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Thursday, February 14, 2013

The rant of inexperience and the lack of cousins

My muscle has atrophied. It was actually pretty easy to check. Two months ago, when I was in the midst of studying for my A levels, frisbee was my life. I looked up videos, searched tactics, ran to make myself faster. I could jump and touch the ceiling with my palms in my house.

I taped a measuring tape to the wall and my jump height was 58cm. I was by no means atheletic so my vertical jump was something I was satisfied by. I don't train so the potential to jump higher with knowledge of the average vertical height was another thing that fueled my frisbee craze. Two months later, after hours of computer games and puzzles and sitting on a damn chair. My jump height has dropped by 5cm. I can feel the significance of the loss of height. It does fill me with a little regret. Something I had enjoyed had reaped me the benefits of height; yet the loss of it was sudden and certain.

Which made me reflect on what I have done. Was it worth it? The opportunity cost of whatever had followed frisbee.

males females
rating (inches) (cm) (inches) (cm)
excellent > 28 > 70 > 24 > 60
very good 24 - 28 61-70 20 - 24 51-60
above average 20 - 24 51-60 16 - 20 41-50
average 16 - 20 41-50 12 - 16 31-40
below average 12 - 16 31-40 8 - 12 21-30
poor 8 - 12 21-30 4 - 8 11-20
very poor < 8 < 21 < 4 < 11


Mundane things, to be sure, but not to me. I define my life by learning. But by engaging in the action of learning, I would have decided to stop learning something else. Which is very similar to the concept of libertarianism and determinism. I digress, but I have no cousins. My New Year, indeed, every holiday, is with me and my brother in the doldrum. My aunts and uncles, four of them, know not my blogging. Hence I am free to rant. In exchange for cousins, my brother and I have became the apple of everyone's eye. It's pressurising and I do not enjoy it to say the least. There is a subconscious judgement of which has been placed on both of us. That we do not have any cousins have reinforced the concept that we are mere childs. There is no comparison of growths, no mothering of their own childs. One moment that still frustrates me is when I cross the darn road, one of my aunt still tries to hold my hands.

My mom laughed at that. I digress but I need to show a picture of how I have grown up. It's has mostly been my brother and I- which is probably why we are so competitive. We fulfil the roles of rivals and cousins, of enemies and best of friends. We only have the other to interact and we step in each role perfectly.

My aunt, of course, would have a maddeningly superiority complex. Any argument ends with a shake of a head, a smile and a sigh. You lack experience, they would say.

"Time, aunt, is a perception. Perhaps we merely perceive the stasis of space and time to be the passing of it. That time and space are a movie already played frame by frame, but we have the ability of only viewing one frame at a time, and only in the forward direction. The flaws of a three-dimensional creature."

"You lack experience, boy," *smiles*, "one day, when you grow up, you will know time is time. Cannot be changed."

 But an argument with my brother yields more interesting discussions. Which is why I am bleeding thankful I have one.



"Free will exist. I am a proponent of the Many-World Theory. A choice is merely the splitting of one world into many. Wave-functions collapse. Parallel universes locked in temporal steps, exactly the same except for the choice just made."

"No, it doesn't. I don't support the MWT but in fact, it shows it doesn't. Think of it this way. Make a choice and you restrict the other from making one. He makes a choice and it means He, or You in this universe has made another one. There are no exceptions due to the conditions of the MWT. No choice you make is so individualised till the impact is nil."

"Winner of the next reversi match wins the argument."













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Friday, February 8, 2013

If I ever have super powers

Disregarding whatever powers I may want to have(because everything sounds good to me), what might be more important would be what I do after obtaining it.

Imagine one day, you wake up. You yawn and try to get more shut-eye. But you know the feeling. The twists and the turns and you just cannot return the the state of sleep you were in. So you laze in bed and only get up after awhile. Opening the door, you broke it. Events followed but suffice to say you realise you have the exact powers Superman has. What would you do?

I am sure confusion is one of the first few things you feel. What to do with it. Perhaps try to fly? You realise you can fly because you levitated above the ground 10 centimetres. Are you going to jump straight out the window? Chances are you will try it on the ground floor(if you live in a high-rise apartment). Caution have to prevail. You don't want to die because you failed to fly the correct way and fell to the ground due to panic.

Human beings are wholly predictable to a certain point. We know this new Superman will panic. He will question, he will accept it. What comes after acceptance? The consequences of the power.

I find it interesting, the resultant action of a man with a power. Immediately, the person will think of similarities. Whatever this Superman does will be with reference to the culture he is in.

He weighs the pros and cons. Not just that, he needs to know the weaknesses. Perhaps he would like to be a bad guy. Rape. Murder. The King of the World doesn't need morals or laws. Power dictates. And so, weaknesses become so very important in deciding the next course of action.

I always wonder about this. What will I do when a ghost appears? What will I do when my best friend commits murder? What will I do if I stumble upon a serial killer on the move; and I have no time to inform the police. The course of action pertaining to each individual is always unique. It branches out. Mostly, it's the same but as time passes, actions are like each individual sprigs of leaves

I think I won't do a thing. I will be too busy being apprenhensive of this unknown that I won't do much. It's 4am. If right now, I have the ability to fly, I won't. And as I type this, slightly satisfied that I have decided to do nothing should the day comes, I realise something. If I obtain the power to control minds, I don't think I will be as timid. But I haven't decided what to do. I know I will do something about it. There's something about mind control that draws you in. And I am equally satisfied I feel that. Ho hum.

I think I am just high.