I have often heard girls claiming that guys are shallower in choosing a mate. "You all just want the hot girls" they say.
I do agree that physical attractiveness does play a significant role when guys look for a partner. However I think the same applies for girls. I've seen many girls go "oh I care about heart not about looks" in public, then quietly tell me that they want a cute/hot guy when I offer to introduce guys to them. The smart thing girls do is that when they choose based on looks, they say it's based on "feel", while when guys choose based on looks they just say it's based on looks. So girls have better PR skills, which doesn't surprise me somehow.
But for argument's sake lets admit that guys care more about looks than girls.
Is this necessarily more shallow?
Let's analyze the situation. If girls attach less weight to the "looks" factor, they will necessarily attach more weight to other factors, such as personality, career, intelligence, etc. What are the implications of these factors?
Personality - girls want a guy with a strong character so he can protect her/their children better.
- girls want a guy with a caring character so he can care for her/their children better.
Career - more money can provide for her/their children better.
Intelligence - smarter = better career (generally speaking), see above point.
So we can see that these factors all ultimately benefit the girl and her immediate children.
On the other hand, how about looks? Statistics show that good looks benefit one in terms of likability, income, success, political career and even the ability to escape conviction in front of a jury. So if you look at it this way, one who wants an attractive mate is considering the long-term welfare of his or her children. More than that, it serves to bolster the long-term genetic potential of all his or her future descendants.
So if we look at this way, hotness is actually a less shallow criteria than personality or career as it confers the most benefits in the long run, measured over generations.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Friday, November 25, 2011
Primitivity
I once went on a class trip to visit a native village near the city I stay in. After we had gave a few gifts to the village elders and finished exchanging pleasantries, a friend and I started chatting with a native teenage boy.
My friend asked him: "So what do you do in your free time?" He answered "Playstation 2". After all of us had finished laughing, we began chatting about the games we played.
I bet some people would be disappointed at hearing that; they would probably hope that he would say his favorite pastime was kicking a rattan ball or hunting wild animals with a blowpipe. "More authentic" they say. We can observe this tendency to feel that it's better to keep the old ways from the laments we see in comments to magazine articles which feature native tribes in Africa or South America which are modernizing.
Now, if you asked those people who didn't like this trend of modernization to live without electricity or catch their own dinner, I bet they wouldn't be too fond of it. So why should we expect natives to like it too? Just because they are used to it? I am used to being stuck in traffic too, but if someone were to offer me a way to avoid the jam and get to work, I'd jump at the chance.
Same thing with natives and modern amenities. Why would you want to do things the hard way?
My friend asked him: "So what do you do in your free time?" He answered "Playstation 2". After all of us had finished laughing, we began chatting about the games we played.
I bet some people would be disappointed at hearing that; they would probably hope that he would say his favorite pastime was kicking a rattan ball or hunting wild animals with a blowpipe. "More authentic" they say. We can observe this tendency to feel that it's better to keep the old ways from the laments we see in comments to magazine articles which feature native tribes in Africa or South America which are modernizing.
Now, if you asked those people who didn't like this trend of modernization to live without electricity or catch their own dinner, I bet they wouldn't be too fond of it. So why should we expect natives to like it too? Just because they are used to it? I am used to being stuck in traffic too, but if someone were to offer me a way to avoid the jam and get to work, I'd jump at the chance.
Same thing with natives and modern amenities. Why would you want to do things the hard way?
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
What if Facebook started charging money
I always see these stupid spam letters on Facebook about how Facebook is about to start charging money and if 50 million people stand up against it Mark Zuckerberg will back down. Barring the sheer stupidity of such spam letters, I wonder what would happen if Mark really did start charging some cold hard cash for the privilege of poking our friends, talking about ourselves 24-7 and stalking hot members of the opposite sex.
How much could he charge? RM100 a month? No way, I would switch back to Friendster. RM 1? Yes I would pay Rm 1 a month to use it. RM 10? That's a good question.
Mark would have to find the best price to maximize revenue obtained. Trouble is a large section of people using Facebook nowadays are kids, and the hassle of getting a credit card to pay for it online might stop them. They would switch to Friendster maybe. This would not be good for business.
Maybe what he could do is to sell a voucher containing a certain amount of value. The value might get you an hour on Facebook, or maybe a certain number of actions such as a thousand words for comments/messages. I'm not sure how that would translate into Facebook games though.
If he does it, I sure hope he charges by word. Then I would have to endure much less updates such as "I'm waiting for the bus now" on my wall.
How much could he charge? RM100 a month? No way, I would switch back to Friendster. RM 1? Yes I would pay Rm 1 a month to use it. RM 10? That's a good question.
Mark would have to find the best price to maximize revenue obtained. Trouble is a large section of people using Facebook nowadays are kids, and the hassle of getting a credit card to pay for it online might stop them. They would switch to Friendster maybe. This would not be good for business.
Maybe what he could do is to sell a voucher containing a certain amount of value. The value might get you an hour on Facebook, or maybe a certain number of actions such as a thousand words for comments/messages. I'm not sure how that would translate into Facebook games though.
If he does it, I sure hope he charges by word. Then I would have to endure much less updates such as "I'm waiting for the bus now" on my wall.
Friday, November 11, 2011
The trouble with modern economies (1)
Say you have a family. Everyone pitches in to do housework. Mom cooks and does dishes, Dad does the heavy work, and the two kids clean the house up. Maybe everyone spends a couple hours a day on doing housework.
As the family finances improve, they buy more and more machines to help them do the work. Mixers and dishwashers help Mom to finish her work fast, a lawnmower helps Dad, while an automatic vacuum cleaner helps the kids. So everyone cuts their work down to one hour a day. Sounds good right?
Unfortunately in the real world when machines increase productivity, we don't get a reduction in work hours. What happens is some people get laid off. The remaining people have to work just as hard. Either that, or they get shifted to do new things.
I used to do consulting work for a large beer company. The factory itself was really empty; there were only a few workers walking around checking instruments and operating the machines, which were mostly automated anyway. There were far more people in the office upstairs doing various kinds of paperwork, such as increasingly fine analysis of accounts and operations, as well as increased marketing efforts.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we didn't have to increase all this paperwork? I really don't see what benefit it brings our society. Yet it wouldn't be a good idea for a company to go "screw it, we don't need to get our people to do this elaborate marketing campaigns", as they might lose market share to companies that did get people to do elaborate marketing campaigns. The sad truth of competition is preventing all of us from reducing our work hours to 6 hours a day due to modern technology.
As the family finances improve, they buy more and more machines to help them do the work. Mixers and dishwashers help Mom to finish her work fast, a lawnmower helps Dad, while an automatic vacuum cleaner helps the kids. So everyone cuts their work down to one hour a day. Sounds good right?
Unfortunately in the real world when machines increase productivity, we don't get a reduction in work hours. What happens is some people get laid off. The remaining people have to work just as hard. Either that, or they get shifted to do new things.
I used to do consulting work for a large beer company. The factory itself was really empty; there were only a few workers walking around checking instruments and operating the machines, which were mostly automated anyway. There were far more people in the office upstairs doing various kinds of paperwork, such as increasingly fine analysis of accounts and operations, as well as increased marketing efforts.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we didn't have to increase all this paperwork? I really don't see what benefit it brings our society. Yet it wouldn't be a good idea for a company to go "screw it, we don't need to get our people to do this elaborate marketing campaigns", as they might lose market share to companies that did get people to do elaborate marketing campaigns. The sad truth of competition is preventing all of us from reducing our work hours to 6 hours a day due to modern technology.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
The mechanics of sneezing
Last night as I was lying on my bed about to sleep, a violent urge to sneeze seized me, and I was forced to yield to it by letting loose an extremely powerful sneeze. The force of the sneeze threw me up into a sitting position.
This got me thinking: why do we throw our upper body forward when we sneeze? Obviously the sneeze is gas + liquid expelled forward, so by the laws of motion our body should be thrown backward by the reaction instead of forward. When a rocket expels hot gas in one way it flies the other, so our body should behave the same way as well.
Why is that not so?
This got me thinking: why do we throw our upper body forward when we sneeze? Obviously the sneeze is gas + liquid expelled forward, so by the laws of motion our body should be thrown backward by the reaction instead of forward. When a rocket expels hot gas in one way it flies the other, so our body should behave the same way as well.
Why is that not so?
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
English
Every time I see people discuss in the newspaper or other mediums on the "teach math and science in English" thing, I facepalm.
Of course math and science should be taught in English, when we go to college that's what its taught in anyway, the international language. In fact, all this discussion is missing the point:
THE OFFICIAL LANGUAGE OF MALAYSIA SHOULD BE ENGLISH ANYWAY.
This would accomplish many things:
1. Our nation would be more competitive: Multinationals would be more keen on hiring people here.
2. Students would do better academically with one main language all the way from nursery to university.
3. I don't need to hear this stupid debate over teaching what in what.
Now many people are going to come and tell me that Malay is our national language and we should take pride in it and tradition and bla bla bla. To this I have one reply:
LOOK AT SINGAPORE PLEASE.
See how they are performing and how we are performing?
Besides, I think that if we all spoke English, the country would be much more united. No matter what race you are, we would all automatically speak English to each other without question; we would share the same jokes and slang. I know the government wants us to do that with Malay but sorry, it's not happening. To be fair, I would say the same if Chinese were the majority and people wanted to use Chinese as the official language. Thanks but no thanks.
Of course math and science should be taught in English, when we go to college that's what its taught in anyway, the international language. In fact, all this discussion is missing the point:
THE OFFICIAL LANGUAGE OF MALAYSIA SHOULD BE ENGLISH ANYWAY.
This would accomplish many things:
1. Our nation would be more competitive: Multinationals would be more keen on hiring people here.
2. Students would do better academically with one main language all the way from nursery to university.
3. I don't need to hear this stupid debate over teaching what in what.
Now many people are going to come and tell me that Malay is our national language and we should take pride in it and tradition and bla bla bla. To this I have one reply:
LOOK AT SINGAPORE PLEASE.
See how they are performing and how we are performing?
Besides, I think that if we all spoke English, the country would be much more united. No matter what race you are, we would all automatically speak English to each other without question; we would share the same jokes and slang. I know the government wants us to do that with Malay but sorry, it's not happening. To be fair, I would say the same if Chinese were the majority and people wanted to use Chinese as the official language. Thanks but no thanks.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Public transport
I car pool with my colleague every day. It gives me great satisfaction to know that I am helping to save the world in a tiny little way. However, I know that I could save the world to a slightly greater degree if I took public transport. The reason I do not do so is that the only train station near my place is a KTM, and as we all know, KTM is synonymous with turtle.
Other forms of trains are more acceptable, as they move much faster and are more comfortable. The only trouble is they tend to become very jammed at times. Buses are out for me because I usually have to stand for a long time in the jam and my laptop is very heavy. I wish there was a better mode of sharing transport.
What I really really wish was that say every car could put up a sign on their roof saying which way they were going. Then I could hop in and pay them a bit of money and go the same way. They wouldn't need to charge me as much as a taxi because they are going that way anyway, so the marginal cost is very low for them. In fact, the more I think of this the more it seems a good idea. So many cars going in the same way with only one person inside really makes the tree-hugger inside me weep silently. Of course, this might not be feasible in our society due to everyone being scared of getting robbed, but in a more safe and cohesive society it might work. Maybe Japan... but their trains are too damn good.
I have thought about this issue for a long time. In my opinion, there is only one way to handle the safety issue: make a new application on Facebook called "Carpool". So once you get on somebody's car, you have to check in to his car, then everyone knows who and who are together. If anyone robs anyone, we know who did it! People could also discuss average reasonable prices for different distances and routes on this application.
Now you may ask me what happens if someone doesn't have the application. The answer is then he or she can't carpool in this manner.
I really think this is a wonderful idea. Mark Zuckerburg should call me to discuss this proposition. After all, it can't be worse than that application which was supposed to notify you when someone in your friend list broke up, right?
Other forms of trains are more acceptable, as they move much faster and are more comfortable. The only trouble is they tend to become very jammed at times. Buses are out for me because I usually have to stand for a long time in the jam and my laptop is very heavy. I wish there was a better mode of sharing transport.
What I really really wish was that say every car could put up a sign on their roof saying which way they were going. Then I could hop in and pay them a bit of money and go the same way. They wouldn't need to charge me as much as a taxi because they are going that way anyway, so the marginal cost is very low for them. In fact, the more I think of this the more it seems a good idea. So many cars going in the same way with only one person inside really makes the tree-hugger inside me weep silently. Of course, this might not be feasible in our society due to everyone being scared of getting robbed, but in a more safe and cohesive society it might work. Maybe Japan... but their trains are too damn good.
I have thought about this issue for a long time. In my opinion, there is only one way to handle the safety issue: make a new application on Facebook called "Carpool". So once you get on somebody's car, you have to check in to his car, then everyone knows who and who are together. If anyone robs anyone, we know who did it! People could also discuss average reasonable prices for different distances and routes on this application.
Now you may ask me what happens if someone doesn't have the application. The answer is then he or she can't carpool in this manner.
I really think this is a wonderful idea. Mark Zuckerburg should call me to discuss this proposition. After all, it can't be worse than that application which was supposed to notify you when someone in your friend list broke up, right?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)