But who knows?

A friend of mine had a question recently and being too shy to ask, she googled it…

Is this the 21st century?

Wow. I guess she has to google everything.

math

ROMANCE MATHEMATICS

Smart man + smart woman = romance
Smart man + dumb woman = affair

Dumb man + smart woman = marriage 
Dumb man + dumb woman = pregnancy

OFFICE ARITHMETIC

Smart boss + smart employee = profit
Smart boss + dumb employee = production 
Dumb boss + smart employee = promotion 
Dumb boss + dumb employee = overtime 


SHOPPING MATH

A man will pay $2 for a $1 item he needs.
A woman will pay $1 for a $2 item that she doesn’t need. 


GENERAL EQUATIONS & STATISTICS

A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.
A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.
A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.
A successful woman is one who can find such a man. 


HAPPINESS

To be happy with a man, you must understand him a lot and love him a little.
To be happy with a woman, you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all.

LONGEVITY

Married men live longer than single men do, but married men are a lot more willing to die. 


PROPENSITY TO CHANGE

A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn’t.
A man marries a woman expecting that she won’t change, and she does. 


DISCUSSION TECHNIQUE

A woman has the last word in any argument.
Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument. 


HOW TO STOP PEOPLE FROM BUGGING YOU ABOUT GETTING MARRIED

Old aunts used to come up to me at weddings, poking me in the ribs and cackling, telling me, “You’re next.” They stopped after I started doing the same thing to them at funerals.

How would life be if the dance sequences we see in Bollywood movies was an everyday thing? It’s amazing how influential popular culture is and how it can affect different cultures. Today in America, most Hollywood movies aren’t like the musicals of Bollywood, which is both a good and bad thing. Good and bad because everyone’s definition of the two is DIFFERENT.

I typically like the “shortness” of Hollywood films because some plots are not meant to be dragged another hour. However, the brevity does short change great movies that would benefit from another hour, and it short changes the movie watcher, the writer, the director… basically everyone. It benefits our imagination and creativity, however at the same time it leaves us in an abyss of darkness. Like all things in life there is a good to every bad and a bad to every good.

If you can look past the “Americanizing,” the goofy jokes, the (sometimes) horribly long run time, etc, there are some advantages. Can you imagine opening up a movie soundtrack market? I’m not talking about the score, but actual songs… with lyrics. How much revenue would that increase? How much more of a cult classic can a movie become? The possibilities are endless, we see this in many of the older Bollywood movies: Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Diwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, etc. The list goes on and on, and why? Because of the songs—tailored specifically for that movie, for that scene, for those actors—the film’s impact on us heightened. I’ve seen plenty of pre-blog era posts (think myspace) which includes the following information: date, time, “current song”, and the body text. Music can have a profound affect on thoughts. We rely on our senses, but we sometimes fail to realize that our senses are interconnected. Movies have limitations; we see and hear. There is no smell, feel, or taste… so to get the most out of the situation you crank up the audio and visual aspects.

This is where Bollywood and Hollywood begin to draw their differences. Bollywood, used to, and I mean USED TO lean a bit more towards the audio aspect of film. I can go ahead and claim that all of the Hindi movies considered classics had GREAT songs. Hollywood seems to be relying heavily on CGI, special effects, etc. nowadays. Western culture has always seem to have been about imagery. Using powerful imagery to invoke certain feelings has been characteristic of many great novels. Implementing that same technique into movies shows that there has been a shift in how American culture has moved from the books to the box office.

Books allow the imagination to run wild; however in movies, the imagination is limited to boundaries set up by the director. The more control you have over an aspect, the more meticulous you have to be in order to induce the particular feeling you have in mind. Reading a book allows the reader to relate themselves to the characters and situations. We often like to sympathize with characters from books; in our minds we give them faces and qualities similar to those of our family, friends, and acquaintances. Movies remove that feature as far as “story telling” goes, so you have to compensate.

Great movies should be more than just an intriguing story line, they should be an experience. We go to weddings, but can you imagine a wedding with “Bollywood style” dancing? Synchronized dance sequences, although extremely cliche in Indian culture, are FUN. They are exciting because you really only see them in the movies, but imagine seeing them at weddings, receptions, engagements. Hell, maybe will get common enough that it will be something you can experience in the quad in-between classes, but who knows?

We live life emphasizing that the decisions we make lead us to our destination. Although this might be true, we overlook that fact that some decisions we don’t really make…they are made for us. Dan Ariely, a behaviorial economist, gathered some information about somewhat trivial decisions we “make” and how the choices givne to us affect the decisions. Sounds like common sense so far, huh?

Dan Ariely gathered some data about organ donors in a few European countries and this is what he found:

Doesn’t make sense, does it? You’d think it’d be a cultural difference but the fact that similar countries are on opposite ends would contradict that thought. Germany-Austria, UK-France, Netherlands-Belgium, etc. What could possibly cause this disparity?

Turns out that it has to do with the form at the DMV. The DMV form for the countries on the left read something like, “Check this box if you want to participate in the organ donor program.” People don’t check the box, they’re not in the program. The DMV form for the countries on the right read something like, “Check this box if you do not want to participate in the organ donor program.” People don’t check the box, they’re in the program.

You might be wandering why the Dutch were higher of all the ones on the left. Turns out the govt. sent out letters to each home begging people to join the organ donor program. As Dan Ariely said, “You know the phrase begging only gets you so much? Well it turns out it only gets you 28% in organ donation.” (insert lol here)

I don’t have much to add to this, Dr. Ariely did a great job with it…behavioral economics is where it’s at! If you’re interested here’s is that rest of his presentation: Dan Ariely - TED 2009.

I’ve realized that we’re all spoiled. Some discoveries don’t seem to have that “wow-factor,” sadly because the complexity of it is shadowed only by its pragmatic quality.

Many people can easily mention Einstein’s famous theory of relativity, but most of those people have never looked into it in such depth that they could actually tell someone else what it means. Do you even know what E = MC^2 means?

The theory of relativity isn’t pragmatic for our purposes (for now at least) so I’ll move on to what I really want to say. Agriculture. Simple? Yes, of course. Dig a small hole, put the seed in the hole, cover up the hole with dirt, pour water over it, and wait. But really, who the fuck went to the extent to actually think of this somewhat arbitrary process?

Thought process: “Hey, let me take this spherical object and put it in the ground just to see what happens.”

Pretty outrageous huh? Well take it one step further. Some guy decides to take some grain, grind it up, add some water and yeast, and put it over a fire…riiiiggghhhttt.

This is what keeps me up at night.