Atheist Ad Sense

The Dude vs The Pope

Last week when I was doing research for the Jesus vs. Gul Panag article, I followed a trail of links that led me to a few atheist websites. The interesting thing about these websites is that they always have “Convert to so-and-so religion” ads popping up where “so-and-so” is either Christianity or Islam, mostly Christianity. Yes atheist websites have conversion ads and Jesus Christ is marketed as aggressively as GI-Joe!

Converting is now as easy as 1-2-3... just enter your email address and click "Yes"
...and while you are at it, chat with Asif :) 

Let’s suppose our dude (of Meter Jam fame) is an atheist who thinks religion is a state of mental disorder. (The dude is a fan of Bill Maher) The dude goes to an atheist website to catch up and socialize with fellow atheist dudes. The atheist organizations are not very well funded. Apparently saying "whatever you believe in is bullshit" to people is not a great business model! To raise a little money, these websites put up Google Ads in their pages. The chances that our staunchly atheist dude embraces a religion because of a Google ad is very low! If you think of it, it’s even a little stupid to place that ad there in the first place.

follow the money trail... 

The dude can either ignore the ads or click on them. If he ignores the ads, nothing really happens. We all know that if the dude clicks on the ad, then the atheist website gets some money from Google which is interesting. Let us follow the money trail...

With Google as the middle man, the Church is indirectly funding the Atheist websites so that the atheists can abuse the Church! This abusing will only make it more popular in Google searches etc. which will drive more traffic to the website which translates to more money from Google! Who's paying more money to Google again? The Church!!!

Conclusion: The Dude is smarter than The Pope

The Pope Ain't that dumb!

The Pope as we know, throughout history has always tried to have more people in his club. The Pope always wants more people. But where are all the people? The American market is saturated and Europe is in a slump. The middle-east has a lot of brand loyalty! So, like most international business houses, the Pope is now concentrating on the emerging markets namely, India and China! And they have a pretty good business model too.

A lot of good Christians in Texas, Norway etc. donate a lot of money towards helping the poor and the downtrodden in Asia through Christian missionaries. With that money, a small branch office (Church) is set up in a remote village. Times are not good for the poor village folk. One such fisherman in the village loses his boat in the storm. The fisherman’s family is hungry. The fisherman is helpless. The fisherman has lost all hope.

On a bright Sunday morning perfect for fishing, the fisherman walks by the Church, depressed, dejected and vulnerable. He sees the miracle box outside the Church. Yes these Churches have miracle boxes and miracle prayer sessions on Sundays! All you have to do is write a wishlist and it'll happen! The fisherman has nothing to lose. So he writes how badly he needs a boat on a piece of paper and drops it into the miracle box.

A few weeks pass by. Things do not improve and one cold gloomy morning, the fisherman finds a new boat outside his house and lo! It’s a Christmas miracle! The fisherman is now convinced that Jesus saved him! The fisherman converts, so does his family… and slowly the whole village and then the whole district! It’s a pretty successful business model. It worked great in Kerala and the Northeast. It is working pretty well in Orissa and Andhra Pradesh too! The dude may be smarter than The Pope but mind you, The Pope is not dumb… getting 2 billion people into your club ain’t easy!

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Es'sense' of humor

Ever wondered how all those funny guys come up with all the funny stuff? I did... in fact I have been doing research on that for one month now. Now most people I know laugh when I use the words "research" and "me" in the same sentence (even before I finish the sentence). May be it has got to do with my rather offbeat research techniques. For instance my research in humor goes like this. I try to figure out how I come up with funny stuff and then generalize the results on how all the funny people come up with all the funny ideas. "A rather controversial method" you might say. The surprising thing is that this is nothing new. Sigmund Freud did this all his life and he is now considered the father of psychology!

Sense of humor is an interesting paradox. It has no funny definition! Also, the notion of sense of humor changes with the gender. A guy is said to have a good sense of humor if he has the ability to make people laugh. A girl is said to have a good sense of humor if she laughs at whatever the guy-with-good-sense-of-humor says. I know it is unfair but yes, it is pretty easy for the girls, all they have to do is laugh!

Speaking of research, some topics are easier to do research on than others.



I'll illustrate most of my research findings in simple sketches because sketching gives me a lot of pleasure:


Here are some of my research findings illustrated:

Sometimes, giving pep talk to depressed bald people can get quite tricky. Even humor might not help.

How I plan to change the world

I always believed running was the most boring activity to do as an exercise. I have been running almost daily for 2 weeks now and trust me it is not the most boring thing. You wondering what’s more boring? Playing tennis without a partner is more boring. You hit the ball against the wall, it bounces back, then you hit it again and again until you hit it wrong and it flies over the wall. Then you breathe profanities under your breath, go fetch the ball, repeat the process. I tried it one day and I felt like a dog trying to train itself. Imagine a dog that has a ball and a pack of biscuits. Instead of eating the biscuits and sleeping under a shade, the dog kicks the ball somewhere, fetches it back and then eats one biscuit and repeats the process. Only Vodafone pups are that stupid! So I decided I am better off running.

One good thing about running is that you get to listen to music while you do that but the downside is that you can’t sing along. Here’s an interesting thing I observed while I was running the other evening. I was listening to this iron maiden number and I could totally get the lyrics! I’ve listened to the song a lot of times before but I couldn’t make sense of the lyrics but when I was gasping and panting for breath, I could make sense of every syllable. The whole song seemed to be in slow motion; at a much slower tempo than it was when I am not running.

This prompted me to do some research on the way the human mind perceives time. My kind of research is rather unconventional. I think of a really simple theory that answers all the questions. Then I search the internet to find any results or literature that contradicts my theory. If they do, then I adopt that theory, else I am in for yet another Nobel.

OK back to my theory, I think the rate at which we perceive time is indirectly proportional to our metabolism rate. That is why I found the song easier to decipher. The whole human body functions at a greater pace and as a result the reaction times are lesser. Just imagine the implications of this; if we can somehow make a drug (with no serious side effects) that increases our metabolism, we can have as much as 40 hours a day. The social implications of this theory could be huge. Just imagine a world where people cannot use the “I-don’t-have-the-time-for-it” excuse anymore!

However, there is a little loophole in the whole process i.e. all the series of experiments being done are based on the assumption that I do not have any super natural powers and we cannot rule that out. Unfortunately I cannot find any test subjects (read friends at IIT willing to collaborate with me in my research), so the world will have to wait a little while before I permanently alter the course of history (Or maybe I am just watching too much big bang theory!)



A rapid sketch of "The Godfather". Took just around 10 minutes. Looks much better on paper.