What is value?
How do we define the value of something? It’s a tricky question, we can look at other identical or very similar objects and extrapolate a value for what we have by averaging, we can check an online price guide (like Redbook for cars in Australia) or we can make up a number based on what we would like the object to be worth.
In reality, while many things may have a value on paper or a website, the value of something is dictated by what another person is prepared to pay at the time of sale. For example, your real estate agent may say your house is worth $500,000 based upon recent sales and trends but the actual value of your house is an unknown. When you recieve one offer of $450,000 and five between $455,000 and $460,000 then the value of your house is probably closer to $455,000. Of course someone may come along and offer you $550,000, the value really is whatever someone is prepared to pay. This is a common (though often overlooked) axiom in business but something quite foreign to most people until they try selling their first car, house or used laptop.
Two recent example for me are one of my cars and my house. I decided to sell the lot and go on a trip around Australia, as you do. I didn’t expect to get more than $2000 for the car, yet someone came along and offered me $2600 simply because it was exactly what they were looking for in a cheap small car and it had low mileage. In this case I did far better than expected, in fact 30% better, because to that particular buyer the car was worth more than what I perceived the market value to be.
On the other hand, I was told by various sources that my house was worth over $430,000, yet come sale time I never received an offer more than $415,000. While I eventually negotiated up to $420, 000 (twice), the market as a whole simply didn’t agree with the ‘professional’ valuations I’d received. No-one believed my house was worth $430,000+, regardless of it’s good points, and the value of the house was determined by what someone was prepared to pay.
As you sell and buy you’ll see the same rule crop up again and again, and it’s something to keep in mind while buying as much as when selling. A great place to see this working in miniature is a garage (or yard) sale. You may think that crystal mug is worth $50, but I’d almost guarantee you’ll get $5, The actual value, regardless of what you paid and how immaculate it is, hinges on what someone is prepared to pay. Use this to your advantage and only buy things at the end of the day when sellers are desperate to offload left-overs. Scale this up when buying a car and again when buying a house. Don’t let the market tell you how much to pay, only offer what you think it’s worth. When they say no, as the seller invariably will, come back a week later and see if it’s still for sale. Offer the same again, or less if you like. After all, it’s not selling so the market isn’t prepared to pay what the seller thinks it’s worth.
So in conclusion, when selling don’t get carried away when valuers give you high expectations or by what you’d like to get. Be realistic. When you buy, be realistic when deciding what you think something’s worth, using what the seller wants as a guide only. And on that note, I’m off to sell another car!
Filed under: life | 1 Comment
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26131264-5006785,00.html
A news story I can only describe, quite angrily, as disgusting. Weren’t laws enacted over 30 years ago to abolish this sort of thing?
It just goes to show that no matter what religious leaders say, no matter how much they try to water their extreme and backward beliefs down in public – they’re still and will always be a bunch of divisive, hate-filled bigots. Despicable. I feel ashamed that this happens in a country like Australia.
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Tags: discrimination, gay rights, religion, women's rights
The most protected of species
In this day and age and despite everything we’ve learned through the marvel of science, why is it that people still continue listening to religious figures on matters of…well anything really? What is it they have to say that’s so different and from where do they command such authority on all manner of subjects? Without a shred of evidence they present incredible stores with no basis in reality, much like fairy tales, and people still believe them. They claim to speak for God, which says little for God’s character since most of the rhetoric is either banal, violent or sly. They claim to be the great moral compass of society but regularly preach division, war and intolerance.
Remove the old bollocks of them drawing authority and morality through the ‘good’ book or divine influence and you’re left with very little. I’ve met ministers and priests who are nice people, sure, but the extent of their knowledge usually goes no further than an understanding of the current trendy western religion. It’s like having an encyclopedic knowledge of the Greek pantheon or only researching Grimm’s fairy tales and then using that to guide peoples lives. Science, politics, history, medicine etc fall way, way outside of their understanding or experience (although there are of course exceptions). Their morals come from a book that extols the virtues of killing your neighbour or beating your children to death. Of the 10 ultimate commandments, only 3 of them are of any use as the rest talk about doing as God says or “don’t take stuff that isn’t yours”. I feel a bit sad for the ministers and bishops who have wasted their entire lives studying the ancient version of Goldilocks. Some church leaders are intelligent people who could have done society a lot of good had they not been sucked into the world of wishful thinking and power mongering.
I believe one of the reasons for this is that having figures of authority helps legitimise the self-deception that believers wallow in. Believers want to think that life goes on, that no-one dies, that everything will be taken care of by the ultimate mother figure in the sky and you don’t have to handle all that work and all those burdens like a real grown up. Having someone in a large hat or impressive robe stand up and spout grand words will reinforce those childish, desperate wants and provide a great comfort - because deep down many believers are unsure. Unsure if this collection of ancient stories is true (or relevant), unsure if it’s okay to ignore some of the old laws when they no longer suit, unsure what God is actually doing for them, unsure why they have to talk to themselves all the time, unsure if that prawn they had with their surf and turf has doomed them to eternal damnation.
To question church leaders however is to commit one of societies greatest sins. Everyone gets worked into a frenzy. People ask how you can question the moral authority of this bishop or that deacon. He has a direct line to Jesus, after all. His robes and extensive knowledge of writings from a nomadic tribe several thousand years ago means he knows all. It’s insane! How the hell are we still stuck in that 16th century thinking? The enlightenment came long ago, people have been questioning and breaking down religion for hundreds of years. The stranglehold on peoples lives was broken before the industrial revolution began and many people lost their lives so we didn’t have to be ignorant slaves any longer. Yet here we sit, often reluctant to speak out against a church leader, still happy to offer them seats on important councils as a ‘moral compass’. It’s limp-wristed and needs to stop, so as a world society we can advance and grow beyond such medieval meddling. How can we stop it…well that’s a topic for another day.
Filed under: religion | 1 Comment
Tags: atheism, belief, god, indoctrination, religion
I asked someone a while ago whether they believed in God and the answer was a surprising one for our day and age. The answer was ‘I suppose so’.
I didn’t think much of it at the time but after some reflection it strikes me as a terrible position. That person had neither the fervent belief of the truly religious (however misguided) nor the reasoned realism of an atheist.
I wish I’d asked some questions at the time because I’ll bet anyone $20 that the reason for that person’s vague belief is that belief in a religion has become the default setting for humanity. I know for a fact that this person doesn’t believe in anything in particular, doesn’t do to a church or mosque, doesn’t pray, has never read a Bible or Koran (or Gita) and certainly doesn’t live in a religious environment. It’s just that blindly believing in a God is the norm, even to the non-religious.
I’m sure the person I have in mind wouldn’t be offended if I questioned their belief, and may even agree that it’s a little silly if reasoned with. It’s the fact that people are indoctrinated to think this way in the first place that concerns me.
With regards the title, it must be made clear that a belief in God isn’t the default setting from birth. We’re not born with religion. We don’t know and understand modern Gods ’straight from the box’, no, it must be ‘installed’. To borrow from the writings of Richard Dawkins, the ideas of religion must be transmitted to the new host as a ‘virus of the mind’. How I dearly wish to protect my children from this infection until they are old enough to analyse religion for themselves and make their own decision.
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Tags: atheism, belief, choice, god, indoctrination, religion, self-determination
A Devil’s Chaplain
From the last paragraph of an article by Richard Dawkins…
Safety and happiness would mean being satisfied with easy answers and cheap comforts, living a comfortable lie. The alternative is risky. You stand to lose comforting delusions: you can no longer suck at the pacifier of faith in immortality. To set against that risk, you stand to gain ‘growth and happiness’; the joy of knowing that you have grown up, faced up to what existence means; to the fact that it is temporary and all the more precious for it.
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A quantum leap
Just a quick one. People seem to think that a quantum leap is a sudden and large stride forward in a certain field of understanding. Yet an actual quantum leap is a completely different beast; according to John Gribbin in Almost Everyone’s Guide to Science a quantum has two distinct features.
When an electron in a high energy state (excited) has a choice of two or more lower energy levels, it chooses randomly.
The second is that the jump, or leap, is very tiny.
Therefore a quantum leap is actually a very small change made entirely at random. The only similarity between the saying and the scientific term is that the change is instantaneous, it’s a change from one thing to another with nothing happening in between.
Check out some wikipedia action for more -> quantum leap.
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More?
Yes, there’s more to come but I’ve been inundated with interstate work, children’s birthdays, visitors and a social life. The first article in my Scorecard series is being worked on intermittently, when I can find some time away from all the above, and I reckon the completion time will be around mid-September.
EDIT: I’m putting the whole scorecard idea on hold as it takes a fair bit research to get right; which takes a fair bit of time, which I simply don’t have. I’ll pick this idea up again sometime in the future but in the meantime i’ll work on smaller articles. Electron shells are something I’ve love to write about next but it’s a complicated subject and I’d like to break it down a bit. Which takes time. Which I don’t really have. TBA.
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The scorecard so far
It must be at least once at week I find myself wondering where the hell all those wonderous sciences and technologies we read about in the 90’s have gone. Like a lot of people I find myself a little dissapointed in 2008. Perhaps the hype of the late 90’s affected my subconcious more than I realised, I mean, if you believed in everything you read back then we’d have a cure for the common cold by now; along with basic nanotech, alternative fuels and many exciting advances in health thanks to stem cells and other vague bio technologys. With that in mind I want to visit the areas I once believed would be far more advanced in 2008; explore where they are now, where they’re going, why it’s taking so long and when we can expect something that knocks our socks off. Coming up next…Cancer research – wheres my cure?
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Tags: future, medicine, research, science
Some things for today
Man’s destruction of Africa – oh dear
All technology can be used for good…or evil
Open source cancer research! - er, wow. That’s unexpected. Very welcome, but unexpected.
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Have you ever, while drinking your 12th beer of the evening, enjoyed a moment of contemplation and wondered ‘what is all this stuff, this…..stuff, made of’? To be imprecise, all stuff in the entire universe is made of…stuff. The same kind of stuff that all other things are made of. This other stuff comes in the form of atoms, electrons, quarks, gluons and other amusing little things.
Atoms, in broad terms, are the building blocks of everything around you – and though everything around you feels solid, it’s not. In fact, nothing is even TOUCHING anything else. No, really. It’s true.
To put that in simplest terms you need to understand two very general things.
1. When talking about charged things - or magnetic things - like repels like and opposites attract. So two things that have a positive charge will repel each other while one thing witha positive charge and another with a negative charge will attract each other. Got a bar magnet? And another bar magnet? Ok, me neither, but if you think back to science classes you may remember pushing the two together. If you push negative to negative, they try their hardest to stay apart. But put positive anywhere near negative and they come together like two hot sweaty blondes in a bath of jelly. What?
2. Um. I forget. Oh yeah, atoms are made of a whole bunch of things. 3 things if you ignore such particles as quarks and gluons. Protons, which have a positive charge; electrons, which have a negative charge; and neutrons, which have no charge, or no net charge to be pedantic.
Here’s a picture of an atom.
To be precise, it’s a helium atom. I’ll leave all talk of atomic weights, isotopes, ions, shells and whatnot for other posts, but for now you know enough to understand how atoms made stuff and why they don’t actually touch.
See the electrons around that nucleus? Thinking back a paragraph or two you might remember that electrons have a negative charge. Now think back to point one, like things repel each other. So two atoms won’t actually touch.
Why the hell then don’t we fly apart into individual atoms and enjoy an atom orgy where no atom actually touches another atom? The answer is simple, an electron cloud(more on this another day) around an atom is attracted to the protons in the nucleus of another atom. The atoms therefore come together but never actually touch. Cool, huh?
ps. Okay, the world of atoms is far more complex and wondrous than this simple article makes it out to be, but I found this all very interesting and simple to understand so I’m outlining it this way. There are many nuances and exceptions I’m sure. I’ll try to cover them in the fullness of time ie. when I have time.
Filed under: science | 5 Comments
Tags: atoms, charge, electrons, particles, protons
An aside
While i try to find time for the next full post….
Georgia Tech researchers developing tricorder-like medical scanner
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Creationism and science
Some random news stories and articles discussing creationism and science. These come pretty much exclusively from the US where such a topic is big news. I fervently hope the same thinking never spreads into Australia and when I cover ‘creationism’ please don’t expect a fair and balanced appraisal because I think it’s total bollocks.
I’ll kick off with a well balanced article that probably summarises best what I believe. There should be room in religion for science and a realistic view of our world. If some sections of society wish to believe in stuff like creationism that’s fine, but they should restrict their sermons to like-minded or curious people and not foist it upon everyone.
Creationism is fine, just don’t call it science
Questioning evolution in schools - I have no problem with people questioning evolution, as long as it’s not a smokescreen to sneak wild, unsupported speculation onto the curriculum.
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Tags: creationism, pseudoscience, science
Electromagnetism
Electromagnetism. I’ve heard the term a thousand times before now but never really grasped the concept until quite recently. Sure, I know what electricity is and I know all about magnets, but what’s electromagnetism all about and why is it so important?
Let’s nutshell it to begin with and go from there. Electromagnetism is the concept that a moving electric current creates a magnetic field and a moving magnet creates an electric current. As an example, electricity moving through a wire creates a magnetic field around itself while a magnet moved past a wire or through a coil of wire creates an electric current in that wire or coil.
Electric motors and generators work on these two ideas. In an electric motor an electric current moves past magnets that then turn a drive shaft. A generator with a chemical source of energy moves magnets past a coil of wire and creates an electric current.
Electromagnetic waves are self propagating. An electric wave sets off and the movement generates a magnetic wave that moves along with the electric wave. In turn, as this magnetic waves moves it creates an electric wave. The electric wave moving with the magnetic wave creates another magnetic wave, and so on.
Light, radio, x-rays etc are all electromagnetic waves with the variation in their wavelength determining their properties. It’s important to understand that all electromagnetic waves move at the speed of light (which is roughly 3×108 m/s).
There is so very much more to this subject but to go further is to branch out into other subjects and delve into more difficult territory.
As a final word I just wanted to mention that this article describes the classical model with an electromagnetic field regarded as a smooth, continuous wave. In the quantum world an electromagnetic field is regarded as a collection of particles, or photons. I’ll leave quantum physics until another day as I’ve only recently begun to understand how it works. Anything I say now is likely to be wrong.
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Tags: electromagnetism, waves
Coming up next…
Now i’ve put across those two basic ideas I’ll be getting into some of the interesting stuff I’ve read and heard about, posting stories from the world of science, commenting on life, theorising on interesting historical happenings and generally making bold statements that I hope are at least moderately well informed.
What I can promise is that the content and commentary will remain firmly grounded in the real world and not wander off into pseudo-science or superstition. If there’s one thing I really hate it’s half arsed mumbo jumbo crammed down peoples throats as real and shielded from independant inquiry. I’ll have a go at that shit as well.
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