Cons,scams,frauds and fun things like that

A couple of days back, I was walking back to the 40th street subway station after catching a movie at U Penn (Wedding Crashers if you must know). I happened to walk past a south indian girl X, and for some reason she initiated conversation with me. Obviously, I was a little surprised (and flattered) but hmm... then we are 2 tams in the US of A. Then, she asked me if I could help her find a job. Ohh, so thats why she wants to talk to me. I told her ok, give me a call tomorrow and I will give you a couple of contacts where I intern and you can take it from there. Then she calls me the next day, and asks me if I could come with her for a 'business meeting' in the evening. NOW, I knew something was fishy. Why would some random person on the road want to meet me? Ok, maybe as a convenient contact but meet me? But, then it would be fun to just play along and see what the con was all about. I always was curious as to how these confidence schemes operated. I also wanted to test if I could play it 'cool', you know- play along and don't give the game away. Thats a good skill to have right- how many times have you been around people you need to get along with but don't really like that much. Also, you get this whole 007 feeling. So, I went.
This turned out to be one of those pyramid schemes. I could explain to you what a pyramid scheme is, why it looks good, why it doesn't work and why people think it works when it actually doesn't work. But, I won't. This so called company called BWW was behind the pyramid scheme in my case. Read this link. And this.
You know why it sucks and now to the more interesting part of how they.One of the basic things that is necessary to sell one of those schemes is that people should believe what you are telling them, so basically you need to make them trust you. So, there is this whole elaborate scheme is set up to win over your trust.
1) The 'conference' was at the Radisson. Impressive.
2) The speaker first goes out to make you feel miserable about how you are currently doing in life. 'See you work so much and make so little money!' 'What will you do when you retire' He goes about doing this whole math about you work 10 hours, sleep 8, do other stuff for 2 and watch tv for 4. Instead of watching TV you can easily make tonnes of money. You should be so happy that this opportunity has landed on your lap.
3) 'Raj' and 'Rama' tell of the time when they made platinum and how their life has changed. The whole room resonates to the sound of their jokes and anecdotes. But then of the 160 people in the room, of which apart from the 40 'guests' everyone else is in on the con.
4) There is a break, where X takes me to meet one of the 'senior' members, who tell me about all the money that he made in the scheme. I also meet Y, who stays 2 streets away from me in Besant Nagar. How much luckier can I get in life
5) They do realize that there are likely to be a number of people who are likely to be skeptical about this scheme.(Very rightly so!) So, in order to make those who are not skeptical stay that way, all skeptics are labeled as 'later' people (who don't realize the opportunity they are missing) and non-skeptics (the suckers) are labeled as 'NOW' people (smart people who know how to take their chances in life). It was pretty convincing, if I hadn't known the game from the word go.
So, there is a good chance you would fall for this. Apart from the basic question, dude if this scheme was so good, why isn't everyone in the world super rich, there were a lot of holes in what they said. A reasonably clever person could have figured the whole thing out:
1) They have a 'brochure' that they are very wary to give out to anyone. They won't let you take it home. Or even see it without one of them being in person. Why would that be?
2) The pyramid scheme uses geometric progression, so a guy at level 10 of the pyramid with breadth 4 atleast has 4^10=2^20=1 million people in on it. I ask this guy Y, the successful magnate, which level he is on. He says 10. I ask him how many people he has under him He says 100. Yeah right!
3) I asked him how much he earned. It was a secret apparantly! I 'understood' and we had a nice laugh on it. Little did he know what I was laughing about.
4) This girl goes out and out to win my sympathy and make me feel good about myself. How dumb does she think I am!
But anyway, it was an interesting experience. It gave me an idea of how these con schemes operate. The basic idea is that for other people to believe you 2 things are necessary:
1) They should trust you.
2) You should firmly believe in it.
It is fascinating to see how something which is blatantly non-sensical at a fundamental level can be made to come across as being all rosy and super duper by top notch PR work. This is really interesting right, trust defies logic! When you trust what a person says you don't attempt to analyze what he just said! The very thought of analysis implies distrust! So, why not exploit that to the fullest! That's what this is all about.

Nice Photo

How to make your own reality TV show

The average American watches about 4 hours of TV a day. That's 28 hours a week, about 1500 hours a year, and assuming he lives till 70, he has blown 105,00 hours of life on this activity. So this institution of American life, this quintessentially (sure I botched the spelling) American pastime, has got about 300 million people spending 1/6th of their lives. If you think of it like this, 1/6th of 300 million people, is about 50 million people lives, so if we didn't have TV, we need to have only 250 million people in the US. So what is it that has costed the lives of 50 million people in the US and hundreds of millions across the world. Is there something about it that makes it so alluring? So addictive? I am going to use my extensive experience writing up research surveys to cook up the ideal TV program. Since, the public is the judge of what is good and bad, and reality tv seems to be the most popular form of visual entertainment, I have to conclude that the ideal TV program would be a reality show. So, how do you go about making one of these shows? I have conconcted a formulaic method that is simple to read, easy to understand and easier to implement.

1) 3 girls : Preferably thin with descriptions concurrent to those mentioned in rap videos. Friendly types not preferred.
2) 1 mentally unstable person. This person should have an history of unstable behaviour, problems with drugs, alchohol ,self control, violence.
3) 1 jaded celebrity. Preferably someone well known in the past, but now long forgotten. Usually has serious issues accepting that he is a nobody.
4) 1 politically correct person. Mostly to ensure that the program is loved from the hoods to the hamptons.
5) Lots of cameras, listening devices and alchoholic beverages: The 3rd ingredient creates the action. The first 2 capture it.
6) Claustrophobic conditions: Insufficient space. Everyone loves a good fight. Nothing to spice things up like abrasive, aggressive people in close and constant contact ;).
7) Lots of HDAs, HRTs : Horrifically Dangerous Acts and Horrifically Revolting Things. Keyword: Spiders, Rats, Animal Entails. As for horrifically dangerous acts, just think of things that you could get killed doing.
8) Lots of sin. Any act that has potential to be classified under one of the 7 deadly sins is welcome . Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Greed, Sloth. Lust and Anger are usually preferred in that order. It improves the viewing experience.
Add 1),2), 3), 4) followed by differendt parts of 5),6) ,7) and 8) based on personal preferences. It's your own personal experience and this author encourages you to enjoy this dish and takes no responsibility for sanity/intelligence related questions that might be posed to you later.

Some good reads

For once I shall not talk about myself, what I like, what I want to do. I have been doing a lot of random browsing off late and of got into reading a lot of blogs. They are fun, witty and give you a feel for another person's life.
The Compulsive Confessor : This is a blog about a 20something Delhi girl. This is as close as it gets in real life to the reel life of the protagonist of the movie Page 3. As in the movie, she is a tabloid journalist whose primary duty is to cover social events in the city. As, the name suggests it is a look into the life of one of those party every night types. I seem to have a penchant for stereotyping.
Prashanth Sriram : Well, this is the blog of one of my friends Prashanth Sriram. We were in the same school together and then in IIT. Though I didn't really meet him that much in IIT, atleast in the later years. It's philosophical, he usually notices something interesting, and goes hmmm..
The Smug Bug : This is a blog about a 20something Chennai girl. I think she is a tam brahm from a liberal art's colleges (stella maris..). She loves to thulp tam brahm boys (tam brahms are sterotyped as academically brilliant but totally naive and lacking in social skills). She is probably one of those 'cool' types, and invariably straddled between urban and traditional values. That's an interesting conflict. Especially since I am a tam brahm myself.
Serial Killer: On a scarier note, over the last few weeks the US has been shaken by the murders of 3 young children. Well, this maniac had kept a blog where he actually hints at the horror that he is going to unleash on the world. Here is a look into a mind, and it's not pretty.
I just discovered that I like to write. Write I will! I usually don't do things simply because I like it (I look at a lot of other factors..yeah very unromantic), but this is something I will do because I like it!

To think or to feel?

or

As you grow older, at each stage of your life the onus is on you to make the decisions. What should I work in? Whom should I marry? Where should I live? How much money do I wan't? How do you decide? Do you think through it or do you feel it?
The reason I am bringing up this topic is a discussion I had with Rob. I was telling him about the system in India, where your parents pick out a girl for you. I personally think that it isn't a bad idea, as long as I know the girl for a while before marriage. But, he was aghast, he couldn't imagine getting married to someone suggested by his parents. I was aghast he was aghast. I could go on like this but back to the topic.
Getting married is probably one of the biggest decisions that you will make in your life. It has the potential to make the difference between a life of fulfillment and a life of resentment. In the beginning of any relationship it's almost impossible to predict how thing's are going to go. So how do you decide ?
Do you go by the way you feel? I feel really connected to her and I feel she is the one. I really don't care about anything else, and all that matters is that I love her. I am going to do what it takes to make it work. In this approach, I might ignore a couple of crucial points that could introduce tension later on, age, race, attitudes etc.
Do you attempt to look at it from a logical perspective? Well, she is a decent looking girl with a nice personality. She wants to do a Ph. D. so the she is reasonably intellectual. Since, I am doing a Ph. D. as well, it would make it easy for us to be together. That's good.
Let's assume she is American:
Hmm...it would be tough to convince my parents about marrying her. If I wanted to get back to India, it would be tough to work out too. And, these people have such a high rate of divorce, what if later after things cool down, no, why do you think of such things, but still.
In this approach, you have the tendency to over-analyze, and with sufficient analysis you can make anyone look bad. You just need to get paranoid and neurotic about their short comings.
So how do you decide? Do you go by the way you feel or by what you think are the 'facts'? I think you need a combination of both. Your feelings and the facts need to align.

Travel Guide- NYC

New York. Songs have been dedicated to it, movies have been made around it- comedies, thrillers, dramas that revolve around it's subways, gangs, financial district....but, all this is no substitute for experiencing it.
What I like about NYC-
1) The atmosphere- lively and animated. Go to Times Square to see what I mean. Most of the theatres are situated around it so you can catch a show while you are there.
2) Restaurants and bars- It's a city that is famed for the number of restaurants that it has and rightly so. You get restaurants that fit every wallet and every palate. Go to Greenich Village/Soho for the bars and nice restaurants. 9th Avenue has a lot of restaurants too.
Things you should do in NYC-
1) Go up the Empire State Building. I actually made the mistake of taking the Chrysler Building to be ESB. Well, it's a lot more distinctive. You should go up the ESB for an amazing view of NY. You can see right from Wall Street to beyond Central Park. You can hear the sounds of the city as the buildings pump them up into the sky. It's great.
2) Take a cruise around Manhattan- For 30$ you can take a 3 hour boat ride around the island of Manhattan. You can see the different parts of the city, Brooklyn, the Bronx, the Statue of Liberty, the UN etc. etc. The list goes on. The boat director gives a very good account of the history and growth of the city. It gives, you a feel for the city, and beats trudging around grumpily in the sweltering heat.

Philosophical Ramblings

Follow your dreams, you may not be for the better once your dreams come through, but the joy is in the means . If it doesn't work out, just let it go.

Songs & Movies

A list of random songs that are good to listen to for a sound night's sleep:
Ode to Joy by Beethoven
Anything Dire Straits
Anything Beatles
Anything Clapton
Things U2 that aren't too fast.
A few movies that I watched lately:
Annie Hall by Woody Allen - Great comedy! Cereberal, sophisticated and extremely funny!
Mr and Mrs Smith - One of the best movies I have seen in recent times. It's amazing how the have perfectly interleaved a marital dispute into an action flick. It's hilarious! It rocks!
Full Metal Jacket by Stanley Kubrick- An insightful satire on the Vietnam war.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail - Hilarious British comedy!
Monty Python and the Life of Brain - Hilarious British comedy!
A few movies that I plan to watch soon:
Dr Strangelove by Stanley Kubrick
The Graduate - It's a movie starring Dustin Hoffman. It's supposed to be based in the University of Pennsylvania. The fact that I am interning in Phili and actually stayed there for a week makes me want to see it more.