Chaos Theory

No Control- Bad Religion

Today, I will be writing about the chaos theory. Let's begin by defining our term to make it clear what it is we are discussing.

Chaos Theory- The study of unpredictable and complex dynamic systems that are highly sensitive to small changes in external conditions.

We are going to be looking at specifically the idea of chaos theory in a global sense. In this sense, chaos theory is the study of all actions and their unseen effects on our everyday lives, in other words, the butterfly effect of chaos theory.

Let me explain this more clearly. Let's say you are in the library. You've just sat down at a computer and some dust came off the seat. This makes you sneeze. Now, when most people view this scenario, they see a simple cause and effect. You needed to do something, and in return something else happened. However, chaos theory looks at the ripples of your action that you may not immediately notice.

Using our earlier scenario, you sit down at the computer and then you sneeze. However, by sneezing, you have just distracted a person from the paper they are writing on their computer. He has lost his train of thought and now looks back to his paper in hopes of regaining it. He had a great argument to write, but now he can't seem to recall what it was. So, he simply writes down a half-ass argument to support his claim. Once again, the ripples do not stop here.

By having written that half-ass argument, his final thesis is not as convincing. The student then hands in his essay and receives a 80 on his paper for not having a more supportive argument, among other reasons. Your sneeze has now cost a student a good grade. But it continues further.

That student, having received a lower grade than he expected, is now disappointed in himself. He put a lot of time into that paper and still received a bad grade. This was a very important essay and he didn't do nearly as well as he thought he would. He blames it on the teacher for being too hard on grading, and in return drops the course. By dropping the course, the student now has a lot more time for his other homework. He puts more effort into those and receives good grades accordingly.

The student may have dropped that one course, however it wasn't necessary for his degree. The students goes on to graduate at the top of his class because he did so well his first year that he had much more confidence in himself in the following years. This student gets hired by a well known company and gets paid extremely well, due to his understanding of his major.

The student becomes rich rather quickly and, having always been partial to movies, attends the first showings of many upcoming movies. However, one night as he leaves in his Ferrari, he gets hit by a drunk driver and dies immediately.

You were in the library and you needed a computer. You sat down on a chair and some dust flew into your nose, causing you to sneeze. Your sneeze goes on to kill the person across from you.

Now, you might say that there are so many other factors involved. That is absolutely true, and that is what chaos theory is. I just took a look at the butterfly effect that your sneeze had on a person's life. To look at all the butterfly effects is what chaos theory is.

So what is the best way of defining Chaos Theory?
-Shit happens.

Did the job make you, or did you make the job?

No, there will be no rating for this week's classes. My teacher didn't really do much teaching at all this week, so I'll spare him the criticism, though I did enjoy both classes.

Anyway, today my classmate, Brent, and I had the pleasure of my teacher's company after his first class. We sat in his office, mentioning different bands and websites of the weird. I believe we three were slightly late to class, but it didn't slow class at all. Today, we simply peer-reviewed stories that everyone wrote as an essay. Easy, quick, enjoyable. A little, sugar-coated treat of a class.

So now I am left to wonder what made Mr. Scott want to be a teacher? He seems to have the uncanny skill of keeping a class's and individual's attention at all times. I wonder, did he develop this before becoming a teacher? or after?

I guess what I'm wondering is, did becoming a teacher make him who he is, or did he become a teacher because of who he is? If the first one, what made him want to be a teacher in the first place? And how long did it take him to learn to such a skill?

Many questions, all are unanswered. Right now I can only speculate. I'm not sure whether I would enjoy analyzing him more or just straight up asking him.

I think I'll just analyze for now.

A Ray of Light, Forever Bright

Song of the Week:




"Another day, another pain," an old work friend of mine used to say. I have never felt the same way about each day as he did; I always looked at each day with some degree of optimism. However, today I am completely exhausted; I have just completed hours of homework; and now must go to my calculus class that starts at 7 and progresses until 8:50. What I would give for a pillow and a bed right now is absolutely absurd.

However, while today may be dreary, tomorrow is a little ray of sunshine. I only have 1 class and I get out at 12. Then, I can go home and relax, finish my homework, and enjoy the rest of the weekend free of it all. Huzzah!

Alright, I'm going to do my second weekly rating for my FI class. If you haven't been keeping up, I rate my class on a 1-5 scale in 3 categories: Clock-Watching, Class Comparison, and Cussing. If you would like to see my first rating and how exactly this works, feel free to check out my other post entitled, "Finding Purpose in an Outline".

Clock-Watching: I honestly only looked at the clock once throughout the whole time. The reason I looked was not because of boredom, but rather because I did not want to do the peer review of my classmates' papers which were scheduled for that day. It's not that I'm afraid of reviewing or being reviewed, it's that the classmate next to me, Neil, had a fucking 11-page story that I did not want to read. 11 pages! So, I'm going to give this category a: 4/5

Class Comparison: My last history class would have earned a 2.5/5 based on the fact that I was pretty bored. My teacher has a fantastic way of grasping your attention and keeping it, but it was not enough this time. I had missed the previous class and she seemed to be giving us the exact same facts as the last class I attended. Too repetitive for my taste. Thus, with that class as my basis and the fact that my FI class blew it out of the water, I give this category a: 4/5

Cussing: Ahhh, cussing. It may not be the most obvious choice of a category, but I think it was a good one. Cussing truly does seem to get everyone's attention in class. My teacher simply places a cuss word in with an exclamation and it's "funniness level" exponentially increases. I was actually tallying my teacher's choice of words until he said about 5 of them in succession, the word was in an example. I chuckled to myself as I just forgot about counting because he definitely earned himself a: 5/5

Final Average: 4/5 There was a power point, and not enough conversation time in class which made him lose a point in Class Comparison. And the fact that we had to review our classmates' papers near the end of class made me hope we wouldn't have time, thus losing him a point in Clock-Watching.

Now that that is over, I just realized that I've been refering to my teacher as "my teacher." This is getting repetitive and boring. I am going to now refer to him as Mr. Scott, so I don't completely drive you and myself crazy. And in case you want to look him up.
And, on a side note, I actually have added the list of blogs I am currently following post-by-post. Mr. Scott's blog is PunchPhoto, if you want to check that out. I actually highly recommend both blogs.

That's enough for now. I am actually worried that my blogs are becoming too long. That's why I've decided I will do at least to posts a week: A short one early in the week, and this long one after my 2nd FI class. This will help anyone that's interested in what I'm thinking, rather than a class rating. Cheers!

The Council of Blogs

Video of the Day:



I have officially read at least one post from all the blogs written by my Focused Inquiry classmates. Some are interesting, some are not. However, I did notice a trend throughout them all. Whenever anyone mentioned this FI class, it was always with compliments. It seems that my classmates agree with me that our teacher is rather interesting. Or they are simply flattering him in hopes of an equal return.

Originally, I thought that I wouldn't tell you my personal labels, for lack of a better phrase. What I mean is that I wasn't going to tell you what political party I'm a part of, what religion, if any, I believe in, sexual orientation, or anything like that. The purpose of that was to protect myself from anyone making hasty generalizations about me, based on those facts. However, I have decided that I might as well tell you because I believe that it will make it more clear to you how I feel about things.

So here we go. I, Jeremy Winslow, am a libertarian, with a lower case 'l'. I want to make it clear to you that I am not a part of the Libertarian Party or I would capitalize my 'l'. There is a decent difference between the two terms, but I'll allow you to look into that, if you are interested. I would hate to bore you. Also, please do not think that I am a liberal. Once again, there is a difference between the two that has to do with social security and other such government aid.

To continue, I am not religious, though I was raised in Christianity. I was religious for most of my life, although once I decided to take an objective look at it, I was not able to believe in it. Reasons why are another story completely.

I guess the only thing left is my orientation. I'm straight, that's how I roll. I have no problems with anyone of any orientation. I openly accept any way of living anyone has, except those that I deem dangerous to our community.

So there I am. That's a little taste of me. Now I must go and write that story for Focused Inquiry so that I won't be kicked out of class tomorrow.
Cheers.

(Oh, and if you liked that video, go to www.sethcomedy.com. Seth MacFarlane is doing an online mini series that just started today. There's only one more episode up there at this time, but there are a couple teasers that are worth watching also. Enjoy!)

Finding purpose in an outline

Song Of The Week:



Alright, my second blog post and already I am having to force myself to sit down and start writing. I would have figured that I could make it longer before my will slowly slipped, but it appears that that is not so.
There is good news, however. I have finished developing my class rating system. It consists of 3 different categories with 5 points in each category, and then a final average score. The 3 categories, descriptions, and format follows:

Clock-Watching: I record how many times I look at the clock for the class period and deduct points based on that. If I feel I am becoming biased in trying to look at the clock (or not look at the clock), I will see how many times my classmates look at the clock. How I rate this is simple, 1 point deduction if I look once and so on.

Class Comparison: My other classes I take, including Art of Historical Detection, Calculus 1, and Intro to Engineering, don't come near to being as entertaining as this class. With the exception of Art of Historical Detection, I usually have to force myself to pay attention. Thus, I will use my History class a grading scale for this section. I would give my History class, on average, a 3 out of 5. So, I can grade how much I enjoyed the class using that as my reference point.

Cussing: Curse words are an easy way to grab a student's attention. Whether my teacher uses this on purpose or not doesn't really matter. It works anyway. Thus, I will be giving him a score based on 2 things: How well he uses his cuss words, and how often.


That is my rough draft for grading the class. You will most likely see many changes over time to it, as it obviously requires fine-tuning. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
With that settled, I figure I'll finish up this blog with my first class rating. Today, we finished up the stories that we, the students, were supposed to tell. It began with a quick look at rGrade, followed by a short, comedic youtube video. So here goes:

1. Clock-Watching: Despite me being extremely exhausted, and just having an energy drink, I was somehow able to not look at the clock at all today. Not by forcing myself, mind you, but simply because I was not bored at all. The youtube video and the stories kept me rather interested throughout the class period. Thus, I give this category: 5/5

2. Class Comparison: This class period, as I said earlier, kept me entertained throughout. Much more so than my history class did. However, the teacher himself did not do much of the talking, which dropped the amusement level down a notch. Hearing the teacher tell a story and a student telling a story are two very different things. Therefore, I believe this should receive a: 4/5

3. Cussing: Only one cuss word was said, a moderate one at that, but the delivery was sufficient enough to still make it entertaining. There's something about hearing a teacher cuss that is remarkably liberating. Thus, this categories receives a: 3/5

Adding those and taking the average gives this class period a : 4/5
This class period was decently good, however it could have been better. The reason it wasn't was simply because the teacher didn't do enough of the talking. It was left up to the students to entertain me, and they did an alright job.

I understand that these first 2 posts are far from interesting, however I feel I need to set out my plan for all to understand before I can make more fluid posts. You should be hearing more about me as I learn to separate the interesting from the not-so-interesting.

Cheers.