Category Archives: George

Change Log of October 19, 2014

Change Logs, George, Miscellaneous Posts

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 since the last change log. 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:

  • Interesting Observation: Average Day considers what we say we like to do and what we actually like to do
  • Finally! Another Idea Polish Level 4! Culture Idea: Chance Based Currency is something I actually started about a month ago, but I kept thinking I couldn’t publish it until it was finished. However, I decided that it’d make it easier on both the reader and the writer to have it split into smaller sections that don’t take as long to read (or write 🙂 ), so that’s what I did.

Major Changes:

Minor Changes:

  • I reformatted the Cool Websites page, Extra Cool Websites page, Special Websites page, and Ponderings from Math Class post so that each item in them were individually numbered.

Of Special Note:

  • Subscribe to the blog to get email alerts whenever a new post is posted!

Certified Brilliant:

 

~ George

Culture Idea: Chance Based Currency (Part 1)

George, Idea Polish Level: 4, My Ideas, , , ,

What if there was an economy which had legal tinder that was made of dice? I’m going to call the currency Felix (“lucky” in Latin). For example, a two felix “bill” would be a two-sided coin, a six felix “bill” would be a normal 6-sided dice, and I don’t know how they would work with hundred felix “bill”‘s. When you pay for something, you pull out your dice and roll them. Whatever value they land on is how much they are worth for that transaction; you could have a 100 sided die, but if it lands on 1 then it’s only worth one dollar. Perhaps when paying something, you have to bring out enough dice to have the price be halfway between the minimum you could roll and the maximum you could roll (I’ll explain that more later), and after the cashier checks to make sure that everything adds up properly you roll the dice. You pay whatever value that comes up is, whether cheaper than or more expensive than the original price.

This could lead to an interesting treatment of the value of money. Here’s some math to explain: You’re buying a new hammer that is worth 5 F [F is absolute money (after the die has been rolled), and felix is potential money (pre-roll), e.g. a 10 felix die rolls 5 F]. If you have a 5 felix die, you still probably wouldn’t be able to afford it. This is because, on average, the die wouldn’t roll a five, and thus, on average, the seller would lose money. The seller doesn’t want to lose money, so he wouldn’t sell the hammer for a 5 felix die.

The way you’d calculate the average value of a die is to divide the top value it could roll in half and add 0.5. The additional 0.5 is because the die can’t ever roll zero, so it’s not the halfway point between the top value and zero that you’re looking for, it’s the halfway point between the top value and one. This would place the average value of the 5 felix die at 3 F. To get you’re hammer you need an average of 2 more F, so if subtract 0.5 from 2 and double the outcome you see that you’d need a 3 felix die to complete the transaction (I assume that a culture based on this currency would figure out how to make a three-sided die).

So now you have two dice which have an average F of 5, enough to satisfy the shopkeeper. You roll your dice. The 3 felix die lands on one, good for you, but the 5 felix die lands on 5, for a total of 6 F. Your heart sinks. The shopkeeper happily pockets the dice, having earned an extra F, and gives you the hammer.

Later, your friend sees the nice quality of your hammer and gives you a 9 felix die to buy him one. The interesting thing about this situation is that a 9 felix die also has an average value of 5 F, even though a 5 felix die + a 3 felix die = 8 felix. The difference is that every die has a minimum roll of 1, so the minimum F for two dice is 2, meanwhile the minimum F for one die is 1. The added price of 1 felix accounts for the added risk to the shopkeeper of 1 felix.

You visit the shopkeeper again, and he seems a bit worried about your 9 felix die, but doesn’t stop you from using it to pay. You roll, and his fears are confirmed. The die landed on 2, giving it a value of 2 F, 3 F less than the asking price! You can see that the shopkeeper is upset at being shortchanged as he pockets the die, but you’re elated. You can’t wait to get the hammer to your friend so that you can tell him what a steal you got it for.

In this system, most sellers would always want to be paid in the highest number of the lowest denomination dice they could get, at least for the more important deals,  so that they are guaranteed at least a certain amount of F, even though the fewer dice that are used the higher the felix value is. Some shopkeepers wouldn’t allow dice with too high of a felix value to be used to purchase items, meanwhile others might make a sale by requiring the average F to be less than halfway between the top value and one. Gambling would be easy in this culture; simply have both players roll a 100 sided die (or whatever they use instead) and switch dice. One might roll 50, and the other might roll 20, who gets 30 F while maintaining the same amount of felix.

After all that though, the only more flawed currency system that I’ve seen anywhere (not that I’ve looked for any) was this one:

Alternate Currency

(Source: http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/512:_Alternate_Currency)

I can’t decide which flaws I should go over first, but this post is too long already, so I’m going to split it into a number of smaller parts focusing on specific problems with this system and addressing them. These I will write and publish those parts until I’ve gone over this idea thoroughly, or I’m tired of it.

~ George

Interesting Observation: Average Day

George, Idea Polish Level: 1, My Ideas,
When someone asks you what you like to do, you usually don’t reply with the things you do most often, whether because they’re not fun (school, work), everyday (eat, sleep), or boring to talk about (watch TV, use the computer, play outside, etc., although they can be interesting to talk about, they aren’t very noteworthy). The more usual reply would be something more specific and interesting, like I would say “Swim Team and Piano”, because those are more interesting replies than “using the computer”. In general, it’s the highlights that we talk about, because for the average person the average day is merely average : )
 .
(Yes, I wrote this whole thing primarily so that I could say that last line 🙂 )
 ~ George

Change Log of October 11, 2014

Change Logs, George, Miscellaneous Posts

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 since the last change log. 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:

Major Changes:

Minor Changes:

Of Special Note:

  • none

Certified Brilliant:

  • At least before you read it 🙂

 

~ George

Song Idea: The Animals Acting

George, Idea Polish Level: 2, My Ideas, ,

One day, I somehow ended up with the song “The wheels on the bus” stuck in my head, and I somehow started coming up with my own lyrics for it. Here’s an example:
The Penguin waddled back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The penguin waddled back and forth, all through the town.
Then goes on to the next lyrics. The form is
The | (two syllable animal name) | (verb) – ing | (three syllable description)
Examples:
The rabbit hopping up and down
the lizard scampered all around
the panda sitting on the ground
the giraffe standing tall and straight
the hedgehog hiding in a ball

You can easily add more lyrics. This could be a fun song to play with kids, and when they sing the verse they act out what the animal is doing (hopping for the rabbit, sitting for the panda, etc.)

Money Code

George, Idea Polish Level: 1, My Ideas,

Just a little idea I had a bit ago

In a movie about two criminals, one criminal send the date of the next heist to the other using a money based code. They send a check with the date of their next heist in the check’s value (e.g. $6.23 – 6/23/__). At the end of the movie, after pulling off an elaborate heist, one criminal opens his vault to find a that everything is gone besides a check for $4.01. April Fools Day.

Change Log of October 7, 2014

Change Logs, George, Miscellaneous Posts

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 since the last change log. 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:

  • Both Story Idea: Non-Linear Book and
  • Age < 11 are simply Polish Level 1 ideas that I thought were interesting
  • Interesting Observation: Movie Titles, however, was supposed to be level 1, but I ended up explaining it a lot more than I intended too, because it ended up more interesting than I thought it would be

Major Changes:

  • none

Minor Changes:

  • I change the phrase “highlights all of the changes and/or posts that have been made that day” in the Change Log description to “highlights all of the changes and/or posts that have been made since the last change log“. While I intend to write the change log often, it seems silly to write one for only one item. This way I can wait until I’ve got at least two things to mention before I write a change log

Of Special Note:

  • none

Certified Brilliant:

 

~ George

Interesting Observation: Movie Titles

George, Idea Polish Level: 2, My Ideas, ,

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