Monday, April 28, 2014

Learning 3 languages in a Month: Day 2 Japanese

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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...
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Friday, April 25, 2014

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

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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...
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Thursday, April 24, 2014

Learning 3 Languages in a Month- Day 1 Spanish

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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...
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Learning 3 Languages in a Month

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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...
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Monday, April 21, 2014

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

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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...
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Sunday, April 13, 2014

Debunking Sherlock Holmes Myths: "Deductive Reasoning"

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"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...
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Wednesday, April 9, 2014

5 minute Logic Tutorial: Deductive Reasoning and Inductive Reasoning

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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,...
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Sunday, April 6, 2014

18 Cryptograms of Western University (Part 3/Final)

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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,...
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Wednesday, April 2, 2014

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

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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...
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