Who is the Strategist: A Book of Five Rings (Part 1)

There are several concepts of what a "Strategist" is- the way in which a man masters the path to victory. Today, we will look at the conception of a strategist as conceived by Miyamoto Musashi. "Book of Five Rings" The "Book of Five Rings" (Go Rin no Sho) is the masterpiece of Miyamoto Musashi, a legendary swordsman from Japan, who was active during 16th and 17th centuries (known as the Kyoto Renaissance). He fought from his youth to his old age without losing a match, and killing several opponents in duels, before becoming somewhat of a warrior poet...

Read more →

Half-Blog post: Espanol current progress.

I find that the best way to demonstrate understanding of something is to try and teach it. To test my proficiency (or lack thereof) of Spanish, i'm going to attempt to write this blog post in spanish (sorry about the lack of accents): Este es una entrada de blog que dice sobre mi progresos en aprendar espanol. En el mes anterior, aprende los conjugaciones de espanol verbos. Durante mi tiempo, Aprende los conjugaciones de "presente", "pasado", y "futuro". Pero no aprende muchos verbos o sustantivos. Para practice escribir espanol, yo enviaba textos a mi amigos y amigas en espanol. Necesitaba...

Read more →

Learning 3 Languages in a Week: Day 3 Japanese and Spanish

I've found a source for my Japanese articles. Unfortunately, its also presented me with a great deal more work. The source is http://news.google.co.jp/, and sadly, the articles are written in a mix of kanji and katakana, of which I have issues. Spanish Here is the next Spanish article in the meantime Here's time for review. Before I started devoting hours to learning an entire new alphabet (hiragana), I had begun to learn the grammar that structures sentences- given that nouns and verbs are so many (I didn't want to merely focus on vocabulary). Learning...

Read more →

Learning 3 languages in a Month: Day 2 Japanese

My original plan to use articles from the BBC has actually failed in a way. This is because, despite how many languages the BBC website has, it does not have Japanese nor Italian. As a result, I'm having to look for articles from other sources. Japanese will be a great deal more difficult for me than Spanish given my lack of exposure to it. I can understand a few phrases here and there thanks to watching several Studio Ghibli films with the subtitles on. However, reading it is an entirely different story, and I imagine learning the language (I'm going to...

Read more →

League Comprehensive History: How good is CJ Frost right now?

If you've followed League of Legends and its professional scene, its hard not be aware of CJ Frost. The team, along with its sister team CJ Blaze, has a history of being one of the oldest and most prestigious League of Legends teams in the Korean scene of OGN. For those in the west, you probably remember them for taking 2nd in the second World Championships after losing to TPA. The Old Kings In Korea, CJ Frost are essentially one of the most popular teams in Korea along with SKT T1 K. They are essentially perceived as the "Old Kings", a team who has...

Read more →

Learning 3 Languages in a Month- Day 1 Spanish

For the first day of the project, I've decided to start with the language I'm most familiar with: Spanish. To start, I picked up an article from the spanish BBC website, and planned my steps: The article in question To begin, I wanted to have this project be steeped in practicality, so I would judge my success by whether or not I could comprehend what was being said in the article. Additionally, I intended to focus more on the "structure of the words" first, rather than worrying about vocabulary with the verbs and nouns. So my first step was to eliminate...

Read more →

Learning 3 Languages in a Month

For a long time now, I've wanted to expand my language base and become truly "Multi-lingual", while at the same time experimenting with my mnemonic technique skillset. Essentially, I intend to discover the best way for me to reach a certain degree of language proficiency in a short amount of time. The Goal An example of an article in Spanish off the BBC For this initial experiment, the goal is: "To be able to read an article written in the language".  For this experiment, I'll be using articles posted on the BBC, which is supposedly meant to...

Read more →

The Fundamental Strategy taught by the game of Nim: The Victory Node

Matches are commonly used to play Nim. Nim is an old strategy game popularized in 16th century Europe, and purportedly played in China. The game is simple, and can be played with simple objects, often using stones or matches. The game is played by laying out lines of objects and taking turns taking objects away. You take objects away by choosing a line, and then taking as many objects from that line as you want. The goal is to force the opponent to take the last object. Its best explained through an example: For example. The game begins by laying...

Read more →

Debunking Sherlock Holmes Myths: "Deductive Reasoning"

"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"      Sherlock Holmes, The Sign of the Four, ch. 6 (1890) As with many Holmesian fanatics, the first time we heard the term "deduce" was while reading a Sherlock Holmes story. Prior to that, I had never heard the word before; so I quickly learned to associate the term "deduce" with Sherlock Holmes, as if it was something unique and central to him and his method. It was many years later that...

Read more →

5 minute Logic Tutorial: Deductive Reasoning and Inductive Reasoning

Alright, here's a 5 minute Logic tutorial on Deductive Reasoning and Inductive Reasoning. In formal Logic, these are the two main methods of reasoning. Deduction- Top-down approach Induction- Bottom-up approach The "top" refers to a group or category The "bottom" refers to an individual or particular instance You should be able to pick it up as you read on. Deductive Reasoning In logic, Deductive Reasoning is known as the "top-down" approach. You go from general qualities of a group to say things about specific instances of that group. For instance,...

Read more →

18 Cryptograms of Western University (Part 3/Final)

Recently, it appears that the code has essentially been "cracked". I am essentially just making this post in order to conclude what happened. The article can be found here According to the article, it wasn't actually a "code" at all, but rather a sort of social art experiment. While 121 letters were hidden a few years ago, it seems they have only had widespread attention at this point. The result may not be especially exciting for the code-breaker, or armchair detective, but I suppose it has its own merits. After all, our analysis had suggested that the text wasn't very carefully formatted,...

Read more →

The Interesting Effects of Suey Park and PETA- The Benefits of Appearing Mad

Craziness works. Her twitter feed. 36K in tweets with 21k in followers. For those of you who are aware of US pop news, you may have heard about the twitter debacle with #CancelColbert and the twitter sensation Suey Park. Suey Park created a campaign to cancel "The Colbert Show" after a twitter account called "The Colbert Report" posted something she considered to be horribly offensive and racist. Her tweet has exploded, and now the entire internet seems to be aware of her and have come to the consensus that she is crazy. And yet, I believe her presence...

Read more →

The 18 Cryptograms of Western University (Part 2)

I found some time to think about the cryptograms since my last post. Apparently, there has been another found since then, putting the number to 19. Granted, I don't want to have to constantly rename it, so i'll keep it at 18 cryptograms for now. The purported 19th page The key fact I decided to consider was the fact that there are really only 4 letters- The Leaf letter, The Gem letter, the Feather Glass, and the Feather Table.The Importance of the picture over the content To prove my point: Here are the endings of two Gem pages. Notice how the symbols are...

Read more →

The 18 Cryptograms of Western University (Part 1)

There has been an interesting mystery brewing in Western University of  London, Ontario. 18 pages filled with strange symbols have been found slipped in the middle of various textbooks in the political science and economics department library. Given a puzzle like this, I couldn't find it in myself to turn it down. Page 14 of 18 A First Look I suggest taking a look at the letters if you are interested in reading further. You can find the album of the letters here. Here are a few facts that are immediately noted: The letters appeared to all be...

Read more →

Malaysia 370- Follow up analysis of possibilities

My previous article was an analysis of the Malaysia 370 situation. It wasn't meant to provide new information, but rather highlight the likelihood of certain scenarios and the key questions that should be answered. However, analysis isn't the full responsibility of a strategist- there comes a time where he must also decide on a plan of action. Possible routes of the Plane In this article, I ponder the methods I would employ in order to find out what happened to the aircraft/recover it and the people. This will be written from the current situation...

Read more →

The Silver Blaze of Malasyia Airlines Flight 370

Edit: For clarity, this post is meant simply to provide a perspective and frame of view on the situation. I intended to point out critical points, and highlight likely possibilities. This isn't really meant to provide "new information", as I am not close enough to the actual scene to be able to provide that information. A follow up article about plans for action can be found here.  I've made a mistake recently akin to Sherlock Holmes' mistake in Silver Blaze. I assumed that given the fame and well known circumstance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370,...

Read more →