How important is money to you?

7 months 1 week ago

"Here's an answer backed by many field studies as well as sociological theories: The correlation between money and happiness is extremely strong when one has very little money, but weakens significantly as one becomes increasingly wealthy. The truth of the matter is, if one doesn't have money he or she can never be happy in the long run - perhaps he or she can convince herself temporarily that he or she has traded the money (or perhaps the opportunity to make the money) for something more worthwhile, but when he or she notices that everyone else around him or her has money and can use that money to purchase whatever it was he or she had traded away his or her money for, unhappiness, discontent, and frustration are quick to settle in.

One who has to live from day to day worrying if there is going to be a next meal or if the repo-man might come any second cannot possibly be sane and steady-state happy. Interestingly enough, as research has soon, the converse is also true: who is sane (or just perceived sane or competent) and always happy will not remain destitute for long. Thus there is most definitely a strong connection between happiness and money when money is small.

When money increases, however, the happiness gain is then logarithmic as imposed by the limits on how much a person can actually spend on him or herself. Thus, if we were able to quantify happiness, we would notice that the man of net worth 10 billion dollars is no noticeably happier than the man with a net worth of 100 million dollars; both have enough money to go wolf down a truck of Russian caviar if they so wished and so it isn't so particularly meaningful or joyous to do so.

Ultimately, however, research conducted at the University of Michigan has shown that steady-state happiness, believe it or not, depends on genes. The average human is essentially a walking assembly of differential equations whose set of solutions are all convergent (the fact we all alive and not exploding left and right are proof of this). And the happiness equation, despite having an obvious sinusoidal oscillatory nature, is also ultimately convergent to some sort of reference happiness set into our genes. Thus, while we can externally affect our happiness values with disturbances such as an increase in pay, a tasty meal, or really good sex, it ultimate settles back down to our reference value unless we constantly change our disturbance values. Consequently, as French saying goes, "variety is the spice of life". "
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Elements of nature

7 months 2 weeks ago

"Actually, I've thought a bit about this whole Aristotle elements dealie. Personally, I think there is so much focus on fire and ice - or hot and cold - because these two "elements" are far more conceptual than the other three (earth, water, and wind). Everyday, one stands on the earth, feels the wind, and drinks the water, making those three elements a mundane vicissitude of the everyday. These elements are, in the control-dynamics sense, inherently stable; a tornado might take down my house or a tidal wave wipe out my family in Malaysia, but a tornado or a tidal wave aren't going to spawn more of themselves out of nowhere.

Fire and ice, on the other hand, are intrinsically unstable. Without even dragging in thermodynamics and the whole increase of entropy destruction of exergy argument, one can see that fires likes to burn and cold likes to spread. As in, I can throw a tiny match in a pile of tinder somewhere and the whole thing will burst into flame or I can dump a bucket of liquid nitrogen on my leg and soon my whole leg will go numb. The ancients probably realized this instability in these two "elements" and reasoned that, because of their unstable nature, surely they couldn't be control by a stable element (like water, earth, or wind). Thus, we see fire and ice always at ends with each other, and it is only in that the two are locked in some sort of death-struggle that we have equilibrium as to allow for life. However, because both systems are, intrinsically, unstable, one assumes that even a slight tip in the balance of the forces would send the whole thing crashing down on our heads...

Thus the world ending in fire or ice. "
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What's the worst thing you have done?

7 months 3 weeks ago

"The summer right before I went to college, I went to Disneyland with a bunch of my friends and, while it was suppose to be the joyful place on Earth, we majorly @#$%ed up the atmosphere. Granted we never went out of our way to make things uncomfortable for the rest of the park guests, but our conversations - laden as they were with profanity, sexual connotations, and math jokes - were more than enough to disturb the twelve year-old little boys and girls and their parents.

Being the immature punks we were (and probably still are), we didn't limit our generally bad behavior to just verbal abuse: we threw wet paper wads at each other furiously in the tea-cup ride, we splashed water all over each other in the appropriate log-rides, and we even blatantly threw bottles off the sides of other rides. And when we were finally confronted by the Disneyland security crew, we all played our part and denied responsibility to a group of middle school kids knowing that the guards would be a lot more strict and suspicious of them because they were black and Latino. I have no idea whatever happened to those kids, but I do hope they didn't get into too serious of trouble because of our actions -_-"
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The end of the world 2012?

7 months 4 weeks ago

"Well, considering all every prophecy about the world ending at some arbitrary date has, so far, been absolutely wrong, the whole 2012 thing doesn't have much historical credibility. Furthermore, one should note that the entirety of the Mayan calender does not end on 2012 as with popular belief - only the outer cycle ends on that date. The world may be slightly different in 2012 than 2011, but it will, by no means, just end. In addition, the whole with Nostradamus and his time-wheel-without-spokes is just another vague page in his purposefully unclear writings - if that dude really was a such an amazing prophet of the future, he would've unequivocally said so and then proceeded to predict the future in non-BS words.

Granted the whole Earth-crossing-over-the-galactic-center thing is true and it will happen in 2012, have we already been over entire ages like this? Surely humanity has already decided that the stars determine our fate only if we choose to let them. Seriously, when was the last time we saw Haley's comet streak through the sky and proceed to crap our pants and scream that Jesus is going to come and pwn us all?
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Well, if the world does end at 2012, I'd totally be fine with that also. It would mean a final end to this miserable life of a college student trying to eek out an existence in a crap-faced economy with no parents for support, the government fisting me with bills and taxes and the professors donkey-punching me with all sorts of impossible research subjects like analytic solutions to Euler's fluid equation (it doesn't @#$%ing exist, get over it).

/rant"
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math=hard or easy??

7 months 4 weeks ago

"Math is not hard until you hit upper-div in college. Real Analysis could very much just be shortened to Real Anal for all the horrors and trauma it has inflicted upon me. To this day, I don't really understand what's the difference between point-wise convergence and uniform convergence aside from the memorized delta-epsilon definition and a mild inkling. And things like measure spaces, Lesbesque (sp?) theory totally escapes me. I mean, the idea that there exists certain functions such that can be integrated (to get zero everywhere) but not differentiated sounds cool, but their rigorous proofs completely baffles me.

Applied math, on the other hand, is by far easier and (obviously) far more useful in the real world (like engineering). I'm learning the finite elements method for partial differential equations right now and it seems a trillion times more intuitive and understandable than things like measure spaces and whatnot. Coupled with the fact that applied math generally doesn't have me deal with abominations like recursively defined sequences, topology, manifolds, cells, and whatnot, I find it so much nicer and easier. Yay applied math. "
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Housemaids: To be trusted or not?

8 months 1 week ago

"Stories the likes of this are rare and shouldn't be taken to archetype and entire profession of individuals with differing personalities, circumstances, and desires. It is incorrect to assume that this housemaid committed those heinous deeds because of the profession, rather it should be more toward that person's circumstances, influences, and even personality. As such, the answer to whether one should trust his or her housemaid or not should be the same as whether one can trust that person or not. And for the majority of society, people tend to live up to (or at try very hard to) live up to their expectations. Thus, if one were to constantly doubt, suspect, and expect his or her housemaid of robbing him or her blind, one should be little surprised if the housemaid falls in line with those very expectations. Consequently, if one were to treat the housemaid with respect, trust, and as a member of the family, the housemaid will be more than willing to live up those expectations and become not only a member of the family, but also a great friend."
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Hey fellas ...and ladies! hows your luck with the opposite sex?

8 months 1 week ago

"I was told many times by various peers and television that, once I gets into college, sex and the opposite sex just jumps out of the bushes and springs out of the corners while wild fraternities and fantastic fun-filled party-goers frolic to and fro the college-party scene with all sorts of illicit drugs, alcohol, and potato chips. It was to be the time of my life when I sate all desires of the flesh and live in a virtual Gomorrah of hedonistic pleasures and heavenly sweetness.
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But then, I made the decision to double major in mathematics and engineering and I spent every waking hour studying. All my roommates (all guys) are also in the same boat and study their asses off also in an ever-destructive cycle of who-can-maintain-a-4.0-the-longest competition. Thus even if the girls at school were the voluptuous heart-breaking vixens of yore, I wouldn't have the time or freedom to indulge my primal passions - not at the cost of my midterms grades!"
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First Wall

8 months 2 weeks ago

"From what I've been told, walling is like learning college physics for scientists and engineers. You may think that all whatever sigs or avatars you've made in the past will prepare you for it, but you would likely be wrong - walling is very hard. It takes a good eye, intuition, sound judgment, artistic perspective, and most importantly, practice and hard work. I hardly know anyone who has consistently made absolutely beautiful walls from the get-go; everyone must go through the same process of practice and more practice to increase judgment and intuition.

...

Either that, or you can just learn how to vector and hi-def all your favorite screenshots from some eye-candy anime you've torrented from the internet."
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heaven or hell!? rock on!

8 months 2 weeks ago

"For some reason, I honestly can't myself caring if I went to heaven or hell. Both would be very interesting to visit...but neither seem like a good place to live since God (at least according to the Christian Bible) is something of a contradictory asshole and Satan's place seems a little too hot for my tastes."
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Hetalia Axis Powers

8 months 2 weeks ago

"As short and silly as this anime is, it has managed to gather its fair share of flack from all shorts of political-correctness groups and has been pulled from at least one television station in Japan. Personally, I'm morbidly curious as to what they'll do for the holocaust or the rape of Nanking (to say nothing of how much political-correctness groups would just ****ing go bat**** crazy tearing out their hair and screaming to the streets).

On another note, the show is random as hell, funny, fast-paced, and perfect if for those with advanced ADHD. "
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Do you believe in next life ?

8 months 3 weeks ago

"What does it matter if there is or isn't life after death. If there isn't, we won't be around to care, and if there is, then we will be around to care. From a historical and psychological background, the need for an afterlife arises directly from the average person's fear of death. "
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what if there is no love in this world?

8 months 3 weeks ago

"We'd have a lot more casual sex...
Seriously. Society functions based upon reciprocity - as in you scratch my back and I scratch yours, which in turns has the potential to develop into friendship, trust, and a sense of happiness. Breeding, a product of the need to "win at evolution" will go on nevertheless and "partnerships" (aka marriage) of people will form in hopes of raising a healthy child able to survive in the world. Furthermore, parents, who protect their children out of an evolutionary need to pass on their genes, will continue to do so without "love"...

In fact, the only real difference we'll see in a world without "love" is a lot less cuddling after sex."
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Contribution limit issue

1 year 2 months ago

"Yes, I have read the FAQs and honestly, I'm still stumped as to why I'm still getting the notice everytime I try to download a wall. Granted I'm not pumping SSS-rated walls every hour or emptying $700 billion tax-payer dollars into AP, but it's not like I've never contributed. Coupled with the fact that this problem "coincidentally" started at the same time I moved away to my current place for college leads me to believe I somehow got my account tainted on some bad IP.

So, any help and or direction would be appreciated and thanks in advance."
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Shakugan no shana wall

1 year 6 months ago

"Anyway, after taking a gander through the collection of Shana walls here, I decided to add more poop to it. So I vectored out a Shana and a piece of turd from some images I saw floating around Google Images and went to work. In this wall, Shana is hanging onto what I hope would look like a piece of toilet paper and very angry (or at least displeased). Unfortunately, I don't have much clue what I should do with the background so I just slapped together some squares and made some sort of bathroom tile collection. I'm open to suggestions and constructive criticisms regarding how I can improve this piece.
"
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Hayate no gotoku wallpaper

1 year 6 months ago

"Despite common sense, reason, and all that is holy, I decided to start making a Hayate no Gotoku wallpaper featuring the minor character "Britney." In the story, Britney is the manga creation of one of the characters and, despite being sold to the audience as a mahou shoujo, is probably not female.

Anyway, here's what I have so far (it's quite rough). I made everything except Britney and her shoes. Please tell me how I should best improve this. Also, make sure to wash out your eyes afterwards.
"
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hayate no gotoku wallpaper

1 year 7 months ago

"Okay, so I tried to fix the eyes and the pillow. The pillow proves to be more difficult. Anyway, here's what I have so far. Also, I've switched to imageshack since photobucket automatically shrinks the images.
"
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hayate no gotoku wallpaper

1 year 7 months ago

"I recently found Photoshop and have been experimenting with it. Anyway, here's a wall I made:
Link 1
Link 2
Anyway comments and suggestions - especially about how I can improve - would be much appreciated. "
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