Conversation Wrestling

Conversations, especially more intense ones, are very similar to wrestling matches.  In wrestling, there is a hierarchy of positions, which each contestant trying to advance their position in hopes of winning the round.  In conversations people make similar moves with their tones of voice, facial expressions, and body language, trying to advance their position.

It is very fun to watch people arguing, especially when you can’t hear them or have no idea what they are saying.  If you watch them close enough, you can observe the trend of the conversation, who is winning the argument, and even predict the future actions of the participants.

The only difference between debate and wrestling is that in wrestling you can declare a victor.

Genetically Modified Food

Genetically modified food gets a really bad reputation in today’s society.  People obsessed with eating only healthy foods (which most of the times becomes a concern that everyone else be forced to eat healthy foods), have been trending more towards “organic” and “natural” foods over the last few years. I am fully aware of the dangers of overly processed foods, but we aren’t living in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.  While natural foods offer a variety of benefits, they also contain a boatload of dangers.

Genetic modification of plants and animals creates higher yields and less chance of illness.  Unfortunately the concern over “organic” foods has shifted from a genuine health concern to advertising manipulation.

I wholeheartedly enjoy genetically modified food, except for the fact that I can’t win watermelon seed spitting contests.

Wine

I have never understood wine.

Why does it matter what country it’s from?  How can such old wine sell for such high prices?  I tried to sell a ham and cheese sandwich from 1998 but no one bought it.

I feel like knowledge about wine is contained in a secret club of people who like dressing up in uncomfortably tight suits and top hats while discussing interest rates and stock projections.

Solitaire

Recently I had a little time to kill, and decided to play solitaire on the computer.  After reteaching myself how to play, I quickly discovered that there is a reason why I hate solitaire and why old people love it.  Besides being the worst possible solitaire player to ever try to place a King of Hearts on a King of Spades and wonder why the computer was “glitching out,” I realized that solitaire is boring because of its improbability of success.  Maybe I’m just terrible, but I couldn’t manage to win the game in the six times I tried.  I considered questions such as “Is it even possible to be bad at solitaire?”, “How do people think this game is fun?”, and “What monarchical status is the Jack?”  Also, if you were lost on an island with a deck of cards and no one to play with, would it be solitary confinement?

One Man Band

When you listen to music, you can hear all of the individual parts that make up the song, but when a computer plays the song, all of the parts are mixed together in one resultant sound.

You could observe this effect in any loud area, where there is more than one source of audio-wave creation.  Naturally people try to single out a certain source of noise, such as a person talking next to them.  If you try to zone out though, you can hear all of the noises as one conglomerate of sound.

My idea is that instead of singing or playing a single part in a song, you could sing/play all of them at the same time by only singing/playing the resultant sound.  Much in the way a beatboxer can create the illusion of many percussion instruments, you could take the part of the main vocalist, side vocalist, drummer, electric guitarist, pianist, and bassist all at the same time.

Mac OSX Snoop Lion

I generally don’t follow celebrity news, but I’m not here to bash those that do.  Recently, I heard that rapper Snoop Dogg changed his name to Snoop Lion.  I find this to be the most ingenious and hilarious news in a while.

Also, I came across this picture:

Kill the Penny!

There is a growing movement of people who want to get rid of the penny in the United States.  They argue that it costs more than $0.01 to produce a penny, that pennies can’t really be used to buy anything, and that digital and electronic forms of money are making pennies obsolete.

These are many good reasons, and I agree with all of their statements.  However, it makes me think about what money actually is, and how we buy and sell goods today.

If the penny were to be eliminated, some say, everything would have to be rounded to the nearest five cents, which would cause prices to go up.  This makes sense as there is no justification for pricing something at a number too precise for even the smallest coin.  Even with the penny still in existence today, there are numerous prices that are determined down to the tenth of a single penny.  Gas prices often have three numbers after the decimal point.  After the total amount of gas is pumped, the price will be rounded up to the nearest whole cent.  Sales tax, interest, and other money calculations are completed very specifically and rounded at the very end.

The physical existence of the penny allows prices to be set to the hundredth of a dollar.  We could eliminate the penny, but we could also go all the way and just halt any production of a paper or metal based value substitution system and go completely digital.  If that idea scares you or sounds ridiculous, you have common cents.

Hat Position and Relative Ego – A Statistical Analysis

I have constructed a scientifically accurate and statistically supported graph displaying the correlation between hat position and relative ego.  The graph is displayed from a birds-eye view, as if you are looking directly down on a person’s head.  The position of the hat is determined by the middle of the brim.  Sombreros and cowboy hats do not apply.

How cool people think they are with hats at a variety of positions (Figure A)

Patience

When you think of training patience, you may think of monks meditating in a temple somewhere in a jungle in Asia.  Although this may work, a much better and faster way to do it would be to play the videogame Super Meat Boy.

Super Meat Boy is an indie computer game that starts out easy then gets very, very hard.  The goal is to jump around, avoiding spikes, bombs, enemies, rockets, saw blades, monsters, radioactive goo, lasers, salt piles, and more.  The levels are relatively long, and if you get hit by any dangerous object once, you have to start the level over.  After attempting a level many times, you learn how to get past obstacles only to get hit by a new one.  If you play the game for more than two hours at a time you run the risk of going mad from the all-consuming rage. Here is a video:

While we are on the topic of extremely difficult games designed to make the player punch their computer screen and throw their mouse across the room, here is a video of Kaizo Mario World.  This game pushes the boundaries of fairness, resulting in deaths not even caused by the player’s mistakes.

Although extremely difficult, these games teach patience.  Whenever I need to wait for long periods of time or get fed up with something I remember the time that I gave up on one level of Super Meat Boy and how much better I felt playing something else instead.