Many universities are uploading their lectures online nowadays. It might be a good idea to take some of your spare time and absorb some of this data because I'm not sure the internet is always going to be a free flow of information like it is right now.
You don't really need to dish out thousands of dollars to gain a university level education anymore, nor do you have to get up early in the morning, or lose out on working and earning money to attend classes, or sit in a room with spoiled trust-fund-having greasy little self-righteous hipster scumbags who do not even appreciate the education they are recieving.
The following are some good ones, you can put out a search for more though...there's a lot out there.
UC Berkeley
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/
Current and archived courses.
Gutenberg free books
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search.html/?format=html&default_prefix=all&sort_order=&query=sun+tzu
This isn't a university but just Database of 33,000 free books for you to read and shit. I used to use Online Books (http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/) but it has only 10,000 books and has been surpassed by Gutenberg.
National Programme on Technical and Advanced Learning
http://www.youtube.com/user/nptelhrd
These videos are good and they're fun because everyone is Indian and has an Indian Accent. It gives the simulated experience of attending an Indian University. I really like this one.
Khan Academy
http://www.khanacademy.org/
This is not a university, and doesn't come across 100% professional but the guy presents a lot of topics and a lot of them are pretty good.
TED
http://www.ted.com/
Assorted lectures an a wide range of topics.
FORA
http://fora.tv/
Various topics, similar to TED.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Turning the Horribly Mundane into something in which the Badness is of As Can...
(Or how they took something Boring and made it Awesome)
Let's be honest, life itself gets pretty boring sometimes...you get up in the morning each day and go to work or school and pass the time, talk to your coworkers or classmates, daydream, hum to yourself, then go to bed at night (cycle reversed for night shift workers obviously). Turning something very boring into something fun is a co essential art within itself, you gotta drain the boring out of a situation, just like draining sap from a tree, where some inventive individual can then boil it and add sugar to make that sap palatable for human consumption. Similarly, inventive individuals can drain the boring out of situational day-to-day activities and dress it up using the most elaborate of shticks to create something that will in essence rock your trousers or drawers (or socks) off.
Let's take two television shows in particular that excel in this boredom draining method....
Iron Chef (the good one not the crappy one)
Ryōri no Tetsujin was a cooking show which tore the place down from 1992 until 2002.
A monster truck rally or a rock and roll concert are inherently awesome and hard to be boring...but a cooking show? To make a cooking show awesome takes absolute and resolute human ingenuity. I don't even know how to describe what makes it so awesome, take the intro for example, it's mythical and legendary. It's a legend but it's not happening thousands of years ago but right in front of your eyes.
That guy in the end of the intro from the link above is the heart and soul of the show...he is Chairman Kaga, he takes the ham and cheese sandwich acting style of William Shatner yet multiplies said ham by somewhere over 9000% and the resulting product is without any doubt...too hot to handle. Whether the Chairman is entering the arena on a snow-white steed or crushing wine glasses and bleeding all over the place in disappointment over his Iron Chefs, Kaga is always without peer. If a global planetary governor is ever elected to govern all peoples of the world, Chairman Kaga is the only person who could possibly be considered.
The Americans made two attempts at recreating this awesomery...the first time they used Kaga's Western counterpart himself, William Shatner, but the show did not catch on. They made a horrible second attempt which sadly did catch on. The show featured jobbers and fools and was hosted by a moron. They purported that Rachel Ray was an Iron Chef, Rachel Ray was an insult to the Iron Chefs and has ruined the glorious name of Iron Chef and spoiled the monicker for future generations.
Defi Mini Putt (RDS)
Défi Mini Putt was the greatest show on TV for a brief stretch in time back in the early nineteen nineties (1990's) which aired on Quebec's sports network.
Taking a cooking show and making it awesome is hard...but mini-putt? That doesn't take absolute/resolute human ingenuity...no no no...to make mini-putt awesome takes a deep concentration of pure human awesomeness in itself. Thankfully two men involved with the show, announcer Serge Vleminckx and puttsman extraordinaire Carl Carmoni had the inner-shutzpah in their respective souls to turn the sucker out.
Serge's narration of the transpired actions of the putters is what makes it what it is, from his trademark "Birdie!" exclamation to his unheard of excitement over mini-putt, this man is the real deal and should have been given better jobs at RDS (i.e. doing Montreal Canadiens games). Please watch the following video to get a taste of his technique and also live the unbridled intensity of the Legend Carl Carmoni...
Conclusion
An ancient Chinese proverb says that "Loneliness is a slow acting but deadly poison," I would venture to say that boringness is also a poison in its own right, but not one that can kill you, but one that simply drains the life out of you slowly, rendering your blood into heavy gray-matter and reducing you to a zombie-esque state of mind.
Yet one must ask, how could we ever know true awesomeness if true boringness never existed? Awesome is only awesome in comparison to its mortal enemy. Do they not go hand-in-hand? Could we ever know what was awesome if nothing was boring? Your mind must begin to travel when contemplating these concepts. Would there be happy...without sad? Would there be a concept of light...without darkness? Would there be rich...if there was no poor? Would there be heaven...if there was no earth? How could we live Life, if we didn't know Death was inevitable? Right with no Wrong? Come on.
The Ying Yang symbol in Taoism tries to represent this concept of negation in it's simplest terms. In our current topic, Boringness is the plain white dot in the midst of all that awesome black matter which is trying to counter act it, while Awesomeness is the black dot in the midst of that boring white matter trying to counter act it. Together they counter act each other so effectively in such a pleasant unison that they achieve total harmony and balance. Wow.
It's like something dark against something light...something movin' in the pale moon light...something dark against something light...something movin' in the pale moon light...
Let's be honest, life itself gets pretty boring sometimes...you get up in the morning each day and go to work or school and pass the time, talk to your coworkers or classmates, daydream, hum to yourself, then go to bed at night (cycle reversed for night shift workers obviously). Turning something very boring into something fun is a co essential art within itself, you gotta drain the boring out of a situation, just like draining sap from a tree, where some inventive individual can then boil it and add sugar to make that sap palatable for human consumption. Similarly, inventive individuals can drain the boring out of situational day-to-day activities and dress it up using the most elaborate of shticks to create something that will in essence rock your trousers or drawers (or socks) off.
Let's take two television shows in particular that excel in this boredom draining method....
Iron Chef (the good one not the crappy one)
Ryōri no Tetsujin was a cooking show which tore the place down from 1992 until 2002.
A monster truck rally or a rock and roll concert are inherently awesome and hard to be boring...but a cooking show? To make a cooking show awesome takes absolute and resolute human ingenuity. I don't even know how to describe what makes it so awesome, take the intro for example, it's mythical and legendary. It's a legend but it's not happening thousands of years ago but right in front of your eyes.
 |
| animated if clicked |
 |
| animated if clicked |
Defi Mini Putt (RDS)
 |
| Expert advice from the Legend... |
Taking a cooking show and making it awesome is hard...but mini-putt? That doesn't take absolute/resolute human ingenuity...no no no...to make mini-putt awesome takes a deep concentration of pure human awesomeness in itself. Thankfully two men involved with the show, announcer Serge Vleminckx and puttsman extraordinaire Carl Carmoni had the inner-shutzpah in their respective souls to turn the sucker out.
Serge's narration of the transpired actions of the putters is what makes it what it is, from his trademark "Birdie!" exclamation to his unheard of excitement over mini-putt, this man is the real deal and should have been given better jobs at RDS (i.e. doing Montreal Canadiens games). Please watch the following video to get a taste of his technique and also live the unbridled intensity of the Legend Carl Carmoni...
Conclusion
An ancient Chinese proverb says that "Loneliness is a slow acting but deadly poison," I would venture to say that boringness is also a poison in its own right, but not one that can kill you, but one that simply drains the life out of you slowly, rendering your blood into heavy gray-matter and reducing you to a zombie-esque state of mind.
Yet one must ask, how could we ever know true awesomeness if true boringness never existed? Awesome is only awesome in comparison to its mortal enemy. Do they not go hand-in-hand? Could we ever know what was awesome if nothing was boring? Your mind must begin to travel when contemplating these concepts. Would there be happy...without sad? Would there be a concept of light...without darkness? Would there be rich...if there was no poor? Would there be heaven...if there was no earth? How could we live Life, if we didn't know Death was inevitable? Right with no Wrong? Come on.
The Ying Yang symbol in Taoism tries to represent this concept of negation in it's simplest terms. In our current topic, Boringness is the plain white dot in the midst of all that awesome black matter which is trying to counter act it, while Awesomeness is the black dot in the midst of that boring white matter trying to counter act it. Together they counter act each other so effectively in such a pleasant unison that they achieve total harmony and balance. Wow.
It's like something dark against something light...something movin' in the pale moon light...something dark against something light...something movin' in the pale moon light...
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Canadian Election Super Power Rankings Mark II
The Incumbent Champion: Prime Minister Stephen Harper
Harp is the first Prime Minister who has ever hailed from the West and is the first Prime Minister who really gave more to the West than the East...and thusly he gets a lot of votes from the West.
Eastern Prime Minsters have messed with the West for many years. For instance, that jabroni Trudeau had a great chance with the Alberta oil sands in the early eighties when an American firm was going to come up and pay for all incurred expenses. This would have created the same job boom that occurred in the West under the Harper administration yet with a HUGE difference...all the jobs and economy boost but NONE of the expenses. To process that shitty oil from the sands has exceeded expected costs astronomically...the boom is already over out there and it was a very costly operation. Think about it though, if we got the boom, the jobs, and the work, but the Yankees covered ALL the costs and how great it would have been (not only for the West but all of Canada)....if only that little fucker Trudeau didn't pretend Canada was a glorious nation that didn't need help from anyone. Trudeau and the National Energy Program placed a ban on all foreign companies from developing oil fields in the "Crown Land." The worst thing about it is that a lot of Canadians knew this was a sure thing and put their life savings into the American firm, and when that shitty Trudeau pulled the plug at the last second he flushed the stock down to pennies in a matter of seconds and many peoples savings along with it. ("Developing Alberta's oil sands: from Karl Clark to Kyoto" By Paul Anthony Chastko is a good read on this era, specifically the "Lost Decade" portion of the book if you are interested in further reading on the matter).
I can see why Western Canada embraces Harper after having to put up with years and years of Easterners fucking with them but I don't think that gives them the right to keep this guy in office for another term. There are hundreds of sites out there devoted to his sins and failings so I don't think I need to get into them. I will bring up my favorite though which is the Fake Lake scandal which is so stupid it's funny. He wasn't thinking of the thousands of people who were going to riot in the streets but was more concerned over giving foreign press a nice backdrop (in a nation with enough lakes as is)...the press got a nice backdrop alright...cops beating kids in the streets. Haha.
Overall Score: 0/10
Michael Ignatieff
This is a fine young academic ninny and fiction writer from Harvard who thinks he has the chutzpah to be Prime. I feel he preformed the worst in the debates...just repeating his campaign ad over and over and answering softball pre-recorded questions from "concerned citizens" where he got to repeat his ad a few more times. I have the least to say about him because he is the blandest by all means (even more so than Harper).
He reminds me of class elections in school where we got to vote for one kid to be "president," I have a feeling this guy was voted as such as a youth for some reason and I bet it was on a "chocolate milk in the cafeteria" type of platform.
Overall Score: 0/10
Jackie Layton
The champion of the youth! Yay! All the university kids love this baldy with all their hearts. He's the "Left" guy, which means he's not "Right"...so that means he's the best. I guess.
I remember being at a David Suzuki talk at a university once and another man was on the docket that evening...a nice man named Albert Gore. The university kids went absolutely batshit buck nuts insane for Al Gore. Why?
Albert Gore is the wife of Tipper Gore (who put some rock and rollers on trial for anti-Christian activities in the eighties), and then he gained notoriety for attempting to become president of America this one time, and at some point he apparently took the initiative to invent the fucking internet. He faded into obscurity after losing the election but resurfaced years later when he felt compelled to make a slide show about pollution which not only won the hearts of some ninnies in Finland who awarded him the Nobel Piece Prize but also idealists around the world who fell in love with him.
These Gore-Groupies are the same ones who think they are saving the world by voting for Jackie Layton. Let's be serious for a minute though, okay? Jack Layton's main shtick is to further "socialize" the country, and make us pay more taxes. We pay a lot of taxes in Canada...we pay taxes on every single dollar we earn, we pay taxes on every single good or service we purchase, and then in April we pay some more taxes, and then we have some armed soldiers running around with a ticket quota taxing us for small infractions we make...and so on...and so on. Then the bureaucracy takes this money and builds fake lakes with it, or uses a few billion of it to hold an Olympiad during a worldwide depression, or pay some crooked mobsters ludicrous amounts of money to do small construction projects, or in the case of the Quebec's Caisse de dépôt in 2009...flat out lose 40 billion of it. The Canadian bureaucracy also features a cute little branch called the Senate, where super smooth rich guys who lived a sweet life or coached hockey for a few years are given large sums of tax payer money to chill out and continue being rich. This is one of the world's biggest and corrupted bureaucracies and anyone suggesting that they need more tax collectors to vacuum up more funds into this bureaucracy is 100% out of his/her mind. For those who insist that Layton is "different" should get real, a bureaucracy of this size has no chance of not being corrupt for it far too large in nature.
Overall Score: 0/10
Gilles Duceppe
For those who insist that he has no place in a federal election because he only represents a geopolitical/linguistic region of Canada must consider that Harper also represents only a small geopolitical/linguistic region of Canada as well. In fact other than Layton who has cute little idealists spread out on all 4 corners of the Nation, every guy in this election represents a balkanized geopolitical region of Canada (Duceppe = Quebec, Ignatieff = Ontario, Harper = Alberta/Saskatchewan) and thusly that argument is false. He has every right to be in this election and similarly he has every right to be as bad as the rest.
Overall Score: 0/10
Conclusion
People always get mad at me when I say I'm not gonna vote, or I'm gonna vote on the back of the ballot for someone more better, but hey...what can you do? They say vote for the lesser of all evils but what if all candidates are equally awful....then what the hell do you do? Who should you vote for?
Honestly, it's a big joke these things but at least in the American ones they got groundbreaking fun stuff going on like getting a black dude or a chick to be president. Look at these bums in Canada, why are they all white men in a nation that is one of the most mosaic in the world? Where are the black dudes, the chicks, the Native Canadians, the Chinese people, can't we get a more inclusive election going one year? Seriously, why is it only these rotten old honky-zombies who get a chance to be Prime Minister?
You wanna know how to get a better voter turnout next year? Do what the Americans did, get a pretty milfy woman who makes the men interested and the women all jealous...and run her against a charismatic black man. The Conservatives have one in stock already, that saucy little Rona Ambrose, and the Liberals can continue their act of recruiting old retired athletes and get in contact with baseball Hall of Famer and Canadian...Ferguson Jenkins. I guarantee a Jenkins vs. Ambrose election will raise voter turnout by upwards of 20 percent.
Harp is the first Prime Minister who has ever hailed from the West and is the first Prime Minister who really gave more to the West than the East...and thusly he gets a lot of votes from the West.Eastern Prime Minsters have messed with the West for many years. For instance, that jabroni Trudeau had a great chance with the Alberta oil sands in the early eighties when an American firm was going to come up and pay for all incurred expenses. This would have created the same job boom that occurred in the West under the Harper administration yet with a HUGE difference...all the jobs and economy boost but NONE of the expenses. To process that shitty oil from the sands has exceeded expected costs astronomically...the boom is already over out there and it was a very costly operation. Think about it though, if we got the boom, the jobs, and the work, but the Yankees covered ALL the costs and how great it would have been (not only for the West but all of Canada)....if only that little fucker Trudeau didn't pretend Canada was a glorious nation that didn't need help from anyone. Trudeau and the National Energy Program placed a ban on all foreign companies from developing oil fields in the "Crown Land." The worst thing about it is that a lot of Canadians knew this was a sure thing and put their life savings into the American firm, and when that shitty Trudeau pulled the plug at the last second he flushed the stock down to pennies in a matter of seconds and many peoples savings along with it. ("Developing Alberta's oil sands: from Karl Clark to Kyoto" By Paul Anthony Chastko is a good read on this era, specifically the "Lost Decade" portion of the book if you are interested in further reading on the matter).
 |
| Shit....cool lake bro! |
Overall Score: 0/10
Michael Ignatieff
 |
| Whatchu thinkin' 'bout? |
He reminds me of class elections in school where we got to vote for one kid to be "president," I have a feeling this guy was voted as such as a youth for some reason and I bet it was on a "chocolate milk in the cafeteria" type of platform.
Overall Score: 0/10
Jackie Layton
 |
| take it RIGHT as I sign it! |
I remember being at a David Suzuki talk at a university once and another man was on the docket that evening...a nice man named Albert Gore. The university kids went absolutely batshit buck nuts insane for Al Gore. Why?
Albert Gore is the wife of Tipper Gore (who put some rock and rollers on trial for anti-Christian activities in the eighties), and then he gained notoriety for attempting to become president of America this one time, and at some point he apparently took the initiative to invent the fucking internet. He faded into obscurity after losing the election but resurfaced years later when he felt compelled to make a slide show about pollution which not only won the hearts of some ninnies in Finland who awarded him the Nobel Piece Prize but also idealists around the world who fell in love with him.
These Gore-Groupies are the same ones who think they are saving the world by voting for Jackie Layton. Let's be serious for a minute though, okay? Jack Layton's main shtick is to further "socialize" the country, and make us pay more taxes. We pay a lot of taxes in Canada...we pay taxes on every single dollar we earn, we pay taxes on every single good or service we purchase, and then in April we pay some more taxes, and then we have some armed soldiers running around with a ticket quota taxing us for small infractions we make...and so on...and so on. Then the bureaucracy takes this money and builds fake lakes with it, or uses a few billion of it to hold an Olympiad during a worldwide depression, or pay some crooked mobsters ludicrous amounts of money to do small construction projects, or in the case of the Quebec's Caisse de dépôt in 2009...flat out lose 40 billion of it. The Canadian bureaucracy also features a cute little branch called the Senate, where super smooth rich guys who lived a sweet life or coached hockey for a few years are given large sums of tax payer money to chill out and continue being rich. This is one of the world's biggest and corrupted bureaucracies and anyone suggesting that they need more tax collectors to vacuum up more funds into this bureaucracy is 100% out of his/her mind. For those who insist that Layton is "different" should get real, a bureaucracy of this size has no chance of not being corrupt for it far too large in nature.
Overall Score: 0/10
Gilles Duceppe
For those who insist that he has no place in a federal election because he only represents a geopolitical/linguistic region of Canada must consider that Harper also represents only a small geopolitical/linguistic region of Canada as well. In fact other than Layton who has cute little idealists spread out on all 4 corners of the Nation, every guy in this election represents a balkanized geopolitical region of Canada (Duceppe = Quebec, Ignatieff = Ontario, Harper = Alberta/Saskatchewan) and thusly that argument is false. He has every right to be in this election and similarly he has every right to be as bad as the rest.Overall Score: 0/10
Conclusion
People always get mad at me when I say I'm not gonna vote, or I'm gonna vote on the back of the ballot for someone more better, but hey...what can you do? They say vote for the lesser of all evils but what if all candidates are equally awful....then what the hell do you do? Who should you vote for?
Honestly, it's a big joke these things but at least in the American ones they got groundbreaking fun stuff going on like getting a black dude or a chick to be president. Look at these bums in Canada, why are they all white men in a nation that is one of the most mosaic in the world? Where are the black dudes, the chicks, the Native Canadians, the Chinese people, can't we get a more inclusive election going one year? Seriously, why is it only these rotten old honky-zombies who get a chance to be Prime Minister?
You wanna know how to get a better voter turnout next year? Do what the Americans did, get a pretty milfy woman who makes the men interested and the women all jealous...and run her against a charismatic black man. The Conservatives have one in stock already, that saucy little Rona Ambrose, and the Liberals can continue their act of recruiting old retired athletes and get in contact with baseball Hall of Famer and Canadian...Ferguson Jenkins. I guarantee a Jenkins vs. Ambrose election will raise voter turnout by upwards of 20 percent.
 |
| *** Election 2012 *** (that Rona looks like such a bad girl sometimes...) |
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