Singing Helps You Learn a Foreign Language

Sunny, Flirty Days

Posted on 2013/01/282013/01/30 by Jason Hensel

When single, I conducted most of my flirting late at night in dark bars after a few drinks to stimulate courage. Any other time and I was a complete mute.

Perhaps, though, I should have attempted to flirt in the daytime, specifically when it’s sunny. According to a new study, women are more receptive and offer their phone numbers more often when approached during a sunny day.

“In a field quasi-experiment, 18–25-year-old women walking alone in the street were approached by an attractive 20-year-old male confederate who solicited them for their phone numbers,” Nicolas Guéguen wrote in the study‘s abstract. “The women were solicited on days that were evaluated as being either sunny or cloudy but care was taken to control for temperature and not to solicit participants when it rained. It was found that women agreed more often to the confederate’s courtship solicitation on the sunny days.”

Caution, though. The sunny day may have put the women in a better mood or caused more confidence in the men. Seriously, who wants to flirt when it’s overcast and rainy outside? Just go to a bar (and flirt there!).

Guéguen also offers another caveat: France.

“In this study, we examined the receptivity of women to a courtship request by a man because it was conducted in France where men traditionally approach women in romantic relationships,” he wrote.

Wait. Is he suggesting that French women are more open to extracurricular activities outside a steady relationship?

(Image via Flickr: Andy Cross / Creative Commons)

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Review: How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

Posted on 2013/01/142013/01/14 by Jason Hensel

Navel-gazing, or the art of self-reflection, hit its high point on the Internet around the turn of the century. Then, every third blog you came across was an exploration of an individual’s daily habits and thoughts. Letting strangers have a glimpse of their lives didn’t bother the authors, because either they wanted the attention or they sincerely wanted to know themselves better. Both options played a role, I’m sure.

In the 16th century, Montaigne was the ultimate navel-gazer. His only aspiration was to learn how to live, the proper way to conduct one’s life. He set out to discover this by writing essays, pieces that are about one subject but would meander or jump to another thought. His goal wasn’t order, but to present life as it is so that he (and the reader) could learn from it. Many readers claim that when they read Montaigne, they feel that he’s writing about them on a personal level. It’s because he was honest with himself, and that we’re all connected, we all feel the same things, experience the same joys and griefs. Many, though, try to rein in their thoughts and feelings, creating a systemic narrative. That’s not life, which really can be compared to a game of Pong. Sometimes you move in a straight line, sometimes you move diagonally. A lot of the time you move back as far as you move forward, and the speed of it all is random. Montaigne knew this and embraced it.

In How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, Sarah Bakewell offers readers a portrait of a man clearly ahead of his time. Even now, Montaigne’s raw honesty would be frown upon or mocked. One only likes a mirror when it’s there to please.

Bakewell organizes the book in 20 chapters, each with such headings as “Q: How to live? Question everything” and “Q: How to live? Give up control.” Each chapter covers a period of Montaigne’s life while at the same time exploring the topic at hand. It’s a clever progression. Throughout the book, you learn a lot about French history, nobility, and philosophy, both Montaigne’s accidental attempts at it and Greek and Roman thoughts.

It’s clear that Bakewell loves Montaigne. The writing is at times energetic, humorous, and balanced, much like her subject’s essays. If you’ve never read any Montaigne, you’ll be inspired to after finishing this book. You may even be inspired to contemplate your own existence, perhaps begin a journal or create a blog. If anything, you’ll definitely think about not only how to live, but what it means to live.

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Review: Whatever

Posted on 2011/11/102011/11/10 by Jason Hensel

Duality is a common theme in literature. In fact, it’s one of my favorite themes, especially when it’s an internal struggle. Questions such as who we are, what’s our place in the world, how we perceive ourselves as opposed to how others perceive us are questions that have fascinated and baffled humans for thousands of years. I suspect we’ll still be trying to answer them millions of years from now as the growing Sun swallows our planet.

Whatever (Original French title: Extension du domaine de la lutte) by Michel Houellbecq is another book posing these types of questions without definitive answers. With so much literature published on this topic, the most important question rises as to how well a writer attempts an answer.

The novel’s protagonist is a 30-year-old computer programmer who writes strange stories about talking animals in his spare time. He’s content (or resigned) to how is his life is playing out, until he’s sent on a trip with a co-worker to train provincial workers on how to use a new computer system.

His traveling partner, Raphael Tisserand, is younger and a virgin. Together, they train by day and go out at night in various French cities. The protagonist (he’s never given a name) observes Tisserand’s repeated failures in trying to have sexual relations with women and comes to the conclusion that capitalism is to blame. Because of a free-market economy, the rich (the good-looking) get richer and the poor (the ugly) get poorer.

In one of the more suspenseful scenes in the book, the protagonist urges Tisserand to exact revenge on a woman and her lover that has thwarted Tisserand’s advances. The outcome, though, succumbs to the protagonist’s capitalist theory about love.

After this scene, the book becomes a lot more philosophical, shooting toward the universal like a slim rocket.

“For years I have been walking alongside a phantom who looks like me, and who lives in a theoretical paradise strictly related to the world,” the protagonist says toward the end of the book. “I’ve long believed that it was up to me to become one with this phantom. That’s done with.”

This is a common feeling among many in the world, that what you once thought would happen–or once thought you’d be–will no longer be a part of reality. It’s a difficult realization. Some never accept it, for better or for worse.

It’s this realization that Houellbecq asks his readers to consider in Whatever. His hero’s response may not be your choice. Nevertheless, it’s the only choice that will keep us alive.

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