All About the Super Bowl!!!

Just kidding. ^_^

I didn't even know who was playing in the Superbowl until the New York Times emailed me a "breaking news bulletin" announcing the winner.

So, rest assured, this will not be about the Superbowl.

Maybe, after I watch some collection of all the commercials, I'll write something about that. But as for the sport, I had absolutely no interest in it. Sorry, Patriots and Giants fans (if any).

However, seeing as I'm about to start my third week of school, it may seem logical to talk about what classes I'm taking this semester. So that's exactly what I'm going to do!

I'll start off by saying that I tried to give myself a less intense semester this time around, mainly because I'm going to be looking for summer internships this semester (soon this semester) and I'd also like to take part in a business case competition or two. Don't worry, I'm not in any danger of falling behind in my unit count. In order to have enough units to graduate, I need to take 27 total units over the next three semesters. However, in order to remain a full-time student, I need to take 39 anyway. So, I'll be A-OK.

I also tried to schedule my classes to begin relatively later in the day (that is to say, not at 8am and 9:30 everyday). And I think I was relatively successful in doing so. My "First-Class-Time" schedule throughout the week is
12:30-11:00-12:30-11:00-10:00

Now, while you may think this makes me look like the laziest bum alive, I think I can redeem myself my noting that my wake-up time throughout the week looks like this:
8:00-8:00-8:00-8:00-8:00

One of the reasons for this is because I'm currently on a new (and, so far, successful) diet and exercise regime.

(Quick aside: It irks me when people say, "Oh, you shouldn't do diet and exercise. You should do a change of lifestyle." What the hell does that mean? Seriously, the only difference between a diet and a "change of lifestyle" is how long you can keep it up. Plus, "change of lifestyle" sounds so new-age and pretentious. That is why I refuse to call it that.)

Anyhoo, I'm waking up at 8am every day so that I can go to our exercise room for 30 minutes of a high-intensity elliptical workout. No, it's not as satisfying as being able to type on my laptop when I was back at home, but the handlebars aren't positioned correctly, and I don't have as much time (especially when there are other people waiting). What I end up doing is downloading movies (nature documentaries, to be exact) to my iPod and watch them on a tiny little screen. Not very satisfying, but it gets the job done.

The rest of my morning time is spent taking a shower, checking out the Internet, and getting anything that needs to get done, done. Then off to class. And what are my classes? Well, let's take a look!

UGBA 101B - Macroeconomics
A required class. A lot of people in the economics department like to say "Macro makes up about 20% of economics, but it takes up 50% of economics lessons." That's seems so true. And it often seems as though it's less relevant and interesting to what I'm going to be doing than Microeconomics. However, the professor is very enthusiatic, so I appreciate that. It should keep me awake.

And, yes, there is a lot of talk about the current state of affairs in the country and the world. So it's relevant in that sense. So it's got that going for it. Overall, it seems like it's going to be okay.

UGBA 102B - Managerial Accounting
Another required class. As a recap, I hated financial accounting last semester. I did fine in it, but gah! is it boring and tedious and...blah. Well, managerial accounting seems like its more relevant to my purposes than financial accounting. You see, what financial accounting boils down to is the annual report for a company; the balance sheet, the income statement, etc. Lots of journal entries, lots of tedium, lots of ech. Managerial accounting, on the other hand, is about the internal accounting aspects; that is, seeing if certain practices are cost effective. And it has a lot less in the way of journal entries. So far, it's looking much better than financial accounting.

But still: Accounting. -_-

UGBA 160 - Consumer Behavior
Not a required class. This is, of course, related to my marketing focus, and I can tell you already, it's fascinating. The professor has some sort of experiment each session, where we learn about some new aspect about consumer behavior.

For example, did you know that in a blind taste test, the majority of people preferred the taste of tap water to bottled? Yet when people knew what they were drinking, the results skewed heavily toward the bottled water. It's all perception, doncha know.

A funnier thing is that my professor said in class, "Before this water experiment was carried out, many of the test subjects said that they could tell the difference between tap and bottled water, and preferred the bottled, yet when they took part in the blind test, they preferred the tap." What's funny is that when I was describing this experiment to one of my co-workers (also at Haas) he told me, "Oh, I can tell the difference between bottled and tap water." And when I tried to tell him that he likely couldn't he insisted he could. It's weird; we've been trained to "know" the difference when there isn't any real difference to be known!

UGBA 96 - Personal Finance
Another non-required class. Hell, I'm not even getting any credit for it one way or another. Why am I taking it, then? Simple: life skills. I've been told that classes such as a personal finance class are ones which many people which they had been able to take in college. And the opportunity is now presenting itself. So, I think it will be useful for me in the long run to take this class. Plus, of the three different lecturers, I've already had two of them, and I have a good relationship with them both. So it shouldn't be bad.

Classics 198 - The Star Wars Galaxy
"What the hell?"

I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that this was your first thought when you read that title. Here I have four different business classes and then one on Star Wars? Well, I think I needed to balance out all that serious stuff with something fun. So, I decided to take a DeCal. A DeCal, for those not in the know, stands for "Democratic Education at Cal". It's basically a class in which a student facilitator teaches other students. If you think that's a stupid idea...well, you're wrong. After all, this blog was the product of a DeCal. Show some respect, whippersnapper!

Anyway, I did a lot of preparation in choosing which DeCal I would take. There were 80 or so of them, but I weeded them down according to my own availability in the early evening (when the majority take place) and general interest. In the end, I narrowed the selection down to the Star Wars one and one about Lewis Carroll. I do have a genuine interest in reading Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, because the wordplay in them is very intriguing. However, a class about Star Wars, regardless of how academically useless it was, just seemed fun!

I did have some reservations, though. I was worried - honestly worried - that the class was going to be filled with socially awkward nerds who could finish a sentence without stuttering.
Nerd Voice: "N,no...that's...that's not what Darth...Plagueis would have said. He...he would have been...he would have been more patient."
And so on and so forth. And before you try to tell me I'm generalizing, I know at least two guys just like this. You know, the kind of acquaintance you feel awkward around. And I was seriously concerned that one or both would be in the class.

However, everyone seemed to be fairly normal. Well, there were some eccentric ones, but they were actually quite sociable, so that's a good balance, I think.

And, as an interesting note, I found out two days later that my facilitator is actually a resident in my building. I've probably seen him before, but just never paid him any mind. However, this puts us in a very interesting position. I don't plan on being in a situation where I don't pass the class, but even if I was, I could just tell him, "Fail me, eh? That sounds to me like a case of failure to comply with hall staff. ID, please."

(Oh, funny story: Notice that the class is Classics 198. Well, in order to get the class approved, the facilitator had to make a proposal to the department chair as to how the class was related to the subject. He admitted that his reasoning was a bit of a stretch: "Well, Rome used to be a republic and then became an empire, just like the Galactic Republic." Apparently, it worked.)


So anyway, that's my Superbowl school year primer. Any questions?

By the Way, Is She Supposed to Be Naked?

Here's a picture that's been making its rounds on the Intertubes lately. The idea of it is to find out whether you are a left-brained or right-brained individual. Now, look at the dancer, and see if she is spinning clockwise or counterclockwise.Now, according to some guy, if you see the dancer spin clockwise, you are primarily a right-brained individual. Conversely, if you see it spin counter-clockwise, you are a left-brained individual. What these titles mean are as follows:

LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
-Uses Logic
-Detail-Oriented
-Facts Rule
-Words and Language
-Present and Past
-Math and Science
-Can Comprehend
-Knowing
-Acknowledges
-Order/Pattern Perception
-Knows Object Name
-Reality Based
-Forms Strategies
-Practical
-Safe

RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
-Uses Feeling
-"Big Picture"-Oriented
-Imagination Rules
-Symbols and Images
-Present and Future
-Philosophy & Religion
-Can "Get It" (i.e. Meaning)
-Believes
-Appreciates
-Spatial Perception
-Knows Object Function
-Fantasy Based
-Presents Possibilities
-Impetuous
-Risk-Taking

Now, here's some interesting things I've noticed when I did this little test. They say that if you focus hard enough, you can make it change directions. I, for one, found this near-impossible.

However!

I noticed that I would look at the picture, with no other distractions, and there would be what seemed to be a quick skip in animation, and all of a sudden, it would be going the other direction. Then, after a while longer, there would be another quick jump, and it be going in the original direction again. Truth be told, I found it very suspicious, and so I actually downloaded the GIF to make sure it wasn't just some scan that would flip occasionally. However, it was legit. So, the issue was not in the image, but rather, in my mind. What seemed to be weird was the fact that no matter what happened, it would always flip every so often. So, I decided to do a little experiment and test how much time passed betwixt directional flips. Here are my results (and trust me, it was a long 10 minutes):

Clockwise: 14 seconds
Counter-Clockwise: 68 seconds
Clockwise: 69 seconds
Counter-Clockwise: 73 seconds
Clockwise: 70 seconds
Counter-Clockwise: 67 seconds
Clockwise: 71 seconds
Counter-Clockwise: 71 seconds
Clockwise: 70 seconds
Counter-Clockwise: 69 seconds

...Huh.

While I know that I have properties (sometimes strong properties) of both brain sides, I wasn't expecting something like this. Apparently, my brain switches sides about every 70 seconds. That means that at any point, I will be a right-brained, emotionally-driven, fantasy-based individual, and 70 seconds later, I will be a left-brained, logic-driven, reality-based one.

...Is that normal?

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish...BLUE Fish???

One thing that sometimes bugs me is perception. How people can see the world two different ways, and yet still see the same thing. To use a more specific example, let's look at color. (I warn you upfront, this post will become quite convoluted, probably due to the very nature of the material.) Consider the following block; what color is it?


It's red, of course. I see it and know it's red. You see it and know it's red. This color is universally red. (For purposes of my argument, colorblind people don't exist. Sorry, pals.) However, what if red is not universally this color?

Confused yet?

What I mean is, what if the color I see as red is not the same one you see as red. What if the photo-receptors in our eyes, while processing the same information, feed different colors to our brain and present them as red. What if, the color you see as red, from my perspective, looks like this:


"Don't be silly, Andrew; that's green." Yes, it is. But what if someone's internal vision say this as red? And they always knew of it as red?

To better illustrate, take these two color wheels (click on them for larger versions). One is the normal color wheel that you're used to. The other is the color wheel someone else sees according to your perspective.



How can such a phenomenon be possible? Well, here's a challenge I propose to you. Describe a color.
Pretend there is a blind child that wants to know what the color red is. Describe it.

...

A-ha! You see my point? It is a nigh-impossible task, because everything we know about color is through experience and reference, not empirical information. If you want to have a person understand the color yellow, you show them a banana or a lemon. Person A may see the yellow on the left. Person B may see the yellow on the right. Each one sees yellow, and in each one's perspective, the other person sees purple and calls it yellow.

I hope that didn't thoroughly trounce your mind. To be perfectly honest, if my theory is true, then so are two other things: 1) It would be difficult to prove. 2) It makes little difference in the world. Let's look at both of these.

First, how would one go about proving that my idea isn't just something I wrote to hear myself type for a while? I have only one possible solution, and I'll readily admit it's more science fiction than science fact. The only place that people see different colors (perspective-wise) is in the mind. Hence, if you could hook some diodes directly onto someone's brain, making a visualization of their thoughts, and their sight, you could see colors the way they see them. How you would do this, I'll leave up to someone who actually knows about science.

Secondly, if my great theory is true...so what? What difference will it make in the world? None, I suppose. Regardless of how people see their individual colors, they will stop at red and go at green (if they're a good citizen, of course). People have gone on well enough for millennia without knowing how each other exactly sees colors, so I think things will go on some more.

It's just interesting to think about. It's like talking about general relativity. A person's perspective alters not only what appears to happen, but what actually happens. Like they say, perception is reality.

Hmm...maybe I should have gotten more sleep last night.