#96 - Feature: Intelligence

Motto: Knowledge is Power!

Today's post is an article on acumen and aptitude. A blurb on brains and brilliance. A commentary on capacity and comprehension. A discourse on discernment and deciphering. An item on intelligence and intellect. A piece on perception and precocity. A story on smarts and savvy. A write-up on wit and wisdom. I am approaching the subject of intelligence not only because it's an important general life topic but also because I want to challenge myself to write with humility - for I am a humble man. Before I write about intelligence, I think I must share this with you as a disclaimer: I am smart. And it turns out I'm not actually humble. Based off a lifetime of experience and achievement, based off mountains of observation and self-reflections, based off third-party testimonials and reviews, based off accomplishments and awards, I feel as though I can safely say that I meet the minimum intelligence threshold to be considered "smart" by the majority of the population.

As anyone would tell you, though, there are different kinds of "smart". This is usually broken down into "Book Smart" and "Street Smart". While I agree these make for great high-level categories of intelligence, I think any real in-depth analysis of the subject cannot stop there. Here is my list of sub-categories & justifications:

• "Book Smarts" - made up of these
• Analytical - takes situations or subjects and picks them apart, able to see how variables affect one another. The kind of people who make good engineers.
• Logical - can think and act objectively, good at following logical chains of events. The kind of people who make good programmers.
• Theoretical - chases down grand overarching themes in different types of situations. The kind of people who get so lost in their own thoughts they could ride the wrong bus for an hour before realizing their mistake.
• Educated - a walking dictionary/encyclopedia. The kind of people who win Jeapardy.
• Linguistic - people who show a strong command of language. The kind of people who write super entertaining Columns.
• "Street Smarts" - made up of these
• Interpersonable - knowing how to talk to and relate with people. Able to effectively discern people's emotions and read body language. The kind of people you want to be friends with.
• Intrapersonable - knowing yourself. Knowing what you like and don't like. Knowing what ticks you off and what makes you tick. The kind of people who talk way too much.
• Aware - knowing where you are and what you are doing at any given moment. This is surprisingly difficult for some theoretical people.
• Life Smart - this one is hard to put into words. Basically just knowing your goals in life and your responsibilities. Seeing problems in your life and fixing them. People who are life smart have some sense of direction and don't let things take them off that path. Life Smart people aren't addicted to anything. They manage their time and resources better than average.

Things that don't really fit into either category, but need to be mentioned:

• Creative - people who can think outside the box.
• Artistic - people who can think outside the box and make it pretty.
• Topical - people who know everything about something. Tradespeople.
• Capable - probably the most important of all, people who actually can do the things they need/want to do. Nothing else matters if you are not capable.

I just pulled that list together on the fly. It could use some refinement, but I'm running out of time.

Performing a self analysis I would say my strengths are intrapersonable, analytical, logical, and "life smart". My weaknesses are awareness, artistry, and probably capability. I am capable of the things I'm capable of. But I don't waste time or energy on things that I don't really care about, which makes me incapable of some relatively important things.

"My car is acting funny."

"What's wrong with it?"

"I dunno."

I'm going to meet my parents in Ottawa very soon, but I want to finish this before i go. I'm just going to leave it with this -

Being smart is a blessing. My university psychology professor said something to the effect of "You guys and girls are lucky! You're going to have a better life than people who didn't make it university. You are statistically more likely to live longer and happier lives." I agree.

Here's the first relevant picture I can find:

Homer Simpson

Top 5: Drawbacks of Being Smart

5. Sometimes you miss out on the simple pleasures of life. Looking at the stars. Smelling the roses. Laughing at a fart. You know, the good stuff.
4. You can alienate people if you aren't (inter)personable. 3. It can be hard to empathize with someone who continually makes bad decisions. It becomes too easy to blame someone's problems squarely on them. If you fail to see the logic in their decisions or if you think "If I were in their shoes I would have just done ____; and they didn't do that, so it's their fault."
2. You can get away without trying very hard in K-12 (and in college, if you undershoot your potential). Eventually you have to learn how to try hard. 1. You understand just how truly messed up some things are. There are so many injustices and inefficiencies everywhere; and there is very little any one person can do about it.

Quote:
“If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough”
- Albert Einstein -

#95 - Basketball Tournament & Royals Games

Motto: Take Me Out to of the Ballgame

I'm writing this post in lieu of going out to play laser tag.

I know what you're thinking, "Aaron, that's not very 'Yes Man' of you." Alternatively "why would anyone skip out on laser tag ever?!" And both thoughts are equally valid. 

I took part in a VERY SHORT NOTICE basketball tournament this weekend. I asked AJ what he was doing this weekend, he said something to the affect of "Leaving for a basketball tournament in 10 minutes, want to go?"

I went.

On the way there AJ said it was a bunch of guys who used to play basketball in college. I didn't know this fact when I signed on board. When I walked into the gymnasium and saw our competition, I wanted to leave immediately. They were big. They were fast. They were naturals.

It was terrifying.

We played our first game and managed to squeak out a win by one.

Then we played the guys who won the game I saw when I first walked in. I had a bit of a sinking feeling walking onto the court, but then I won the tip against a guy I thought was going to out-jump me for sure. Then our team made something like 6 three-pointers in a row. And we never really looked back. We end up beating the scariest team by 11 or 13.

The last team was more like us. 6 older, slower dudes. Long story short, we beat them again to win the whole tournament and a t-shirt.

I wish this said "Champion" or "This guy won something" or "Basketball person"

I only scored 4 or 6 points per game, but I didn't think I played that bad. Usually with that score I would go home with a foul taste in my mouth, but I am also not used to being the worst player on the floor. That was the case at several points during the tournament. My job was to defend, rebound, and that was most of what I did.

It was awesome.

But anyway, I'm very tired now. Which is why I'm passing up laser tag.

One random thing before I go into the Royal's games thing - I played in a trivia night with 3 different groups of great friends. It was really strange having people that I know so well and like so much meet each other. Sort of a preview of the wedding, I guess.

Over the span of 2 weeks I watched 3 Royal's games. Here are pictures from those times:

Tailgating from the first game with Nick, Leigh, Kyle, and Stephanie

Game two with Joe and Jon

Game three with Kyle, Priya, AJ, Danielle, Aaron, and fictionally Melissa

I don't particularly like baseball, so I'm not sure how I ended up going to so many games in such a short amount of time. I mostly just wanted to post that last picture on here.

Top 5: Favorite Ball-Based Games (a.k.a - "A list I should be ashamed of")

5. Golf
4. Ping-Pong (although I'm terrible at it, I really like playing)
3. Croquet
2. Basketball
1. Pool

Quote:
“Some people think they see St. Louis when they see my feet”
- Nick, talking about how impressive his arches are -

#94 - Feature: Path of Least Resistance

Motto: Facts are Overrated Anyway

For over a week I've had two Feature Posts half-written. One of them is about intelligence, the other is about tools. Today's post was written for one, then transferred to the other, then I decided it was long enough to warrant a feature post of its own. So, without further ado...

Technology is amazing and nobody appreciates it enough.

Every system in the world runs in the same way: a source of high potential energy runs through an extremely complex path of least resistance on its way to a place of lower potential energy. In engineering this path, humans have figured out how to make everyone into quasi-superheroes. We can see what our friends saw a year ago. We can hear them speak from across the country. We can access an awe-inspiring network of answers and functions known as the internet.

Right now my earphones are getting power from my phone, which is getting power from my computer, which is getting power from my wall, which is getting power from the grid, which is getting power from some unseen turbine(s) miles away from here. The turbine is spinning a set of conductive coils about very powerful magnets thanks to pressure caused by heat generated by way of nuclear fission, burning fossil fuels, or some form of green energy.

I am on a phone call with my colleague from California. I consider him a friend as well, so I'll call him that.

My friend is talking ~1500 miles away and I can hear him. How?

The changes in air pressure caused my my friend's mouth and vocal chords push a tiny magnet on a tiny membrane through a tiny loop of copper. This induces a current on the copper using the exact same principle the power plant relies on to generate electricity (just in reverse). This tiny current is amplified and digitized (turned in to a long series of 0's and 1's) by the electrical current running from the positive terminal to the negative terminal of my friend's phone's battery. This digital (binary) signal is driven into a tiny antenna within the handset where it radiates out into the air. This newly created electric field crosses through the atmosphere until it reaches the antennas of one (or more) cellular base stations. The electric fields at these antennas induce an electrical potential differential (voltage) into the circuitry of the radio tower. The base station then converts the voltages on this copper circuitry into light pulses, which it beams down a pair of concentric tubes of glass. Miles later, these light pulses are converted back into a traditional electrical signal that feeds into an extremely complex network of networks orchestrated by my friend's cellular provider and the public phone system. That network of networks forwards the signal along an incredibly intricate and long path of least resistance that ends at the antennas of the cell tower(s) nearest me. The signal is broadcast into the air (along with thousands of others) where it hits the tiny antennas inside my phone. The current going from the positive terminal of my phone's battery to its negative terminal demodulates and deconstructs the signal from the antenna, pulls out the portion that was meant for me, turns it into an analog signal, then sends it down the wire to my earbuds. A tiny magnet inside my earbuds reacts to the incoming signal by vibrating a tiny membrane back and forth, changing the air pressure inside my ear. And I can hear what my friend is saying.

The whole thing is driven by the splitting of Uranium 235 and/or coal burning and/or natural gas burning and/or some form of green energy. It transverse thousands of miles, and it happens in less than a second.

And that's amazing.

That's why I studied engineering.

And you all need to appreciate it more.

The picture to go out on - every time you see one of these, try to remember this post and APPRECIATE what you can do:

Top 5: Other Things to Consider

5. The capacitive capacity of my fingers is detected by my phone's touchscreen. My phone is detecting and reacting to something I didn't even know existed until my teenage years.
4. I just used the phrase "capacitive capacity"; and it actually made sense. I'm proud of that. I could and probably will at some point write about simultaneously self-actualizing in art and engineering.
3. Everything we've built started in the nature. We found all this stuff in the ground and machined it into something useful.
2. People used to physically open and close a circuit to send messages. It was called a telegraph.
1. If you abstract the process a little, the system starts in my friend's brain. It drives an even more impressive natural network to make his mouth and vocal chords create specific air pressure changes. Miles away, my ears pick them up, convert them to electrical signals of their own, then feed them into my brain which converts them into meaning. The system directly connects my brain to that of Kyle in California. Whoa.


Quote:
“Everything is amazing and nobody's happy”
- Louis C.K. -

#93 - Cousin Week

Motto: Too Much of a Good Thing is a Great Thing

Fact: I Already Don't like Color Changes and Addition of the "Fact of the Update".

You may have noticed that it's been a while since my last update. There's a really great reason for that; last Sunday my cousin Joe came up to stay with me for the week while he took some preparatory classes for his medical internship this summer.

It has been an awesome and somewhat crazy week. We have had a fortnight's amount of fun in half the time.

His brother Jon came up Thursday night. Since that time we've had a week's worth of fun in 3 days.

I have a metric buttload of stories from the week, and an equal amount of videos. Rather than write at length about everything we did - I'll just show you:

That's just what I filmed. I didn't really have the intention to make that video until after I realized just how much footage I had. I showed less than 1/50th of the videogame playing footage I took.

I've determined it takes me about an hour to make each minute of video I make. The above video is around 3 minutes long. I (sadly) took me about 3 hours to cut together how I liked it.

3 select stories from the weekend:

1 - Baseball and the redhead

On Friday we went to the Royal's game in celebration of Joe's 24th birthday. When we got there, we found our seats well in advance of the game (we didn't bring a truck or tailgating supplies because it was a weak commitment). Long story short, we left out seats for a bit and came back to find they had been stolen by a group of kids. "Kids" in this instance is a group of people between the ages of 18 and 21.

No big deal, we find another set of seats nearby.

A redheaded kid started to annoy the three of us with his loud antics. He left and came back with a beer. I told my cousins I would take bets on him being underage and, before they could reply, he made a really big show about giving a Driver's License back to his friend.

To make a somewhat long story short, less than 5 minutes later the kid was pulled out of the stands into the hall by security. He came back and told his friends he was only in trouble for "swearing too much". This turned out to be a lie. Jon was coming back from the restroom and came across the security people telling him if he drank underage he would be thrown out of the game.

2 - Dave and Buster's
Joe, Jon, and I went to the Legends for a brief stint of man-shopping. I wasn't buying anything, so I decided to pass the time the same way I do when Melissa goes shopping for clothes - by doing embarrassing things without shame.

I danced. I juggled anything I could find. I pretended I was playing Battlefield in real life (okay, we all kind of did that last thing).

Then we went to Dave and Buster's. It had been a year since I had been there last time. Jon was with me back then, too. We had the same waiter that we had had so long ago. The very fact that we remembered him should go to show just how good he was. He can (and did) recite the whole "V" monologue from "V for Vendetta". It was awesome (again).

Then we played games. I won the most tickets - mostly on account of getting lucky once.

3 - Battlefield 3
We played Battlefield 3 every night after coming home from the day's festivities. We played as a team and, in doing so, won a lot.

That was a short story.

In other news:

Melissa comes home in 17 days.

Joe and Jon jointly taught me a new pen spin. It's nifty, but I'm terrible at it. I can combo it into the one I already have mastered about 5% of the time right now. Here is an example of a good one.

I put a shirt on just to make this. You're welcome.

I have 2 feature columns half-written right now. One on entellajence and another on tools (such as spell check).

There's a church bell playing "America the Beautiful" outside my window somewhere. I've lived here for almost a year, and I have never heard a bell before.

Top 5: Weekend in Photos

5. Thursday Night

We stumbled across a free country music concert. We are not fans.

4. Friday Morning

We visited our aunt and were reminded we have the sweetest family.

3. Friday Evening

Birthday boy man on the left. Jon's weird arm condition on the right.

2. Saturday

Dave and Buster's is a good time.

1. Every Night

We destroyed a bunch of 12 year olds. No shame.

Quote:
“I have laser-precision punches. I could punch a gnat off a fly's ass”
- Jon -

#92 - One Month Tracked

Fact: I've tracked 35 days

Motto: Know Thyself

A little over one month ago I put into action a plan to better understand and manage my life. Thirty-one days ago I wrote:

The goal of the LTS is to audit my life in the four distinct areas I've determined have the greatest significance or impact. I want to track the following:

• Diet - Garbage in, garbage out. What you eat is what you are.

• Exercise - If you don't use it, you lose it.

• Money - I'm spending how much on what?!?

• Demetri - My list of 25 things a "good" person would do every day.

In doing so I hope to gain a greater sense of self, a greater handle on the important things in life, and use this knowledge to make intentional and positive changes in my life.

And for the past month I've done just that. Here's what I've learned about myself:

Diet:

My three favorite things

I eat better than I would have expected. Of course, I have altered my eating habits drastically during the past month. I have had little to no frozen or fast foods. My smoothie intake has skyrocketed. 

Diet results from month one

I used 3 different online calculators to determine my goal caloric intake. 3000 was actually a step down from the average they suggested; and I can't even get 2500 consistently. If you aren't eating fast food or drinking soda, it's hard to get more than 2500. I did manage to get 3700 on a few occasions, but never in a healthy manner (I LOVE pizza). I'm going to lower my goal some.

Somehow I've managed to exactly nail my goal fat intake. I accurately predicted I was going to exceed my carb limit and not quite meet my protein objective. I got a little closer than I expected, though.

Note: During the past month I've gained ~5 pounds. This officially put me at my goal weight of 100 kg. Now I can say "I'm over 2 m tall and 100 kg".

Second note: Most people I know won't have any idea how much 100 kilograms actually is. It's 220.5 pounds.

Exercise:

Still from one of my unused "second of the day"(s)

I worked out an average of 4.2 times per week. I also tracked my actual exercises. I found out first-hand what I had been told so many times in my life - if you track your lifts, you can intentionally increase your weight/reps and get stronger! I almost never failed to lift more in successive exercises. For a little while now, I've bordered on possibly looking strong... but, for the first time in my life, I've actually felt strong.

Not everything went perfectly, though. I very stupidly stopped warming up before my workouts. Last week I experienced what I have determined to be exercise-induced exertion headaches. After some Googling, I have decided to take a week or two off from weightlifting and shift my focus to cardio and flexibility. I'll ease back into lifting soon.

Note: I went for a run just before writing this column. First one in a while. I'm out of shape.

Money:

This picture was taken over 6 years ago

I spend too much.

In fairness, though, during the past month I splurged on myself an unusual amount. I have a wedding and a car coming up soon. I saw this as my last opportunity with any "fun money" and decided to make the most of it. Besides, I won't be a bachelor much longer.

I'm not going to delve any farther into my personal finances on the internet. I'm keeping good track. I'm on top of things. And that's all that matters.

Demetri:

A still from the stand-up routine that started all of this

The Demetri List is nothing new. I've actually been doing it on and off for a couple of years now. What's interesting is the comparison of my performance from before I started tracking everything to now. I've lived a (slightly) more disciplined life in the past month. How has that affected things?

Each category has a maximum possible score of 35 - for a total maximum of 35x5 = 175

My productivity has gone up across the board. Keen observers may say "no no no, your 'Mind' category actually dropped". To them I respond by saying "I no notice, I'm not do good with mind lately".

Really though, the dip in my average "Mind" score comes from an increase in goal difficulty. The version of the Demetri List I've been using for the past month is new. Almost every goal is a little harder to accomplish, "Mind" in particular was made much more difficult. I replaced "Cut down on multitasking" with "read for more than 20 minutes". Changed "worked on a project" to "worked on a non-column project". I added a stipulation to "learned/practiced something" that it now has to be something useful. In short, the data doesn't show the whole story there.

Unsurprisingly, the area that saw the biggest increase was "Manage" (which I'm only now realizing should be called "Management"). If you are constantly recording what you do, it's becomes much easier to manage what exactly that is.

Overall, I'm running at 51.4% of maximum possible productivity. Note that "maximum possible" does not equal "maximum feasible". I've never accomplished all 35 goals in one day - it's really hard. 

Maybe tomorrow.

Wrap Up:

Overall - the Life Tracking System has been a huge success and personal triumph. I have definitely developed a greater sense of self from a managerial perspective; and I have definitely improved my overall health and wellness. I still have greater goals and I'm still going to keep pushing forward. I see no reason to stop tracking life any time in the near future.

Honestly, I could have written a lot more about it.

Unrelated Site News:

I am introducing a new label - FEATURE. During each Feature Column I will choose a general theme, then try to cover that theme in both a complete and entertaining way. These themes will not be specific to me (like, say, my well-documented month); instead, they will be things everyone can relate to (for examples, see the Top 5). I'm retroactively applying the FEATURE label to Column #82 - Superheroes as it perfectly exemplifies what I'm talking about.

Top 5: Possible Future Features

5. "Big Brother"
4. Dogs
3. Movies
2. Tools
1. Intelligence (I actually already started writing this)

Quote:
“You Film Yourself More than Anyone I've Ever Met”
- Emily said something like this a while back -