I don't get it.

In a last ditch attempt to procrastinate work on a Saturday afternoon, I decided to finish a post I started quite a while back on things I don't understand.

1. Gotye - Somebody That I Used to Know


The song falls into a category I like to call "whiny songs" where the lyrics, voice, and style of song all work together to make it sound like somebody is doing just that - whining. I have little tolerance for people who whine and bitch constantly in real life so this song hits a nerve for me. Even watching the video the dude even looks like he's whining, which he is actually. The fact that the song has hit the top or near-top of so many charts like the Billboard Hot 100 really confuses me. To each their own musically I guess.

2. TOMS (The Shoes)


They're not comfortable, they look odd in my eyes, they feel cheaply made, and they cost up to $70 which is ridiculous. I get that TOMS donates a pair of shoes for every pair sold but couldn't you just donate the money directly and have maybe 4 pairs of some other shoe sent for the same amount? I think it's a statement piece much like driving a Prius, (except the Prius actually makes sense), and a rather silly one at that.

I think my Cuban manager at my job last summer summed it up best - "They look like shoes the poor people wore back in Cuba. They took scrap fabric and made shoes out of them there and here they're charging $70 for it"

3. Grading Curves

Grading curves can make sense if implemented properly, but it can also be a huge pain in the ass if they're applied where they don't belong. At my school, all the business courses are set on a strict curve - and when I say strict, if an nontenured professor decides not to follow it, they'll get fired. Only a certain percentage of people can get an A/A-, anybody that falls below that threshold in the class is screwed. While it maybe makes sense for conceptually more difficult classes like Finance and Accounting, in easier classes like Marketing and Management, they screw so many people out of the grade they deserve. Last semester, I pulled off "A"s on all my case projects, got an 91 on my midterm, and around the same for my final and ended up only with a "B"in the class because the curve was so high. Rules say only a certain number of people can get an "A", but when the curve is set such that a 96% is the cutoff for an "A", so many people are SOL even if they get a 95% overall. And now in my marketing class I'm worried things will repeat since the average on the last midterm was a 91% and everyone is pretty much brilliant. Last semester, my friend's marketing class had a 95% A/A- curve - meaning if you got a 94% you were stuck with a B+ and below a 90% was a B. Fuck.

4. Macs and especially the Macbook Pro.


I grew up with PCs and I imagine the majority of people in my generation did too so imagine my surprise when I get to college and EVERYONE has a Mac. I remember when having a Mac was such a hipster thing to do but now they outnumber PCs 3-to-1 at my school. What I don't understand is why people are willing to spend pretty much double the money on a laptop when you can get a similar spec PC for so much less. Case in point - I have a 14" HP Pavilion and many of my friends have a 13.3" or 15" Macbook Pro. My laptop has a gen-2 Core i5 processor, 640GB of memory, 6GB of RAM, and a 6 hour battery life with normal use. It's pretty much similar or in a few ways superior in terms of specifications to their computers except for one way: I got my current laptop last summer for about $500 after rebates while they got their Macs for $1200-$1600. Even aesthetically the difference isn't too much; they both have an aluminum case and the fun little light-up logo on the back of the monitor. The only difference that's actually useful or cool is that they have a light-up keyboard and the fancy Apple logo. Even sillier in my mind is that in the business school we run programs that were designed ONLY for PC so people end up partitioning their laptops so one half runs Windows. Why don't you just buy a PC in the first place? Macs really arent' any more reliable either; I've never had any major problems with my HP laptops. My last one lasted about 4 years without major fault and I still keep it as a backup today. The only reason I replaced it was that I wanted something faster and lighter so I could carry it around more easily. If Apple's brand equity can justify a $600-$800 markup then man, Apple's got everyone just drinking their fancy Kool-Aid.

5. Kony 2012

I know it's mostly died out now but while there was the whole frenzy after the Invisible Children video came out, I was so confused as to why everyone was suddenly so impassioned about it. Guys, watching a 30 minute video does not make you suddenly into a world activist. It presents only one view of a situation and you can never become an expert on ANYTHING in the length of a weeknight sitcom. I'm also sure 99% of people who suddenly became Kony2012 supporters wouldn't even be able to find Uganda on a map of Africa (Probably unhelpful hint: it's by Kenya, Tanzania, and the newly formed South Sudan). I won't dive into Invisible Children's sketchy financials which is another important issue but I was really disturbed by just how even well-educated individuals can be so illogical at times.

Anyways, I'm sure there are dozens of counterarguments which can be raised on any of these five things so please, if you think you can explain to me some hidden benefit or meaning that I might be missing, please do. I would love to learn something new or at least hear the other side of an argument.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend y'all.

All the best,

JP