Monday, April 14, 2008

Women Don't Ask

I just came from a talk by Sara Laschever, who is the co-author of the book "Women Don't Ask". This talk was very interesting, and it was mostly about how women fall behind men when it comes to negotiating. She argued that social stereotypes of men and women play a big role in this. I personally agree with most of her arguments, as I have witnessed those myself.
I should try and get hold of this book and read it!

Friday, April 4, 2008

When will you get married?

I have been on Facebook for about 6 months now, and although it has helped me a lot to keep in touch with some of my long lost friends, I have to admit that I've come across the most ridiculous applications ever imaginable! First there was a host of vampire invitations that really irritated me, then there were zombies, hugs, roses, angels, you name it.

Very recently one of my closest friends sent me an invitation to this "When will you get married" application. Here is a screenshot of that:


Notice that it says "Patented Wedding Algorithm A.I" :).
Anybody with even a teeny bit of common sense should be able to see that this is an attempt to get your personal information, and popularize this application by asking you to send this out to at least X number of your friends . But still, people try this out
! I find this fact (i.e. how psychologically we are tempted to try out these kind of silly applications even though we have a feeling that there might be an adverse consequence for us at the very end) really interesting. Don't you?