Game theory is a study of strategic decision making. More formally, it is "the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers". An alternative term suggested "as a more descriptive name for the discipline" is interactive decision theory. Game theory is mainly used in economics, political science, and psychology, as well as logic and biology. The subject first addressed zero-sum games, such that one person's gains exactly equal net losses of the other participant(s). Today, however, game theory applies to a wide range of behavioral relations, and has developed into an umbrella term for the logical side of decision science, to include both human and non-humans, like computers.
Modern game theory began with the idea regarding the existence of mixed-strategy equilibria in two-person zero-sum games and its proof by John von Neumann. Von Neumann's original proof used Brouwer's fixed-point theorem on continuous mappings into compact convex sets, which became a standard method in game theory and mathematical economics. His paper was followed by his 1944 book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, with Oskar Morgenstern, which considered cooperative games of several players. The second edition of this book provided an axiomatic theory of expected utility, which allowed mathematical statisticians and economists to treat decision-making under uncertainty.
This theory was developed extensively in the 1950s by many scholars. Game theory was later explicitly applied to biology in the 1970s, although similar developments go back at least as far as the 1930s. Game theory has been widely recognized as an important tool in many fields. Eight game-theorists have won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, and John Maynard Smith was awarded the Crafoord Prize for his application of game theory to biology. (Source: HERE)
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The prisoner's dilemma is a canonical example of a game analyzed in game theory that shows why two individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interests to do so. It was originally framed by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher working at RAND in 1950. Albert W. Tucker formalized the game with prison sentence rewards and gave it the name "prisoner's dilemma" (Poundstone, 1992), presenting it as follows:
Two members of a criminal gang are arrested and imprisoned. Each prisoner is in solitary confinement with no means of speaking to or exchanging messages with the other. The police admit they don't have enough evidence to convict the pair on the principal charge. They plan to sentence both to a year in prison on a lesser charge. Simultaneously, the police offer each prisoner a Faustian bargain. If he testifies against his partner, he will go free while the partner will get three years in prison on the main charge. Oh, yes, there is a catch ... If both prisoners testify against each other, both will be sentenced to two years in jail.
In this classic version of the game, collaboration is dominated by betrayal; if the other prisoner chooses to stay silent, then betraying them gives a better reward (no sentence instead of one year), and if the other prisoner chooses to betray then betraying them also gives a better reward (two years instead of three).
Because betrayal always rewards more than cooperation, rational self-interested prisoners would betray their counterparts, and the only possible outcome for two rational self-interested prisoners is for them to betray each other. The interesting part of this result is that pursuing individual reward logically leads the prisoners to both betray, but they would get a better reward if they both cooperated with each other to stay silent.
In reality, humans display a systematic bias towards cooperative behavior in this and similar games, much more so than predicted by simple models of "rational" self-interested action.
There is also an extended "iterative" version of the game, where the classic game is played over and over between the same prisoners, and consequently, both prisoners continuously have an opportunity to penalize the other for previous decisions.
If the number of times the game will be played is known to the players, the finite aspect of the game means that (by backward induction) the two prisoners will betray each other repeatedly. Game theory does not claim, however, that real human players will actually betray each other continuously. In an infinite or unknown length game there is no fixed optimum strategy, and Prisoner's Dilemma tournaments have been held to compete and test algorithms.
In casual usage, the label "prisoner's dilemma" may be applied to situations not strictly matching the formal criteria of the classic or iterative games: for instance, those in which two entities could gain important benefits from cooperating or suffer from the failure to do so, but find it merely difficult or expensive, not necessarily impossible, to coordinate their activities to achieve cooperation. MORE AT THIS LINK.
Recommended reading: THIS LINK
Highly recommended: THIS ARTICLE
Sometimes we may not pay much attention to logos. Not many may be aware of the hours of laborious work that the artist has to put in before he can come up wih something worthy of international recognition.
Some logos may have hidden meanings whilst others may have optical illusions. Take a look at this logo of the Pittsburgh Zoo. Look at it carefully. Do you see what I see? Apart from the two birds flying away, there are two animals. Can you see them?
How about this one?
Did you ever think beyond that sweet nougat chocolate bar that you enjoy so much? What animal do you see in the graphic? Why? Hint" Toblerone originated from Berne, Switzerland whose symbol is what you should see in the logo.
Do you see any sign in the following logo?
A rooster lays an egg on the roof of a barn.
Each side of the roof has a 90 degree angle and windspeed is approxiamately 15 mph blowing in an eastern direction.
The egg is layed at the front part of the roof, which has been caved in due to weather.
Because of that part of the roof being caved in, it has a slight 45 degree angle to it, which is more than the rest of the roof.
So, which side of the roof will the egg roll off:
(a) the one with the eastern exposure
or
(b) the one with the western exposure?
Please leave a comment if you wish to share your response to this riddle.
I will post the answer as soon as I have a number of responses.
Thanks and have a great day!
Recently, I discovered a fantastic website and have been so enthralled with it that I forgot to put up my early afternoon posts. In fact, this morning I was answering over 150 history questions in a bid to go to the third level.
The site is called mental_floss and the tagline is Where Knowledge Junkies Get Their Fix. The blog has a strong following of 82, 537!
If you are free and would love to discover new things, swing over to mental_floss and check out the range of fantastic articles there especially the ones the Daily Flossings!
Here are three fantastic posts worth reading...
1. 11 Authors Who Hated the Movie Versions of Their Books
2. 11 Songs Inspired by Literature
3. Lunch-time Quiz : The Big Album Cover Up
4. 10 Scandalous VP Stories Worth a Warm Bucket of Spit
Have fun...And now, it is time for me to continue with my Geography Challenge Trivia. :-)
Please share your results if you are doing any of the Trivia quizzes. Believe me - it is HIGHLY addictive!
Have a lovely evening.
One website that I visit quite often reported that:
The likelihood of intelligence agencies using the London Olympics to detonate a nuclear `dirty bomb` could be as high as 80-90%, with hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded.
CLICK HERE to read the rest of the entry and to watch the videos.
CLICK HERE to read the background of the 7/7 incident.
Another article worth reading is THIS one on ASEAN.
I do apologise for this very brief post that does not mention names for obvious reasons.
The following post by Nathaniel Tan was first posted in Malaysiakini at this link.
Have you ever been made to buy something you didn’t need?
Or worse, have you been deceived, intimidated and bullied into making an entirely unnecessary, overpriced purchase?
It would appear that this is what we are facing with Syabas, this “water crisis” it keeps getting excited about.
However, if we examine the hard facts closely, we will see that the only crisis we are facing is an all too familiar crisis of corruption and cronyism - centred tightly around the RM8.65 billion Langat 2 Water Treatment Plant.
Do we really need the Langat 2 plant?
We all know politicians use taxpayer-funded megaprojects to make money. The bigger the megaproject, the bigger the kickbacks - and RM8.65 billion is plenty big.
With that much money at stake, the last thing ‘well-connected’ individuals care about is whether the project is actually needed, or whether it truly benefits the rakyat or not.
The Selangor government is all for preventing this RM8.65 billion gravy train from riding out, and its position is simple: there is plenty of water in Selangor, and if there is any shortage at all, it is due to failure, or worse, failure on the part of Syabas.
Here’s what Syabas doesn’t want you to know about this water “crisis”: it’s not about how much raw water there is (since the dams in Selangor are all clearly full); it’s about how Syabas is failing dramatically to efficiently convert enough of that raw water into potable water.
(Technically speaking, the main company responsible for treatment of water is Puncak Niaga Bhd, which in turn owns 70 percent of Syabas. Both companies are in essence run by the same people. For the purpose of this article, 'Syabas' refers to both Puncak Niaga and Syabas.)
Not all the raw water that goes into a water treatment plant becomes potable water - that is, water deemed fit to run in our taps at home. The technical term for the amount of raw water that is wasted due to inefficiencies in the water treatment plant is called “non-revenue water” or NRW.
32pct of water produced by Syabas is wasted
Syabas’ level of NRW is 32 percent. This means that a whopping one-third of the raw water that enters a Syabas water treatment plant goes entirely to waste.
Syabas must be congratulated here, for succeeding in wasting more water than Dhaka, Bangladesh, where the NRW is only 29 percent. Eastern Manila managed to bring down its NRW from 63 percent in 1997 to 11 percent in 2010.
More developed nations have even lower levels of NRW - Germany’s NRW is only seven percent, while the Netherlands and Denmark have achieved NRW levels of six percent.
Perhaps this can be attributed to the fact that they are advanced, developed Western democracies? Oh, wait a minute, Singapore’s NRW is five percent.
It looks like under Syabas’ brilliant management, we have managed to waste six times more water than our neighbour to the south whom we like so much to make fun of. Thank you, Syabas!
There is also talk that Syabas is not given enough money to improve its services. However, the question is, would you give more money to a company that demonstrates zero ability to put that money to good use, and in fact has wasted away all the money that has already been given to it?
Quite simply put, all we need to do to ensure a sufficient water supply for the Klang Valley is to drastically reduce the amount of NRW. For that, we don’t need a RM8.65 billion water treatment plant, or to throw money at the problem - we just need cleaner, better managers.
Is Syabas turning off the taps?
It’s little wonder that Syabas has never had much incentive to improve its efficiency or quality of its service - for it does not have any competition.
This simple fact has rendered many an industry in Malaysia completely defunct. Automobiles, airlines, telecommunications and power generation are all industries where cronies get rich, and Malaysians pay high prices for crap quality.
A monopoly like Syabas is able to take this game one step further. When you have complete monopoly over the water industry, you don’t have to wait for an actual water crisis to justify an RM8.65 billion white elephant megaproject. Even in the midst of heavy rain every single day, all you need to do is turn off the taps, and voila - “water crisis”.
I think we’ve all noticed the increased frequency of water cuts in the Klang Valley recently. A simple question remains: are the taps turned off because of a water shortage? Or because some people want you to think there’s a water shortage?
Is this all to justify a RM8.65 billion water treatment plant that no one needs - a plant that might make a few lucky people extremely rich, while impoverishing the rest of the nation?
Is Syabas threatening us?
One of the ‘best’ quotes I have read throughout this saga comes from Syabas technical services executive director V Subramaniam, perhaps a minor pawn sent forth to spew such brilliant statements as:
“The water crisis at present is the result of a shortfall in treated water for distribution caused by the refusal of the state government to issue the development order for construction of the Langat 2 treatment plant.”
Does Syabas take us for dummies?
According to this logic, if the Selangor government approves the construction of Langat 2 today (a project that will take years to complete), then the water crisis will disappear tomorrow.
Sounds a little suspicious?
Perhaps Subramaniam’s statement is technically correct, in that the state government’s refusal has indeed precipitated a ‘water shortage’ - except that he is silent on whether the said water shortage is natural - or manufactured by unscrupulous people to achieve even more unscrupulous ends.
Who is politicising the water problem? There should be a law against this sort of thing.
Oh, wait. There is this thing called the Water Services Industry Act (WSIA), which was passed by the BN-dominated Parliament in 2006.
This law provided for the de-privatisation of the water industry and its return to the respective state governments, for privatisation had clearly proven to be a disastrous failure across the board.
The water industries of BN-led (for now) Malacca and Johor were successfully deprivatised following the gazetting of the WSIA. But what happened to Selangor post-2008?
Both sides like to accuse each other of ‘politicising’ the water problem, but when the facts show that the federal government had allowed deprivatisation in BN-held states while preventing it in Selangor, the truth becomes clear to all.
Let’s not forget that Syabas is run by Rozali Ismail, the ready-to-run-for-Parliament Selangor Umno treasurer who, despite creating a spectacular failure of Syabas and being accused of using millions of Syabas’ funds to buy pipes from his own company in Indonesia, is still paid a salary of RM425,000 a month as CEO.
The Selangor government has openly stated that it plans to slash the monthly salary for this post by 90 percent.
While Syabas is dead set on exponential increases of up to 75 percent on water tariffs, Selangor has pledged to cap any tariff increases to 12 percent.
So, who is looking out for the rakyat, and who is looking out for themselves?
BN plundering before an inevitable defeat?
Menteri Besar Abdul Khalid Ibrahim is the man most keen on the de-privatisation of the Selangor water industry and the takeover of Syabas by the state government.
This is the man who increased the cash reserves of the Selangor government five-fold from RM400 million in 2008 to RM2.1 billion in 2012.
Under Umno and Najib Abdul Razak, the federal debt - a debt our children and grandchildren will have to pay - has since the year 2007 nearly doubled to RM421 billion this year.
Who do you think is better suited to run our water industry?
Are we going to allow people who are bringing the nation to the edge of a real - not manufactured - economic crisis to bully us into footing the bill for a RM8.65 billion megaproject that nobody needs?
Are these high jinks the latest attempt - along with FGV, George Kent and the innumerable new spending initiatives the prime minister has recently announced - to bleed the nation’s coffers completely dry for personal gain before finishing a full term in office in 2013?
It seems the BN has serious fears of losing power, and is trying to take out as much as it can before having to face an angry electorate next year. If the BN was confident of a victory, surely the general election would have been held by now.
In any case, the unscrupulous among us are welcome to play their games.
Turning off the taps and replacing the flow of water with the flow of painfully illogical arguments is less likely to pressure the state government to forsake the interests of the rakyat, and more likely to point the finger back at those truly responsible for scaremongering and criminal mismanagement.
*NATHANIEL TAN works as a consultant to the Selangor state government.
Recently, I wrote a post HERE which might have been befuddling to some. It is unfortunate that due to certain developments, it is safer to write in veiled terms than to make postulations in black and white. The purpose of that post was to emphasize the point that things are not clear-cut in black and white terms. There is no one scenario of A versus B, the good guys versus the not-so-good guys or good triumphing over evil. Whilst idealism can be a motivating factor, it can also blind us from seeing reality as it is. Remember - various combinations of possibilities can arise and the powerful ones have worked these out for their self-preservation. It is only those who have been beguiled by agenda-setting schemes or attempts to shape public opinion and then to have a herd mentality who may be susceptible to oversimplification of events/developments. Hence, there is such a deep need for Malaysians not to be fooled by reports or any form of writing, mine included - even though I try, to the best of my ability, to write as objectively as possible. Most importantly, it is vital that we have a bird'e eye-view of developments and think as far back as even 2001 and see how things have rolled out till now. Find the golden thread to put it all together. Join the dots and then see who is the Master of them all whose plans have been executed to the hilt by those chosen for their talents, network and abilities. To make it easier for us to size up the current situation, consider The Black Swan Theory.
*I wish to express my grateful thanks to UP41 for enlightening me in this area.
Do black swans exist? Well, years ago, people thought all swans must be white just because no one had ever encountered a black swan. In 1697, Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh discovered black swans in Western Australia after which the term 'black swan' metamorphosed to connote that a perceived impossibility might later be disproven. As far back as the 19th century, John Stuart Mill used the black swan logical fallacy as a new term to identify falsification.
In the 17th century, writer Francis Bacon warned that our minds are wired to deceive us.
The sad reality is that our brains are wired for narrative, not statistical uncertainty. In order to simplify the world that we live in, we tell ourselves simple stories to explain complex things/people/situations which we do not/cannot understand. Ever so often, it is likely that whatever reason we postulate may be simplified, distorted or wrong.
It was Lebanese-American writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb who first made this argument in Fooled by Randomness (2004), an engaging look at the history and reasons for our predilection for self-deception when it comes to statistics. In 2007, he wrote The Black Swan: the Impact of the Highly Improbable (revised and completed in 2010), about predicting the future.
Nassim explains that the problem exists because we place too much weight on the odds that past events will repeat (diligently trying to follow the path of the "millionaire next door," when unrepeatable chance is a better explanation). He highlights that the really important events are rare and unpredictable. He calls such events Black Swans which is in direct reference to a 17th century philosophical thought experiment.
Nassim also argues that it is futile to explain really big events in our world which are rare and unpredictable. Any attempt to explain them may be satisfying but pointless. and thus trying to extract generalizable stories to explain them may be emotionally satisfying, but it's practically useless. His rationale: "History does not crawl, it jumps." He argues that whatever assumptions we have are developed from the bell-curve predictability of what he calls "Mediocristan." In reality, our world is really shaped by the wild power law swings of "Extremistan."
According to Wikipedia:
The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that is a surprise (to the observer), has a major impact, and after the fact is often inappropriately rationalized with the benefit of hindsight.
The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain:
- The disproportionate role of high-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance and technology
- The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities)
- The psychological biases that make people individually and collectively blind to uncertainty and unaware of the massive role of the rare event in historical affairs
Identifying a black swan event
Based on the author's criteria:
- The event is a surprise (to the observer).
- The event has a major impact.
- After the first recorded instance of the event, it is rationalized by hindsight, as if it could have been expected; that is, the relevant data was available but unaccounted for in risk mitigation programs. The same is true for the personal perception by individuals.
An example Taleb uses to explain his theory is the events of 11 September 2001. 9/11 was a shock to all common observers. Its ramifications continue to be felt in many ways: increased levels of security; "preventive" strikes or wars by Western governments. The coordinated, successful attack on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon using commercial airliners was virtually unthinkable at the time. However, with the benefit of hindsight, it has come to be seen as a predictable incident in the context of the changes in terrorist tactics.
Coping with black swan events
The main idea in Taleb's book is not to attempt to predict black swan events, but to build robustness against negative ones that occur and be able to exploit positive ones. Taleb contends that banks and trading firms are very vulnerable to hazardous black swan events and are exposed to losses beyond those predicted by their defective models. On the subject of business in particular, Taleb is highly critical of the widespread use of the normal distribution model as the basis for calculating risk.
In the second edition of The Black Swan, Taleb provides "Ten Principles for a Black-Swan-Robust Society". Taleb states that a black swan event depends on the observer. For example, what may be a black swan surprise for a turkey is not a black swan surprise to its butcher; hence the objective should be to "avoid being the turkey" by identifying areas of vulnerability in order to "turn the Black Swans white". (Source: HERE)
Here's an excerpt of New York Times review of the book:
A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.
Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don’t know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate opportunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the “impossible.”
For years, Taleb has studied how we fool ourselves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. In this revelatory book, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don’t know, and this second edition features a new philosophical and empirical essay, “On Robustness and Fragility,” which offers tools to navigate and exploit a Black Swan world.
Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications, The Black Swan will change the way you look at the world. Taleb is a vastly entertaining writer, with wit, irreverence, and unusual stories to tell. He has a polymathic command of subjects ranging from cognitive science to business to probability theory. The Black Swan is a landmark book—itself a black swan. (MORE HERE)
So, please be on guard because:
- What you read may not be what the writer intended OR
- What you think (opinions/perceptions) may be what the writer INTENDED but need not reflect the truth because there could be a hidden agenda that can only be understood in the bigger picture
- What you think may not happen COULD happen
- What you see is only but a part of the big picture which could be completed in many ways based on the different combinations that the one-in-charge had already foreseen
God's accuracy may be observed in the hatching of eggs.
For example:
-the eggs of the potato bug hatch in 7 days;
-those of the canary in 14 days;
-those of the barnyard hen in 21 days;
-The eggs of ducks and geese hatch in 28 days;
-those of the mallard in 35 days;
-The eggs of the parrot and the ostrich hatch in 42 days.
(Notice, they are all divisible by seven, the number of days in a week!)
God's wisdom is seen in the making of an elephant. The four legs of this great beast all bend forward in the same direction. No other quadruped is so made. God planned that this animal would have a huge body, too large to live on two legs. For this reason He gave it four fulcrums so that it can rise from the ground easily.
The horse rises from the ground on its two front legs first.
A cow rises from the ground with its two hind legs first.
How wise the Lord is in all His works of creation! God's wisdom is revealed in His arrangement of sections and segments, as well as in the number of grains.
-Each watermelon has an even number of stripes on the rind.
-Each orange has an even number of segments.
-Each ear of corn has an even number of rows.
-Each stalk of wheat has an even number of grains.
-Every bunch of bananas has on its lowest row an even number of bananas, and each row decreases by one, so that one row has an even number and the next row an odd number.
-The waves of the sea roll in on shore twenty-six to the minute in all kinds of weather.
All grains are found in even numbers on the stalks, and the Lord specified thirty fold, sixty fold, and a hundred fold - all even numbers.
God has caused the flowers to blossom at certain specified times during the day, so that Linnaeus, the great botanist, once said that
if he had a conservatory containing the right kind of soil, moisture and temperature, he could tell the time of day or night by the flowers that were open and those that were closed!
The lives of each of you may be ordered by the Lord in a beautiful way for His glory, if you will only entrust Him with your life. If you try
to regulate your own life, it will only be a mess and a failure.
Only the One Who made the brain and the heart can successfully guide them to a profitable end.
I HOPE YOU FIND THIS AS FASCINATING AS I DID
.....WOW!!!!
To me, San Francisco is one of the most beautiful and romantic cities in this world. Even though I have visited San Francisco twice, I never had the chance to visit Alcatraz.
According to Wikipedia:
Alcatraz Island is located in the San Francisco Bay, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) offshore from San Francisco, California, United States. Often referred to as "The Rock", the small island was developed with facilities for a lighthouse, a military fortification, a military prison (1868), and a federal prison from 1933 until 1963.
Beginning in November 1969, the island was occupied for more than 19 months by a group of American Indians from San Francisco who were part of a wave of Indian activism across the nation with public protests through the 1970s. In 1972 Alcatraz became a national recreation area and received designation as a National Historic Landmark in 1986.
Today, the island's facilities are operated by the National Park Service as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area; it is open to tours. Visitors can reach the island by ferry ride from Pier 33, near Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. In 2008 the nation's first hybrid propulsion ferry started serving the island. (MORE HERE)
According to a very interesting article about Alcatraz written by Alastair Leithead in BBC NEWS:
Those who ran Alcatraz liked to say nobody ever escaped alive.
But that hasn't stopped US marshals from continuing the search for three men who made it off the island 50 years ago. According to the official version, Frank Morris, and the brothers John and Clarence Anglin were presumed drowned in the cold and choppy waters of San Francisco Bay.
There are plenty of people who think they did make it ashore and have been in hiding ever since.
Rumour had it they would return to the prison turned tourist spot on the 50th anniversary of their escape. Although it's not certain where the urban myth began, US Marshal Michael Dyke spent the day on the island anyway, just in case.
Papier-mache heads
Most prisoners who tried to flee "The Rock", as it became known, were captured or killed or drowned.
But this was one of the most daring and intricate escapes in the notorious prison's history - involving spoons, papier-mache heads and rubber raincoats.
It began by digging away at the concrete around the air vents in their cells with spoons and a drill-like device fashioned from a vacuum cleaner.
A seagull flies over Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary on Alcatraz Island 2 July 2003 Alcatraz was closed in 1963, a year after the escape
Accordion practice muffled the sound of the drilling, and cardboard was carefully used to cover each hole as it grew. Soap became a substitute for removed rivets.
When the time came, they squeezed through into a utility corridor and headed for the roof.
Guards doing their rounds periodically checked on the faces of their prisoners. The three escapees appeared to be sleeping soundly, the guards were unaware they were papier-mache heads with real hair, harvested from the prison barber shop.
The three made it up to the roof, and despite the searchlights, headed over high barbed-wire fences.
At a watchtower blind spot they used improvised bellows to inflate a raft fashioned from rubber raincoats.
A fourth member of the gang had been unable to remove his air vent quickly enough, and by the time he broke through, the others had already cast off into San Francisco Bay - to their deaths or to freedom - depending on what you believe.
CLICK HERE for the rest of the entry.
These are weird puzzles that you'll probably just start laughing after you read them anyway. After that you can rack your brain to figure out how they work out the way they do!
Three guys go for dinner, each buys a $10 steak. At the end of the meal, they collect $30 between the three of them to cover the cost of the meals and gives it to the waitress. She goes back to the cash register, where the overlooking manager says "Those dinners are discounted, you need to give them $5 back." So the waitress gets the five dollars, and returns to the table. Not knowing how to split $5 between the three of them, she gives 1 dollar to each of the three patrons, and kept two for herself.
Now if you do the math, together they paid $30, got $3 back meaning they only paid $27. The waitress kept $2. This totals $29.
Where did the last dollar go?
So you want a day off. Let's take a look at what you are asking for. There are 365 days per year available for work. There are 52 weeks per year in which you already have 2 days off per week, leaving 261 days available for work. Since you spend 16 hours each day away from work, you have used up 170 days, leaving only 91 days available. You spend 30 minutes each day on coffee break which counts for 23 days each year, leaving only 68 days available.
With a 1 hour lunch each day, you used up another 46 days, leaving only 22 days available for work. You normally spend 2 days per year on sick leave. This leaves you only 20 days per year available for work. We are off 5 holidays per year, so your available working time is down to 15 days. We generously give 14 days vacation per year which leaves only 1 day available for work and I'll be damned if you are going to take that day off!
Depending on how you ask the questions, you can force the answer you seek! Remember 43% of polls are wrong, the other 78% are made up! Don't jump to the answer, just scroll down.
Take this test mentally, don't write down your answers, and don't shout them out.
1. Pick a number from 2 to 9. It can be 2 or it can be 9, or any number in between.
2. Take that number that you've chosen, and multiply it by 9.
3. That should give you a two digit number. Take those two digits and add them together.
4. Take the resulting number and subtract 5 from it.
5. Take that number and correspond it to the alphabet, numbering the letters. A =1, B=2, C=3, and so on...
6. Take your letter, and think of a country that begins with that letter.
7. Take the last letter in the name of that country, and think of an animal.
8. Now, take the last letter in the name of that animal, and think of a color.
Remember: there are no orange kangaroos in Denmark. :-)
-Author Unknown-
Have a nice day!
Ever wondered about the mysteries of our universe? Wonder no more. Check out the following post written by Soren Dreier:
1. What Are Fermi Bubbles?
No, this is not a rare digestive disorder. The bubbles are massive, mysterious structures that emanate from the Milky Ways center and extend roughly 20,000 light-years above and below the galactic plane. The strange phenomenon, first discovered in 2010, is made up of super-high-energy gamma-ray and X-ray emissions, invisible to the naked eye. Scientists have hypothesized that the gamma rays might be shock waves from stars being consumed by the massive black hole at the center of the galaxy.
2. Rectangular Galaxy
“Look, up in the sky! It’s a…rectangle?” Earlier this year, astronomers spotted a celestial body, roughly 70 million light-years away, with an appearance that is unique in the visible universe: The galaxy LEDA 074886 is shaped more or less like a rectangle. While most galaxies are shaped like discs, three-dimensional ellipses or irregular blobs, this one seems to have a regular rectangle or diamond-shaped appearance. Some have speculated that the shape results from the collision of two spiral-shaped galaxies, but no one knows for now.
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1) Why does the glue in a tube not stick to the tube itself?
2) Academic research has detailed reports stating that from a group of four men or women one will most certainly have a mental ailment of some kind or the other. Think about this calculation: if you have three normal friends, then you unfortunately are the fourth one out. Who then is the fourth person? :-)
3) Why do we press down hard on the remote control even though we know that the batteries are weak?
4) Have you ever watched old or new films about Tarzan? If he is supposed to be living in the wild, why is he clean shaven?
5) Switched those bulbs that are enclosed in tight plastic shutters? Have you noticed that whenever you go to do that there are always dead bugs inside? How did they manage to get there?
6) Why can't we ever manage to open a plastic bag on the first attempt?
7) Why do they use sterilized needles when injecting a convict on death role?
8) Why does a bank take interest on money when your account is overdrawn? From where do they think you are going to pay them? If you had the cash you would have used it, wouldn't you?
9) Why don't we ever hear jokes about father-in-laws?
10) When statistics claim that the sum of all the stars in the sky is about four billion, people believe it. But, when someone sees a sign on a park bench or board stating "wet paint", why is it a natural instinct to 'verify' this?
11) How many times will be keep coming back and opening the door to the fridge when we are hungry? Do we really think that food will appear there miraculously?
12) Why does Superman stop bullets with his chest but ducks if after the bullets are over the gun is thrown at him?
13) I'm sure you've heard of the evolutionary claim that mankind has evolved from monkeys. If this is so, why are monkeys still roaming earth?
14) If you are sitting by a table and something is accidentally falling off, chances are you may not try to stop it. Why?
15) Why did the Japanese pilots who were planning to crash into American ships wear helmets?
16) Why do people move a vacuum cleaner over a small piece of thread again and again? Why do we pick it up, examine it and then place it back down and move the vacuum cleaner over it to give it a second chance?
17) Why are soap bubbles always white no matter what is the colour of the soap?
18) Is it winter or summer wherever you are right now? Have you noticed that if it is summer we try and make the house as cold as it would be during winter, and if it is winter, we try and make the house as hot as it would during summer?
19) Why is it that whenever you walk past a mattress dealership, they have large signs advertising a big price reduction?
20) Isn't it silly that when if wandering through one of the large shopping malls someone doesn't pay attention and the cart they are pushing smacks into your toes, and then they say sorry, all we can think of saying is that no harm was done while your toe is aching.
If you have answers to any/some/all of the above questions, do share that we can smile together. Take care and have a lovely evening!
Have you played this before?
If not, do enjoy the game.
I have been trying to figure out how this works but am still in darkness. Don't ask me cos I don't know the solution. :-(
And if you do know the solution, please enlighten me!!! Thanks!
CLICK HERE TO PLAY THE GUESS YOUR NUMBER GAME.
You have got to try this, it is really great to see how fast your mind and hand can work at the same time drive you nuts!
Go to the site, then click on the start button.
A group of numerals from 1 to 33 will appear in red boxes.
You don't need to click on the numbers, just move your cursor over them in order from 1 to 33 and as you correctly do so that numeral will disappear.
See how fast you can get the task completed.
This is a good practice to keep your brain sharp and your eye hand co-ordination crisp, or ............................ it could drive you mad !
CLICK ON THIS LINK.
This is a classic and it works!!!
Stare at this pic carefully and it may seem as though the man is turning his face suddenly and then faces another angle.
Share this with your friends - if you can see this!!!!
Do leave a comment to share your responses. Thanks to Angela who sent me this post!
The man on the Clapham omnibus is a hypothetical reasonable person, used by the courts in English law where it is necessary to decide whether a party has acted in the way that a reasonable person should - for example, in a civil action for negligence.
The man on the Clapham omnibus is a reasonably educated and intelligent but non-specialist person, against whom the conduct of the defendant can be measured. This concept was used by Greer LJ in the case of Hall v. Brooklands Auto-Racing Club (1933) 1 KB 205 to define the standard of care which a defendant must live up to in order to avoid being found negligent.
The phrase was first put to legal use in a reported judgment by Sir Richard Henn Collins MR in the 1903 English Court of Appeal libel case, McQuire v. Western Morning News. He attributed it to Lord Bowen, said to have coined it as junior counsel defending the Tichborne Claimant case in 1871. Brewer's also lists this as a possible first use.
It is possibly derived from the phrase "Public opinion ... is the opinion of the bald-headed man at the back of the omnibus," coined by the 19th century journalist Walter Bagehot to describe the normal man of London. Clapham in south London at the time was a nondescript commuter suburb seen to represent "ordinary" London. Omnibus is now rather an archaic expression for a public bus, but was in common use by the judiciary at the beginning of the 20th century.
The expression has also been incorporated in Canadian patent jurisprudence, notably Beloit v. Valmet Oy (1986), C.P.R. (3d) 289[4] in its discussion regarding the test for obviousness.
In Australia, the "Clapham omnibus" expression has inspired the New South Wales and Victorian equivalents, "the man on the Bondi tram"[5] and "the man on the Bourke Street tram".
In Hong Kong, the equivalent expression is "the man on the Shaukiwan Tram."
Source: Wikipedia at this link.
There are 4 questions. Don’t miss one. Thanks to reader SKT who sent this to me.
1. How do you put a giraffe into a refrigerator?
Stop and think about it and decide on your answer before you scroll down.
The correct answer is: Open the refrigerator, put in the giraffe, and close the door. This question tests whether you tend to do simple things in an overly complicated way.
2. How do you put an elephant into a refrigerator?
Did you say, open the refrigerator, put in the elephant, and close the refrigerator?
Wrong Answer.
Correct Answer: Open the refrigerator, take out the giraffe, put in the elephant and close the door. This tests your ability to think through the repercussions of your previous actions..
3. The Lion King is hosting an animal conference. All the animals
attend .... except one. Which animal does not attend?
Correct Answer: The Elephant. The elephant is in the refrigerator. You just put him in there. This tests your memory ... Okay, even if you did not answer the first three questions correctly, you still have one more chance to show your true abilities.
4. There is a river you must cross but it is used by crocodiles, and
you do not have a boat. How do you manage it?
Correct Answer: You jump into the river and swim across. Have you not been listening? All the crocodiles are attending the Animal Meeting. This tests whether you learn quickly from your mistakes.
According to Anderson Consulting Worldwide, around 90% of the Professionals they tested got all questions wrong, but many preschoolers got several correct answers. Anderson Consulting says this conclusively proves the theory that most professionals do not have the brains of a four-year-old.
Send this out to frustrate all of your smart friends.
I posted it for my smart readers :-). Have a wonderful day.
I have been to many places but I have never been in Cahoots. Apparently you can't go there alone. You have to be in Cahoots with someone.
I've also never been in Cognito. I hear no one recognizes you there.
I have, however, been in Sane. They don't have an airport. You have to be driven there. I have made several trips there, thanks to my family, friends and those with whom I have worked.
I would like to go to Conclusions, but you have to jump and I am not too
much on physical activity anymore.
I have also been in Doubt. That is a sad place to go and I try not to visit there too often.
I've been in Flexible, but only when it was very important to stand firm.
Sometimes I'm in Capable, and I go there more often as I'm getting older.
One of my favorite places to be is in Suspense. It really gets the adrenalin flowing and pumps up the old heart. At my age I need all of the stimuli I can get.
Just an added note: I hope none of my dear friends are in continent!! :-)
-Author Unknown-
Thanks to Linda who sent me this post. Have a great weekend!
Awesome Answers In IAS (Indian Administrative Service) Examinations:
YOU MAY THINK THE ANSWERS ARE FUNNY BUT THEY ARE THE CORRECT ANSWERS.
THINK BEYOND BOUNDARIES. :-)
Q. How can you drop a raw egg onto a concrete floor without cracking it?
A. Concrete floors are very hard to crack! (UPSC Topper)
Q. If it took eight men ten hours to build a wall, how long would it take
four men to build it?
A. No time at all it is already built. (UPSC 23rd Rank Opted for IFS)
Q. If you had three apples and four oranges in one hand and four apples and
three oranges in the other hand, what would you have?
A. Very large hands. (Good one) (UPSC 11 Rank Opted for IPS)
Q. How can you lift an elephant with one hand?
A. you will never find an elephant with one hand. (UPSC Rank 14 Opted for IES)
Q. How can a man go eight days without sleep?
A. No Probs, He sleeps at night. (UPSC IAS Rank 98)
Q.. If you throw a red stone into the blue sea what it will become?
A. It will Wet or Sink as simple as that. (UPSC IAS Rank 2)
Q. What looks like half apple ?
A: The other half. (UPSC - IAS Topper )
Q. What can you never eat for breakfast?
A: Dinner.
Q. Bay of Bengal is in which state?
A: Liquid (UPSC 33 Rank)
The interviewer said,"I shall either ask you ten easy questions or one really
difficult question. Think well before you make up your mind!"
The candidate thought for a while and said, "My choice is one really difficult
question."
"Well, good luck to you, you have made your own choice! Now tell me this.
What comes first, Day or Night?"
The boy was jolted into reality as his admission depends on the correctness
of his answer, but he thought for a while and said, "It's the DAY sir!"
"How" the interviewer asked.
"Sorry sir, you promised me that you will not ask me a SECOND difficult
question!"
He was selected for IIM! (Indian Institute of Management)
-Author Unknown-
Thanks to Angela who sent me this post. Have a restful evening, everyone!
Measure your brain age in 2 minutes by playing some fun games. If your final score is younger than your actual age, then you are doing enough brain exercise for your brain... If you score higher than your age, then you need to exercise your brain more...
Click THIS LINK to find out your brain age.
