Randomarathon: Midnight Musings

Randomarathon!!! Midnight Musings :-)

*main sources: wikipedia; brittanica encyclopedia; my bored brain cells

What Would Oprah Do???
I am such an Oprah fan. Hahaha. I did this research into her life, and, well, I'm not going to copy-paste all of that here... I don't think many people I know are as fanatical about her as I am. I just wanted to share this cute phrase. Kevin, a gay guy from the reality show The Benefactor always asks this before making a strategic decision: "What would Oprah do?" Hahaha. That is so darn cute. I actually say that sometimes... Just in my head though. :D

I swear, I want to be like Oprah someday. Okay, that's overreaching, but she's just so... Cool. She was called "arguably the world's most powerful woman" by CNN and Time.com, "arguably the most influential woman in the world" by the American Spectator, "one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th Century" and "one of the most influential people" of 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 by Time. She is the only person in the world to have made all five lists. Even Nelson Mandela praises her. (South African statesman who ended apartheid and won the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize... But I'm sure you knew that. I saw that on Tyra Banks’ ANTM. Hehehe.)

In July 2007 TV Guide reported that she was the highest paid TV entertainer in the United States during the past year. She earned an estimated $260 million... This amount was more than 5 times what had been earned by the person in second place - music executive Simon Cowell, who had earned $45 million. In 2005 she became the first black person listed by Business Week as one of America's top 50 most generous philanthropists, having given an estimated $303 million.

She's more than a talk show host... She decides what's on the NY Times Bestseller List... She uses her influence on viewers to actually help people, and her political views are as valued as much as the greatest political advisers. She was also the first one who broke 20th century taboos through her show, which airs in 117 countries. She's a feminist, but she's not biased either. And she's so incredibly human. She confesses everything, even the really embarrassing things. Michael Moore was right... She should run for president of the United States. She's one of the greatest tycoons in the history of the world. Born in Mississippi to a poor unwed teenage mother, she sometimes wore potato sacks as a little girl. Now she's the richest African-American in the world. If that's not a success story, I don't know what is.

If you're not an Oprah fan then you are probably scratching your head right now. Oh, well. C'est la vie. I'll talk about something else. :D

Bill Gates Ain't the Richest Man Anymore

Something I didn't think I'd live to see. But hey, he only slipped to third. I can't believe the Forbes article actually said, "Click through our gallery as we count down the top five world's richest people, see how far Gates has fallen, and then see who else made it onto the full list."

How far Gates has fallen? Wow. The man has been the richest in the world for thirteen consecutive years... Not bad for a college dropout, I'd say... Well? What was that comment all about? He's only down by 4 billion dollars... (Only? Okay, that's a lot, but still.) I don't know if the writer was bitter or something.

Anyway, for random junk, here's the Forbes' 22nd annual ranking of the World's Billionaires... (Copy-pasted from the Forbes website.)

No. 5: Mukesh Ambani
Country: India
Net Worth: $43.0 billion

Asia's richest resident heads petrochemicals giant Reliance Industries, India's most valuable company by market cap. His fortune is up $22.9 billion since last year, making him the world's second-biggest gainer in terms of dollars. Mukesh is using some of his money to build a 27-story home.

No. 4: Lakshmi Mittal
Country: India
Net Worth: $45.0 billion

Mittal heads the world's largest steelmaker, ArcelorMittal, which accounts for 10% of all crude steel production. It just delivered 580 tons to be used in construction of the World Trade Center memorial in New York. With a 44% stake, he is the company's largest shareholder.

No. 3: William H. Gates III
Country: United States
Net Worth: $58.0 billion

After 13 straight years, the Harvard dropout and Microsoft visionary is no longer the world's richest man. Blame Yahoo!: Microsoft shares have fallen 15% since the company boldly attempted to merge with the search engine giant to better fight Google for Internet dominance. Gates is preparing to give up day-to-day involvement in Microsoft to spend more time on philanthropic endeavors.

No. 2: Carlos Slim Helú & Family
Country: Mexico
Net Worth: $60.0 billion

The son of a Lebanese immigrant, Slim made his first fortune in 1990 when he bought fixed-line operator Telefonos de Mexico (Telmex) in a privatization. In December, America Movil struck a deal with Yahoo! to provide mobile Web services to 16 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. A widower and father of six, Slim is a baseball fan and art collector.

No. 1: Warren Edward Buffett
Country: United States
Net Worth: $62.0 billion

America's most beloved investor is now the world's richest man. The son of a Nebraska politician, he delivered newspapers as a boy and filed his first tax return at age 13, claiming a $35 deduction for his bicycle. This year, he soared past friend and bridge partner Bill Gates as shares of Berkshire Hathaway climbed 25% since the middle of last July.

Who Invented the Internet???

Since the previous random entry mentioned the internet a couple of times, this just crept up from the subconscious and spilled out. And this is a Randomarathon anyway, so what the hell.

I read from Angels and Demons by Dan Brown (my most favorite book ever, ever, ever infinity,) that it was Tim Berners-Lee who invented it. But that was kind of confusing, since my computer class back in second year taught us that the internet was invented by some kind of military organization. (Mandsci people, remember that?) Lee wasn’t mentioned in the lesson...

So, anyway, it was Tim Berners-Lee. The World Wide Web was begun in 1989 by Lee and his colleagues at CERN, an international scientific organization based in Geneva, Switzerland.

CERN and Antimatter

CERN is my favorite laboratory in the world. Not that I’ve been there, but they did produce antimatter. (Again, Angels and Demons.)

CERN stands for: Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire... Or in English, European Organization for Nuclear Research.

They have the most powerful and versatile facilities in the world...

In 1995, they created antimatter!!! This is just the coolest thing ever. (The science geek doeth awaketh.) Each particle of antimatter survives for only about forty-billionths of a second before it comes into contact with ordinary matter and annihilates in a powerful explosion. It’s more powerful than nuclear fission... A droplet can power NYC for a whole day. But it’s just highly unstable. A gram contains the energy of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

It’s the deadliest weapon ever.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Flashback. Freshman year in Mandsci. I don’t know why but this is pretty much the only lesson I actually remember from back then. Compounded with the thing about Albert Einstein I picked up during Senior English class... Here’s another random narration.

Albert Einstein had warned Roosevelt of the danger of Nazi Germany's forestalling other states in the development of an atomic bomb. But he placed so much detail in this letter that the government actually used it to make the bomb. (Tsk3. Einstein dubbed this his greatest mistake.) Eventually, the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development was created and given joint responsibility with the war department in the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear bomb. The test bomb was set off in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Thus the atomic bomb was born. On August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima... the combined heat and blast pulverized everything in the explosion's immediate vicinity, generated spontaneous fires and killed between 70,000 and 80,000 people, besides injuring more than 70,000 others. A second bomb, dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, killed between 35,000 and 40,000 people, and injured a like number.

Wonder what they would’ve done if old Albert wrote about antimatter instead.

MIT (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Established in 1961, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

(My dream school! I want to study archaeology there.)

MIT is one of two private land-grant universities and is also a sea grant and space grant university.

MIT graduates and faculty are noted for their technical acumen (72 affiliated Nobel Laureates, 47 National Medal of Science recipients, and 29 MacArthur Fellows.)

Their motto: Mens et Manus... Latin for Mind and Hand.

It’s near the Harvard University, also located along Charles River.

MIT has numerous research centers and laboratories. Among its facilities are a nuclear reactor, a computation centre, geophysical and astrophysical observatories, a linear accelerator, a space research centre, supersonic wind tunnels, pressurized wind tunnel, a towing tank for testing ship and ocean structure designs, a low-emission cogeneration plant that serves most of the campus electricity and heating requirements, an artificial intelligence laboratory, a centre for cognitive science, and an international studies centre. MIT's library system is extensive and includes a number of specialized libraries; there are also several museums.

MIT's on-campus nuclear reactor is the second largest university-based nuclear reactor in the United States.

They have a cool pass/no record system for first years. Wonder if they’ll ever do that in UP.

In the 2006 academic year, MIT faculty and researchers disclosed 523 inventions, filed 321 patent applications, received 121 patents, and earned $42.3 million in royalties. (And that’s just one school. To think that the Philippines had 27 patents last year... But hey, I’m not an inventor so I shouldn’t be complaining.)

Tim Berners-Lee, the internet inventor, is also associated with MIT, since he created the W3C there in 1994. What’s a W3C? I don’t know either.

There is a lot of stuff that can be said about the place... But I’ll just end it with this: As a prank, MIT students once reconstructed a Wright Flyer atop their Great Dome. Cool prank. :D

The List of Who to Ask for Help (or Run Away From, whichever applies.)

1. The Russian KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvenoy Bezopasnosti)
- Commitee for State Security
- Established in 1917
- Where they are: Russia, duh. :)
- During the lifetime of the Soviet Union, the KGB was responsible for everything... Espionage, counter-espionage, travels in, out and within the country, protection of Soviet leaders, censorship, codes, archives, finance, surveillance, and internal security. For a country as big as the USSR, this was a pretty huge job. And they did it secretly, especially when they dealt with “enemy forces.” (Read: Torture and death.) They kept the intruders out and the citizens in with 300, 000 troops complete with armor, artillery and naval vessels. During the four decades after WW 2, the KGB was (and still is) the only agency in the world that was able to infiltrate all the Western Intelligence Services except the CIA.
- The KGB was the primary intelligence service until 1991.
- Why criminals hate them: ain’t it obvious? And it wasn’t only the criminals who hated them... Freedom fighters also did.

2. CIA (Central Intelligence Agency)
- Established in 1947
- Where they are: uh... the United States?
- It is the principal intelligence and counterintelligence agency of the U.S. government.
- During WW 2, it was responsible for analyzing foreign intelligence.
- At its height it had about 12, 000 members.
- George Bush was formerly a director of the CIA, then known as the OSS.
- The CIA is organized into four major directorates:
The Intelligence Directorate analyzes intelligence that is gathered overtly from available sources... Espionage, aerial and satellite photography, and interception of radio, telephone, and other forms of communication. It also monitors foreign radio broadcasts.
The Directorate of Operations is responsible for covert operations, including clandestine collection of intelligence (i.e., espionage) and special covert activities.
The Directorate of Science and Technology is charged with keeping the agency abreast of scientific and technological advances, and it develops technical devices useful to the agency and supplies technical and scientific support to agency operations.
The Directorate of Administration not only administers but also contains the Office of Security, which is responsible for the security of personnel, facilities, information, and such information sources as defectors from other governments.
- It is often compared to the Russian KGB, but the CIA was restricted to foreign soil... The KGB had major and numerous foreign and domestic military and police responsibilities. (Told you they did everything.)
- Why criminals hate them: well... They’re tricky. Enough said. :)

3. Interpol (International Police)
- Also known as the International Criminal Police Organization
- Where they are: Lyon and/or Paris, France
- The number of affiliated countries is more than 125, representing all continents.
- The goal of Interpol is to catch the “international criminal...” There are three main categories: those who operate in more than one country such as smugglers, dealing mainly in gold and narcotics and other illicit drugs; criminals who do not travel at all but whose crimes affect other countries—for example, a counterfeiter of foreign bank notes; and criminals who commit a crime in one country and flee to another.
- It has extensive archives of all the international criminals (and all those who may later fall into the category) from the affiliated countries.
- They also have the best satellites, surveillance, you name it.
- Why criminals hate them: I once saw this feature on Discovery Channel about them. It was an episode where a domestic police force (whose name escapes me) caught a painting smuggler (who fled over five countries already) hours after seeking help from the Interpol. They, of course, had complete records and facilities to pinpoint exactly where the smuggler was, using the known M.O., and phone and travel records. If that’s not a reason for criminals to hate them, I don’t know what is.

4. Scotland Yard
- Where they are: South of St. James’ Park in the borough of Westminster, London
- Jurisdiction: Metropolitan London
- Scotland Yard keeps extensive files on all known criminals in the United Kingdom. It also has a special branch of police who guard visiting dignitaries, royalty, and statesmen. Scotland Yard is responsible for maintaining links between British law-enforcement agencies and Interpol. Although Scotland Yard's responsibility is limited to metropolitan London, its assistance is often sought by police in other parts of England, particularly with regard to difficult cases. It also assists in the training of police personnel in the countries of the Commonwealth.
- Why criminals hate them: Because, obviously, they can catch the bad guys... Unlike some police forces in some countries... (ahem, ahem, ahem...)

Last but not the least...

5. The Justice League!!!
- Yeah, I am serious. They are the only ones I can think of that can actually give the four others on this list a run for their money... If they were real, that is.
- Plus, they have cool powers. :D

The Smartest Person on Earth

According to Guinness, her name is Marilyn Vos Savant, with an IQ of 228 when she was 10 years and 8 months old.

“She is of German and Italian ancestry, and is a descendant of physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach. She attended Washington University in St. Louis, but dropped out to help with a family investment business, seeking financial freedom to pursue a career in writing.”

She was given the Mega Test by Guinness in the mid-90s, as an adult this time... Vos Savant's raw score was 46 out of a possible 48, with 5.4 z-score, and standard deviation of 16, arriving at a 186 IQ in the 99.999997 percentile, with a rarity of 1 in 30 million.

Going from 228 to 186 is NOT an IQ drop... The two tests (one as a child and the other as an adult) represent different types of IQ.

Vos Savant herself values IQ tests as measurements of a variety of mental abilities, and believes intelligence itself involves so many factors that "attempts to measure it are useless."

Read the wikipedia article for some of her resolutions to questions from her readers on the column “Ask Marilyn,” or read her books. There was something about Fermat’s Theorem... Heey... This is veering off to math too much... Tsk3...

IQ is such an inexact science... So I searched, which led me to this next random entry...

The Coolest Blog Ever

http://onemansblog.com

I swear, this is the coolest blog I have ever read. (Fan?)

I was searching for the list of highest IQs, and this introduction to an article popped out:

“The other day I sat down to watch The Princess Bride for about the 10,000th time. Man that is a great movie! Anyway, when I was watching the part where Vizzini, the Sicilian, was answering the question as to how smart he is, he said:

“Let me put it this way. Have you ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates? Morons.”

So, I decided to mosey on over to the Interwebs and find a list of people with the highest IQ ever measured, and lo and behold I couldn’t find one! So for the sake of future searchers, I compiled the following information. Enjoy.”

And the material on there was pretty good, complete with a fairly accurate IQ test. (I didn’t take it... I’m scared of those things.)

So I did a little moseying myself and I was really amused by his articles in the blog... See for yourself. Again, that’s http://onemansblog.com :D

Back to the Smartest Person (okay, people) on Earth

This list (and paragraph) is from http://onemansblog.com

“I’d like to stop for a second and inject a little philosophy before we go on. I have absolutely no respect whatsoever for intelligence. I only respect people for their actions. So no one should envy or emulate people on the list that follow because some of them are miserable human beings.”

The Highest IQs On Record

People Still Alive

Physicist / Engineer Kim Ung-yong has a verified IQ of 210
Bouncer Christopher Michael Langan has a verified IQ of 195
Engineer Philip Emeagwali is alleged to have an IQ of 190
World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov is alleged to have an IQ of 190
Author Marilyn Vos Savant has a verified IQ of 186
Actor James Woods is alleged to have an IQ of 180
Politician John H. Sununu is alleged to have an IQ of 180
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is alleged to have an IQ of 180
Mathematician Andrew Wiles is alleged to have an IQ of 170
World Chess Champion Judith Polgar is alleged to have an IQ of 170
Chess Grandmaster Robert Byrne is alleged to have an IQ of 170
World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer is alleged to have an IQ of 167
Mathematician / Physicist Stephen W. Hawking is alleged to have an IQ of over 160
Microsoft Founder Paul Allen is alleged to have an IQ of over 160
Actress Sharon Stone is alleged to have an IQ of 154

From the Past

In 1926, psychologist Dr. Catherine Morris Cox - who had been assisted by Dr. Lewis M. Terman, Dr. Florence L. Goodenaugh, and Dr. Kate Gordon - published a study “of the most eminent men and women” who had lived between 1450 and 1850 to estimate what their IQs might have been. Data from that study as well as other sources around the net were compiled to form the following list. Please drop me a comment if you have additions or corrections (make sure and cite sources).

190 - Ludwig Wittgenstein
190 - Sir Isaac Newton
190 - Francois-Marie Arouet (Voltaire)
180 - Leonardo da Vinci
180 - David Hume
180 - Buonarroti Michelangelo
179 - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
176 - Emanuel Swedenborg
176 - Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz
175 - Johannes Kepler
175 - Edmund Spenser
175 - Baruch Spinoza
174 - John Stuart Mill
171 - Blaise Pascal
170 - Michael Faraday
170 - George Friedrich Handel
170 - Antoine Lavoisier
170 - Martin Luther
165 - Galileo Galilei
165 - Charlotte Bronte
165 - Johann Sebastian Bach
165 - Thomas Hobbes
165 - Carl von Linnaeus
165 - John Locke
165 - Joseph Priestley
165 - Ludwig van Beethoven
165 - Samuel Johnson
162 - Rene Descartes
162 - Madame De Stael
160 - Albert Einstein
160 - Robert Boyle
160 - Benjamin Franklin
159 - Immanuel Kant
156 - Linus Carl Pauling
156 - Sofia Kovalevskaya
156 - Thomas Chatterton
156 - Olof Palme
155 - Rembrandt van Rijn
155 - Miguel de Cervantes
155 - Jonathan Swift
153 - Charles Darwin
153 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
150 - George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
150 - Nicolaus Copernicus
150 - Abraham Lincoln
145 - Napoleon Bonaparte
145 - Anna Lindh
143 - George Sand (Aurore Dupin)
140 - George Washington
130 - Ulysses S. Grant
130 - Sir Francis Drake

Random Anecdote

All the stuff about the smart gals and guys reminded me of this story:

It goes something like, one day, a particular student arrived really late for class. And I mean really late, because everyone was gone already. He saw three problems on the board and copied them down, since he assumed that that was homework.

About three days later, he submitted his remarkably accurate solutions to the problems. Which surprised the teacher, since the problems on the board weren’t homework at all... They were examples for the day’s lesson that he missed... “Unsolvable Mathematical Equations.”

This is a true story. I just can’t, for the life of me, remember his name. I know he’s a mathematician someplace. Help...!

Serendipity

So I have this Writing Workshop homework... Write a short story about serendipity. I was supposed to do it tonight, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. My forte is horror, suspense, crime, mystery, historical allusions... Not freaking feel-good stuff. I am however guilty of inspirational and more positive poetry, but that’s just because I find poems easier to do than short stories. Wonder what Freud has to say about that.

Anyway, this anecdote was the one that Mayor Benhur Abalos narrated when he made his speech during the Mandsci graduation ceremony.

There was once a farmer who worked for a rich man. One day, the rich man visited the fields and saw the son of the farmer tending the fields with him. The rich man inquired as to why the young boy was not in school. The farmer replied that he had no money to send him there. The rich man said that he would finance the boy’s schooling, and he did, until the boy finished college and became one of the most famous scientists of all time. The name of that boy was Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin. But that’s not all. The rich man’s son, shortly after the discovery of penicillin, contracted smallpox. The drug was administered by Fleming himself and saved the boy’s life. That boy grew up to become Sir Winston Churchill.

Now that’s serendipity. :)

Global Warming Rants

I’ll make this one short. I have an extremely long article on this in the works anyway. :)

For heaven’s sake, will someone please tell those freaking fast-food chains to stop using those freaking plastics and Styrofoam??? Suure, some of them have switched to using paper for takeout and plastic dishes for dine-in but hell, if they want the human race to make it for another fifty years they should at least do more effort! Plastic cups, for example. Ketchup sachets. Plastic spoons and forks. Plastic bags. This is the freaking fate of humanity we’re talking about here! Aaargh. Fast-food chains are major pollutants when it comes to land waste... Air, of course it’s the automobiles (start walking, stop polluting)... Water, it’s those industries that are around bodies of water... (The Manila Bay is now 75% polluted. In 5 years, the water will be poisonous, which sucks because this is the main source for Metro Manila’s water supply. Piggeries around the area dump their waste here, and owners say they can’t do anything about this because it’s the only place they can dump their trash. Grrr. If there’s a will, there’s a way... If there ‘s no will, then there’s an excuse!)

I would like to inform my fellow environmentalist friends that SM malls have switched to using biodegradable plastic bags. Yey! :D

The recent storm in Myanmar which killed over 40,000 people is of course another testament to global warming. Damn the skeptics.

Why David Cook is Cool

I know someone out there somewhere is about to file a complaint for my excessive use of the word “cool.” Fine. Note to self: Find new expression of glee and amazement.

Anyway... Five reasons why David Cook is cool...
- He’s versatile.
- His voice is gritty yet polished at the same time. Like Daughtry, only better.
- He has fun on stage.
- He manages to make old songs sound new.
- He’s original. Can’t go wrong with originality. :D

Why Simon Cowell makes People Listen

He says what’s on people’s minds... Even the things that are mean. Honestly, I think some part of everyone wants to be mean once in a while, but only Simon can pull it off so effortlessly. The world just can’t help but listen to his antics. And he has a point. And he’s usually right. He’s like Doctor House... You hate him ‘cause he’s mean and cranky and downright hard to please, but you know he has a point, and an accurate one at that. I guess the novelty of his mean judging was that before he came on screen, nobody could be that mean. And meanness can be amusing. Sometimes he makes you think that he’s a genuine misanthrope... But then, he says something positive and you realize that he’s just a very cranky human being. And because Simon is probably one of the meanest and most picky critics on this planet, being just remotely praised by him is an achievement already. If he says you’re good, then you must be good. I think that’s also a reason why people endorsed by Simon Cowell usually turn out to be the best. :D
.............................................................
I think I just ran out of randomness. For now.
A plus tard! :D

Post Scriptum: Josh Groban is MARVELOUS! (Hah, I didn’t use cool. :) I didn’t understand a word of Un Dia Llegara or Solo Por Ti but I am hooked. Will learn Italian if I survive French class this year. I promise.