservation and they would charge if I had it changed. I dropped the ball on this one on making a bad reservation, but caught them in the act of trying to swindle me out of more cash when I tried to change my reservation.
So just as a note, don't let some organization take a deposit from you for a hotel booking. The key thing is that hotels don't generally take deposits, and even if it is a no show, you just lose the reservation. Also, it is always wise to call the hotel directly to make sure you aren't paying some kind of markup fee for some organization making a phone call and doing the reservation for you.
This, unfortunately, is my $200 lesson.
I would come back to check on the price again a month later to find out that the hotel I booked and came to realize that just today that the price per night was $200 and I would be staying there for 5 nights... ouch! Fortunately the lab is covering hotel costs, however only up to $100 per night meaning that I would be in the hole for $500 should I have gone that route.
I quickly sent off an e-mail to the coordinators to have my reservation changed to another hotel on their list that was in the $100 range. The problem, however, is that changing the hotel would cost me my $200 deposit and I would have to pay a new deposit on the next hotel I reserve! I was aghast! More over, they told me that the $100 room that I wanted was not available and they told me that a next class up room was available for $120.
Figuring that I had enough of this, I did a search through the net looking for a phone number directly to the hotel I wanted to stay at and gave them a ring. They told me that the room I wanted was available for $100. I told them yes and took the room; no deposit or anything required. The coordination company would have swindled me out of an extra $100 over 5 days had I left it up to them.
Yes, they had a policy that I would lose the deposit on their website if I canceled my reservation and they would charge if I had it changed. I dropped the ball on this one on making a bad reservation, but caught them in the act of trying to swindle me out of more cash when I tried to change my reservation.
So just as a note, don't let some organization take a deposit from you for a hotel booking. The key thing is that hotels don't generally take deposits, and even if it is a no show, you just lose the reservation. Also, it is always wise to call the hotel directly to make sure you aren't paying some kind of markup fee for some organization making a phone call and doing the reservation for you.
This, unfortunately, is my $200 lesson.
Monday, September 03, 2007
It is Beautiful Outside the Grasp of the Recording Industry
Earlier this year, I made a short post about a performer by the name of Kate Walsh, an independent musician who setup her own label and took top spot on Apple's iTunes service having the most downloaded song in April. Who would have known that an independent musician could do something like this without the recording industry's marketing and distribution machine.
A few months after posting my last article about this topic, I would stumble upon an essay from the Seminal about a man's 8 hour US cross country move in a rented truck with nothing but a radio for entertainment. His take on music on the radio is similar to how I felt during my morning drives to university while listening to the radio-- the same popular songs played in "heavy rotation" as the essay puts it, with tons of commercials.
I heartfeltfuly agreed with what this man had to say as I went through the same thing. Back in Vancouver we have atleast 4 - 6 main radio stations (3 of which I avidly listened to) and I would always station surf when the station went off through a long set of commercials. It was so hard to find a solid block of music, let alone good music.
This problem, which the above essay notes is the consolidation of the radio broadcasting industry, to which I have found a report published by an organization by the Future of Music Coalition, where they site that the top 10 radio station owners have 2/3's of all listeners. We are talking about owners here, where the same people own most of all the radio stations. This is a problem when it comes to musical variety because it is these few companies that decide what goes on air and it would be pretty obvious that that the easiest route to success would be to play what they think are the most popular songs in respective genres across all stations. The problem with this is diminished musical variety and the growing boredom of current "pop music."
Before the advent of radio broadcasting conglomerates, radio stations were run independently by DJs spinning their own tunes on air--whatever they liked. Lots of independent and orginal material was put on air (though not all great), but there were definately gems to be found. With the invention of radio and music broadcasts, we ushered in the equivalent of a music renaissance. But now, we face a hypothetical dark age with bland radio music, filled with unwanted commercials.
This would all change with the internet, with a resurgence of independent broadcasting coming to life by webcasters, like the DJs of the old, who ran their virtual radio stations over the internet, out of a personal passion to share the music they liked. The earliest webcasters did all of this with no financial incentives, often shelling out their own money to finance their own ideal radio station, something with little or no commercials. The listeners who truly loved the station donated small sums of money to help these stations going.
Eventually, webcasting took off in an incredible way with automated recommendation sites like Pandora and last.fm with software that tailer made music playlists and played songs to their listeners depending on their musical taste. Just tell the site what songs or artists you liked and they'd come back and played a bunch of songs that you might like, sites like these became immensely popular and thrived.
The recording industry took notice by threatening these online sites with copyright infringement and lawsuits for damages. Why? Because they never thought of creating webcasting software and song recommendation services that played music to users with truly little or no commercials? The recording industry flexed their legal muscles and sought out lawsuits to force webcasters to pay royalties everytime as song was played so that the artists (whom they usually ripped off) got paid appropriately.
Right now, many webcasting stations stand to go out of business after the courts ruled in the recording industry's favor, with the recording industry opting to charge exorbitant royalty fees for online broadcasters. Whatever they cannot control, they try to stifle but in the process, variety and creativity take a serious hit and us as the audience, unknowingly suffer because of it. What the radio stations play, are groups of signed artists by the recording labels. And what these large recording labels chose to sign were what they think will be a hit and turn a profit. What you end up with is "more of the same," because recording labels don't like taking risks and end up sticking with the kind of music that works for them.
Just today, I came across a youTube video of a violinist stringing to a DJ playing hip-hop music. The compilation was nothing short of awesome and many people whom have seen the video left comments of high praise and a view count pushing 220,000 views as of this publishing. Would you have ever heard or seen this on the radio or MTV? There is even an immensely popular beat-boxing flutist with incredible skill. None of these people would have ever made it to any mainstream media outlets. YouTube, like webcasters, is wonderful just because anyone can post anything; things that you might never be able to imagine, things that will broaden your horizons and yet YouTube faces a similar fight the webcasters have on their hand-- a battle for media control and money. As you can see this argument doesn't just apply for music, but even to the diversity of media in general.
I cannot fathom why these media companies are so intent on controlling access and distribution of their material to the world. In their minds, it is a privilege to broadcast their material and they realize it by charing the broadcasters for it. Yet I would beg to differ that it is the other way around-- without these broadcasters, the media they control would never have such wide exposure. Like a double-edged sword, the blade cuts in both ways.
I believe that we would be better off without these media conglomerates because we stand to lose exposure to a huge breadth of human creativity which we would never be exposed to, all in the namesake of these companies sticking to their tested formulas to turn a profit. But there is hope, I do believe that these media companies will disappear, because the fundamentals that brought them to life is crumbling away-- as mixing and mastering equipment becomes cheaper with every passing year and the CD manufacturing process, inaccessible to normal people, will soon be obsolete compared to the cheapness and ease of online distribution.
But in the mean time, I would implore you to turn off your radios and shut off your TVs and look elsewhere for music and entertainment, somewhere beyond the control of large conglomerates. I assure you, that the new things you will find, will amaze you.
A few months after posting my last article about this topic, I would stumble upon an essay from the Seminal about a man's 8 hour US cross country move in a rented truck with nothing but a radio for entertainment. His take on music on the radio is similar to how I felt during my morning drives to university while listening to the radio-- the same popular songs played in "heavy rotation" as the essay puts it, with tons of commercials.
I heartfeltfuly agreed with what this man had to say as I went through the same thing. Back in Vancouver we have atleast 4 - 6 main radio stations (3 of which I avidly listened to) and I would always station surf when the station went off through a long set of commercials. It was so hard to find a solid block of music, let alone good music.
This problem, which the above essay notes is the consolidation of the radio broadcasting industry, to which I have found a report published by an organization by the Future of Music Coalition, where they site that the top 10 radio station owners have 2/3's of all listeners. We are talking about owners here, where the same people own most of all the radio stations. This is a problem when it comes to musical variety because it is these few companies that decide what goes on air and it would be pretty obvious that that the easiest route to success would be to play what they think are the most popular songs in respective genres across all stations. The problem with this is diminished musical variety and the growing boredom of current "pop music."
Before the advent of radio broadcasting conglomerates, radio stations were run independently by DJs spinning their own tunes on air--whatever they liked. Lots of independent and orginal material was put on air (though not all great), but there were definately gems to be found. With the invention of radio and music broadcasts, we ushered in the equivalent of a music renaissance. But now, we face a hypothetical dark age with bland radio music, filled with unwanted commercials.
This would all change with the internet, with a resurgence of independent broadcasting coming to life by webcasters, like the DJs of the old, who ran their virtual radio stations over the internet, out of a personal passion to share the music they liked. The earliest webcasters did all of this with no financial incentives, often shelling out their own money to finance their own ideal radio station, something with little or no commercials. The listeners who truly loved the station donated small sums of money to help these stations going.
Eventually, webcasting took off in an incredible way with automated recommendation sites like Pandora and last.fm with software that tailer made music playlists and played songs to their listeners depending on their musical taste. Just tell the site what songs or artists you liked and they'd come back and played a bunch of songs that you might like, sites like these became immensely popular and thrived.
The recording industry took notice by threatening these online sites with copyright infringement and lawsuits for damages. Why? Because they never thought of creating webcasting software and song recommendation services that played music to users with truly little or no commercials? The recording industry flexed their legal muscles and sought out lawsuits to force webcasters to pay royalties everytime as song was played so that the artists (whom they usually ripped off) got paid appropriately.
Right now, many webcasting stations stand to go out of business after the courts ruled in the recording industry's favor, with the recording industry opting to charge exorbitant royalty fees for online broadcasters. Whatever they cannot control, they try to stifle but in the process, variety and creativity take a serious hit and us as the audience, unknowingly suffer because of it. What the radio stations play, are groups of signed artists by the recording labels. And what these large recording labels chose to sign were what they think will be a hit and turn a profit. What you end up with is "more of the same," because recording labels don't like taking risks and end up sticking with the kind of music that works for them.
Just today, I came across a youTube video of a violinist stringing to a DJ playing hip-hop music. The compilation was nothing short of awesome and many people whom have seen the video left comments of high praise and a view count pushing 220,000 views as of this publishing. Would you have ever heard or seen this on the radio or MTV? There is even an immensely popular beat-boxing flutist with incredible skill. None of these people would have ever made it to any mainstream media outlets. YouTube, like webcasters, is wonderful just because anyone can post anything; things that you might never be able to imagine, things that will broaden your horizons and yet YouTube faces a similar fight the webcasters have on their hand-- a battle for media control and money. As you can see this argument doesn't just apply for music, but even to the diversity of media in general.
I cannot fathom why these media companies are so intent on controlling access and distribution of their material to the world. In their minds, it is a privilege to broadcast their material and they realize it by charing the broadcasters for it. Yet I would beg to differ that it is the other way around-- without these broadcasters, the media they control would never have such wide exposure. Like a double-edged sword, the blade cuts in both ways.
I believe that we would be better off without these media conglomerates because we stand to lose exposure to a huge breadth of human creativity which we would never be exposed to, all in the namesake of these companies sticking to their tested formulas to turn a profit. But there is hope, I do believe that these media companies will disappear, because the fundamentals that brought them to life is crumbling away-- as mixing and mastering equipment becomes cheaper with every passing year and the CD manufacturing process, inaccessible to normal people, will soon be obsolete compared to the cheapness and ease of online distribution.
But in the mean time, I would implore you to turn off your radios and shut off your TVs and look elsewhere for music and entertainment, somewhere beyond the control of large conglomerates. I assure you, that the new things you will find, will amaze you.
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