Off to wordpress

Hello people. So I finally made the move to WordPress. It pains me greatly to abandon blogger – my first blogging platform, but hey, that’s what happens to the first wife when she stops taking care of herself,; gets all fat and ugly; stops wearing heels and starts wearing rubber shoes; doesn’t make her hair, you know, all that fancy stuff; and the husbands friends start complaining and at first he defends her but after a while, he can’t anymore and he has to out every day and see his friends with their pretty, young thangs and he knows he can get one but he still feels loyalty to his first and he resists and tries and then one day when the cup is full and overflowing and he can hold it no longer, he kicks the stup cow out of…er…I’m sorry I got carried away a bit. Anyway, now I’m on WordPress. Learning to love it now. That’s that. If you want to keep up with my random rubbish feel free to join in at:

http://thinktankt.wordpress.com/

Its been real.

(I will be reposting my last post X&Y on wordpress, since it got lost in translation between the two platforms)

X & Y

by @Nerdychique

I beg your pardon in advance so forgive me; this will be a bit of a nerdy post. Please read to the end, I promise it will be worth your while. Will you stay? Please....okay, you’re still here. Good.

I'm sure everyone reading this post did some sort of elementary mathematics; if you didn’t please accept my deepest condolences. if you did, the following question shouldn't be difficult.

Question: Given the two variables 'x' and 'y' and a constant '5'; how many mathematical relationships (equations) can you write to connect them (e.g x+y=5). Take 10minutes to try this and see how many you can come up with. Try it…No really, TRY it.

(-_-)

I apologize for putting you through the stress, but there is indeed a point to all this mathematical calisthenics .
Okay, are you done? Your basic answers should look something like this: x+y=5, x+5=y, x-5=y, xy=5, y/x=5; and you could have more complex ones like x^5=y, x=y>5, x=5log(y), y=Sin(x+5), ln(x)=y/5; and then some progressing toward even more complexity like: Cosh(x)+Sinh(y)=5 or even x^7+x^5+x^4-x^3+5x+5 = y, …continua ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

If you thought about it carefully, you would have realized early on that there are almost an infinite amount of relationships that can be constructed. Some of you might have also observed that the amount of mathematical relationships you come up with is also a function of a number of other indirect factors. These are:

i.) How much mathematics you've been taught.

I'm pretty sure that @ThinkTank (an engineer) would have more advanced statements than me (aBiochemist). This is because he has been taught; or rather he has had to learn more mathematics than I have.(@ThinkTank says: “You’re damn right about that sister! Do you know how many equations I have solved in my life time? You go fear if I write equations for you o, don’t let me start! We will not leave here till 2012! Jor oh!)

ii.) How much mathematics you've been exposed to.

This one is very closely related to the first. It differs only in terms of the fact that you may not have been taught, but you might have come across the math somewhere else, maybe from a friend or you may have had to use it to solve a problem outside school.

iii.) How much research and effort you put into solving the question.

For all I care, someone may have googled 'mathematical statements' and come up with a deluge of answers, while other people may just see no point, and answer based on residual knowledge.

My point is, our views on everything in life, much like our answers to the question above, are dependent on the same three factors: what we’ve been taught, what we’ve experienced or come across and what we are willing to find out. If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm towing the line towards the third one which has to do with open-mindedness. How open minded are you? The Oxford dictionary (sorry I had to go there) defines open mindedness as “the willingness to listen to, investigate, think about, or accept different ideas”.

See, we are all different. Our ideas and opinions about different issues depend on our backgrounds, openness and natural predilections. It should be clear from this that everyone will have different views on the same issues.

There’s nothing wrong with that, but the great evil are the people with closed minds, who refuse to even think about the logic behind another person's idea or beliefs. I think this is what is referred to as rigidity. Using the Mathematical statement analogy, the rigid student would probably have been the person with the least statements and the rigid teacher would be the one who refused to accept a student’s statements just because he hasn’t seen them before.

Rigid people are everywhere around us, they are the people who argue about issues blindly, refusing to listen or even think. They don’t even TRY to think. Somehow, their minds have been blocked by something: outright stupidity, religion, culture or just a tenacious unwillingness to change.

We all know how annoying it is to argue with someone who keeps who keeps telling you 'that's how it’s supposed to be' or ‘It can never happen’. Personally, there's nothing that grinds my gears more than people who always stick to the status quo, nothing.

I believe we would be doing ourselves, and the whole world, a whole lot of good if we just took the time to open our minds a little; question things more. Read, travel (you can 'sort of' travel online), engage in conversations with people from vastly different backgrounds, ask questions, continually question the status quo, use your brain.

Personally, I have imposed the 'learn a new thing everyday' rule on myself. When I realize that I haven't learned anything, I go to the Wikipedia homepage, and just read. You can adopt whatever works for you. In the end, I believe that open-mindedness is what will bring us closer to unity as a species. But then that's just my opinion.