What is you had a book in which literally everything was happening at once?
Monthly Archives: October 2014
Age < 11
What if there was a boy who’s literal age was < 11? To clarify, it wouldn’t be that no one knows his age, it would be that his age simply wasn’t an exact number, just “under 11 years old”.
Interesting Observation: Movie Titles
I noticed (somewhat) recently that there are a number of movies that have one word titles,yet seem to convey more of an idea than a specific item. Here’s a list of what I’ve found so far:
Adjectives:
- Epic
- Frozen
- Up
- Brave
- Enchanted
- Tangled
- Divergent
- Taken
Ideas:
- Inception
Note: when considering if a movie falls under this category, proper nouns (like Rio or Hercules) don’t count; in fact, if it isn’t an idea or an adjective, it doesn’t count (Planes and (The?) Incredibles don’t count because they are things, not ideas) . Also, must be rated PG-13 or lower to be on this list.
I find it quite interesting how much more the title can mean if you think about it. Frozen, for example, can mean the obvious reference of everything being ice, or a reference to a frozen heart (which could mean Anna (literally), Elsa (lack of emotions), or Hans (cruel)), or maybe even frozen in time, which the castle might as well have been for so many years.
Epic is harder; there is no obvious reference so I looked up the the word. Epic can mean “grand in scale,” and how Epic would our normal world seem to the M.K. after she was shrunk to the size of a mouse?! Then there is how Epic the fight for the forest is, that only once every 100 years can an heir be chosen, allowing the forest to continue. Then there is the definition meaning “a long poem, typically one derived from ancient oral tradition, narrating the deeds and adventures of heroic or legendary figures or the history of a nation.” This movie gives you a sense of the history of the Leafmen and the forest, and that if only someone would write their story it would be an Epic.
(Yes, I know I’m probably over analyzing the titles, but it’s fun, so I’ll continue)
Up: Obvious reference = way too many balloons, house in the sky, you know it already. But it can also be a reference to how Russell (the boy scout) wakes Carl Fredricksen (the old man) “up” from his tired life, cheers him “up” from his dreariness, never gives “up” on him, and, in the end, looks “up” to him as a father figure. I like the title much more now than I did a few minutes ago.
(I’ll skip Brave and Enchanted for now, because it’s been forever since I’ve seen them. I’ll also skip Taken and Divergent because I haven’t seen them yet)
Tangled: Yes, she has long hair that probably gets “tangled” all the time (although you don’t see it in the movie). This clearly fits the definition of “twisted together untidily”. But so does so many of the relationships in the movie: Rapunzel (that took me forever to spell right) and her “mother” don’t fit together so well, and you can sort of imagine the “mother” twisting her way into Rapunzel’s life, although she does keep the relationship pretty tidy; a better example would be Flynn Rider and the horse, who never wanted to be with each other, yet were thrown together against their will; and then there was Flynn and Rapunzel, whose emotions are so “tangled” that they don’t know what to do with each other. Tangled can also mean “complicated and confused; chaotic”, if you want to think about that.
Inception (my favorite movie along with The Dark Knight): It turns out that Inception is a noun, unlike the others on this list (which are, at this point, all adjectives), but it’s sort of an idea, so I think that it still will work. Inception is “the establishment or starting point of an institution or activity”. The movie is about the inception of an idea. There are, however, a few starting points. The start of the the inception process (lol, the starting point of establishing…) is a critical part of the film. You wonder, “Will Cobb risk everything for this?” It also has the start of Adriane’s ventures into the mind, which she will definitely do more of in the future. And, ultimately, the movie is about the beginning of the end of Cobb’s exile from the U.S. and his children, who he desperately hoping to see again.
That was fun; if you see any new movies that fit the conditions, feel free to comment on them!
~ George
Change Log of October 3, 2014 – The “To Do List” Update
At the end of every day (or, at least every day that I change something), I make a post that highlights all of the changes and/or posts that have been made that day. This way I can update previous posts and actually have the changes be found, plus readers will be able get easy access to all the new posts without scrolling down too much. Note: Since this post will be the last thing I post each day, it is less likely to be properly cleaned up, as I will be rather tired at that point
New posts:
- Added Certified Brilliant – October Edition! See “Of Special Note” for details
Major Changes:
- I added a page for Cool Websites/Posts/Videos/Etc. that I found during my roamings of the internet!
- I added a page for Extra Cool Websites/Posts/Videos/Etc. that I found during my roamings of the internet!
- I added a page for Special Websites/Posts/Videos/Etc. that I found during my roamings of the internet!
Minor Changes:
- I converted the To Do List from bullet points to a Numbered List for convenience (both for you and for me)
- I marked off #1, 3, 6, and 7 off on the To Do List (!!!!!) These were all things that I’ve really wanted to do for the site but I hadn’t done until now
Of Special Note:
- I’m starting up Certified Brilliants again! However, instead of doing it every day, I’ll add a certified brilliant to (almost) every Change Logs.
- I find so many interesting things on the internet, I decided that I’d form my own StumbleUpon sort of page. The idea is that no matter which links you decide to click on, you’ll find something interesting.
Certified Brilliant:
- For those who confuse “I could care less” with “I couldn’t care less”
~ George
Certified Brilliant – October Edition
Certified Brilliant is something I’m doing in which add something on the internet to the most recent Change Log. To qualify, I must think that it is simply brilliant, epic, and/or incredible. Since I don’t want to have too many posts doing small things, I’ll edit this post every day, adding a new brilliant/epic/incredible thing. Every month I will make a new post and start updating it. My favorite brilliant/incredible/epic thing in each post will be starred.
____________________________________________________
October 11 – Certified Brilliant <–*Star*
At least until you read it 🙂
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October 7 – Certified Incredible <–*Star*
An awesome visual effect video.
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October 3 – Certified Brilliant
For those who confuse “I could care less” with “I couldn’t care less”
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~ George
Change Log of October 2, 2014
At the end of every day (or, at least every day that I change something), I make a post that highlights all of the changes and/or posts that have been made that day. This way I can update previous posts and actually have the changes be found, plus readers will be able get easy access to all the new posts without scrolling down too much. Note: Since this post will be the last thing I post each day, it is less likely to be properly cleaned up, as I will be rather tired at that point
New posts:
- George’s Posts
- A Lame Chemistry Joke that I came up with in, you guessed it, my chemistry class. I still think it’s pretty funny, but no one ever gets it. Too bad.
- The Ultimate Wish: Part 3 of 3 – Fun is finally out! Yay!!
Major Changes:
- none
Minor Changes:
- For The Ultimate Wish: Part 1 of 3 – The Wish and The Ultimate Wish: Part 2 of 3 – Safety, I added links to the other two of the triad
Of Special Note:
- none
~ George
A Lame Chemistry Joke
Why does Enthalpy minus Uranium equal Sneezing?
Enthalpy’s symbol = H
Uranium’s symbol = U
The Minus sign is a dash –
so
Enthalpy minus uranium = H-U
If you say that out loud, you say…
Achoo
Gesundheit
~ George
The Ultimate Wish: Part 3 of 3 – Fun
You’ve made the wish. You protected the universe from yourself, and yourself from the universe. Now it’s time to enjoy your awesome power
As I wish for things in real life, I’ll post them here. Something big to note though, I won’t just wish for anything I want. After all, that would take all the fun and joy and surprise out of life. For example, I won’t wish that I was an awesome soccer player, because that takes the fun out of playing soccer. Better things to wish for are along the lines of being able to fly, because I can’t fly (I think 🙂 ), and there’d be no joy-robbing if suddenly I could fly.
- I wish to be able to fly (Not very original, I know, but it’d still be awesome)
- I wish to be able to turn myself and anything else I want invisible, as well as being able to turn anything that is invisible visible (Again not very original, but you could get in some serious trouble if you’re seen flying around. Also, something everyone seems to forget about is that when you say “I wish to be able to turn myself invisible”, they don’t mention turning visible again 🙂 )
- I wish that my toes (or some other injury) were completely healed (Some people reading might know that I was on crutches for two weeks and in a boot for another three weeks because of a toe injury that still bothers me sometimes. Something like that definitely has to go when you are all powerful)
- I wish I wasn’t so sore right now (Probably something that I’d wish a lot 🙂 )
- I wish to be able to go to sleep and wake up exactly when I want to (I have trouble getting to sleep, and almost everybody has trouble waking up, so this solves both problems in one go)
- I wish to have Telekinesis (Perhaps the best wish for the lazy person and the busy person alike, the ability to move stuff around with your mind would be awesome)
- I wish that my body can adapt to cold and/or heat, in such a way that I keep my complete abilities and no damage is caused to my body. (Fall just started, and earlier today I had to swim in a very cold pool for swim team. It would be very nice to not be bothered by temperature.)
- I wish to be able to understand, read, speak, and write in any language that I hear, see, or want to understand. (It’d be very helpful to say the least)
- I wish to be able to change what happens inside a book and see what the characters would do in such a way that the change is only applied to the book that I am holding at the time of changing it and only after I have said “I, ______, am changing this book”. (This would be Great if you like reading. Not only could you fix any situations that you didn’t like (such as a favorite character dying), but you’d also have a story that would never end. You could just keep changing the situation and seeing what the characters do! As for the restrictions, you don’t want to mess up every book you look at and you certainly don’t want to mess up every copy of the book in the world.)
Notable exceptions (wishes that some might want, but I personally don’t)
- I wish for x amount of dollars (There are a number of reasons that I wouldn’t want this. First off, with wish power you could easily earn a real income without magically getting the money from nowhere. Second, with wish power, many things that would need money you can easily get for yourself.)
- I wish to be stronger/faster/thinner/better at soccer, etc. (Something that I’m happy about myself is that I’m fit. Even though I could wish myself to be extremely fast, it’d take the joy out of winning in a race. Wishing that I was as good of a swimmer as Michael Phelps would ruin all the fun of competitive swimming. While some may want to be stronger, I feel good the way I am)
These are just a few of the things I’d wish for, and I know that you can easily think of others that I missed. Leave any suggestions/ questions in the comments!
~ George
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This post is part of a 3 post triad, each focusing on a specific aspect of “The Ultimate Wish”.
- For Part 1 – The Wish, go here: http://evansforever.com/the-ultimate-wish-part-1-of-3-the-wish/
- For Part 2 – Safety, go here: http://evansforever.com/the-ultimate-wish-part-2-of-3-safety/
Change Log of October 1, 2014
At the end of every day (or, at least every day that I change something), I make a post that highlights all of the changes and/or posts that have been made that day. This way I can update previous posts and actually have the changes be found, plus readers will be able get easy access to all the new posts without scrolling down too much. Note: Since this post will be the last thing I post each day, it is less likely to be properly cleaned up, as I will be rather tired at that point
New posts:
- George’s Posts
- Might as well make some use of the time I spend in math class 😉 : Ponderings from Math Class (Note: just to be clear, I spend almost all the time listening to the teacher. Glad to have that out of the way 🙂 )
Major Changes:
- There is now an About Us page! Now we just need to fill it…:)
Minor Changes:
- none
Of Special Note:
- none
~ George
Ponderings from Math Class
One of the things that has me so tied up for time is my math class, precal/trig in one semester (5 credits!). However, during class I often think of random questions or observations, and I think that instead of making a post for every single one, it’d be better if I just make this single post and keep updating it. If I make a post based on something in here, even better! Quite a few of these will probably only make much sense in my head, but since half the point of this blog is to make people think about things they wouldn’t usually think about, I think it’ll work :). Anyhow, on to the ponderings…
(1) First off, every time I hear the word “pondering” I think of a joking definition made by a past teacher of it. Someone asked what pondering meant, and he replied something like, “pondering is what it’s called when someone wanders around making ponds, the word explains itself, you see.” 🙂
(2) What if 4 > 4 was somehow a valid statement? (((I actually have a way to make it so, but it involves something that I’m not anywhere near posting)))
(3) 1 = 1/1 = 2/2 = 3/3… Somewhat similar to the last question, what if it wasn’t exactly equal, or in some way it wasn’t true. They actually aren’t exactly the same, after all; you type them different, so if you were to measure the bit count of them they wouldn’t be equal
(4) How can you have $i ? Is it equal to $1? $-1?
(5) A joking quote from the teacher: “I’m pointing big!”. What would that actually mean? “Point” means a specific place, but point “big” could mean a general direction, or what?
(6) Interesting Observation: It is impossible to plot a perfect graph, because there is always a smaller number to calculate
(7) Interesting Observation: In precal, you are told that the only numbers you have to worry about being undefined are dividing by zero (infinity), even roots of a negative number (i), taking log of a negative number (also i), and taking log of zero (infinity again). However, you also can’t do this: 0^0, which is undefined (note: not infinity or i, “indeterminate”; even Wolfram Alpha can’t figure it out: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=0%5E0). So if you had a problem in which you needed to find the domain of 0^x, the answer would be {x|x<>0}. Also, a^0 = 1 = a/a, so 0^0 = 0/0, which is also indeterminate.
(8) Funny comment my teacher made: “Now back to more pleasant things, like math!” (after a conversation about exponential growth and Ebola)
(9) log base a of x = y is equivalent to a^x=y, so long as x>0 and x≠1, both of which are impossible (at this level of math?), for example, log 0 = y would mean that 10^SomeRealNumber = 0, but what if it worked? Same with log (-100) = x, which means 10^x=-100, although I think that one is possible with imaginary numbers
(10) Interesting Observation (that I’m positive lots of people know): You can have any base for a number system (ours is base-10) and still use decimals, it just depends on when you shift over a decimal. For example, our base 10: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 (one 10), 11 (1 and one 10), 12 (2 and one 10)…; base 8: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 (one 8), 11 (1 and one 8), 12 (2 and one 8), 13, (3 and one 8)…; also, base 12: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, a, b, c (one c), 11 (1 and one c), 12 (2 and one c)….
It can get pretty hard to imagine, but you could do it, especially if you were raised on it
(11) 0 < 8 > 0 is a perfectly valid statement, but is there any context in which it would be useful? At the very least it’s symmetrical 🙂
(12) It’d be interesting to create a problem that has an exact answer and is made up of whole numbers, yet the exact answer is 20 digits long (and not just a irrational number, like e, or a fraction, like 1/3). Also, if you wanted to be mean, you could say that the answer has to be exact, and nobody would trust that their calculator wasn’t just rounding to the 20th decimal, causing everybody would think they just had to restate the problem instead of giving an exact decimal.
More to Come!
~ George