Category: Uncategorized

Why I failed statistics in high school

I could not get my head around ∑ √µȠ and standard deviations in high school. I could relate to maths being about having one right answer to one plus one – but maths with no right answers and lots of numbers did not make sense.

It has taken me over 60 years to realise that life is all about numbers.

• To wait in a line, I need to take a number;
• To make my plastic card materialise money, I need a PIN number;
• To get a bank loan, I need all my financial numbers;
• If I want to communicate with someone, I need to punch some numbers on the phone;
• To be better than you, I just need better numbers;
• The whole internet thing and everything digital are made up of only two numbers;
• And when I die, I will be just a number on a death certificate.

The reason I failed statistics in high school was because I had no idea what life was about.

Old males have better mating opportunities

I was really shy in my youth. Put me in a dance hall and I would be the only person on the bench whilst everyone else were on the dance floor.

If you were to put me in a dance hall today with 99 other people who represented the Australian population over 30 years old, where would I be?

Well, I would still be the last male on the bench.

Not because I am shy.

…It is because I have learnt my statistics.

If every one paired off the old fashioned way (male plus female), I will still be the last male on the bench.

…But there will be 10 unmatched females also on the bench with me.

Even though it is a variation of the “A young bull and an old bull are at the top of a hill…” joke, the ‘Statistical Jack’ suddenly has far better odds.

… And I learnt this just by looking at the abs statistics…

The 65 year old question

I can’t wait until I get to 65. I am so excited to get a 40% discount on my racing licence after I get to 65.

If a person gets to 65, they reach a milestone in the way they become treated by the Australian government. Getting to 65 means entry into the chart….

The question then becomes: “What does society expect a 65 year plus person to do?”

Filling the VOID

People don’t fall into a black hole when they turn 65.

But there are some holes that need filling as they jump into the 16 % band of the population.

I have been keenly interested in the lives of this 16% – purely because I am going to be joining them in a couple of years.

Change is the dominant feature for the 16%. There are two categories of change – voluntary and involuntary. Both involves experiencing a void and finding ways to fill it up again.

…And here are my 3 void-filling strategies.

1. Shrinkage – Shrink the life. Live to the limiting resources
2. Replace – Replace the old life activities with new ones
3. Rinse and repeat – Wash out the old life and bring clarity to the new one.

I have two more years to figure out which one I will choose.

In just 3 birthdays, Olivia has made more progress in knowing how this world works than the meagre awakening that I have achieved over my last 4 decades of birthdays.

I had fallen prey to bursting into this world like a fireworks explosion and then rapidly imploding into the void of darkness.

In the animal kingdom, babies learn to stand up and move within minutes. Much of their sole purpose in life is to survive the hunger of a sniffing predator.

We humans are different. It is the mind that governs our survival.

When I was born, I was totally helpless physically. It would have taken almost two birthdays before I could even know how to use the two legs that were built for walking (and cycling)..

Yet……

The mind/ego/consciousness was starting to shift through the gears. A cry meant the familiar warmth of a breast and some mouth exercise to bring relief to an empty feeling. This was the beginning to knowing how this world works.

Life in 3 acts

The three-act structure is a model used in narrative fiction that divides a story into three parts (acts), often called the Setup, the Confrontation and the Resolution. (Wikipedia).

Over a span of decades, the 3-act structure has been the guiding light in my life:

1. I was born. The story structure builds:
2. Shit happens. This is happening over a long timeline and I am still fighting my way out of this part of the story.
3. I die. I am not there yet… but his used to fill me with a frightening sense of dread and irony

However, an essential element of any good story is the pivot point just before the 3rd and final act.
…And it is REVELATIONS.

And it works like this:
What colour is an apple?
Red?
Green?
Golden?

It seems like any of these can be the correct answer (and I could bring up a whole lot of data to prove my answer of red – simply because there are more red apples in this world than the other colours combined).

The true colour of an apple is white. And this is only revelled when the apple is cut open to expose the body of the fruit.

Life in 4 acts plus a bonus.

The book of revelations is the final book of the new testament. And its existence is the key to opening the possibilities beyond the 3rd act (when Jesus Christ died).

I am now 62 years old.
….And I reckon I am one of the lucky ones who can live through my ‘book of revelations’ way before I check out of this world.
It has dawned upon me that my life has evolved in discrete steps of 20 years.
I have done 3 steps and there is more. (In the old days, humans lived to 60 – and the 3 act structure made sense).

So, I have been forced to use another metaphor for my life. It is in 4 parts – just as there are four seasons in a year.

1. SPRING. One day it is all barren and suddenly the cherry blossoms pop out. (guess what part of life this is…)
2. SUMMER. We are all on the beach chasing boys and girls. (most of us catch something).
3. AUTUMN. It is harvest time. But it is hard work. And as the saying goes… you reap what you sow.
4. WINTER. The nights grow longer and we wrap ourselves up to hibernate. Will we live through another winter?
   
   

But winter is the key… And there is work involved.

In cycling, those who ride through winter come out with a bonus the following spring.

In computer gaming, when you get enough points.. there is a bonus life after THE END.

For a lot of people, life goes into winter when they enter their 60s. It is a time for reflection and asking WHY? (why did this have to happen to me?).

There is a fine line between reflection and revelation. In my case, I fell into revelation as I learnt to say NO.
I have finally realised that the question I should always ask myself is WHY NOT?

There is a bonus life hidden in the depths of winter.
… And I am on a journey to hunt for it.

It felt like hours – but it was probably only 10 minutes.

I was strapped down and the air was getting stuffy. I could see the world moving about through the tiny circular window beside me. But I was stuck where I was – going nowhere.

Finally the pilot’s announcement put me out of my misery. We started moving and I waited for that familiar push onto the back of the seat. The acceleration mounted and all too quickly, we were airborne.

I know of people who could spend all day near a busy airport and watch the planes do their magic. Personally, I stop and watch every time a A380 floats its way across the Sydney skies and never stop marvelling how such a big vessel can actually fly.

The laws of physics states that if an object moves fast enough and has the right aerodynamics, it will create enough force to lift off. It seems that forward movement is the key to what life is all about. Even that famous equation E=MC² contains a forward velocity element.

From spinning electrons to the orbits of the planets, everything moves forwards. Most of us ride our bikes forward…

I love my sleep but I have a limited love relationship with my mattress. Stay on it too long and I get a sore back. I take it as a sign to get up and start moving. Sleep is only a truck stop on the highway of life. Come to think of it, all my life experiences have been when I have been awake and moving forward.

It is no accident that time only moves forward…and I have never seem a plane fly backwards yet.

So, if you want ‘lift-off’ in your life – keep heading forward. What is behind you is all done (and dusted). You can only meet the future by facing it and diving straight in…

Pick a fight and expect to be bruised. I can remember my most recent fight with the gates of Rookwood Cemetery… and like most fights that I pick, I came out badly bruised and obviously lost the match.

I did not really intend to choose a fight with a gate – it just happened. Although you may think that fighting is a deliberate choice, it is seldom the case.

Human beings and fighting go hand in hand. For some reason, we all love to have a ‘blue’ – even though we know that there is a good chance that physical and emotional pain would follow.  Even death does not deter us from having a decent fight and that is why wars will never end. As long as we are humans, we will try to pick up a fight with someone else. Sometimes, we even fight with ourselves – but because this does not involve an audience it is hidden beneath the surface… waiting to be uncovered by ‘shrinks’.

Rovny and Brambilla had a few swings at each other on stage 16 of the Vuelta. If it happened in the peloton, we would probably not have known. But because they were in the break and had good TV coverage, it is now quite a famous ‘blue’. It even forced the officials to wave the disqualification arm at both riders.  The fight will probably be watched on replay more times than the finish of the race that had Contador attack Froome in the last kilometre to produce an empathic (but less memorable) win. And now, most who follow cycle racing will remember this fight for years to come – but the pistol shot finish would fade into ‘another stage finish’.

Since fights are unavoidable, we just have to learn how to handle it properly.

When I get in a fight, I now know that there is no such thing as winning.  I will come out the other end bruised and hurt.

If I accept this law of nature, I know exactly what I am in for when I go in battling. And when the obvious results happen…it is as expected. And isn’t getting what you expect just the same as  winning?

Nude Pics were the hot news of the week.

And most of the feature news just dwelled on the surface of the issue. Naughty pictures on the internet are not new. Nor are the same style of exposure of some famous people (authorised or unauthorised) in the past. The uproar was that this time around, it had a bit of everything.

Human behaviour gravitates to the love of quantity. So, a bit of everything really grabs us.

And that is how we usually live our lives – just skimming along the surface of things. Because if we stopped and went deeper into things, we will miss out on the next shinning object that pops up.

But the real fun stuff is buried under the surface and if we go deep, the discoveries will enable us to see the surface things in so many levels… and this will eventually lead to appreciation of what life is offering us.

If we go deep into the nude pic saga, we get to discover the richness of the different levels of the whole story.

1 The legal issues. This the most superficial level because the laws that govern the storage and retrieval of digital media is being made up as we go. Most laws are just inventions by those who can anyway.

2. Privacy. If there was nothing to hide, there would not be any privacy issues. In the game of “hide and seek”, the only reason to hide is to be found. On this level, there are two camps. Those who like to hide and the others who like to hack and expose.

3. Nude pictures. Nude pictures were invented long before the iPhone camera. They can be found on walls in caves and ancient places of worship. As soon as some people figured that a whole industry could be founded on nudity, they started to condition the rest of us to hide behind clothes. My grandkids run around naked after their bath and think that is really fun. Unfortunately, someday soon, they will be conditioned to cover up. If nudity was not an industry – then nude pictures would have no value.

4. Spot the difference. This is where we go deeper. We have all seen ourselves naked and at our advanced age, we cannot count the number of naked people we have seen – either fleetingly or in our faces every day… So why do we still have this desire to see nude pics of more people?

It is because as human beings, we thrive on variety. We spend our lives trying to spot the difference between ourselves (plus what we own) and others– as if looking for that part of us that we are missing..

5. The façade of perfection. If someone leaked nude pictures of me that instantly made me the envy of all the other males in this world, my reaction would be to …. Leak more pictures!

We are all afraid of being judged as flawed by others. And it is easy to pick flaws when one has nothing to hide behind. At this “what is wrong with me?” level, we are continuously worried about our flaws becoming exposed.

6. Imagination triumphs reality.  This goes deeper into the human psyche. The only reason we love to take photos and to store them is so that when we look at them at some later date, it triggers the imagination. Pictures are taken to be looked at later. And sometimes a picture can be more real than the actual person…

As technology enables us to explore the path of virtual reality, we are going back to our roots. Imagination is all there is. Reality is only imagined.

7. We can go deeper. But we won’t at this stage,

If you find the chance to get unlimited use of an elevator in a skyscraper, go right up to the top to enjoy the view. Then go down each level at a time and notice how the view changes. And as you hit the bottom level, marvel at how they dug such a big hole and the structure that supports the whole building above.

Then go up the levels again and notice how your appreciation of the building and the views change.

This is what happens when you are able to go deep in life – rather than just skim along the surface,

 

A bike race presents the perfect backdrop to showcase the plight of opportunists.

There are the ‘escapees’ who will stay out at the front of the bike race from the start – working all day to stay away…all hoping to make it to the finish line before the chasing peloton.

Very often, these opportunists fail in their quest by the slimmest of margins. They then get swallowed by the chasers and are in no condition to contest the race any longer. But there are those rare occasions when the opportunists succeed, seeming to defy the odds.

Failure and sometimes success against the odds – that is the plight of the opportunists.

However, what most of us do not see in the same bike race are the hidden opportunists. These are the riders who choose to stay in the chasing peloton. The pure sprinter’s opportunity is to hide in the peloton until the last 200m before they unleash their preserved explosive acceleration. The sprinter’s hunting ground is in the peloton – not in the small group of break aways slaving away swapping turns to escape the clutches of the chase.

Then, there are the ‘GC’ riders who hunt in the arena of time differences. Their opportunities lay in positioning themselves within striking distance of their main rivals. They pounce on the chance to gain time over their main rivals in their race within a race.

The mountain points jersey is won by a calculating climber who conserves their energy until the right mountain tops appear. And the green jersey has to survive the mountains to stay in contention. Even the ‘domestiques’ have their place of work where they have to impress to make next season’s team.

Most opportunities are hidden and so are the opportunists. In the classic “Acres of Diamonds” story by R H Conwell, the hero goes far and wide looking for ‘the opportunity’ and ends up missing it because it is buried in his back yard.

To the un-initiated, the opportunities (and the opportunists) are at the head of the bike race – but the knowledgeable wait for the finish because they know different. Likewise, we all set forth in this world to seek our fortunes… and we end up in our old age realising that we were going after the wrong opportunity.