Rating And Dating!

A rating scale has the obvious advantage of simplifying something into a logical and coherent structure. To use it to rate women, even more so. I see you men wincing and you women baying for my blood. But it's an unsavory fact of life and one must accept it just like Scientology and Madonna. You can deny it all you want but these elements do exist.

The most widely used scale is the 1-10 rating system. The women are slotted on this scale based on certain purportedly objective characteristics. Although one might argue that one's subjective tastes color the rating handed out. The one's at the top, i.e. a 10 is someone we really want to be with and may be someone out of our league. Then come the 8's and 9's who we like and may also be dating. Then come the 7's who are actually 8's without the make-up. And then come the 6 and below who are generally not to be 'gamed'. This rating system however modified in it's various forms holds some resemblance to the one I roughly outlined. Now I personally used this version of the system and noticed some flaws. For e.g a girl who would be rated a 10 by me would not even begin to appeal to a friend. Does that mean that she isn't fucking hot? No, it just means that my subjective judgment of her ability to put out easily clouded my objective rating by maybe pushing her up the scale a point or 2. Other times there would be a girl I would be attracted to based on certain..uh..qualities and yet would find that I would only rate her a 7. Which is low according to my standard rating and would lead to confusion on whether I should pursue the girl or quit.

Thus I came to believe that this system though it has served me well in the past now needs to either be modified or discarded completely. Then it came to me, the most simple yet profound method of rating which is actually a misnomer since it doesn't involve digits. I just had to ask myself 1 simple question and the answer to that would determine whether I would go ahead or cut my losses and look elsewhere. The answer would also be closed-ended which would eliminate any ambiguousness by only allowing me a yes or a no as my choice. The time has come to reveal the question which may at first sound stupid as it did to me too but one will meditate and savor the question and maybe even roll it around in one's mouth till one comes to terms with it's profoundness.

"Do I find this woman attractive?" is the question guys. Pause and let it sink in and marvel and delight in it's simplicity. Once you're done silently mumbling thanks to God for giving me to the world here's why I think the question kicks ass. It makes it possible to add my subjective judgment to the equation thus making a rating much more personal. The margin of error is reduced which means I wouldn't waste my time on that girl who is a perfect ten when it comes to looks but thinks scoring 97 in an I.Q test means she scored 97%. Gad! Unless you actually are that stupid yourself, but even then the system would still work. It would also give me an opportunity to know a wide variety of women since I would have normally constricted myself using the old system to only really hot bimbos who thought Barack Obama referred to military quarters in Africa.

I know my pioneering work in this field will be a great boon to a lot of guys out there who think about these sort of things but find no one to answer their questions. You can be rest assured that nothing is too stupid for me to devote a little time to writing on these days. And if I do get that call from the Nobel Committee I know it's only my readers that I have to thank for making it possible.

Foolish Questions

Here's a bunch of foolish but interesting questions that I found on the web. By the end of it you will indeed question the extent of boredom's grip on my life. Enjoy.



1) How can you tell you’ve run out of invisible ink?
2) If a jogger runs at the speed of sound, can he still hear his mp3 player?
3) Why are most nudist people you wouldn’t want to see naked?
4) If flying is so safe, why do they call the airport the terminal?
5) Why do you press harder on a remote control when you know the battery is dead?
6) When you’re finally holding all the cards, why does everyone else decide to play chess?
7) Do molecular biologists wear designer genes?
8) Are part-time bandleaders Simi-conductors?
9) If most accidents occur within five miles from home, why don’t people just move?
10) How many weeks are there in a light year?

The Terrorists Mind

The recent terror attacks in Mumbai fill our minds with horror at the heinous acts perpetrated by the terrorists. When it took place I had no words to describe how I felt and I still don't. The only question that keeps ringing in my mind is 'why?'. Why did it happen? More importantly, why is a terrorist a terrorist? What makes a person slay innocents without remorse and justify such acts as righteous? There are differing opinions out there of different psychologists, all compelling but since terrorists don't really volunteer for psychological analysis there are differences in what motivates terrorist.

There's the anger without guilt theory that is put forward by Rona Fields, a Washington D.C. psychologist, that says that the way a terrorist defines right and wrong is very black and white and mostly influenced by a charismatic authoritative figure. They have a total limitation to the capacity to think for themselves. A terrorist develops gradually from a young age (typically boys aged 10-16) who are easiest to recruit "at the stage of development of moral judgment called retributive justice or vendetta." This "an eye for an eye" stage of emotional development was described by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, she adds. In "societies where there's been inter-generational, inter-communal war," Fields says, many adults never outgrow the vendetta, and are trapped in righteous indignation, which Fields found among "all the members of all paramilitary organizations I examined. They believe there's a difference between right and wrong, but when they do something in the name of the cause, it's justified."

These true believers, she adds, "are angry, but they don't feel guilty about their anger."


On the other hand some experts argue that the suicidal terrorists instead of being psychopathic wackos are actually rational people effectively pursuing their goals. In fact David Long, former assistant director of the State Department's Office of Counter Terrorism says that not only are terrorists not crazy but they don't share a uniform personality type and he goes on to say, "No comparative work on terrorist psychology has ever succeeded in revealing a particular psychological type or uniform terrorist mindset." Still, Long wrote that terrorists tend to have low self-esteem, are attracted to groups with charismatic leaders, and, not surprisingly, enjoy risk. Oddly, Long concluded that many terrorists are ambivalent about violence and guns.


John Horgan, a psychologist at University College Cork (Ireland) says, One of the major appeals of fundamentalism is the remarkable ability to see the world in black and white terms." Fundamentalist terrorist groups, Horgan adds, offer persuasive inducements to would-be bombers. "We shouldn't underestimate the lures of joining these groups. Some have specific ideas of what the afterlife involves. Allah will forgive the sins of both the suicide bomber and his family."

Suicide bombers, he adds, are often "seen as heroes in the Palestinian struggle. You can see the pictures of martyrs plastered on walls. The families are praised... and the families of the bombers usually receive some financial reward."

One goal of analyzing terrorists in psychological terms, obviously, is to deter or prevent attacks, but the present situation is not encouraging. "There are not just people ready to die, but people who want to die," Horgan notes.

Rather than analyze terrorism in terms of psychopathology, Horgan and others prefer to see it in the context of culture, politics and religion. Terrorism, he says, "is a product of its own time and place. You're not going to find personality traits that will allow you to predict that one person or another is more likely to become a terrorist."

Horgan also suggests looking at the process of screening and training that creates terrorists and selects those best suited to individual "jobs" or leadership. "We don't see the protracted process of indoctrination that terrorists go through." To understand motivations, he says, the focus should shift from personality to process. The excessive focus on the psychology of terrorism echoes the mistakes of criminologists a century ago, Horgan concludes. "Early criminology was characterized by attempts to find differences between the criminal and the non-criminal. We ignored groups, culture, opportunity, the development of people's involvement."

Similarly, until terrorists are studied in the context of their lives, "psychological profiles" and pathological diagnoses are unlikely to provide a satisfying explanation for evil -- or a conclusive warning.

Getting to the root of terrorism doesn't mean killing more terrorists. That would be futile as another terrorist would simply take his place. The solution would be to know what motivates people to become terrorists and change the conditions. Also a weeding out of extremist elements and propaganda spread by the influential few for their own gains is required. That is the real root that needs to be got at and eliminated.

Excerpts taken from an article written by -- David Tenenbaum and Eric Zuelow.