Sociology: Trust

How can you tell whether someone is a rapist or a murderer? You really can't unless you develop an intuitive sense which comes from careful observation of people. Even knowing their full past won't help if you're their first victim. Many crimes are done by people you've always thought would never do such evil. So how can you trust anyone?

There is no answer for 100% accuracy but developing your perception can help tremendously. Let's consider the case of a girl trusting a guy. How can you tell whether your friend or boyfriend is what he appears to be? If he seems too nice, something may be wrong. If he doesn't tell you much about his background, be alert. If no one trustworthy you know backs up his character, watch out. If the people hanging around him seem to be decrepit, nasty, or ___ (insert negative word), stay away. Though a lotus can come out of mud, there's a good chance he's just a mud pile pretending to be a lotus.

There's many books out there on this topic. It's best to read a few and examine from other peoples' mistakes. Learning from experience is a hard road here.

Entrepreneurship: Bottles for Rockets

While drinking the last drops of the Vittel spring water bottle, I just had a social entrepreneurship idea. Water rockets can be easily built from bottles and some metal, plastic, or even paper fins. These items are common in developing nations but bottle rockets are uncommon.

I saw an inspiring video recently about kids who live in slums that made beautiful musical instruments out of junk. Music brought meaning to their lives that otherwise would be just dirty and miserable. It brought magic. Similarly, space can also bring magic.

Imagination can be fostered in even the worst places. These kids' interest in science and technology are very limited due to lack of exposure to books, videos, and educated peers or parents.Yet, if they can make bottle rockets out of scrap, they can see that the magic power is all around them. This can be an excellent plan for developing nations and even developed countries with slums.

Sociology: Popularity of a Person or a Country

Which is more popular? A country or a person? Consider the country called Sierra Leone located in west Africa.Sierra Leone is known for its diamonds, the devastating civil war which lasted for 11 years, and its role in the slave trade centuries past. Most people have heard about the country but do they know anything more than that?

Now compare with a person's name. Obviously, there's very few people with the full name Sierra Leone*. However, there are people with the last name of Leone. There's two methods here to see who's or what is more popular and both uses Google. The first is a simple Google Image search for 'Leone' which can be seen as follows:

From the first screen, the statistics for each image linked to the country or a person as are as follows for the first 23 images shown:

Sierra Leone: 7
Sunny Leone: 5
Ashley Leone: 1
Pino Leone: 1
Matthew Leone: 3
Rudy Leone: 1
Jim Leone: 1
Jennifer Leone: 1
Donna Leone: 1
Paola Leone: 1
Carlo Leone: 1

Clearly, Sierra Leone does lead but not by much. Combined, from the image relation percentage, the popularity of people with the last name Leone is much greater than that of the country of Sierra Leone. Taking a look with method two of examining number of Google searches for each of the 10 people and the country Sierra Leone reveals the following number of results in order:

1. Sierra Leone: 380,000,000
2. Sunny Leone: 57,400,000
3. Jennifer Leone: 16,500,000
4. Jim Leone: 15,000,000
5. Mathew Leone: 12,200,000
6. Donna Leone: 12,100,000
7. Ashley Leone: 11,000,000
8. Carlo Leone: 9,400,000
9. Paola Leone: 4,740,000
10. Pino Leone: 3,820,000
11. Rudy Leone: 2,800,000

Combined, the 10 people searches amount to 144,960,000 or over 1/3 of the amount of information for Sierra Leone. Clearly, the information for Sierra Leone still dominates but there is much interest in the people as well. As a sidenote, an interesting lineup of the popularity level of these people and what they do highlights what much of society has their minds wrapped around. In the order of the number of results by Google and removing the names Jennifer Leone and Jim Leone which are due to people with a really popular first name, people's minds are focused on:

1. Hot girls (Sunny Leone or Pino Leone)
2. Music (Matthew Leone or Ashley Leone)
3. Crime novels or fictional Venice (Donna Leone)
4. Science or justs Canavian disease (Paola Leone)
5. Politics (Carlo Leone)
6. Horses (Rudy Leone)

This is not very surprising at all given that to most people, politics and equestrian (art of horse riding) are hardly interesting, while almost no one will object to music and no guys will object to hot girls. Still,  the good sign remains that the country information still ranks first. Perhaps this shows that global politics is still interesting to many people but politicians are not since they come and go. *By the way, did you know that there's a town in Sierra Leone named Shen Ge? I plan to go there one day.

Sociology: Encounters with Homeless People

A few days ago, while I was walking around in Little Five Points in Atlanta, I came across a homeless guy who was begging for money. This incident on its own is not surprising nor is it surprising that he stopped me and asked me for money. I have been approached a number of times before. What is surprising this time is what went through my mind. I realized that homeless people have an attribute that many of us should have but lack: a barrier to talking with strangers! Isn't a lack of understanding between people best curable by open communication?

Now, I know that genuine communication is different from begging for money which is why I didn't give him any money but instead smiled and said that I'll buy him some coffee and chat for a bit if he doesn't mind. He said he was fine with that. So I went inside the coffee shop five steps away and bought two cups of coffee, one for myself and one for him. (I wasn't sure what flavor he wanted so I chose something that wouldn't be too strange.)

In our little conversation, I was able to find out that he was originally from South Carolina but came to Atlanta since a relative of his said there's work here. Since he got here a few months ago, he has been out on the streets in the area of Little Five Points. I noticed that he had a limp in his right leg. I asked him what happened. He told me that he got shot several years ago but he didn't seem to want to go into more details.

Our conversation ended rather quickly since he constantly felt like reminding me that I should give him money so he can go buy a baloney sandwich. I don't like to give money since I don't know what they'll do with it and I had no guarantee that I would get better stories from him by buying him a baloney sandwich even after satiating his hunger. I decided to just leave him alone.

Later, I was thinking that if I was with a friend who would be willing to do this though, I would definitely have talked to him a while longer. I was reminded of an incidence several years ago when my friend and I were walking on the streets of Little Rock and a guy we didn't think was homeless asked us for some money. Since he didn't look threatening or crazy, we decided to take him to a nice little restaurant and hear his story. We learned that he suffered learning disabilities and had a terrible family upbringing. I wanted to keep in touch with him with email which he said he had one. Unfortunately, we never got in touch again so I hope he's alright.

It may seem like I have these conversations all the time but it's actually quite rare. Since my conversations with homeless people don't usually happen on a regular basis, when they do, they leave a mark in my mind. While I was talking with this guy, I had another flashback of a really interesting conversation I had with a homeless guy a few years back at a hotel in Arizona.

I was in Arizona for a space conference and on one of those nights there was a party in a crowded hotel room. I did not feel that shouting over the music and chatter was worth it so I went downstairs to cool off. There, while standing outside, a homeless guy came up to me and instead of begging for money as I presumed, asked if he can borrow my phone to make a phone call. Apparently, someone was supposed to meet with him and etc. I told him to come into the lobby since it's cold outside and make his phone call. He did and said that he needed to wait.

We sat in the lobby and talked for a little while before he mentioned Bruce Li. Coincidentally, I had a Bruce Li movie on my laptop and so we started watching it. One of the guards came by a few times and was slightly suspicious but I told the guard that he was cool so the guard left us alone for a while. Ultimately though, it was quite obvious and the guard told him he had to leave. The guy made one last phone call and thanked me before leaving. I hope he found who he was looking for.

I feel like that the more privileged we are, the less open we are towards those who are less fortunate. I watched a documentary called Born Rich before on rich kids and it's apparent that most of these guys never interact at all with people who are not rich. In other words, 99% of the people in this world do not exist for these guys. They have their exclusive parties and getaway vacations. On the other hand, you have homeless people who are willing to talk to anyone to get some money or for those who are more genuine, have someone care about where they come from. Clearly, for society to operate well, the amount of wealth should not be an indication  of how much or how little you talk with your fellow human being. Communication between all parties should be welcome.

Sociology: Why Musicians are More Attractive

The female mind acts more out of emotion than reason. The reason that musicians have much greater sex appeal than most non-musical nerds* is due to music's direct access to the emotional part of the brain. Music, a favorite activity of musicians, is a drug that can create intensely good feelings in the brain. Intellectual conversation, a favorite activity of nerds, on the other hand, is a convoluted and complicated logical process that usually confuses the less intellectual-minded (which happens to make up most of the population).

"Falling in love at first sight" is not a logical response but an emotional one. Even a decent musician who can play some songs can trigger a series of chemicals creating a fuzzy good feeling in any girl's mind except those of the deaf or emotionally comatose variety. However, an intellectual discussion is far less likely to create the same emotions and can sometimes cause argument even if the girl understands the conversational topic. Thus, to reach a girl's heart, it's best to avoid the logical and appeal to the emotional.

The only times when the nerd is on equal footing as the musician for sex appeal is when the girl is a rational being herself or is impressed by intelligence. This will be a rare girl indeed and if a nerd finds such a girl, he has probably found another nerd. Even in such a situation though, too much logic is not good. For instance, consider the first kiss. A nerd analyzes the moment and decides whether it is the moment before doing anything. By the time the nerd does anything the moment has already passed.

In short, nerds rarely get into bed with a girl or have a romantic relationship since the nerd's favorite activity is usually too analytical to have much emotional appeal. On the other hand, music has a direct emotional appeal and enables the musician to be immediately more attractive to the female mind. This truth can be seen all around. While ugly musicians can hook up with attractive girls, even handsome nerds are often single.

I think I may have been too analytical here myself. This analysis is concluded.