At the 1994 annual awards dinner given for Forensic Science, AAFS President Dr Don Harper Mills astounded his audience with the legal complications of a bizarre death.

Here is the Case:

On March 23, 1994 the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head.
Mr. Opus had jumped from the top of a ten-story building intending to commit suicide. He left a note to the effect indicating his despondency. As he fell past the ninth floor his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast passing through a window, which killed him instantly. Neither the shooter nor the deceased was aware that a safety net had been installed just below the eighth floor level to protect some building workers and that Ronald Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide the way he had planned.

"Ordinarily," Dr Mills continued, "A person, who sets out to commit suicide and ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended, is still defined as committing suicide." That Mr. Opus was shot on the way to certain death, but probably would not have been successful because of the safety net, caused the medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his hands.
In the room on the ninth floor, where the shotgun blast emanated, was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing vigorously and he was threatening her with a shotgun.
The man was so upset that when he pulled the trigger he completely missed his wife and the pellets went through the window striking Mr. Opus. When one intends to kill subject "A" but kills subject "B" in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject "B".
When confronted with the murder charge the old man and his wife were both adamant and both said that they thought the shotgun was unloaded. The old man said it was a long-standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her.
Therefore the killing of Mr. Opus appeared to be an accident; that is, if the gun had been accidentally loaded. The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple's son loading the shotgun about six weeks prior to the fatal accident.
It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son's financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother.Since the loader of the gun was aware of this, he was guilty of the murder even though he didn't actually pull the trigger. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.

Now comes the exquisite twist-
Further investigation revealed hat the son was, in fact, Ronald Opus. He had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder. This led him to jump off the ten-story building on March 23rd, only to be killed by a shotgun blast passing through the ninth story window. The son had actually murdered himself, so the medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.

The other day in one of my Technical Communication class, I happened to meet head-on with this topic called "Emotional Intelligence". It kind of really seemed way beyond the traditional psychometrics,et al.But, nonetheless - somewhere down in my ganglions I felt that metrics like Emotional Intelligence could not be used to measure a person's level of happiness or sadness per-say; Atleast it isn't the right tool to get such things measured..On the other hand though- I could more conspicuously see the OOBT tableau of it...Hmm..Why can't someone use Emotional Intelligence to feel better? Why can't someone use Emotional Intelligence to come out of depression? And with it did my IETs(Yeah!, the same old Idiotic Emission of Thoughts) flow and thus leading to painting my rectangular parchment of space on my blog with some thoughts to ponder..

For the uninitiated,if we do step back and see the very "grass-root" level definition of EI (Emotional Intelligence) it says - and I quote "a self-perceived grand ability to identify, assess, manage and control the emotions of one's self, of others, and of groups". Voila! So, EI as I learnt is not all about mere digits indicating some "quotient", but, about the state of mind!

Further research revealed that the human mind tends to behave in an entirely-different manner when the body builds a different environment around it. Now, what that means is that- If a person is depressed (low EI), then, if s/he manages to forcefully move into an environment that is filled with a high EI. Then, it seems, the EI of the depressed person is at a pseudo-high EI. Now, another rule says that if a person spends a more than 15.7 mins in an pseudo-high EI environment,then, s/he crosses a threshold barrier to reach a quasi-stable state of mind.

Now, that's revalation, I felt!. Man!, what if we fake ourselves into the quasi stable state? Wouldn't we be able to overcome depression? Wouldn't we be able to achieve a temporary control over our emotions?

So, what I thought was that one of the best techniques to temporarily control your emotions is simply to fake them. Feigning courage when you’re scared can make you feel more confident. Faking enthusiasm when you’re down can give you the extra push you need to keep going. Acting happy can get you out of a brief emotional slump.

Why would you want to fake your state? The emotional state you have at any particular time will have a tremendous impact on your effectiveness. Your speech will sound more convincing and effective if you’re speaking with confidence rather than trembling with nervousness. State control is essential for communication because people want to be around people who feel good. Even personal activities like exercise, work and reading benefit from the right emotional background. The way you feel determines how effectively you act.

And meanwhile, at the back-end all that you have done is to have moved into a quasi-stable state. Voila!, you have faked youself out of depression isn't it?

The idea of faking your state can seem a little like cheating. Aren’t your emotions there for a reason? But few people recognize how malleable their moment-to-moment feelings are. If you’re caught up in a lousy thinking pattern and someone gives you a small compliment, what happens? You’re entire world changes. As soon as your focus shifts from a small negative to a small positive you start feeling good.

In the long-run our emotional well-being is relatively smooth. But in the short-run emotions often fluctuate heavily. Depending on what you focus on you could feel the range of depression, anger, joy and pride all in the same day. Faking your state can’t change your life but it can change how you are responding right now.

And finally I felt that after all state change is not all about feeling good,but, it’s all about doing good.
A common mistake people make is that they want to change their emotional state to feel better. Remember that emotions are nothing more than chemicals and signals you are giving yourself. Your brain wouldn’t be giving them to you if it didn’t think you needed them.

The emotional part of your brain wasn’t designed to make you feel happy – it was designed to help you survive. Although most emotions are no longer matters of survival for the human species, your brain is still adapted to give you the emotions it believes will be the most effective.

Your goal with state control is to shift your emotional state into the most effective state. Trying to simply shift out of uncomfortable emotions because you don’t like them is likely to backfire. But shifting into emotional states you truly believe will be more effective can.

What makes an effective state differs depending on the situation. In social settings, an effective state can often be enthusiasm, fun or playfulness. Other situations might require courage, motivation or willpower. Trying to calm yourself down before a speech often doesn’t work because your brain wants you to focus. Picking an emotion like enthusiasm or being alert is more likely to hold.

So, dont make yourself come out of depression- fake it!

Vote via SMS is the most commonly used voting system these days. From reality shows to surveys & contests everywhere it’s been used. But, I personally don’t vote at all using this system since it uses 5 or 6 digit short code which my service provider will charge around 5 to 6 Re per SMS. Because of this pricing, participation in voting becomes very less.

But, somewhere down the lane I fel that there should be a revamping added to this idea. Why not use the technique of the so-called "Missed Call" to make votes?. The concept of "Missed calls" is of-course a "great invention" by the Indians!! We are so fond of using this “Missed Call” technique in our daily life that none of the home-based person in the family calls a worked-based person in the same family, instead they always give a missed call and the other usually makes the call back! Just because they don’t want to burn their currency from their home-based mobile(which apparently has substituted the tradtional 'land-line' phones). Taking this forward into a global market why can't we come up with a “Missed Call to Vote” system!

For Ex:

Q: Should ABCD become Governor of XYZ company?

If YES, give a missed call to +91 12 34 56 78 90
If No, give a missed call to +91 12 34 56 78 91

All that you are doing here is just giving a missed call, so you wouldn't be charged anything to vote! And isn't this system simple? you don’t even have to remember the “Send XX to YYYYY” and blah blah part to vote! It is just different numbers to dial for different options.

Just about a week ago, I was in conversation with a friend of mine- about what sort of active thinking needs to be inculcated in Undergrads before they go ahead and pick their majors.

This is a sentiment of a cry that usually lurks behind academia at large—for classics and philosophy majors who do not know what to do with their majors, for social science majors who become frustrated with the gap between jargon‑intensive theories and real‑life phenomena, and so forth. Except, perhaps, for premedical students, the academic journey taken by most students in college is fraught with questions of purpose.

In the past people have attempted to bridge the gap between academic theory and practice. One of the major points was that “in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is.” In other words, if the theory is well‑supported with evidence from reality, it should naturally have relevant implications for practice.

But on the other hand, I would like to point out a subtler undercurrent of student attitudes towards academic texts like those read as part of the Core. The attitude, which I argue changes over time, goes something like this:

We enter into college, or for some of us, high school, excited about discovering truth and enriching our minds. We soon discover that we can’t agree amongst ourselves on interpretations of texts, let alone on fundamental concepts. Does “thou shalt not kill” apply to acts of self‑defence? To animals? What about capital punishment?

Frustrated with the ambiguity and dissonance, we throw our hands up, sighing, “It’s all relative. It’s all the same. Who cares?”

I think that this disillusioned response is due to a previous presumption that there must be one coherent theory that contains all truth. With this presumption framing our minds, the conflicting plurality of theories bowls us over—we swing over, deflated, to the other end, denying all truth. But to maintain this presumption would be to reject Newtonian mechanics simply because they do not work on the atomic level. It would be to deny what each idea and person has to offer. At its worst, this attitude becomes an ear‑closed arrogance, but a polite one at that—a kind that often takes a variation of the response, “Oh that’s interesting. Well, that’s just what you believe.”

So reading and thinking about theory does inevitably translate into an attitude and, consequently, a practice—the question is, what sort of attitude? A retreat into cynicism can become, I argue, a thinly veiled intellectual laziness that does not actively engage ideas different from one’s own. An active engagement means a critical assessment of ideas to judge whether or not one would subscribe to them and often involves a revaluation of one’s ideas. Such a mental exercise of reflecting, judging, and even imagining is useful in its own right. It trains the mind’s faculties and the heart’s toleration of difference—“mental gymnastics,” as my geometry teacher once said.

Theory may enlighten our understanding, but it ultimately trains our way of thinking. It is left to us to strike the right balance between contemplation and action and to translate the mode of thinking into practical action—a frustrating and ambiguous responsibility, certainly, but ours, and only ours, nevertheless.