Traditions

A very interesting conversation with colleagues over lunch ensued sometime back over the whole concept of traditions.

Lets consider a sociological experiment first.
Put five monkeys in a cage with a ladder at one end which leads upto a banana. Now sooner or later at least one of those monkeys will go ahead to the ladder to scale it and grab the banana. As soon as one of the monkeys touches the ladder spray the other bunch with water. (At this point it is immaterial if the first monkey gets the banana.) Now place another banana and whenever any monkey reaches the ladder, spray the rest with water. After sometime there will be a scenario where if any of the monkeys goes towards the ladder then the rest will gang up on him and hold him back with the fear of getting sprayed.

Once this condition is manifested then remove one of the monkeys and replace him with another. Now obviously this new dude will go towards the ladder to grab the banana. But this time (no water spray) what would happen is all the other monkeys would hold him back (with the fear of getting sprayed if someone went to the ladder). Replace all the original monkeys now one by one with others and soon a pattern emerges that noone will be allowed to get to the banana. Even though there is no water being sprayed at this point.

None of them know exactly why they aren't supposed to get to the banana but the argument over here is "Since this is the way things have always been done, we continue to follow suit".

This is the whole point about tradition, most of us do follow several customs etc. but as to what reasons are behind this we hardly ever know.

Driver Rants

I like driving.A lot. So it drives me nuts when I often see some very very moronic drivers on the roads. When someone is in the left lane going at 90-100 then invariably some moron will be on the left lane going at 65 as well which ends up leading to a bottleneck and all the cars behind this moron are doing 65 as well (especially when theres a massive semi on the right lane.)

Also I hate people who cut and do not signal. First of all its dangerous to other cars behind and also its just stupid. The whole point of having indicators is that you use them to flash other cars. Same thing goes for the idiots(on the right lane) who decide to speed up as soon as you are trying to get past them on the left lane.

I am all for weaving in and through traffic but provided the proper lane change indicators are given. The whole point about having a powerful car is that you can do all this.

Another observation is that somehow invariably if there is a traffic issue/bottleneck somewhere on an otherwise long stretch(without construction) then it more often than not is due to an asian chick behind the wheel. I mean c'mon asians should be among the best drivers ever since they mainly come from countries which have some of the worst traffic systems in place. But I suppose then that this only leads to one observation and that is of over cautiousness.

Everyone has encountered someone who has pissed them off on the road sometime or the other. It is also a good outlet for all the rage though sometimes. ;)