Society

Before I allow the "Love as a mental illness" debate to die, I thought I should throw one final argument onto the table. The general conclusion seemed to be that it is simply not possible to be truly happy without a romantic partner. Most participants in the debate agreed that it was possible to change one's attitude towards life greatly, and even learn to become "neutral" because of inner factors alone. However, nearly everyone felt that a yet higher level, of "true" happiness, could only be achieved with the help of a romantic partner.

To disprove the theory that love is a "magical" part of life for which there is no substitute, I point to one profession where members are expected to forego the romantic part of life in all its forms, both just through sex and also through avoiding marriage. While there are many jobs that either require or suggest chastity, the job of Catholic priest is worth mentioning because of the recent controversy that has gripped the religion, at least in the United States.

Continue reading "On priests and chastity"

I recently stopped playing Halo 2 on Xbox Live as often as I used to because I became frustrated about the constant foul language and generally abhorrent people one would meet while playing the game. It seems that someone actually carefully jotted down what everyone had to say and created graphs on the subject (here, the words in question are printed on the site). It's shocking, to say the least. For example, he found that, on average, you're likely to hear someone say the F word at least 10 times per hour.

Most of these people are probably upstanding citizens in real life. What is it that causes people to degenerate into this mindless filth once they start up their consoles?

Earlier today, one of CNN's anchors posted an interesting article on one of the network's blogs. The article in question refers to a study conducted earlier in the decade by one British scientist Dr. Tallis, and now confirmed by a researcher named Lucy Brown. The old research was performed by interviewing people who had fallen in love, while the newer study was conducted by scanning the brains of people who were in love while they looked at pictures of the objects of their affections.

Many people label the results as shocking. In fact, when I searched for blogs that mentioned these studies, almost everyone discounted the study as "psychiatry run amok" or "science intruding upon our everyday lives." I have seen few topics on the Internet where so many people are in agreement. Yet, I still disagree with them all.

See, the studies show that romantic love is almost identical in physical symptoms and in brain response to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

Continue reading "Love as a mental illness"

Here's a warning: this is one of those blog-defining posts. 13 months ago, I posted that I had major problems with the state of dating today. I was even able to describe some of them to you: the expectation of society that men do all the work, and women who took advantage of that fact regardless of the cost. I pointed out some likely culprits: the seduction community, David DeAngelo, and the women's rights movement. Until now, however, I wasn't able to make a concrete suggestion as to why things are the way they are. I was not and still am not convinced that vague, uncontrollable forces such as "evolution" and "nature" are entirely at fault for this state of affairs.

That was until yesterday, when I finally pieced together at least some part of why my opinions are received so negatively by many people. I owe the revelation to watching an interview with the author of Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey into Manhood and Back, which I saw on CNN and later decided to buy the book. The premise of this book is different, to say the least: it details the journey of a woman who decided to pose as a man for 18 months.

Continue reading "Stop basing your life on what women think of you"

I regularly visit a number of sites with the purpose of drawing more visitors to this blog. Besides reading and leaving comments on other blogs, one the best ways I've found to increase traffic is by submitting articles to "article emporiums." These sites link to your site in exchange for content on your topic of expertise. An example of such an article is the "Likability Quotient". While anyone can contributes articles to these sites without justifying whether they are actually knowledable in the subject area, this one in particular seemed like it had some merit.

The article describes a concept the author calls the "likability quotient," which is a measure of how much someone is liked or disliked in general by the people he or she meets. The quotient is based upon attributes such as how often a person complains, for example.

Continue reading ""Likability Quotient""

Since I seem to be on a roll of introducing new "theories," I thought I'd write today about another observation I've made recently, this one concerning tradeoffs. For those who might not be aware, I now work as a software engineer for traffic.com, a company headquartered in Wayne, PA. The company configures and installs traffic sensors on major highways in about 40 cities. Most of the company's bottom line is earned through trading that data to radio and television stations, which then use an application to visually display the data on the air. In return, the company gets 10-second advertising spots from the stations, which they resell to other companies.

Even though I've only been there for a short time, I suspect that working in the field of broadcasting will give me the opportunity to see the nitty-gritty that goes on behind the scenes. In particular, the company has moved into the business of building and leasing space for studios for a few television crews. I visited two of the studios in the building earlier this week and took a look around, and met DJs for some morning radio shows broadcast to cities like New York.

Continue reading "The paradox of fame and fortune"

Earlier tonight, I ran across an interesting article entitled Competing Choices: Men's and Women's Paths After Earning a Bachelor's Degree. The piece, as have many before it, reviews whether careers or family lives should come first after University graduation. The first half of the article covers tried-and-true statistics about which majors women are more likely to major in compared to men, and so on.

The second half, however, reveals some interesting differences related to both majors and GPAs. First, those who chose majors in business and engineering were more likely to get married than those who majored in liberal arts. That goes in direct contrast to scientific evidence posted on CNN last week, which found that people who were artists (especially dancers) were more attractive than those who were not.

Continue reading "Statistics correlating marriage and University educations"

I have a few extra hours before the graduation ceremonies today for the most unfortunate of reasons. Because there was a quarter inch of ice overnight, one of the participants was involved in a minor car accident on the way west from Connecticut. Fortunately, nobody was hurt and there was little or no damage. On the other hand, I've been sitting around my apartment with little to do until 3:00. It hit me about an hour ago that this is what the weekends are like for people after they graduate from college. It's been so long since I've had a weekend free with no homework to worry about that I didn't remember how life was before this hell began.

If the next few weeks are like today, being able to come home at night and do things other than get back to work, then it's likely I'll have a radical change in opinion on many of the stances I've taken on this blog. Yet, before all those changes occur, I've made a decision on what to do that will (hopefully) last for the next few years - without any clue as to how life will be like with all this free time.

Continue reading "Take a risk"

Yesterday, I walked to the office of the Schreyer Honors College and submitted my thesis, which I had already submitted to the graduate school several weeks before. The honors college required a few changes to be made to the document, and with everything that had been going on I wasn't able to get them done until yesterday. In fact, there is so much going on that I didn't consider handing in the thesis to be anything special - it just meant an end to the writing and a beginning to the extra programming required to get the simulation up to the level that my boss wants before I leave the position on December 13. That in itself will probably require a lot of hours over the next two weeks.

When I walked into the office, however, everyone there started talking about how I was "finally done." After getting all the paperwork in order, the secretary informed me that when someone completes all the requirements for the college, he or she is privileged with the ability to bang a gong in the corner of the office. They told me to hit the thing as loud as I wanted, so I wound up and made a crash so loud that I almost fell backward. Suddenly, ten people poked their heads above the cubicles and started clapping.



Continue reading "Traditions"

Years ago, I remember looking forward to Halloween. Weeks before the holiday arrived, I (with the help of my brother and others) would hang up plastic pumpkins over all the trees around the house, and would gather those plastic pumpkin leaf bags. Because where I used to live had a warm climate, it was difficult to find leaves around until early November, so we crumpled newspaper to fill them. We would hang orange lights outside and cover the doors to the house in ghoulish scenes.

These days, people still buy the pumpkins and lights, as is evident from retailers posting record sales in Halloween decorations in recent years, but they do little else. Trick-or-treating, the staple of Halloween, has declined to near nonexistence, and you rarely see people walking about in costumes these days. When I was young enough to participate, I recall that almost every house would have its lights on to invite visitors, and we would have to empty our bags after the first hour because we would have too much candy to carry. My father would purchase huge stashes and would often run out. These days, if ten visitors stop by his house the entire night, he's shocked.
Continue reading "Halloween: a dying tradition"

USA Today has an article about the new Doom movie, which topped the box office last weekend. The article points out that many of the movie's viewers - 59% - had played the video game with the same name. And 46% of those who turned out did so solely because they had played the game.

Most of the article laments the fact that movie studios are making less than they did last year, by almost 6%. One of the distributors blames the phenomenon on the lack of young males going to the movies:

"Women are coming out to the theaters, but they're coming out to movies with each other and not their boyfriends and husbands," says Jim Tharp, distribution chief for DreamWorks. "I think we've lost a lot of our male audiences this year. The video game industry may be having more of an effect than we originally thought it might."

Continue reading "The effect of video games on society"

I sacrificed a homework assignment this weekend in order to participate in a dance workshop, despite having lost interest in dancing over the past few months, as discussed earlier on this blog. I figured I would give it one big try to determine if the activity is something I want to continue when I begin building a life for myself after graduation. I'll discuss my (largely mixed) observations on the dance community and "exchange weekends" in a later post.

One of the reasons why I've become more and more disinterested in dancing, at least in this type of dance, is that the activity forces men and women into antiquated roles. Generally, men do the leading, and women do the following. And although some people vehemently insist that women equally share the burden of initiating a dance, in practice the men largely do the asking and the women stand around waiting to be asked. It's all very old-fashioned and outdated.

Continue reading "Leaderless dance"

I like the rain. Fortunately, today there's been plenty of it. It's been a steady torrential downpour for most of the day, with at least four more inches predicted. The heavy rain is predicted to continue through most of the day tomorrow - and the temperatures are actually going to return to normal (58 degrees) or even lower. I wish I had time to go to the huge football game tomorrow in this stuff - it should make for a classic brawl.

Because of that football game, I'm looking out the window at traffic stretching for miles up to the intersection of two main roads - that's not surprising, given that the cheapest hotel rooms are selling for $600 a weekend - at the nicer places, you could easily pay a grand. What is surprising is how few people are actually doing anything other than sitting in that traffic.

Continue reading "Scared off by the rain?"