Knowing Your End-date

A few months back I was watching The Bucket List, and the movie posed an interesting question. I'm not referring to the question that was the central theme of the movie: what would you do if you know you had X days left to live? There is another question that I find even more intriguing. If you could peer into the future and learn the exact time and date you are going to die, would you chose to know it? According to a scene in the movie, a survey was conducted and 94% of respondents said that they wouldn't want to know. The remaining 6% responded that they would like to know.

I'm really on the fence on this question. There are major advantages to knowing when your life will come to an end. You'd be able to say goodbye to those you care about and you'd get the opportunity to experience things before you passed away. (Although this whole idea is far too fatalistic for me) If you knew the exact date which you were going to die, then prior to this date you'd be able to do outrageous things that put your life in danger with the knowledge that you would survive!

Fatalistic thoughts aside, knowing your end-date would enable you to adequately plan and budget your remaining days. For example, if you discovered that you had a month left to live you'd be able to cram as much enjoyment into your remaining days as possible! However, if you found that you had 50 years left, you wouldn't be in such a rush.

The obvious drawback to knowing when you will die is the possibility that you will dread dying as the date comes closer and closer. I personally do not fear death, but since it is an unknown and I like living, it could present a....downgrade? It's probably easy for me to say this since I am 22 years old. Perhaps as I get older, I will feel differently. Anyhow, I'm not going to get into my views of the afterlife. That requires its own blog post! But I will say that we have a legitimate reason to fear death since it is a big question mark, and this could make our final days anxious ones.

Not knowing our end date would present us with the inverse advantages and disadvantages. It is possible that we won't have the opportunity for closure with friends and family and it is possible that we won't experience everything we wished to do. On the other hand, we wouldn't have to dread our end-date.

As of right now, if I had to pick a side, consider me part of the 6%.

What Makes Milk So Special?

Let me rephrase that: What makes milk so special other than calcium. We all love that element on the period table, CA. All those "got milk?" campaigns drilled into our heads how important it is. When you're growing up and you see your favorite athlete drinking milk in a commercial, aren't you going to go home and drink a half gallon? I did! I must have consumed about 3 gallons a week as a youngster. If you don't know where I'm going with this, then you probably think like a normal person.

Milk is a great drink because it gives us options. We can pick between skim, 1%, 2%, and whole milk. If there are any other types of milk, I apologize to the milk connoisseurs. I've always been a fan of 2%, but I enjoy 1% on occasion. Skim tastes way too watery to me, and whole is far too thick. But the point is we have options and choices to pick from. Your taste buds are different than mine. So who am I to tell you that 2% is the best? It's a personal choice, all up to you, my friend.

My question is why don't other drinks offer the same type of flexibility? For example, why doesn't 1% or 2% Coca Cola or Pepsi exist? They have regular (immensely sugary) drinks and diet (too watery) drinks. When I drink a Pepsi, I feel like I am on drugs! I will bounce around with a ridiculous surplus of energy for about an hour. Then, like the 5 hour energy commercials states, I suffer a "debilitating crash". That soda is not so much fun anymore, is it?! Drinking the diet Pepsi is not fun either. It just doesn't taste very good. However, I find myself more frequently drinking the diet Pepsi to avoid the negative consequences of the regular one.

Back at Bentley when I was at the school cafeteria, I would create my own drink: 50% regular Coke: 50% diet Coke. It was the best of both worlds for me. I'm surprised that this product is not available. What is stopping Coke and Pepsi from releasing a half and half type of drink? Don't tell me I missed the memo and this already exists because that would render this entire post useless! Stay thirsty my friends (Dos Equis guy voice, I LOVE those commercials)

The Pretentious Stranger

Every once in a while I find myself in a public place with nothing to do. Today, for example, I was at South Station in Boston waiting for the commuter rail. After spending a few minutes perusing through books at the mini bookstore, I resorted to walking around the station and "people watching." No, I don't think this is sketchy. I was just walking around and making observations about people.

Sometimes I will see a random stranger who rubs me the wrong way. Since I don't know the stranger at all, I have nothing against him/her. There is absolutely no reason I should dislike the stranger. However, something about the manner in which this person walks, talks, interacts, and acts in general I can't stand. Gotta love nonverbal communications

I'm not sure if these thoughts are reasonable, but I sometimes think to myself "That guy looks like an asshole!" Why do I form opinions on people I don't know at all? Am I being judgmental? I'd say so. But damn, that guy looked like a douche bag.

Interactive Things

I've always been a fan of things that are interactive.

Interactive presentations: Get the audience engaged! They won't fall asleep. Back at Bentley I thought it was fun to present things in an interactive manner when possible. Those types of presentations are typically more creative and the audience will like them better too!

Interactive books: Choose your own destiny. Remember the RL Stine Goosebumps series? He also came out with some choose your own destiny Goosebumps books which I found to be very entertaining. It was fun to try to pick a path in the book that would lead to your survival! (Or I should say the book's protagonist's survival.)

Interactive television shows: There may be other examples of interactive television shows, but the show that comes to mind for me is Beyond Belief Fact or Fiction. This show aired from 1997-2000 on Fox. During each show there are five short stories, and each story is difficult to believe. The catch is some of the stories are based on factual events and some of the stories are completely fictitious. The writers of the show may also change some of the minor details in the factually based stories. At the end of the show they reveal which stories are factually based and which are totally made up. I really enjoyed Beyond Belief because it is fun to evaluate the stories and try to discern whether or not they are fictitious! It would be fun to watch with a friend as well and try to compete with them to see who can figure out more of the stories! Or it would even be fun to keep track of how good you are at predicting whether or not the stories are factually grounded - a Beyond Belief Fact or Fiction Win-Loss record.

I found the show online. You can watch it for free at the URL below if you are curious:

http://www.videowebtown.com/xxxscary4youxxx/21829/73945