Formulae in life... and the Tao of Steve (warning, it's a bit of a head trip, you may need a glass of wine to get through this, I certainly had a few writing it!)...

Here's an anomaly: in my last blog I banged on about random stuff and the spontaneous and the surreal, and yet conversely, there's something about having a rule, or pattern to follow that I particularly enjoy. In many aspects of life. I love spotting patterns created by others and attempting to determine the intent of the creator (Eww.... hang on - I am NOT referring here to 'the Creator'; more on anti-creationism another time).  I admit it, I am a manual reader (I DO RTFM!! ). I love to see the rules first and then apply them. They are there for a reason; someone, somewhere has done all the work on our behalf to make things easier - all we have to do is follow the recipe.

I think this is why I love toying with haiku - Japanese poetry format - 17 syllables, three lines, 5-7-5, include some expression or metaphor of nature or the seasons, and....Kazam! There you are!

I much prefer this to anything chaotic or too emotional and woolly. Like romanticism. I think this is also why I like puzzles and treasure hunts so much. There is a pattern or code, there is an answer, someone else has devised it, and the challenge is for me and you to find out what the route to the answer is. Maybe this is also why I managed to delve (albeit briefly) into programming and UNIX a few years ago. Understanding and applying rules has been useful for me throughout life - and is probably what has made me marginally academic. It makes it so easy to remember stuff! All those formulae, mnemonics, methodologies.....I enjoyed learning Latin at school, and dare I say, was good at it. Consequently I like languages - learning the rules of grammar, and toying with codes and alphabets. Not just in language though, I did Business Studies, 22 years ago - at University. I still recall the simplicity behind Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, and the hypothesis behind Herzberg's Motivator-Hygiene Theory; and methodologies like SWOT; and the 4 P's of the marketing mix. Which in Business is probably about as much as you need to remember  And here's something else about formulae that is fantastic. They all interlink and cross over. You can take a formula from one aspect of life and apply it somewhere else.

Let's stop for a moment and think about this....

1) The obvious discipline is mathematics. Formulae EVERYWHERE, all over the bleeding shop. I read Fermat's Last Theorem, which outlined the work which took place over centuries and decades, to re-prove something for which the original mathematical proof (by Fermat, in the 17th century - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_last_theorem) had been lost. Interestingly (for me at least), the mathematicians that finally managed, at the end of the last century, to re-prove Fermat, used branches of mathematics that hadn't been around when the original dude originally worked things out. So how the hell did he do it? But what was more interesting still, was the way in which you could apply one set of mathematic proofs from one discipline to something quite tangential, and maintain the integrity of what you were trying to solve - like a massive jigsaw. e.g. (and I can't recall the exact details) you might be able to draw on the basic tenets of algebra, geometry, probability, number theory, and calculus, all to solve one universal or quite different problem. Thus showing that all aspects of life, the universe and everything are most probably interconnected. Woh!

2) You can apply rules from business, maths, language etc to solve interpersonal, domestic and philosophical situations. And if you can't, it's fun trying to!

Take Herzberg, as previously mentioned. It's basically just psychology. You can use it to encourage good behaviour in your children. Or SWOT analysis to help you decide whether to make an offer on that dream house. etc etc. I'm sure there are far more way out and bizarre examples, let me know if you've ever applied anything like this in life....?

So....onto the Tao of Steve (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0234853/). I listed this in my favourite films, and I've only seen it once! My husband recently described it in less than praiseworthy terms to a mutual friend (I think 'heap of shit' might have been his actual terminology),  but to me, it is less about the artistic or production merit of the film, or the plot, or the characterisations (actually, which are all OK), but more about the philosophy on 'how to get the girl' which the protagonist, Dex, espouses over the course of the film. I saw it one time, but it's so easy to remember his three rules for courting success...

1) Eliminate desire
2) Be excellent in her presence
3) We pursue that which retreats before us (i.e. having excited a woman's interest, you should withdraw...)

It makes utter sense. In terms of 'pulling' theory. (The fact that he ultimately has to stray from his own Tao in order to actually get the woman of his dreams is by the by - I just like the sheer *notion* of a methodology for this). I think there's also one in 'A Beautiful Mind', some probability theory applied to 'tapping off'.

Next - oh yeah - Dice Games.... mixing the random with the deterministic, and the trouble it could land you in .