ok so here's one question that i've been pondering over for sometime now:
why do girls' jeans have zippers?
no, seriously, why? i mean, i can imagine the very first time that women started wearing jeans. at that time, jeans were probably manufactured just for men and the zipper was obviously present out of sheer necessity. and the women just started wearing them. this far, it makes sense. but today, with manufacturers making jeans especially for women, with the body-hugging tight-fitting ready-to-rip-open-any-moment-now shapes and everything, which obviously are not designed for omnisexual use, why do they still come with zippers?
is there some mysterious purpose that is served by these seemingly unnecessary metallic attachments, unbeknownst to me? in my opinion, all they do is cause annoyance when they inevitably get stuck from time to time.
and it's not like jeans *must* have them, right? it's not like not having them would leave gaping holes in the wrong places because i'm sure the designers of this era are not so dumb as to be unable to come up with creative ways of covering up the holes that are left behind.
scene1: typical university setting. really cold evening.
me cycling down towards the post office. up pops an anomaly in my field of vision. a pretty girl, may be twenty years old, is standing on the sidewalk and is holding up a placard over her head that reads "FREE HUGS!!"
from the looks of it, i can tell she's a student. i stop and watch her for a few minutes from a distance. she holds the placard as high as she can, and whenever someone walks by, she says something to them and some of them stop to give her a hug. i watch her do this for sometime and i'm dying to find out what's going on. so i go up to her and she says 'do you have the time for a free hug?'. so i give her a quick hug . . . . . or did i just take one? she's the one who's giving away hugs for free, right? or is she the one in need of them? what the hell - ok so we exchange a hug . . . . .
'why're you doing this?' 'doing what?' 'this free hugs thingy' 'well, i've been feeling like shit for the last two days because my dog died. i wanted to cheer myself up. so i thought and thought and came up with this idea.' 'why don't you go shopping like all other girls do?' <laughs> 'i figured that this way, not only would i feel good, but would also be able to bring a moment of warmth to a few other people while i'm at it'
i generally only come across kind deeds in forwarded emails. but this one was for real. right in front of my eyes. it's a pity i don't carry my camera around with me. i soooooooo wanted to take her picture. i wanted to prepare another similar placard and stand alongside her. but i didn't. i didn't deserve to. i would never have thought of something so nice. there was such a huge gap between her and me. so near . . . . . yet so far.
standing on the street and hugging total strangers - is that something you would be willing to do? would you ever find the time? i wouldn't. never.
scene2: iraq . . . . . well, watch it for yourself . . . . .
this took place half way across the globe from where i am. yet the video had me immersed in thought with the same intensity as the previous incident did. i would never have thought of something so cruel, spiteful, painful, dehumanizing. a common question i hear many people ask is 'why is there so much hatred in this world?' this video provides one of the answers. this is for real. half way across the globe. right in front of my eyes. so far . . . . . yet so near.
making a bunch of kids run, tantalizing them with a bottle of drinking water and finally denying them it - is that something you would be willing to do? would you ever stoop so low in life? i wouldn't. never.
and that is how the universe remains in a perfectly balanced state. dichotomy.
look at this walkway that is right in the middle of this picture!! i mean, just look at it. what's the first thing that comes to your mind?
damn right - why the *hell* is it all so curvy?
what was the 'designer' (or whatever the term for the guy who designs these things is!!) thinking? let me take a guess . . .
"hmm. let's see now . . . where do i want this trail to go? oh i know i know, i'll make it go straight into this building on the right."
after laying the first part, (s)he changes his/her mind . . .
"wait. naaah. this building's too boring. i'll make this trail lead the 'walkers' to that white cylindrical cool-looking rocket like thingy behind those trees. then people walking on this will feel as if they're walking towards a rocket launch pad. yep - that'd be soooooooo cool!!"
after laying another section, (s)he's like . . .
"wait wait! the building's better. this way, people who're like totally busy will simply follow the walk and not even see where they're headed to and bang their heads against the building and fall down on the ground. hee hee hee. that would be sooooooo coooool for all the college kids to watch professors walk into walls everyday"
after laying yet another section towards the building, . . .
"duh, what was i thinking? my devious ploy would never work. i mean, it might work once or twice for sure. but then word would spread among the 'busy clan' about this misleading walkway. i should just merge this into that one there"
and that is how it was done!!
or maybe the 'designers' were being fired one after another and each new one was taking it in his/her own direction?
seriously, why on earth (or elsewhere too) would an engineer draw this layout? maybe the trees were already there and (s)he didn't want to have them cut down? noble, but i can still see a (thousand) straight lines connecting the end points of the path without touching any tree. this is a waste of the raw material used to lay these paths, waste of time and effort, more lights are needed along the length of this curved path, more turns for the poor bicyclists, and what not! the only thing this is 'saving' is the amount of grass by reducing the area of growth, which, again, is bad!!
reason, i want a reason for this. is it curvy because that is more efficient in some weird civil engineery way that i don't understand? is it curvy because curvy is sexy and appealing? is it curvy because, when seen from high above, it happens to be part of a larger figure like the mystic nazca lines?
give me one good reason why this might have been done the way it is. this is a call to all the readers of this blog (all both of you :D . . . . maybe three) to quench my thirst for wisdom. apart from good reasons, funny reasons are welcome in large numbers.
yeah i know it's an old theme, but still . . . every time i come across such a thing, i promise myself that i will contribute something . . . anything, in any small way possible. but then, i put it off, make excuses to myself saying that i have a long life ahead and can do it later. i'm just afraid that i'm gonna keep delaying it forever.
anyway, back to the video at hand, it starts by assigning a cost of $150,000 to a $15 production and ends with "so that is where all the money went". it does a superb job at comparing how valuable things that we disregard as mundane can be at another point on the globe. we really ought to appreciate every little thing that we possess - if not for what it means to us, then atleast for what it could mean to one of 'them'. (i guess this discrimination that i just made is justifiable)
reminds me of this saying "if you cannot have 2/3rds of a day for yourself, then you're a slave". i vividly remember this because my brother, who dabbles at art and created admirable pieces from the time i was 10, had once painted this faceless person in shackles and wrote this quote below it and hung it up on the wall of our room. so, i got to see that everyday for a long long time and it turned out to be one of those things that just got indelibly etched into my mind.
makes me laugh at the audacious claims made by people that slavery has ended in the modern world. not even by a looooooooong shot. no number of charitable organizations with volunteers working round the clock can hope to put even a little dent into this monster called poverty. not even by a looo ooooo oong shot. there's one way - and one way alone - of putting an end to this sadness once and for all, and you all will spit fire in my face if i say what it is . . .
thank you, sarah!! you look breath-takingly gorgeous!!
am·biv·a·lence [ăm-bĭvə'-lən(t)s] n. the coexistence of opposing attitudes or feelings towards the same object/person
neo-ambivalence n. the coexistence of opposing attitudes or feelings towards closely related objects/events
sample usage: "the recent terrorist bombings in one of the world's most populous cities evoked a natural feeling of sadness, but a statement issued by a minister to the media evoked laughter, changing my feelings to neo-ambivalence"
from the news . . . > the home minister told reporters that authorities had some information an attack > was coming, "but place and time was not known"
i don't know whether these people make a conscious attempt at being stupid or whether it is a gift they possess by birth. every news source carried this quote from him. what i fail to understand is the point of that statement. what good is any information about an attack without the place or time? how can that be called 'information' in the first place?
i guess i have to coin another word for "the coexistence of pity and sympathetic laughter towards a nutcase holding an important position in the government who doesn't know what to, and what not to say to the press"
who hasn't seen the all-famous rubik's cube? the 6-faced 6-colored 3X3X3 wonder that had me marvelling at the beauty of its symmetry and geometry for hours together at a stretch. the puzzle which gave me immense satisfaction when i figured out, all by myself, how to solve one face. but then, however much i strained my puny little brain, i couldn't figure out a strategy to solve it in its entirety, and had to resort to cheating by looking the solution up. solving it is still my favorite pastime, and i try to get faster and faster at it. right now though, i'm no where close to the gifted 'speed-cubers', who can solve a scrambled cube in under 20 friggin' seconds.
anyway, then came the rubik's revenge:
and the professor's cube:
i haven't dared to lay my hands on either one . . . . . yet!! why, you ask? have you ever laid your hands on a rubik's cube? if you did, you'd know why.
moving on, do you think people would stop there? oooooooooh no siree. because people are crazy. so they went on to create an extended version of rubik's cube in 4 dimensions!! it looks like this when projected onto a screen:
if you think that's mad, how about this? a bunch of freaks took that concept one huuuuuuuuuuge step further and extended it into 5 - that's right - five bloody dimensions!! when you project that onto a mere 2 dimensional screen, you're bound to get dizzy:
and the last time i checked, there were three actual people who solved the 5d version. they're members of the 'hall of insanity' - yep they're not famous, they sure are insane. after knowing the existence of such freaks, now i have all the guts needed to attack the rubik's revenge followed by the professor's cube. if i'm still alive after solving these, i'll try to look at these 4 and 5 dimensional ones.
oh, and there are plenty of other such puzzle games for those who're interested:
here's presenting the square1:
and the pyraminx:
and the megaminx:
makes me wonder what else exists in the world of mathematics? i'm gonna solve these (atleast make an attempt to solve these) someday.
for now, i ran into another interesting puzzle game. here it is. unlike the scary ones presented above, this game's actually (relatively) easily solvable. go ahead rack your brains :)
p.s. - all images have been taken from wikipedia, except the 4d one which has been taken from whatever showed up on google images, and the 5d one which has been taken from a link on a recent post on /.
