What is real?

We are in a room with a group of people. A dog walks in. We can all agree that the dog is real, right? And if we can all agree that it is there, then it is there, right? Well, not exactly.

Some of the people pet the dog because they think it is cute, some of the people are afraid of the dog so make an effort to avoid it, and some people hardly notice the dog at all because they are too busy talking about Jersey Shore and The Bachelor.

As soon as the dog leaves, you ask each of the people in the room, "What is the dog really like?"

One person says, "Really friendly and cute." If we are trying to determine the reality of this dog's personality and existence, I am inclined to believe this person, because she actually petted and touched the dog and the dog did not bite her. Isn't this evidence of it's existence as a friendly animal?

Another says, "Really terrifying and vicious." If it is true that the dog is really friendly and cute, this does not explain why some people are still afraid of the dog. To them, it is absolutely not friendly or cute. So maybe it really was vicious and the people that befriended it just thought it was nice.

A third says, "There wasn't a dog." Often reality is confirmed when other people agree that it is real. If nobody else noticed the dog except you, do you think you might question whether or not it was really there? Maybe it was a cat, or a child wearing furry clothing crawling on the floor, or an ottoman, or nothing at all.

Someone else says, "The dog doesn't exist anymore." We usually assume that when something such as a dog leaves, it is still real somewhere else. We have learned from past experiences that it probably still exists and could come back. But for all we know, it could be gone forever. In this case, the dog continuing to exist after it leaves the room is merely the result of a preconceived notion, or what we think to be real.

All of these people are right about the dog's reality because it is what is real to them. So maybe real is just what we think is real. If this is the case, then what is actually real doesn't matter at all, and what really matters is what we think is real.

How can we learn from this and apply it to our lives? Even if you really care about someone, if she doesn't think you do then to her your care is not real. We need to show people how we really feel or else they might not know. So do something nice for the people you care about so that they know it too.

"...How do you define real? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain." --The Matrix

Why won't Photo Bomb post this picture on their website?

There is a large butt in the upper right hand corner of the picture. Also note the horny man that is clearly lovin' it, and the girl in the upper left hand corner that does not approve. This photo was taken of the girl in the foreground without awareness of the events occurring behind her.

Now look at the other photos on Photo Bomb. Isn't this photo at least on par, if not funnier than the other photos?

How do I achieve happiness?

We've all heard the phrase "Money can't buy happiness." Yet this world (especially this country) is obsessed with increasing GDP per capita and continuing to give us more and more expensive things that we buy because we think they will make us happier (laptops, mp3 players, swimming pools, jewelry...) It seems as though we never achieve happiness but continue to want more. This raises the question: Is happiness something that can ever even be achieved?

To begin addressing this multifaceted question, I consulted a list entitled "Why I have been the happiest" that I wrote a while ago and stumbled upon just yesterday:

I was on a regular sleep schedule.
I just finished exercising.
I didn't have to do things that I didn't want to do.
I felt valued.
I was with friends that care about me.
I had time to follow through with my creative ideas.
I was busy enough to not waste time on facebook.
I was working towards something I cared about.
I felt like I had accomplished something important.
I felt like I was becoming a better person.
I felt like I was making other people feel happy.

Note that "I just got a new ipod/laptop" didn't make the cut when I wrote this list, even though I think it was shortly after I got my laptop. Reflecting upon this list, I see that I don't get as much happiness from things as from feelings. In fact, my list actually shows that too much facebook wastes my time and makes me feel like I am unhappy. I should concede though that if I didn't have enough money to buy food, clothing on my back, and shelter, then I'm sure more money would make me a lot happier. Also that living in this world I do buy things sometimes. But if I lived in the early 1900's and didn't know that any of these things existed, I think I would be just as happy without them. So maybe happiness for me isn't having what I want.

I also find that many of my reasons start with "I felt" or describe something that I can control (I can decide whether or not I want to exercise, I can decide what I want to work towards, I can decide whether I care about what I am working towards). This implies that happiness comes from within. It has less to do with what is happening around me but rather what I do about it and how I feel about it. So, maybe the best way to become extremely happy would be to convince myself that I am extremely happy. But does this work?

To acquire recommended methods of achieving happiness, I consulted WikiHow's "How to be happy." Although I didn't find it particularly helpful, it was interesting. The first step listed to be happy is to "Win a Nobel prize" because it "has a major impact on your self worth." So in order to make the world a happier place, we all have to win Nobel prizes. Thanks WikiHow. But also notice that WikiHow considers having a high self worth as being happy. It again points to the idea that happiness comes from within. Even if other people don't find us worthy at all, if we feel worthy we will be happy.

"Be optimistic" is the next step. It says that "improving your attitude towards life will increase your happiness permanently." But I thought that happiness is your attitude towards life. By saying "I'm happy," I'm also saying "I like my life," and isn't optimism liking your life?

WikiHow, along with many other sources, agree with me that exercising will increase happiness. If this is the one method of increasing happiness that we can all agree on, maybe the world should try it. Instead of our country working toward economic growth that increases our GDP per capita, or devising complex happiness-increasing plans, maybe we should just force people to go to a Zumba class or get on a treadmill.

What is happiness?

Is happiness tangible and measurable or an arbitrary state of mind? Is it something we actually have or just think we have? Can it be only either present or absent? Or are there different degrees of happiness? Is happiness an ideal state that we continually work towards? Or is it a comparison in our own minds ("I'm happier now than I was then") so that we will think we have achieved happiness if we are the happiest we ourselves have ever been? Or is it what we think we are when our lives are better than those around us ("I'm happier than he is, so I must be happy"). Or, is happy just a generalized word to encompass many more specific other emotions (such as proud, valuable, excited)?

I have always wondered if there was a correlation between the amount of endorphins released from an activity (running, a movie, sex, food) and our willingness to pay for it. This could be a way to measure actual happiness, by the amount of endorphins released. Utils could become measurable as "number of endorphins released." But still, some people that have never experienced the greatest happiness would be happier by the little things, but maybe not willing to pay as much because so many things make them happy.

Bill McKibben argues in Deep Economy that people who call themselves happy actually or have higher electrical activity in certain areas of the brain, are more likely to be rated as happy by friends, less likely to be involved in disputes at work, and less likely to die prematurely. In this way, he shows that we could use these correlations to provide a tangible and objective measurement of happiness. But to me, these correlations seem to provide more benefits of happiness, not a definition of what it is or how to achieve it.

Whether happiness is tangible, objective, and definite or just an arbitrary ideal state of mind, it is still an arbitrary ideal state of mind that I would like to have. Even if happiness is subjective, many of us still want to achieve it.

What did you learn today?

As Kanye West once insightfully said, "that that don't kill me can only make me stronger." He means that when we live through our experiences, we become stronger people. Learning from our experiences contribute to who we are and help us to be better people in the future. Thus, when my dad used to ask me regularly "What did you learn today?" it tripled as a way to stimulate interesting conversation, for him to find out if the school system was making effective use of his tax dollars, and for me to reflect on what I learned so that I could use the knowledge in the future.

Today, some friends and I visited the Rochester Museum and Science Center followed by Spot Coffee. Of course, the museum is a place where knowledge is supposed to be learned, so I thought that this would be a good time to list the things that I learned today so that you too can benefit from this insight.

1. A single first class ticket on the Titanic would cost $43,000 in today's dollars.
2. Ice is intolerably cold.
3. A key works because when you put it in, it makes the bars inside line up.
4. If you look up, you will often find the answer.
5. Don't bring your purse when you are climbing something.
6. Glowsticks are not alive (in case there was any discrepancy).
7. Pregnant women cannot do fun activities such as drink alcohol, ride submarine simulations, and be in earthquakes.
8. When you look at something from a different angle (this is a metaphor but also refers to the top of the stairs at Spot), you can often spot something that you didn't notice before.
9. Start filling a canal lock before the boat gets there so you don't have to wait for it.
10. That indistinct phrase in "Replay" is "Shorty's like a melody in my head that I can't keep OUT."
10. I love my friends even more than I thought I did.

What is your favorite food?

I'm not telling you.

This seems like a simple question, so "Why won't you tell me?" you might ask. You wouldn't have asked this though if I had just told you my favorite food. In this way, I made you think more. See, sometimes you learn more when your questions aren't answered.

For about two weeks when I was younger, all I ate was Quaker white cheddar rice cakes. They were my favorite, the greatest thing since sliced bread.

If I was around when sliced bread was invented, I probably would have said that was my favorite food.

At the moment, I'm partial to onions because they make so many things taste delicious! Recently, delicious onion topped pizza, scrambled tofu and onions, and lasagna with onions have led me to become infatuated with the onion's ability to transform any dish. Which raises another question: What makes something (a food, an answer, a friend) the best? If it is its ability to perform under different circumstances, then answers are not the "best" answers at all because they depend so much on the circumstances (just as my answer to "What is your favorite food?" depends on the circumstances).

If I was stranded on a desert island, onions would absolutely not be my favorite food. Without other foods to mix them with, onions are too tart, and I would much prefer strawberries. Or beans, because they are hearty (and since I'm stranded alone I wouldn't have to worry about gas).

Sometimes it's better to look for more questions than to look for answers.

Why is heads touching in pictures such an effective strategy?

Maybe people don't ask me this question daily, monthly, or even ever. But it definitely deserves to be addressed because it is a principle that is responsible for many of the most quality portraits that I have seen.

Example #1: Quality portrait with heads touching.


Example #2: Very good photograph, but would be ideal if the girl on the right had her head touching.


So now that you understand what I mean by heads touching (some people get confused or may misinterpret the instructions), I will try to explain why heads touching is often necessary.

Example #3: A picture of two people having a conversation awkwardly because they appear farther apart than they actually are.


Example #4: A picture of two people having a conversation at a different angle so that they appear closer together and less awkward. This is usually the angle that professionals use when shooting movies.


Example #5: Displays another strategy for making the conversation seem less awkward: move the people closer together than they would normally stand.


Example #6: When posing for a picture, people sometimes don't put their heads together. Like the awkward conversation, the people appear farther apart than they actually are. The girl in this photo on the left is displaying this for us.


Example #7: To combat this appearance of distance, one option is to take the picture at a different angle, like they usually do in the movies.



Example #8: Another option would be for the girl on the left to move her head closer than she thinks she needs to (so it is touching the girl's head in the middle). I didn't have an example of this from the same occasion as example #8, so I used another photo with similar composition.


Example #9: While there are many other things occurring in this family photograph, the main reason it is not the greatest portrait is because the people's heads aren't touching.


Example #10: This is a classic example of how touching heads can improve a photograph. Notice how the girl in the middle put her head in proper position and the boy's head on the far right appears to be touching the boy behind him. Now you can tell what a lovely family they are.

Why comment?

Common explanations for not commenting on blog posts:

1. "I don't want people to know what I wrote."

2. "I don't have anything to say."

3. "We have different opinions and I don't want to cause a ruckus by stating mine."

4. "It's too much work."

5. "You'll think it's weird that I read your blog."

Lame, lame, lame, lame, and LAME. (Yes, that is five lames.) Those are lame excuses for not commenting. I am now going to refute the legitimacy of these claims.

1. Use the anonymous button.

2. That is just not true. Reading requires thinking. So if you don't have thoughts while you are reading then you cannot read. So just write your thoughts.

3. We are different people with different thoughts, so a difference of opinion will not offend me or cause a ruckus. Re-frame your thinking so that you realize disagreements are actually good because they make discussions interesting! I don't even mind if you comment correcting my grammar. I know I need it.

4. Seriously? I even made the settings so you don't have to register on Blogspot to comment. If you don't have enough motivation to click "comment" at the end of the post, I don't know how you gathered up enough motivation to start reading this blog post. Go eat some Doritos and fly a kite.

5. Contrary to popular belief (that is sarcasm), when blogs are posted on the internet, everyone can read them. While it is also true that another purpose of writing is for personal satisfaction (like a journal), the fact that I am posting on the internet proves that I don't mind if you read it too. Even if you don't know me very well or I haven't seen you in awhile, I would love to hear from you.