Revamped!

Hope you guys like the new look! I was getting bored of the old black and white one... so now we're going green! :D

Coming Up!

http://uniting-diversity-contactlist.blogspot.com/

If you didn't get my email about it:

Dear dudes and duddetes of 5S1 '05

How is everybody? I know some of you overseas people are already back in the motherland enjoying good food, family and being soaked in sweat (which will be pretty much the same for me, now that the Sun is blazing most furiously!)

First of all, I'd like to apologize for not being able to follow up with completing the class contact list as I've planned last year.

Right now, since I'm still gonna be stuck in Europe with only one subject left (Anatomy finals)... I might as well be of some other good use, and really, really complete that list! I know Mei Wen has been asking since last year (so sorry!!!) and a couple of other people.

So, once again, please send me your details:

NAME:
MSIAN ADDRESS:
HSE NO:
HP NO. (LOCAL):
HP NO. (OVERSEAS):
EMAIL:
MSN:
BLOG ADDRESS:
D.O.B.:
PLACE OF STUDY:
COURSE OF STUDY:

Please also include a 500-word essay to let me know how you are doing, so that I can evaluate your mental state of mind.

Just kidding. :-P

Hopefully I'll be able to complete the list before I get back to Msia (which will be around mid August to early September, depending on how the paperwork and all goes. Here ahh... terlalu banyak bureaucracy. :-S)

For those who are done with exams... GOOD FOR YOU!!! Have a nice, good, well-deserved (I hope!) holiday. :-)

For those who are still struggling with me with late nights of eleventh-hour cramming, YOU ARE NOT ALONE!!!

Take care, everyone.

Love, Flo.

P/S: How come no news about the paintball thingy wannn??? I may not be around to bug around to join, but still... do go for it if you can! ;-) Thanks to Sui Yuan for effort. :-)

Paintball Friendly

Ok, this came up last week. The suggested details are below.

Event : PAINTBALL FRIENDLY
Venue : (to be confirmed - either Bukit Jalil, Subang or Astaka)
Date : 19th July (suggest other dates too)
Who : Any 5s1 2005 students. Boys AND girls, especially girls actually.

Spread the word.

Thanks. Anything you can post in the comments box or contact me at adralnikea@gmail.com

Sui Yuan

Schrodinger's Cat

The story of Schrödinger's cat

Dear Cecil:

Cecil, you're my final hope
Of finding out the true Straight Dope
For I have been reading of Schrödinger's cat
But none of my cats are at all like that.
This unusual animal (so it is said)
Is simultaneously live and dead!
What I don't understand is just why he
Can't be one or other, unquestionably.
My future now hangs in between eigenstates.
In one I'm enlightened, the other I ain't.
If you understand, Cecil, then show me the way
And rescue my psyche from quantum decay.
But if this queer thing has perplexed even you,
Then I will and won't see you in Schrödinger's zoo.

--Randy F., Chicago

Dear Randy

Schrödinger, Erwin! Professor of physics!
Wrote daring equations! Confounded his critics!
(Not bad, eh? Don't worry. This part of the verse
Starts off pretty good, but it gets a lot worse.)
Win saw that the theory that Newton'd invented
By Einstein's discov'ries had been badly dented.
What now? wailed his colleagues. Said Erwin, "Don't panic,
No grease monkey I, but a quantum mechanic.
Consider electrons. Now, these teeny articles
Are sometimes like waves, and then sometimes like particles.
If that's not confusing, the nuclear dance
Of electrons and suchlike is governed by chance!
No sweat, though--my theory permits us to judge
Where some of 'em is and the rest of 'em was."
Not everyone bought this. It threatened to wreck
The comforting linkage of cause and effect.
E'en Einstein had doubts, and so Schrödinger tried
To tell him what quantum mechanics implied.
Said Win to Al, "Brother, suppose we've a cat,
And inside a tube we have put that cat at--
Along with a solitaire deck and some Fritos,
A bottle of Night Train, a couple mosquitoes
(Or something else rhyming) and, oh, if you got 'em,
One vial prussic acid, one decaying ottom
Or atom--whatever--but when it emits,
A trigger device blasts the vial into bits
Which snuffs our poor kitty. The odds of this crime
Are 50 to 50 per hour each time.
The cylinder's sealed. The hour's passed away. Is
Our pussy still purring--or pushing up daisies?
Now, you'd say the cat either lives or it don't
But quantum mechanics is stubborn and won't.
Statistically speaking, the cat (goes the joke),
Is half a cat breathing and half a cat croaked.
To some this may seem a ridiculous split,
But quantum mechanics must answer, "Tough @#&!
We may not know much, but one thing's fo' sho':
There's things in the cosmos that we cannot know.
Shine light on electrons--you'll cause them to swerve.
The act of observing disturbs the observed--
Which ruins your test. But then if there's no testing
To see if a particle's moving or resting
Why try to conjecture? Pure useless endeavor!
We know probability--certainty, never.'
The effect of this notion? I very much fear
'Twill make doubtful all things that were formerly clear.
Till soon the cat doctors will say in reports,
"We've just flipped a coin and we've learned he's a corpse."'
So saith Herr Erwin. Quoth Albert, "You're nuts.
God doesn't play dice with the universe, putz.
I'll prove it!" he said, and the Lord knows he tried--
In vain--until fin'ly he more or less died.
Win spoke at the funeral: "Listen, dear friends,
Sweet Al was my buddy. I must make amends.
Though he doubted my theory, I'll say of this saint:
Ten-to-one he's in heaven--but five bucks says he ain't."


Oh uncylopedia, what would I do for comedy if not for you... most likely Sinfest

of Prices and Petrol

I bet that:

Car ownership rate will increase tremendously over these few years(if this RM650 rebate thing continues)...

Then when this car rebate things is over, then there will be a sudden tremendous drop in car ownership in Malaysia...

But the traffic will obviously still remain the same even after this miraculous drop in car ownership lar, because the actual number cars used in the country is still the same...

We will see for ourselves first hand how ppl respond to economic incentive..and how the policies distort/influence markets..

Let the wheels roll.......

=p

Modern Minds and Pastimes

Gay

More Gay

Mostest Gayerest

Free some more.... hehe

Wei Ken's turn to act gay

Buffet lunch at Resort Cafe

A happy Wei Ken

An equally happy Xing Ji

Good photography gives you wings

Bad photography makes you look retarded (sorry Wei Ken)

Fan girls wating to be the first (some were they since we reached Genting at 12...wtf)

The crowd gets bigger...oh well...tis' dinnertime for us =)

Typical Malaysians...fill 5 saucers full of ketchup and then don't finish...

Pre-Concert Arena of Stars

Introducing - Joe Guese

Ethan Mentzer

Ben Romans

Joey Zehr

Kyle Patrick

And together they form MEGAZORD! I mean The Click Five...I always get those mixed up

How not to pose at a concert

Peace Brother Ken!

The morning after

Looking out the window

Hey kids...it's the cookie monster!

A puffed bag of chips

Another scenic Genting pic...the bottom left pile of rubble looks like a bomb site

Wei Ken's face as we go down Genting in a car with no brakes

My expression...remember hor...buckle up behind...or get fined!

Of prices and hydrocarbons

As they say at Mastercard

Old Petrol Price : RM 1.92

New Petrol Price : RM 2.70 (effective midnight today)

Reaction by Malaysian public :

Pics were taken at the two petrol kiosks outside my house....the queue was so badass...ppl living in my area couldn't leave their houses...lol...the quality of the pics are so crummy because i didn't dare to use flash and didn't dare to go near...the drivers looked angry enough already...on the plus side...Ramly burger did a roaring trade....mmmmm...Ramly....

Copy Sketching!

This is what I've been up to...when i'm not dotaing =)

I call it copy sketching...obviously it involves ripping off other people's creative designs as fast as possible...naturally I chose only the sexiest concept art to copy from...hehe

All above designs by James Hawkins...check out his wicked site http://www.hawkprey.com/mainpage.htm

Anyway...I tried my hand at some original drawing...and came up with this two pieces of uh...less than stellar crap..or just plain crap...whatever...nuff' said.

Girls have absolute advantage over boys!!

read this article..

Girls are becoming as good as boys at mathematics, and are still better at reading

TRADITION has it that boys are good at counting and girls are good at reading. So much so that Mattel once produced a talking Barbie doll whose stock of phrases included “Math class is tough!”

Although much is made of differences between the brains of adult males and females, the sources of these differences are a matter of controversy. Some people put forward cultural explanations and note, for example, that when girls are taught separately from boys they often do better in subjects such as maths than if classes are mixed. Others claim that the differences are rooted in biology, are there from birth, and exist because girls' and boys' brains have evolved to handle information in different ways

Luigi Guiso of the European University Institute in Florence and his colleagues have just published the results of a study which suggests that culture explains most of the difference in maths, at least. In this week's Science, they show that the gap in mathematics scores between boys and girls virtually disappears in countries with high levels of sexual equality, though the reading gap remains.

Dr Guiso took data from the 2003 OECD Programme for International Student Assessment. Some 276,000 15-year-olds from 40 countries sat the same maths and reading tests. The researchers compared the results, by country, with each other and with a number of different measures of social sexual equality. One measure was the World Economic Forum's gender-gap index, which reflects economic and political opportunities, education and well-being for women. Another was based on an index of cultural attitudes towards women. A third was the rate of female economic activity in a country, and the fourth measure looked at women's political participation.

On average, girls' maths scores were, as expected, lower than those of boys. However, the gap was largest in countries with the least equality between the sexes (by any score), such as Turkey. It vanished in countries such as Norway and Sweden, where the sexes are more or less on a par with one another. The researchers also did some additional statistical checks to ensure the correlation was material, and not generated by another, third variable that is correlated with sexual equality, such as GDP per person. They say their data therefore show that improvements in maths scores are related not to economic development, but directly to improvements in the social position of women.

The one mathematical gap that did not disappear was the differences between girls and boys in geometry. This seems to have no relation to sexual equality, and may allow men to cling on to their famed claim to be better at navigating than women are. However, the gap in reading scores not only remained, but got bigger as the sexes became more equal. Average reading scores were higher for girls than for boys in all countries. But in more equal societies, not only were the girls as good at maths as the boys, their advantage in reading had increased.

This suggests an interesting paradox. At first sight, girls' rise to mathematical equality suggests they should be invading maths-heavy professions such as engineering—and that if they are not, the implication might be that prejudice is keeping them out. However, as David Ricardo observed almost 200 years ago, economic optimisation is about comparative advantage. The rise in female reading scores alongside their maths scores suggests that female comparative advantage in this area has not changed. According to Paola Sapienza, a professor of finance at Northwestern University in Illinois who is one of the paper's authors, that is just what has happened. Other studies of gifted girls, she says, show that even though the girls had the ability, fewer than expected ended up reading maths and sciences at university. Instead, they went on to be become successful in areas such as law.

In other words, girls may acquire an absolute advantage over boys as a result of equal treatment. This is something that society, more broadly, has not yet taken on board. Mattel may wish to take note that among Teen Talk Barbie's 270 phrases concerning shopping, parties and clothes, at least one might usefully have been, “Dostoevsky rocks!”

from : http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11449804

btw..as expected from anything controversial, there are many criticism towards this particular research published in Science..but well, this makes into a good piece of dinner table discussion eh??