neoviky

The less talked about creations of Steve Jobs

2011-05-10T18:07:00.002+05:30

This guy, Mr. Jobs, is not your regular CEO. He has a cult following. He is God like to many people. This guy, who wears a black turtle-neck and blue jeans for all public events in the last decade, does seem like the last true tech 'visionary' we will have.

Even my mom knows he created the iPod, but... in the last decade, apart from the well known stuff like the iPhone, and the iMac, Mr. Steve Jobs ended up creating a lot of other things too.

A true visionary creates path breaking products and services, and some of them go on to become hits, and some of them duds. Like a new-age alternative rockstar, the music he creates is unheard of, and he unleashes the new tunes on us, gambling on whether it will be accepted by us all, or would be too alien.

The iPod-iTunes ecosystem

When Mr. Jobs created the iPod, and eventually iTunes to put the music in it, negotiating with the record companies to give us new and old tunes for 99 cents a pop… he was creating a new music economy, a never before seen platform to purchase music digitally. This radical approach was difficult, as he later admitted, as the record company executives were from Stone Age, but he eventually made this entire system of legally purchasing digital music the de facto standard across the world. Now apart from music, iTunes became the digital store of all kinds of media, be it TV shows, music videos, movies… the user experience is still one of its kind.

The TOUCH platform

In 2007, when the first iPhone came, we didn’t know how good its touch responsiveness and OS smoothness was, but the more we got to knew the iPhone, the more we could see that there hasn’t been a device like this before. It was a refined, smooth user experience. The fluid and super cool device also had a sibling, the very versatile iPod Touch, which was as cool as the iPhone was, and could do lots. It gave rise to the ‘TOUCH’ web, a world where we could login and check our gmail or facebook in 3 ‘touches’ as compared to 15 clicks on our windows laptop, Google search was instant and fast, with voice search too. This later gave rise to a whole new economy of APPS, the word which is so common now. There are millions of apps, and there is an app for almost anything now!

Over 75 percent of our casual internet usage is only limited to checking facebook, checking email, tweeting, reading the news, and searching on Google. And all of this is more instant, personal, fast and intuitive on a touch interface that Mr. Jobs provided us with. It was without the hassle of sitting on a chair, powering on your PC/laptop, and typing/clicking away to do something we can do in a more intuitive and better way. The iPod Touch/iPhone also were the first consumer devices in the world with gravity/proximity sensors, accelerometers. The refined OS, combined with these new sensors, and the whole multi touch thing, almost made them ALIVE.

The Apps made full use of the devices, making them uniquely versatile, like watching Youtube videos, to reading ebooks, to recipes, and exercising.

The Post-PC device

Even if we just look at media consumption, it’s a totally changed game after 2007. The Windows PC or even the Mac looked like an old way of doing things. Sure you need an MS PowerPoint to make a presentation, and if you want to type something out, you need your laptop. The iPad had an appeal as it was not a computer, but a different beast all together, a tablet that can be used by directly talking through fingers. Anything, like browsing photos, or watching a video, became personal, enlarged, intuitive, and in-your-face. The technology was already proven and refined due to the iPhone/iPod touch devices doing the same things on a smaller screen. (Most of the apps and features, and even the OS is basically the same), the larger screen makes the device not a toy, but a new age POST PC device.

So what Mr. Steve Jobs is actually doing is not creating devices, but making us fall in love with music again, with cover flow and large album covers on our touch screens, What he is doing is not creating a computer box, but a transparent, button-less, cover-less, screw-less device with an invisible battery, that feels alive due to the many sensors it has. That responds to touch like a furry animal would. This was never envisioned before, though now we have 100 clones.

We are watching music videos while we lie on our beds, because we just thought of listening to that song, that very second. We are reading books and magazines on our touch devices, reading comics, and it feels right.

Mr. Steve Jobs has a cult following due to his changing the way we live our lives, and improving it. The way he has ‘touched’ our lives! His creations for the last decade are the tech world’s greatest hits collection!

What else do you think Steve Jobs created?

Death

2011-04-14T16:15:00.005+05:30

Ok lets talk about this huge, gigantic dead horse in the room, which no one wants to talk about!

What happens to us after we die? It is the most inevitable thing, a sure fact, a reality in the future, which is more real than anything.

The fact that the sun rises in the east, may be proved false someday but this will always remain a fact that you are going to die.

Are you afraid of death? This is not a stupid question. Are you? Because most people are afraid of death, but only because it brings about the unknown. We don't know what is going to happen after death. And we imagine death to be very painful.

But the biggest reason we all are afraid to die, is because we think it will eliminate our personality, our sense of 'I'. Our life of 70, 80, 100 years, when we are a kid, grow up, get married, and grow old, we have a certain fondness with ourselves. We love to listen to our name. We like to get educated, so that we can be called a doctor or an MBA.(not me!) All of the love we have for ourselves, extends to our house, family, car... whatever things we want to associate with us.

The name we earn in society, the respect, the trust, and of course the material possesions, we like to attach to ourselves as closely as possible.

Death seem like a flood that will take away everything, as we ourselves would cease to exist. So no more Mr. (insert your name) that exists! He was a great man! He is gone now! Left everything behind: family, money, house!

I would like to give a name to this tendency: our attachment to our ego.

Our fear of death is what makes us hoard money, commit crime (sometimes horrible crimes), get attached to wealth, buy insurance, and spend so much in health costs.

So death is not a problem, its only a fact. Problem is the fear of death. These two are separate things.

What if after death the ego does not die? Just the old body dies, and 'WE' as a personality remain? Can that be possible? The Geeta tells us that we are souls, not bodies, so we don't really die, only the body dies. We are eternal, and have been alive since eternity and will be alive forever... that is what is written in the holy book.

And eventually this fear of death is what makes us look towards God, otherwise we will be too busy either working or partying! Who has time for God? He has to get our attention by giving us pain, so that we remember him!

I have seen and heard of spiritual people who have conquered death. They are so close to God that they are already dead, yet alive. So they know the secrets we don't know, and are not afraid of anything, including Death.

The hindus do have the 're-incarnation' belief, and it fits well with the 'Karma' theory too. So we keep on getting new bodies to enjoy our good and bad deeds!

That is all I can say, rest i don't really know...... what do you think?

facebook

2010-11-20T23:59:00.004+05:30

The new dope called facebook.

Since a few years before.... a global nuclear bomb is going off, every passing moment, and has not yet stopped exploding. It's stuck at the 'boom'.

What is the reason of this internet superstar that is now getting more people searching for it and using it than even Google? There were many social networking sites before this, friendster, myspace, orkut... and myspace was so huge almost everyone had a page there... but that was 2005.....

So is it like every 3 to 4 years all of the online human population has to change the social platform? Or is it something else?

There have been many sites before this so the idea was not new. What was new was the implementation by someone who not only understands online behaviour and technology but also understands human psychology. Man is basic. Man is fundamental, and is in most common packages, a machine.

The basic things, human need for sex, power, curiosity, money, always drives most people. We get interested in others lives, we have a curiosity to know about others, we have a desire to be a celebrity in our social circle, to 'show off', to present ourselves, to 'market' ourselves to others, and at the same time keeping track of what is happening

with others whom we know, or want to know, or want to be known to. Facebook is the new dope, it is highly addictive because it lets us peek, gets us to look in private lives exhibitioned by the friends and colleagues.

I have seen public fights and arguments due to a relationship status on facebook set to 'single' or 'interested in' status set to 'a relationship'...... I think that sums up the power of facebook. This is so important right now in 2010.... God knows what will happen a few years later, will we all be on fb showing off our lives or will a new platform will be our social network.

Vicki

Florence + The Machine 'Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)' - Out now!

2010-05-26T21:15:00.000+05:30

The Human DNA

2010-05-04T20:01:00.001+05:30

The human DNA is a biological Internet and superior in many aspects to the artificial one. The latest Russian scientific research directly or indirectly explains phenomena such as clairvoyance, intuition, spontaneous and remote acts of healing, self healing, affirmation techniques, unusual light/auras around people (namely spiritual masters), mind’s influence on weather patterns and much more. In addition, there is evidence for a whole new type of medicine in which DNA can be influenced and reprogrammed by words and frequencies WITHOUT cutting out and replacing single genes.

Only 10% of our DNA is being used for building proteins. It is this subset of DNA that is of interest to western researchers and is being examined and categorized. The other 90% are considered "junk DNA.” The Russian researchers, however, convinced that nature was not dumb, joined linguists and geneticists in a venture to explore those 90% of "junk DNA.” Their results, findings and conclusions are simply revolutionary! According to them, our DNA is not only responsible for the construction of our body but also serves as data storage and in communication. The Russian linguists found that the genetic code, especially in the apparently useless 90%, follows the same rules as all our human languages. To this end they compared the rules of syntax (the way in which words are put together to form phrases and sentences), semantics (the study of meaning in language forms) and the basic rules of grammar.

They found that the alkalines of our DNA follow a regular grammar and do have set rules just like our languages. So human languages did not appear coincidentally but are a reflection of our inherent DNA.

The Russian biophysicist and molecular biologist Pjotr Garjajev and his colleagues also explored the vibrational behavior of the DNA. [For the sake of brevity I will give only a summary here. For further exploration please refer to the appendix at the end of this article.] The bottom line was: "Living chromosomes function just like solitonic/holographic computers using the endogenous DNA laser radiation." This means that they managed for example to modulate certain frequency patterns onto a laser ray and with it influenced the DNA frequency and thus the genetic information itself. Since the basic structure of DNA-alkaline pairs and of language (as explained earlier) are of the same structure, no DNA decoding is necessary.

One can simply use words and sentences of the human language! This, too, was experimentally proven! Living DNA substance (in living tissue, not in vitro) will always react to language-modulated laser rays and even to radio waves, if the proper frequencies are being used. This finally and scientifically explains why affirmations, autogenous training, hypnosis and the like can have such strong effects on humans and their bodies. It is entirely normal and natural for our DNA to react to language. While western researchers cut single genes from the DNA strands and insert them elsewhere, the Russians enthusiastically worked on devices that can influence the cellular metabolism through suitable modulated radio and light frequencies and thus repair genetic defects.

Garjajev’s research group succeeded in proving that with this method chromosomes damaged by x-rays for example can be repaired. They even captured information patterns of a particular DNA and transmitted it onto another, thus reprogramming cells to another genome.
So they successfully transformed, for example, frog embryos to salamander embryos simply by transmitting the DNA information patterns! This way the entire information was transmitted without any of the side effects or disharmonies encountered when cutting out and re-introducing single genes from the DNA. This represents an unbelievable, world-transforming revolution and sensation! All this by simply applying vibration and language instead of the archaic cutting-out procedure! This experiment points to the immense power of wave genetics, which obviously has a greater influence on the formation of organisms than the biochemical processes of alkaline sequences.

Esoteric and spiritual teachers have known for ages that our body is programmable by language, words and thought. This has now been scientifically proven and explained. Of course the frequency has to be correct. And this is why not everybody is equally successful or can do it with always the same strength. The individual person must work on the inner processes and maturity in order to establish a conscious communication with the DNA. The Russian researchers work on a method that is not dependent on these factors but will ALWAYS work, provided one uses the correct frequency.

But the higher developed an individual’s consciousness is, the less need is there for any type of device! One can achieve these results by oneself, and science will finally stop to laugh at such ideas and will confirm and explain the results. And it doesn’t end there.
The Russian scientists also found out that our DNA can cause disturbing patterns in the vacuum, thus producing magnetized wormholes! Wormholes are the microscopic equivalents of the so-called Einstein-Rosen bridges in the vicinity of black holes (left by burned-out stars).
These are tunnel connections between entirely different areas in the universe through which information can be transmitted outside of space and time. The DNA attracts these bits of information and passes them on to our consciousness. This process of hypercommunication is most effective in a state of relaxation. Stress, worries or a hyperactive intellect prevent successful hypercommunication or the information will be totally distorted and useless.

In nature, hypercommunication has been successfully applied for millions of years. The organized flow of life in insect states proves this dramatically. Modern man knows it only on a much more subtle level as "intuition.” But we, too, can regain full use of it. An example from Nature: When a queen ant is spatially separated from her colony, building still continues fervently and according to plan. If the queen is killed, however, all work in the colony stops. No ant knows what to do. Apparently the queen sends the "building plans" also from far away via the group consciousness of her subjects. She can be as far away as she wants, as long as she is alive. In man hypercommunication is most often encountered when one suddenly gains access to information that is outside one’s knowledge base. Such hypercommunication is then experienced as inspiration or intuition. The Italian composer Giuseppe Tartini for instance dreamt one night that a devil sat at his bedside playing the violin. The next morning Tartini was able to note down the piece exactly from memory, he called it the Devil’s Trill Sonata
.
For years, a 42-year old male nurse dreamt of a situation in which he was hooked up to a kind of knowledge CD-ROM. Verifiable knowledge from all imaginable fields was then transmitted to him that he was able to recall in the morning. There was such a flood of information that it seemed a whole encyclopedia was transmitted at night. The majority of facts were outside his personal knowledge base and reached technical details about which he knew absolutely nothing.

When hypercommunication occurs, one can observe in the DNA as well as in the human being special phenomena. The Russian scientists irradiated DNA samples with laser light. On screen a typical wave pattern was formed. When they removed the DNA sample, the wave pattern did not disappear, it remained. Many control experiments showed that the pattern still came from the removed sample, whose energy field apparently remained by itself. This effect is now called phantom DNA effect. It is surmised that energy from outside of space and time still flows through the activated wormholes after the DNA was removed. The side effect encountered most often in hypercommunication also in human beings are inexplicable electromagnetic fields in the vicinity of the persons concerned. Electronic devices like CD players and the like can be irritated and cease to function for hours. When the electromagnetic field slowly dissipates, the devices function normally again. Many healers and psychics know this effect from their work. The better the atmosphere and the energy, the more frustrating it is that the recording device stops functioning and recording exactly at that moment. And repeated switching on and off after the session does not restore function yet, but next morning all is back to normal. Perhaps this is reassuring to read for many, as it has nothing to do with them being technically inept, it means they are good at hypercommunication.

In their book “Vernetzte Intelligenz” (Networked Intelligence), Grazyna Gosar and Franz Bludorf explain these connections precisely and clearly.
The authors also quote sources presuming that in earlier times humanity had been, just like the animals, very strongly connected to the group consciousness and acted as a group. To develop and experience individuality we humans however had to forget hypercommunication almost completely. Now that we are fairly stable in our individual consciousness, we can create a new form of group consciousness, namely one, in which we attain access to all information via our DNA without being forced or remotely controlled about what to do with that information. We now know that just as on the internet our DNA can feed its proper data into the network, can call up data from the network and can establish contact with other participants in the network. Remote healing, telepathy or "remote sensing" about the state of relatives etc. can thus be explained. Some animals know also from afar when their owners plan to return home. That can be freshly interpreted and explained via the concepts of group consciousness and hypercommunication. Any collective consciousness cannot be sensibly used over any period of time without a distinctive individuality. Otherwise we would revert to a primitive herd instinct that is easily manipulated.

Hypercommunication in the new millennium means something quite different: Researchers think that if humans with full individuality would regain group consciousness, they would have a god-like power to create, alter and shape things on Earth! AND humanity is collectively moving toward such a group consciousness of the new kind. Fifty percent of today’s children will be problem children as soon as the go to school. The system lumps everyone together and demands adjustment. But the individuality of today’s children is so strong that that they refuse this adjustment and giving up their idiosyncrasies in the most diverse ways.
At the same time more and more clairvoyant children are born [see the book “China’s Indigo Children” by Paul Dong or the chapter about Indigos in my book “Nutze die taeglichen Wunder” (Make Use of the Daily Wonders)]. Something in those children is striving more and more towards the group consciousness of the new kind, and it will no longer be suppressed. As a rule, weather for example is rather difficult to influence by a single individual. But it may be influenced by a group consciousness (nothing new to some tribes doing it in their rain dances). Weather is strongly influenced by Earth resonance frequencies, the so-called Schumann frequencies. But those same frequencies are also produced in our brains, and when many people synchronize their thinking or individuals (spiritual masters, for instance) focus their thoughts in a laser-like fashion, then it is scientifically speaking not at all surprising if they can thus influence weather.

Researchers in group consciousness have formulated the theory of Type I civilizations. A humanity that developed a group consciousness of the new kind would have neither environmental problems nor scarcity of energy. For if it were to use its mental power as a unified civilization, it would have control of the energies of its home planet as a natural consequence. And that includes all natural catastrophes!!! A theoretical Type II civilization would even be able to control all energies of their home galaxy. In my book “Nutze die taeglichen Wunder,” I have described an example of this: Whenever a great many people focus their attention or consciousness on something similar like Christmas time, football world championship or the funeral of Lady Diana in England then certain random number generators in computers start to deliver ordered numbers instead of the random ones. An ordered group consciousness creates order in its whole surroundings!!! [http://noosphere.princeton.edu/fristwall2.html] [1] When a great number of people get together very closely, potentials of violence also dissolve. It looks as if here, too, a kind of humanitarian consciousness of all humanity is created.

At the Love Parade, for example, where every year about one million of young people congregate, there has never been any brutal riots as they occur for instance at sports events. The name of the event alone is not seen as the cause here. The result of an analysis indicated rather that the number of people was TOO GREAT to allow a tipping over to violence
.
To come back to the DNA: It apparently is also an organic superconductor that can work at normal body temperature. Artificial superconductors require extremely low temperatures of between 200 and 140°C to function.
As one recently learned, all superconductors are able to store light and thus information. This is a further explanation of how the DNA can store information. There is another phenomenon linked to DNA and wormholes. Normally, these supersmall wormholes are highly unstable and are maintained only for the tiniest fractions of a second. Under certain conditions (read about it in the Fosar/Bludorf book above) stable wormholes can organize themselves which then form distinctive vacuum domains in which for example gravity can transform into electricity.

Vacuum domains are self-radiant balls of ionized gas that contain considerable amounts of energy. There are regions in Russia where such radiant balls appear very often. Following the ensuing confusion the Russians started massive research programs leading finally to some of the discoveries mentions above. Many people know vacuum domains as shiny balls in the sky. The attentive look at them in wonder and ask themselves, what they could be. I thought once: "Hello up there. If you happen to be a UFO, fly in a triangle." And suddenly, the light balls moved in a triangle. Or they shot across the sky like ice hockey pucks. They accelerated from zero to crazy speeds while sliding gently across the sky. One is left gawking and I have, as many others, too, thought them to be UFOs. Friendly ones, apparently, as they flew in triangles just to please me. Now the Russians found in the regions, where vacuum domains appear often that sometimes fly as balls of light from the ground upwards into the sky, that these balls can be guided by thought. One has found out since that vacuum domains emit waves of low frequency as they are also produced in our brains.

And because of this similarity of waves they are able to react to our thoughts. To run excitedly into one that is on ground level might not be such a great idea, because those balls of light can contain immense energies and are able to mutate our genes. They can, they don’t necessarily have to, one has to say. For many spiritual teachers also produce such visible balls or columns of light in deep meditation or during energy work which trigger decidedly pleasant feelings and do not cause any harm. Apparently this is also dependent on some inner order and on the quality and provenance of the vacuum domain. There are some spiritual teachers (the young Englishman Ananda, for example) with whom nothing is seen at first, but when one tries to take a photograph while they sit and speak or meditate in hypercommunication, one gets only a picture of a white cloud on a chair. In some Earth healing projects such light effects also appear on photographs. Simply put, these phenomena have to do with gravity and anti-gravity forces that are also exactly described in the book and with ever more stable wormholes and hypercommunication and thus with energies from outside our time and space structure.
Earlier generations that got in contact with such hypercommunication experiences and visible vacuum domains were convinced that an angel had appeared before them. And we cannot be too sure to what forms of consciousness we can get access when using hypercommunication. Not having scientific proof for their actual existence (people having had such experiences do NOT all suffer from hallucinations) does not mean that there is no metaphysical background to it. We have simply made another giant step towards understanding our reality.

from
http://www.tomislavbudak.com

Vicki

Google: the new currency keeper

2010-04-13T15:39:00.008+05:30

Google is getting fed something or the other, a million times per second. Every educated person on this planet is feeding it. We all want to search something on Google, many times a day. Kids know they can find anything on Google. So does my totally non-computer savvy dad. He knows he can search for any kind of stuff on Google. Billions of people use this search engine regularly.

Now these are a lot of people using Google, not counting the other 20 Google services, like Gmail or Buzz, just Google Search.

We all are giving Google a new 'thought' information. This collective information may be totally unknown in the past decade, but due to the coming of FB/Twitter, we all know what real time 'trending' is. When suddenly some odd topic becomes really hot. Like recently when Google itself was in the news for pulling out of China, or when Lady GaGa's new 'TELEPHONE' video was premiering, we could see for ourselves the trending spike on twitter, and of course, Google could see the spike in search. These search spikes has made Google come out with 'FLU TRENDS' which tracks tell tale searches to know which parts of the world have got flu contamination.

Last year Michael Jackson passed away, and even Google didn't know what to do with the super-duper search spike for him, and thought it was a spam attack.

Google has in it's hands a new kind of 'thought' currency that it is beginning to realize the value of only in recent years. The rich and the powerful Governments would kill for such a huge information PULSE. You have thousands of 'signals' coming from all parts of the world, all the time. What are people thinking, in New York, in Sydney, what is going on in peoples minds? Whatever it is, we only thought it knows what we, as individuals search. But they just don't see our search, they see everybody's google search, and can know about search trends, moods, fears, secrets, and problems/solutions like no one else can. The real power is the 'collective thought' pulse and it is the emerging currency that is going to dominate the future. It's more than just eyeballs, this is truly interactive and intuitive, along with being totally real time.

Another factor is that Google is so omnipresent. It has embedded itself in cellphones, iphones, droids, Google phones, netbooks, almost everywhere. It wants people to use it, to feed to it what they are thinking, all the time. No matter how personal or intimate a search is, Google is filing it and indexing it, trending it, geo-locating it, and comparing it with other searches.

So much information to one single company who has already monetized it through advertising, using sophisticated and automatic online tools like ad-words/ad-sense.

Google has been fair though, and does offer some insight to what it finds, through Google TRENDS, and Google INSIGHT. But in a few years the value of the thought pulse is going to increase manifold, and the Governments can kill for such valuable information about the masses.

Such information can effect elections, marketing campaigns, and even cause big disruptions in sensitive countries like the middle east and China.

A totally new, super valuable currency of the future in the hands of one company?

Vikram

People: friendly enemies, and familiar strangers

2009-11-01T18:25:00.003+05:30

Friends are totally over-rated, and enemies, highly under-rated.

If i begin to count, i have very few real 'friends'. Most of the people i meet everyday, are my colleagues. Then I have those ex-collegues. And finally a few people i know since school/college.

Most of our so called friends, are in fact enemies. But they are very friendly, they talk sweetly, do favors , talk gossip, share secrets, take you into confidence, have beer with you, appear like best buddies, and still, they are not really friends, but are friendly enemies. These people have a habit of back-biting, back-stabbing, and other back related deeds(!), at any time in the future. It's a looming possibility, always.

The reverse is also true. Some sworn enemies, sometimes end up helping you. They have something to prove, so they are genuinely loyal!

But my point of discussion is the many people we all meet around everyday, and i have broken them down into two catagories:

Friendly Enemies(as discussed above);

and;

Familiar Strangers.

These are the people that you know but don't really know. This includes ALL the people in your office that you don't talk to, not even say hi, but they bump into you in elevators, pantries, and washrooms. These people you know very well, and they know you very well too maybe, but you have never talked to them, ever!

These can also be sometimes those people who are in different departments and you have sometimes had a word with them, a friendly word. People in HR, IT, Accounts.

Or in case of where we live, most of our neighbours that we don't talk to, but still know them! If you take the metro, you'll find same faces that you saw a few days back, and they will look at you too, but u don't know each other, but are still familiar.

In the online world, take your facebook friends, or the gmail talk chat list. There would be some people in it, which u don't even recall by name, but they are still there, somehow being in your buddy list! What to do with these people?

I saw in a tv commercial, a question was put, 'why sit alone when u can sing/dance together'? It showed people in a train that don't know each other (strangers) so they sit alone, and then they all start singing, and become friendly to each other.

An old quote: "a stranger is a friend we haven't met yet."

Vikram

Lost

2009-09-16T20:07:00.000+05:30

My life is a drift. An aimless existence. I'm not really doing anything. I'm not goal

oriented. I don't have a purpose. I"m just 'being' me. I really don't know what I will

eventually become. I'm lost.

I read somewhere that to go where no one can go, you have to be lost at some point. If there

was a set path to everything achievable, however difficult, then anybody could just follow

that path and reach the goal.

I've seen people around me asking me stuff i have absolutely no answer of. Like when i'm on

the net, and somebody asks me what i'm doing, and sees that i'm reading something, and ask

what am i reading. Heck I don't know what i'm reading, i am not thinking that NOW i'm going

to read this, it's just something that i'm finding interesting at this moment, and i'm

reading it. When I lose interest in it, i will close it, and browse somewhere else, or

check my email, or facebook, or whatever stuff we 'do' on the net.

For those normal people, you have to be doing something always, you have to have a purpose.

If you're goal oriented, you'll open the laptop only when you have somewhere specific to go

to online, or something specific to check. Some tangible purpose.

One of my friends lately told me he's buying his dad a laptop, so that the old man can play

poker on it. Seems like a very normal thing to say. But for me buying somebody a laptop to

play poker sounded very stupid. A bit like buying a russian submarine to find sea shells in

a pond.

Maybe i'm wrong. Maybe specific things are required to be done in life at the right time to

get the right result. Or maybe I'll stumble upon something big and then everything will be

just all right!

Pictures

2009-08-31T11:48:00.002+05:30

I have been fascinated by Pictures, and the whole concept of capturing the moment in a camera, with all it's colorful glory and that freeze frame being with us forever. It's like stopping time itself, freezing it in that very moment. Video captures sound and motion too, but it's the mute and frozen pictures which are strangely more interesting and have a timeless quality in them.

Capturing light, now that was a great invention. In the days before cameras, people used to

get paintings of themselves. Billboards, cocacola signboards, and movie posters used to be

painted too. There was no concept of clicking a picture and publishing it. It all had to

be drawn by hand first.

I see old pictures of me,and my family.. those eastman color pictures..the beauty, youth and

the feeling of those times remains intact and embedded in those pictures, after decades.

They become so valuable. They root us somewhere, and sometimes we are so very surprised to

look at them, as we can't believe that once that person was like this, or that dress was

actually worn, or that makeup/hairstyle could be carried off! Sometimes we are surprised to

look at an old picture of ourselves. How could we be like this, and why did not we do the

things we desperately want to do now, but can't.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a collection of pictures in sequence would be

like a diary. I think if we click a few pictures every day and store them day/date/month

wise, it would be an ideal diary for what's happening in our lives, every day. Pictures are

not just to pose with a stupid smile/grin or a V sign in front of the camera with the same

stupid posture. Anything that we see, and click a picture, and be much more valuable later,

even though at that time it may seem odd to take out your digicam/phone cam to click that

situation/image.

Instead of just vacation pics in front of huge towers/markets/sceneries which all look the

same, we need to be more original, more inventive in what we click. Food is an example. If

we click a picture of the restaurant dish we have ordered, before we eat it, when the dish

is placed in front of us, tempting, that can be a good picture. Or what we see around when

we ride a bus/subway. The small things around us can be a good memory later, if captured

and immortalized by the 'time freezer' machine in our hands.

Michael Jackson: The man in the mirror

2009-06-28T21:58:00.005+05:30

Ok well the boy has died, while he was still a boy! Peter Pan he was really, I thought it was a joke everyone made that Jackson never grew up, but it was true. He was an upside down person. The curious case of Michael Jackson is the name of the movie it seems.

He was remarkable, really. In December 1988 when i was a very little kid, i bought my first music tape, from money i had borrowed and stolen, It was Michael Jackson's BAD. I 'blogged' about it even then, before computers before blogging, before the internet, before mobile phones, i had to blog my purchase of something heavenly and I did, in my rough notepad that had my curious notes and drawings. It was a blog, now that i think about it. (see pic)

Everyone knew Michael jackson....but no one really knew Michael Jackson. His friends and relatives knew maybe. Maybe Lisa Mary Presley came to know him and left him! But to the rest of the billions of fans and critics, he was a super showman only. All his appearances, his music, his videos on MTV, his interviews, his stage performances, were manufactured, and heavily choreographed, edited and sanitized. Nothing was raw. His music was edited and re-edited, polished and smoothened. Sony took care of his promotional activities, everything was managed.

So all we fans/critics have ever seen of him was what was fed to us. What they wanted us to see.

I think the 80s era and the timing made him a lot more famous than he himself imagined. And it slowly got into his talented head. He was always a victim though, no matter what charges the media put upon him. He has cried and cried that he does not know what's going on, he was a little kid who had whims and cute desires, that the grown up world did not understand. Even if he DID like little boys, he did not want to sexually molest them, but wanted to be with them coz he related to them, he was a little boy himself! He may have been physically older, but he was just a little boy it seemed, a victim.

This guy became really famous. So famous that he ceased to become a human being. He had to become larger than life, hence the huge promotions, the huge statues, the grand entries, the big spending, as the show was getting bigger, the fan base huge, and this manufactured pop artiste was to be presented as such. It was all bound to collapse, really.

My heart goes out for the lonely little boy who died young at 50! It's so fitting that he almost broke the internet when he went away! Now everyone is listening to his music again, and watching his music videos and stage appearances on TV/net. Everyone.

He did went as far as fame can take you. He went to the end, and it turned really ugly at the end. I always wondered what he thought when he looked at the man in the mirror. I now think about that more often while I look at the mirror too.

Star Trek -Movie Review

2009-06-09T00:39:00.002+05:30

Star Trek......... i waited and waited to watch it....little did i know that i had already watched it in the trailers of the movie on the net!

It had nothing in it which was new....the old star trek (TOS) series, made in 1966, had depth, vision, complex storylines, character development....and to top it all, sometimes it had surprise endings, a shock at the end of the 40 minute episode leaves me gasping even today.

Episodes took years to write, and scripts were drafted and redrafted several times before it was filmed. The graphics were not CG, but what do you expect in the 60s? But they made it up with awesome stories.

Small example:

In one episode Kirk and his people go down to a planet to meet an old scientist, but they are kept prisoners there, and they find out andriods(robots) are made there by that scientist, who look and behave like humans. Kirk is also duplicated and an andriod kirk is sent to the starship, with the real kirk kept as a prisoner. The episode progresses and Kirk fights it out and escapes, as he implanted some quirk in the andriod Kirk so that Spock gets the hint....Kirk also falls in love with a beautiful female andriod. Later they find out the old scientist who is such a genius, is in fact an andriod duplicate of that scientist who died decades ago. All this in one 40 minute episode.

There were many episodes like the one i mentioned above, which had so much depth and coolness, apart from being technically correct from a physics and astronomical point of view, that it was a treat to watch them.

STAR TREK (2009)

Oh where do I start? This movie is a treat if you don't know anything about Star-trek, if you are an 18 year old with your 15 year old girlfriend, this is THE movie to watch, thrills, laughs, special effects, emotions, and all of this served the fast food way.

But no, i have done the mistake of being a trekkie. I watched the original series (in rerun episodes on Star World in 1995) and well....my bad luck!

This movie feels like the fast forward button was pressed throughout.

There is an excellent opening sequence when Kirk is born, it set my hopes high for the rest of the movie. Then the second scene of a kid Kirk, getting chased for speeding, set my hopes even higher.

After that all was a big let down. Story: how can the fucking story be one-dimensional, when they have so many dimensions and black holes in the plot? beats me! But they did it!!

It was a simple good guy(Kirk) who is rash and brash, fights with so obvious bald/tattooed/MOGAMBO bad guy. We saw in the trailers, we know he's the bad guy. He will obviously fight Kirk/Spock.

Why did all of them had to be 17 year olds? Space wars were being fought as if it's a PS2 game and the video game's main Hero is stuck in a situation and certain cheat codes and fast button pressing will take him out of that situation...yes the way the characters were giggling and pressing buttons it did feel that way. But here they were saving planets.

Scotty says this is like shooting at a moving bullet, while being blindfolded and riding a horse, just to explain to the 15 year old girl sitting in the theater watching Star Trek just how much of a nerd/geek/techie/genius he is!

Spock actually drops Kirk to die on an icy planet. No comment on that....

This was a STAR TREK cartoon version! Kirk and Spock have Archie-Reggie type fights!

Maybe in a two hour movie they were trying to cram up everything they got to make it fast, furious and hard-hitting and didn't have time to breathe.

Or maybe i'm right.... the fast-forward button was left on!

Vicki

the coolest Gods of the universe part 1: Lord Shiva

2009-05-15T04:42:00.009+05:30

Lord Shiva, the much revered, and one of the most amazing Gods of this cosmos. There is so much about Him, it's mind-boggling!

Lord Shiva is one of the Three Primary Gods, Lord Bhrahma is the Creator, Lord Vishnu is the Preserver, and Lord Shiva the Destroyer.

He is the lord of Dance!

He is the most mysterious Gods of the universe, and also the most contradictory.

He is seen as the Supreme God.

He is sitting in Mount Kailash, right now, in the Himalayas. Yes, that mountain, which shines like a diamond, is a strange figure in middle of the forest of mountains, like a flower growing in the middle of a puddle, and nobody goes near the Kailash mountain, nobody can touch it! Forget the bermuda triangle, take a look at a real heaven on earth, sort of like Superman's crystal home in the north pole........How cool is that!?

Shiva is Pure Consciousness; the masculine principle of the universe.

He is the one who is making the universe end and a new universes begin! Like the center of the Galaxy where new stars are given birth and old stars dissolve. He is beyond time and space, as you might have guessed. The universe, which has all those aspects is under His control.

Lord Shiva, takes pleasure in smoking, drinking and generally enjoying and making merry! He is the universal vibration for dancing, so its very apt too! He is also the most broad-minded and cool God that I have learned about, doing things that are beyond our level of understanding. Which even if we try to understand or comprehend, we'll get lost and our limited minds will think of those acts/deeds/truths in a wrong light.

I could go on about the astounding things, but the main thing here is the attitude of the God. He's is ultra-cool! He is the essence in Michael Jackson/Beyonce's dance steps! He is not very easy to explain, and that is the beauty! We really don't know nothing about Him! We don't! We know a few things, and those are facts, not mythology as is widely believed. Yes...TRUE facts, and your believing or not believing is not going to change those facts, because the believing/not believing part is just your ego, nothing more.

We really need to change our attitude towards the Gods and the so-called Mythology though, it's very hard to understand them anyway, so why have a negative or a disbelieving attitude?

Next week: Lord Krishna

Vicki

'Fuck!'

2009-03-15T19:40:00.004+05:30

Fuck is one of the most beautiful words. The English language should be proud of it. I don't think any other language has such a beautiful word.

It is one magical word: just by its sound it can describe pain, pleasure, hate and love.

Besides the sexual meaning, there are also the following uses:

Fraud: I got fucked at the used car lot.
Ignorance: Fucked if I know.
Trouble: I guess I am fucked now!
Aggression: Fuck you!
Displeasure: What the fuck is going on here?
Difficulty: I can't understand this fucking job.
Incompetence: He is a fuck-off.
Suspicion: What the fuck are you doing?
Enjoyment: I had a fucking good time.
Request: Get the fuck out of here!
Hostility: I am going to knock your fucking head off!
Greeting: How the fuck are you?
Apathy: Who gives a fuck?
Innovation: Get a bigger fucking hammer.
Surprise: What the Fuck?
Anxiety: Today is really fucked.

As you can see there are not many words with the versatility of 'Fuck'.

But if we ALL are using it, if Presidents and Vice-Presidents are caught on the microphone using it, if everybody knows about it, young people, old people, men, women, kids, everyone you can think of.......then why is this word so powerful? Why does it still have that sting in it? the word "GOD" has lost all its power, the word "SEX" has still some sting left, and this F word is all stingy, after all these years.

And why do i have a bad feeling writing this piece on the F word? As if I'm going to be arrested for this!? As if my friends now would not talk to me!? Why is this word, which is SO out there, invoking such paradoxical and hypocritical feelings?

I want this word out on the streets in everybody's lips. (Ok my mistake, it already is out on the streets, on EVERYBODYS lips!!) Then what is my point? I really don't know, but i'm amazed at the different reactions this tiny little 4 letter word evokes in people, and how it's still the dog whistle of humanity.

Love the Pirates!

2009-03-03T19:51:00.003+05:30

This case is straight out of a movie, involving our internet freedom, our liberty, and our digital future. The Pirate Bay Trial is historic. Take a look at the dynamics of Both the sides:

The Prosecution (Bad guys) are using the following:

- generalization of facts to distort them

- assumptions based on mis-assumptions.

- 'lack of evidence' points put out of the record(selective showing)

- very very little technical knowledge

- hypothesies

- hyperboles

- involved politics

The Pirate Bay (The Good Guys) have these points:

- country law mostly on their side.

- EU law on their side.

- very good technical knowledge

- real figures given in court talk.

- no relation with users committing crime.

- provides indexing service just like Google

- no generalization, straight to the point.

- no politics involved

- says if linking to copyrighted material is illegal, then almost every site in the world, including Google, can be found guilty.

You can guess what my side is, what's yours?

(thanks to a comment by 'Doh' in TorrentFreak)

one shot: Facts! Part 2

2009-03-02T16:57:00.003+05:30

Fact 2: " The Sun gives our body Vitamin D"

Ok. So that is all you brilliant scientists could find, after studying the glorious Sun? The life-prevading, the spectacular source of everything, which gives all the plants and animals (and us) life, which gives us sunlight, which the reason for the rain-cycles, the weather, vegetation, and countless other miracles. Without which we all die in 2 weeks, that God-like Sun, you say is there to give us a Vitamin D dose, which we can get from popping a pill.

COMPLIMENTS GONE WRONG!

2009-02-23T19:35:00.006+05:30

Compliments never to give....

(learned the hard way.)

Wow you got a pretty face! (apparently they think i mean the rest of them is not good)
Hey for someone who just delivered a baby, you look great! (this one made them furious, but i'm clueless why)
Hey you got an awesome body! (implies to them that i meant their face is not good)
Wow you gotta great smile! (makes them smile sarcastically)
No it's like you may have put on weight very very slightly, not more than a pound max. (the lesson i learned is that i gotta follow the 'LIE! LIE! LIE thru your teeth!' rule, and just say they look skinny/wafer thin)
Hey how come you're so pretty, when your parents are so ugly? (this one is obvious. Don't say it to them in front of their mother. Or father. Or both.)

one shot: Facts! part 1

2009-02-21T19:15:00.003+05:30

Fact 1: "95% of the human DNA is useless, hence is known as Junk DNA."

Okk.....soo..... just because you don't understand what it does, it's useless? Couldn't there be a possibility that your benchmark of it's use is not what it should be? No? Oh I forgot the part where you declared that you're the all knowing God of the universe.

(starting a new 'one shot' series where i put the known facts, that is what the scientists say... under my POV)

The missile part 2: SALE

2009-02-16T19:04:00.006+05:30

The self-destructive missile raised a point on commercialism being important. Here's another take:

Why is everything for sale? I don't mean the discount sales, i mean everything in this world.....why is everything for sale?

There is a price you can pay for anything, and everything has a price.

Everything can be bought if the price is right.

The price is there, always. It varies, but it's there. There is a price tag on humans, on fetishes, on any kind of object, on feelings, on all the things that can be seen, tasted, heard, felt....and relished. The price to pay can be your beliefs, desires, freedom, morals......

In a very New York like city i once visited, i realised the place was so commercial, one could sell dirt there.

As in my earlier "one shot" post, agreed commercialism is important, but to what extent? It has crossed all limits. It's scary.

Sales has been a big question mark, always. It has been very difficult for me to sell. After getting kicked out of many 'sales' jobs, i realised i can't sell. I watched and interacted with the 'sales guys' and found them...well, let me not say it.

But one can't escape from Sales, as one is selling oneself all the time. One is polishing oneself, pretending, impressing, listening, talking, asserting, dressing up, doing plastic surgery/botox(!!), giving a job interview...... all is part of selling oneself.

Sorry I can't meet my sales target again!

one shot: the missile

2009-02-12T03:06:00.004+05:30

a creative person, who is not commercially inclined, and does not have the ability or desire to make an effort to be commercially successful...........

.....is like a self-destructive missile! Even if that missile does not find a wall to hit, it will explode mid-air anyway!

For example, you know that you are a great painter, you love your paintings, and you do paint pretty well, it is still of no use to you. There is potential, but nothing else. But if a few thousand or a few million people believe so to, then it is acceptable to all... the very same paintings! And you become a great painter!

Google Latitude- yet another barrier gone

2009-02-04T15:32:00.002+05:30

Well they have done it again, after dissolving barriers with Books project, Translation, and a few other disruptive services like Google Earth, they jump into dissolving the real-time location barrier on our smartphones and laptops.

Check out the link:

Google Latitude

Also check out my Google- Dissolving Barriers post for the back-story.

V

obama: first week

2009-01-27T17:14:00.005+05:30

Now that we finally have Mr. Nice guy on the most important position of the world...here goes:

Obama's First week checklist as the President of the United States of America:

Give the finger to Bush and Cheney while heading for the oval office.
Go to my facebook page...change status to "Me President".
Call Oprah, and put her on hold with 'white house' hold music.
Delete the porn pics from blackberry before handing it to the secret service.
Send note to my high school crushes who rejected me, especially her, on presidencial stationary, marked "Office of the President of the United States"
Find where exactly did Bill Clinton made out with that intern....and spray some holy water there.
Install PS3 next to main chair, but away from the nuke buttons.
Set daily 3AM alarm to crank call on Hillarys home and cell numbers.
Start that discussed pact with Google.

(inspired by Mad Magazines feb 2009 article on obama)

Man as a Machine: the river

2009-01-25T18:51:00.005+05:30

Shut. The minds encountered every day are mostly shut. They have the required knowledge to:

1) make the most of their life

2) get the most of whatever they can through programmed greed and selfishness

3) Use the information and the skills in them to make money and earn their living and die

These are very good working instruments, which we come across every day. Their minds are a perfect machine, complete in itself. They know that they know everything there is to know about everything.

They have a lot of focus on the task that they are doing, on the work they do everyday. Laser sharp focus.

But they forgot one tiny, small revelation i came across recently, man is not an instrument, but a process.

Man is not a complete dead thing in itself, man is a potential, a process of events/happenings/changes that man undergoes, and finally dies or attains Moksha.

Man is not a rock, but a river that flows into an ocean. Man is not a stagnant pool of water, stinking, rotting, smelling of old beliefs/thinkings/customs/etc.

It is in our nature to learn, to change, to observe, to renew, to replenish, but mostly we see around ourselves, man has forgotten that. It is constantly just finding ways to swindle people more into parting with their money. That seems to be the basic goal of life for them.

While writing a DVD on my laptop i come across the term "finalize disk?" where if i click yes, no further writing on that disk is possible. If I click no, that disk can later get more stuff inside it.

I guess God's 'Finalize mind?' option is auto-checked to Yes.

lies

2008-12-19T20:00:00.003+05:30

We all lie.

Yes, and it's more often than you think. We're lying to our own family and friends, lying to strangers, lying to ourselves.

It's difficult to be honest, and impossible to be completely honest. Jesus Christ was completely honest, there was truth residing in him, look what happened.

The fabric of society is held together by the combined force of all the lies.

The moment a person stops the constant lying and starts speaking the truth, he is shunned out of society, he is killed off, jailed, or sent to an aslyum. He's declared mad. His crime is that he's not being a sport. He's is not following the game, is not playing it by the rules, is not a team-player. The rule is that you lie, all the time.

Your face, your gestures, your smile, your clothes, your car, your tie, your hand-shake everything should be exactly as you want others to see it, not what it is really. Your false image that you portray to others, most of the day, is only the tip of the iceberg. Continously we keep on lying, and are actually benefiting society, trying to save it from falling apart, by playing the lying game.

Some people, like politicians, priests, and lawyers, this is the only game. Their whole life is a sham. If this is pointed out to them, they would think nothing of it, and we would be labeled naive for thinking like that.

If you start noticing it around you, how many times you're lied at, and how many times you lie to others, you'll find it pretty funny, just observing it.

If you tell EVERYBODY the truth, ALL the time, you'll feel really happy from the inside....but in about a few days, you'll be all alone, shunned from society, automatically. In about a week, even the dominos guy won't deliver your pizza. In about a year, you'll either die, or become a spiritual being, to whom nobody talks to except God.

Such is this strange force of lying, it rivals the force of gravity. Science should have an equation for it!

Why am I discussing about a trivial thing like lying? I'm not counting it as a sin. It's not. Its the only global currency! We can lie in all languages, in all countries....to anyone. When used properly, lying can get you the presidency too! Selective lying got Bush presidency twice, and I know for very sure that Obama couldn't get the white house without telling a white lie. But look how important it was for him to become president.....so it's not bad to lie.

Mahatma Gandhi said: Speak only what's true, necessary and good. hmmmmm....

Wedding reception

2008-12-11T21:43:00.001+05:30

A beautiful wedding reception of a friend...had nice decor.

Barriers

2008-12-01T06:28:00.002+05:30

Google has been hell-bent on dissolving barriers. A few of my observations.

The Language Barrier

Google has always been very aggressive and forthcoming in providing access to it's services in as many languages as possible. The Google India site lists around 12 different indian languages that users can access Google with. Now that would require a sustained effort.
The widely used and accurate Google Translater is a fine example of a great service which is very useful, accessible, does not do anything else but is a super fast tool to translate languages. It does its' job and that's it. It even has Klingon as one of it's languages! It makes the language barrier dissolve, transparently.

Google Book search/Book Project

If there are a few books in some american library that I've never heard of, sitting in a different continent, but would be very useful for me, how do I get access to it? If I could search for a term and that book could show in my google result, then firstly I would know such a book exists. Then if I want to read the book, where do I get it? I'll have to go to the US for it? Buy from Amazon? What do I do? There is a huge information and logistical barrier here, which Google are addressing now with Book Search and the Online Book project.

Google Maps: The barrier of Space

Universal access to an online blueprint of the space around us, complete with pictures/multiple views/info of where we live, and whats around it, is a very basic requirement that we never had, until only recently. We now have it all in a usable way with Google Maps/Google Earth. It is fully alive and getting updated by users every second, and is free too.
I use the mobile version, and its features has made my sony ericsson phone to emulate a GPS enabled phone, with approximately the same features.

Google is effectively removing the barrier of space by creatin an online replica of every physical object and landmark.

Everyone knows their mission statement, but the underlying aspect is that It is harnessing available technology to make groundbreaking products that dissolve barriers, and it's primary concern is not to earn money.

Take the online, real time sharing in Google Docs. We have been using MS Office for years. The PPTs and the Excels were never online except in closed intranets (shared access). It became truely collabrative with Google Docs, enabling true team work. Or take the small example of their integrating Google Talk application in Gmail. Yahoo had yahoo mail and Yahoo messanger for years, never thought it could intergrate the two, and only recently did so! It was a barrier to use 2 similar applications, they joined them.

Small things, but making big impacts....

V

google voice search on iphone

2008-11-17T02:13:00.003+05:30

With the entry of voice search on Apple's iPhone, Google has made the saying 'any sufficiently advanced technology is like magic...' to ring true.

They have used the following technologies:

Their search network and DB
iPhone's accerelometer/in built sensors
location based software
Voice recognition
3G wireless internet
iPhone's 'mini mac' interface
iPhone's multi touch

apart from a few others...but this is a potent combination. It gives a very visual and seamless demo of what can be done, by a few touches and words. How information is on our fingertips in true 'star trek' style. How far we have come in accessing useful information. The kids around us don't even know of a time when there was no search box to type any query any time and get the information text/image/video. By using the above mentioned technologies in this way, they have shown what can be thought of by putting users first, and giving an excellent product, not possible even a few months back. Just when it was possible, we have it...!

Just on friday I checked out the Gmail video chat.....the moment i plugged in the USB webcam, the small green dot of gmail chat turned into a video cam icon. It was very seamless and neat. The video conferencing was hassle free, clutter free, and did the job very well.

Google was always a software and technology company. They use the available hardware (PC, phone, iPhone, mac) and create very smart, very well connected web applications, right from the beginning. They are pro-user, which is good! Otherwise they would the Microsoft of the Internet age.

Back to the story, I agree the iPhone is a pretty groundbreaking product in every aspect, and Apple-Google are a match made in heaven....! But this combination of fresh off the oven technologies, which gives a glimpse of the hard work going on at Google, is huge. This thing could not have been imagined even a few years ago (see embedded video above, which a demo of the voice search on iPhone)

The Voice search App should release tomorrow (17 Nov) in Apple's iPhone App store.

effect and cause

2008-11-13T09:07:00.002+05:30

We all know cause and effect: One thing leads to another. A seed is sown in the soil, and a tree grows; that is cause and effect....common knowledge. The reverse should also be true.

If you create an effect, the cause should happen, too. stupid huh? If you think you're gonna be happy when you have some object of desire, like a car for example. Then the car is the cause, and your happiness is the effect. What if you create the effect already? You create in your mind the effect...the pure happiness of your having that car.....the result should be that you get the car.

Of course, when you try to create the effect, you will deep down know you don't actually have the car, you are just pretending to be happy by a non-existent car, so the car will not come to you!

The trick is to make yourself wholly believe the effect. It IS true, and then the result appears.

This yet to be discovered law should actually be more common and logical than the original 'cause and effect' law...

Out of a tree come a thousand seeds, right? Effect and cause!

Man as a machine: the order

2008-11-04T19:48:00.002+05:30

hmmm.. almost a month long break.....sorry!

Nothing exemplifies the man as machine concept than the importance attached to an 'order'. Whether it's the military, where seniors and those higher in rank give orders to thier subordinates, or whether it's any political system, any policing system, and any big organization.

If an order comes from above, it has to be followed. A higher up can give a lower ranking worker an order and that person does not have any say in it. He cannot choose not to do it, or choose to modify it, soften it, even tinker with it, but to follow as told.

This discipline is embedded in the military right from Day 1. The superiors order the newly recruited trainees to various activities. They march, they run, they climb, they do as told. They have to obey. This goes on for years. This is for a reason. It goes deep into the subconscious mind of the trainee, that he has to obey his superiors, no matter how illogical or stupid the order is. The feet of the trainees are clanked to the ground, with such heavy heels in the boots, hundreds of times every day. After years of clanking the feet to the ground, the mind goes numb! They become sheep, soldier sheep maybe, but still sheep. They don't have the spark, the ability or the inclination to think, or say no to anything. This is a brain-killing, machine making exercise.

Systematically, the men are made into machines. Just as a computer or a car, which are machines, obey your orders, the soldiers start doing so.

If you are about to kill a guy on the road by your car, and you start your car...it won't display a message on your dashboard saying "person ahead, can't start engine" The car is a machine, it will just go towards the guy. It can't think.

That is what they are making us, machines.

I find the 'order' concept an insult. If I'm a manager, and I get an order from my CEO to trim 10 people from my department in 24 hours, i would be deemed incapable of doing my job if I hesitate even slightly, no matter what reasons i give. It's an order from the CEO....who am i to think, to decide or to change his decision? I can't do that. I'm just a manager. Just a machine.

Vicki

inside the time-space of a song

2008-10-09T18:59:00.004+05:30

The name of a song, before it starts, invokes a reaction in us. We instantly decide whether or not to listen to it. We think we already know the song, as we have listened to it a few times before. We know the kind of feeling it invokes inside us. So if that feeling is good, we continue to listen, if the feeling is sour, we skip the song, we think we don't really like the start of that song, "maybe the next one will start better".

I'm of course assuming we are listening to music like we listen to nowadays. From our iPod nano/classic/Touch or from our computers (iTunes/wmp/xyz) or even from our home theater system when we insert our old favourite cd (we rarely buy the new ones, do we?!) I still like my Nirvana Nevermind CD or my Best of Bon Jovi CD.

But I noticed when I listen to music from an iPod nano, i tend to see the music that is about to be played, the band, the song name, everything is visible so i skip music more, a lot more.

But if I'm listening from an iPod shuffle, i tend to not notice sometimes that the song is over and another song has started and I've accidently listened to a 2 minutes of that song already, and if I'd known that song was gonna play, I would've skipped it, for sure. But now I'm inside that song, there is space in it, maybe a brief time-space wrap, where the song shows it's true potential, which you hardly guess from the name. But once you are inside the guitar vocal strings, and have gotten the beat, the atmosphere, and the feel, the song shows it's colors.

Maybe that is why music sounds better on radio (not clear channel), where you really don't know what will turn up next, it's a surprise....this song was so damn good, you'll feel why didn't you have it in your iPod, why?? but once you go to download or buy it, it was not so good that you wanna really do that.... If Madonna's "Rain" sounded good suddenly, on the radio, it might not later, when you actually get it from a 'discography' torrent of hers. Or even a song like Haddaways "what is love?" will really sound cool on the car radio.....but do you have it in your iPod? Do you plan to?? never.

I guess it is the same with relationships. In a speed date/blind date/online date, you cannot really fall in love, but in an office, or college, when after a few months/years of being in close proximity together, you get to go in the inside of the person, the time-space of his/her being. Then love can happen, you know that person. You didn't just read the name tag and liked/disliked that person, you went in, and saw it for yourself.

Man as a machine: the day job

2008-09-27T10:57:00.002+05:30

There is a large chunk of people, maybe you and me, and a lot of our friends, neighbors, and people that we know....who are doing a job they don't really like doing. It's not a small group, this "day job haters" group, as we may call them.

You might say we don't have to like our jobs, and it's out of the question that we would love our work. Work is supposed to be unpleasant, hard, and miserable, that is the reason the company pays the worker.

In an episode of an old US TV series "The Wonder Years" where the growing up of a tween kid is shown very nicely, our little guy gets his first part time job and complains to his dad that it's not fun! "Fun?", his dad shouts back, you want your job to be fun? How's that even possible? Work being fun? that's like money growing on trees....

So many of us are stuck in a wrong job. We do it for the money. There is a long commute, there are shitty co-workers, who say the same old stupid things every day. The females have to cope with the same co-workers, with stupid flirtatious remarks every day. They have to keep smiling and bearing all these walking 'workplace hazards' all the time.

A lot of times, they long to do something, but they are not doing it. It's not a vacation they want, because that's temporary. They want to do something, that they have interest, that they would love to do all the time, that they would do for free.

I've heard of this a lot. People want to do gardening, painting, open a chinese restaurant, Do IT support from the comfort of their homes, open a boutique, get into a certain company where their skillsets would be better used....but they are stuck with some job that they have to do.

It's so crucial to just keep doing what we don't like, for the money, for our career. We keep on working, like a machine, as it is our machine part only which is able to work like that. Our mind tells us to bear with it and keep going, otherwise how will you get the salary every month/week, and how will you meet your expenses, just keep going. Our heart is, as usual, neglected.

So many of us who would like to have a dream job, something we'll be really good at, and something we would do from our hearts, and giving our full potential, as work becomes play when we love what we're doing....

I wish there was some place, maybe on the internet, where we list our current location and job, and then list what we would like to do. Then thousands of others also do the same, listing what they are doing currently, and what they would love to do......

And then they all get swapped!! To each his own dream job....

iNet

2008-09-16T23:21:00.008+05:30

It's here, finally... iNet. It is the biggest, most disruptive idea in the world, whose time has come. It is for real, and is the future!

Here is a link to a presentation on iNet(click here)

It's also below in a mini format for instant reading:

Now, like it or hate it I want you all to send feedback, and also, more importantly, to circulate this! Yes, please do that....so that the maximum number of people can talk about this super disruptive idea....hey, the worst that they will do is send a flame right? But this thing has to be shared, like fire....yes it does. Do that!

email suggestions, rants, feedback at inetfounder@gmail.com

Man as a Machine: The rules of the Game

2008-09-16T00:24:00.004+05:30

The society survives on only one thing: Rules. Wherever there is a game going on, there are rules...what game? the game of life of course. Anything you can think of, in fact.....the checkout counter at the supermarket, you gotta stand in a line, right?

Whereever there are rules, you can smell a game going on. They are termed differently though.

Ettiquetes.

manners.

standards.

protocol.

official way.

standard procedure or just procedure.

Guidelines

Do's and Don'ts

How to behave...etc...

The game is going on everywhere. Did someone die at your place? There is a rulebook for that, of course. You can't just do what you feel like, you gotta follow the procedure.

This is what seperates us from the animals i guess. They don't have any rules. They are not forming a line and marching, they can do what they want, when they want.

It's very hard to guess what would happen in a world without rules, everyone being a bit like the Joker!

In an old Batman comic "the man who laughs", the Joker releases prisoners from an aslyum..... now these people he calls 'poor misunderstood souls'!

Isn't that right? I mean what are these people but those who just don't follow rules? They cry when somebody is born and are happy when somebody dies? That is not the protocol man, you gotta cry during death and be happy when somebody is born....so you're insane!

If everyone is in a line marching, and one guy leaves the line, wanders, smells the roses, runs, jumps, he is just insane!

I think we all at some point have trouble following rules, but some people I know follow them as if they are straight from God, the rulebook is Bible for them. Like a lawyer using the lawbooks as Bible...he gotta follow this book for everything, he can't argue or change laws....they are written already in this thick binded book. Others, like me, find rules to be bendable, and fluid.

There is always a particular way..... Even while praying at a temple there is a list of things to do, which are mandatory and are to be done in the exact manner as everybody else is doing, otherwise God won't register your prayer. There is a big list of things to do to please God and push the right buttons to come in his good books, especially on auspicious days.

Sports is based on rules. I found it hard to play sports, as I found people could easily grasp, follow and cheat on rules, but I couldn't figure them out, or remember them, or even act according to them while playing. I did not let my body and mind give in to stupid rules, whether it was sports, or even mathematics. An equation could be solved by countless ways, according to me, not that particular logical way that was supposed to be the correct answer. Nope, the right answer was not what it came to eventually, according to me, there could be many other equally right answers. I had problems with which mathematical rule to apply, and when....

It's very easy to take a decision when you know all the rules, and the boundaries, it's easier to act then. But if you are not sure about the rules, deciding can be tough. A little knowlegde is a dangerous thing.

Everyone is playing the game, everywhere. There are different rules for different countries, cities, offices and clubs, but everybody is busy playing the game.

Bill and Jerry Part 2!

2008-09-12T22:06:00.003+05:30

Man, after ages, something funny! Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld are in a real American family, trying to 'connect' with them! It's genius. The chinese delivery boy says 'woahhhh' when he sees Bill and Jerry, doesn't get the money, Jerry gives him a greek coin! Now this, is cool!

Part One of the Microsoft Ad, was ok, it set the pace, was funny in parts, and most people didn't get it. I don't hate Microsoft, like some people, though I am an Apple fanatic, and these ads are pretty nice, something like that old Sitcom of Jerry....

V

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

2008-09-10T15:33:00.007+05:30

This LHC project, what can I say..... Google's new doodle above explains it all....

People are thinking it will create a black hole which will suck the earth.... i secretly wish that does happen!

But straight out of a very cute scientist's mouth, an actual rap video made by the team working there....is below, check it out it awesome and explains everything too!.....below....

According to Wiki: Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest particle accelerator complex, intended to collide opposing beams of 7 TeV protons. Its main purpose is to explore the validity and limitations of the Standard Model, the current theoretical picture forparticle physics. The LHC was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and lies underneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva,Switzerland.

The LHC is the world's largest and the highest-energy particle accelerator. It is funded by and built in collaboration with over eight thousand physicists from over eighty-five countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories.

The LHC is now operational, and in the process of being prepared for first collisions. The first beam was circulated through the collider on the morning of 10 September 2008.[1] The first high-energy collisions are planned to take place after the LHC is officially unveiled on 21 October 2008.[2]It is theorized that the collider will produce the elusive Higgs boson, the observation of which could confirm the predictions and missing links in the Standard Model of physics and could explain how other elementary particles acquire properties such asmass.

Anyways, I love these things, it's like ID4 or something!

one shot: lost!

2008-09-07T13:06:00.002+05:30

in Pirates of the caribbean 3, our heroes are going to find Jack Sparrow who is 'at world's end', where it's impossible to go.....so while they are sailing in a storm, they came to know that they are lost. The captain stays calm, says if we're going where it's impossible to go, it's imperative that we get lost too as there is no map or route to where we are going!

Chrome

2008-09-06T00:37:00.006+05:30

What is this new software released by Google? It's not a browser, mind you. A browser is such an outdated term. We used to browse the web in mid to late 90s, where getting a short audio/video clip of a Nirvana song playing in our small java app used to excite us so much! We used to read, research and see those pictures....that was our usage, nothing more. Hotmail gave us online email in 98, then we were stuck with Yahoo for all our searching and browsing, using IE or Netscape....

I used to love Netscape so much I seriously considered buying a full version (with printed manuals) using my credit card... Netscape 3....4....then straight away Netscape 6! (there was no version 5!), what a lovely browser. At that time it was a dial up connection, not this speedy broadband...nope. Data intensive sites were not heard of.

So what's up now? Browser wars? No.... the browser had to be updated....just like email had to be updated by Gmail.... After using google's email webapp, can anyone go back to yahoo or Hotmail? My Hotmail account was 2MB and if i didn't login every 30 days they used to erase all my emails..... i lost precious messages due to this rule of Microsoft.

No one can actually see what's Chrome. It's like 2008 is the start of a new battleground. A new 21st Century invasion, where the game has changed since 1998, when Google was not even formed, and Microsoft ruled. But it's not a browser war.

Chrome is a start of an operating system in your PC, totally connected to the Cloud. All your important connections, information, contacts, calendars, messages, documents. images are in the cloud anyway, not just stored in some hard disk online, but actually being edited online, whether it's a Google Docs spreadsheet or a blog entry. Everything is done from within the browser window now.

The key word is Applications, and with Chrome, all applications which previously only an operating system could handle, can now be handled by a browser. Chrome being robust, rock-solid, fail-safe, multithreaded and having a smooth, superfast Javascript Virtual Machine, makes windows code look even more bloated.

For example, Microsoft Office 2007, has a lot of features, but we all know it's a huge, heavy install. What you and me need to really do every day, is to use email, documents, presentations and spreadsheets. All of these four applications are done superbly online by Google, by using 1/1000th of code of Microsoft. If features are a concern, enter Chrome! The new changes and newer better applications that we will see online by Google and other web developers will truly change the game.....Microsoft must be worried. They feared the same thing when Netscape was there...in 1996 I remember, they got scared and killed Netscape, but it was a small company. They can't do that to Google.

Bloated, slow and unproductive software is history. Chrome's applications(web applications designed for Chrome's VM), would be extremely fast and efficient...and we will eventually be doing things in our browsers that we can't think of doing now.

Chrome is the start of a new platform...and you call it a new browser?

man as a machine: the concept of planning

2008-08-25T21:39:00.001+05:30

In one of my earlier posts I discussed the "routine" concept, where it's so hard to break old patterns and old routine activities, that it actually needs thought and planning....

Hmmm, planning........ for life. How important it is, to plan. By the time you are a teen, you have to plan your life, what you will do after school, which stream at college, what to do after college, what field to choose...will you do a Job or do you have your Dad's business? But that is not the end of planning, it continues:

Planning your day
Planning your date
education planning
career planning
Family Planning
Financial Planning/Savings
Insurance
Credit card payment planning
Expenses planning
Time management
Retirement planning

I don't know, this list could really go on. We have to plan when we will do whatever, marry, have kids, buy a house....it's so damn important.
There has to be a clear thought out process of what is to be done, how much to save, how much to invest, how to have that college fee of your kid who is 5 years old now....these questions are so important, they need to be planned and implemented with priority, then life feels secure.

So you have a house insurance, a car insurance, a life policy, a retirement/pension plan, some good money lying in savings and PF, you have money to send your kid to college too.
You have planned your life to perfection, nothing can go wrong, everything is picture perfect....and you keep earning every month. If you can't earn after 10 years, you have your insurance that will take care of you and your family...

I know an insurance guy who used to take a blank sheet of paper and try to explain a customer the life policies, he used to draw stick figures of the family head and his wife and kids, then, with a red pen, he used to strike the main earning member, trying to dramatize as to what will happen if the main earning member is not there anymore, so that the customer is scared.....

Recently I came across a guy from Private Banking, managing portfolios of rich people. I asked him does he also include insurance in that portfolio, he replied "my clients are so rich, they don't need insurance!". Money, apparently, is the answer to all problems on this planet.

But anyways, for all of us, planning is so much required to live this life.

Imagine a scenario where there is no planning done, whatsoever. There is no thought out process, no charted course, and life is just lived on a whim.
Where the present is given so much importance, that the past and the future are forgotten! Only the present exists! People who are planning for the future generally sacrifice their present, just to have a better future. This seems to be the general idea.....like "don't spend this money now, but put it in a stock, it will grow after a year to a bigger amount."

People are so scared of an unplanned life where they don't know where they will get the money, they work really hard, I have seen people working, taking great pains, for their kids, their families, and toiling hard, day and night to give their families the financial support that they deserve. The alternate to this hard work, is a dark abyss to them...which means poverty, homelessness, hunger...they can't even think of this, they are so scared of this scenario, and hurriedly keep on working to earn money to live that planned life that they dream of, everything happening right on schedule: tick tock tick tock tick tock....

Has nobody ever let that baton fall? And lived the completely unpredictable, unplanned, hopeless, future-less life?? With complete uncertainty and with nothing which can be spoken of before it actually happens? An accidental life, with faith instead of insurance? Like an animal, perhaps? A more natural, instinctive, responsive, here-now kind of a life? Nobody?? Ok Ok, back to planning for the future!! tick tock tick tock......

V

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The Dark, Long, Boring Knight

2008-08-17T01:16:00.001+05:30

I've been a huge Batman fan. I eagerly awaited when after so many bad sequels, "Batman Begins" hype was building...it was so great to see the trailers for that movie.....and so many great actors! Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman! Gary Oldman! What is happening? Is it a dream? He's my favorite actor! He's Commissioner Gordon? Wow!

So finally, I thought, years back when the first of the new series was about to come, that after so many years of only having the Tim Burton movies as the ones I can watch again and again, this is something new to look forward to. The original Batman is so watchable... it's dark, brooding, has a great comic book feel to it, all the people are insane in the movie (like in every Tim Burton movie), but then it's a comic book adaptation to perfection! By a truly madly gifted director....... this must have been his dream come true to direct Batman, who's really insane, to be so rich, and yet dress as a flying mouse at night, and catch street muggers! He eventually gets amazingly great madmen as villians, but still.....

Ok, Batman Begins came, I saw it first day, alone. I started ok, it was turning into something really great, but i suddenly found the dialogue to be one or two words long, people in the movie were saying things in one word or maybe just the fewest words possible, there was heavy editing...fast scene cuts...no time to think and ponder over what happened...there was no atmosphere, no tension....this Batman movie, though it starred my fav actor....was out in the sunlight.

They did away with all the mysteries of Batman's origin. He is seen here as a rough, techy, scuba diving costume wearing, Bond wannabe, with great toys just like 007, but with a cape.... he was out....Batman felt real, out of the comic book, and in the real world and everything was feeling awkward as they got that movie out of the comic book but now the original story imagined by the comic book creator, felt weak....it was so great to be in the comic world.....

Tim Burtons was purely in the comic world....the scene where the Joker falls in the chemical tank, or when he's murdering his boss, This original Batman had such a great repeat value purely because of the shadowy, mysterious world it put us in, everytime. It was not taking itself too seriously

Batman Begins was so damn serious. It's intention was great in the beginning, the training scenes made me feel as if I'm watching the next "Matrix"...! but it went down the drain.....boring was the word for it, it took itself so seriously that it got self indulgent......but enough about these old movies.....

Lets go to the present.....The Dark Knight.

Now this new movie is liked by almost everyone. We all knew the Joker, played by Heath Legder is gonna debut in this movie....we took the hype, and we all loved the Joker.
People are seeing this movie, to revel at his dialouges and his antics, throughout the lonnnnng film. I read somewhere it may break the records set by Titanic...

I saw the Dark Knight, again first day, alone. It was great to see the Joker, to see Gary Oldman, and also, the Batman.

Then why did I find it so boring? And so long? People are watching it for the Joker, I agree, because I find him taking some of the boredom off...but otherwise, it's a very boring Batman flick. So how can such an action packed movie be boring, you would ask? There are a hundred artificial situations which are completely nonsense.....that would have been ok if they were pretending this was a comic book movie, but they are making a real, gritty crime thriller, set in the real world...and that is not how this works.....real crime thrillers, with masks and face paint?? Either you make this a comic book story, or you make it something like "Air Force One", or "The Fugitive"........those were real crime thrillers....they had grit, suspense, tension, and were set in the real world.

See this movie again, you will find in most of the scenes, an artificial sense of urgency, risk, danger, and "constant climax" is being stuffed, delibrately. This is done so many times it feels the director has no sense of what should or could happen, but just wants to make everything happen..all at once. Again, during the starting scene of the Bank Robbery, i felt wow, this movie could be that one movie I would love to see again and again....but sadly it is not! I have an ok print on a DVD, I couldn't watch it again, the dialogue felt so corny......Harvey Dent felt so plastic like, the Joker felt as if I'm watching Theater, and a mime is performing, giving it everything he has got.....it was a good performance, I agree, but it felt like not just me, but everyone is just watching the Joker perform, including the police, the guests, Batman, everyone!

Even in the movie hall, I got restless and tired watching the movie.... is it me? Batman is a comic, the heros and villians are in a parallel, alternate universe, whose glimpse we saw in the two Tim Burtons creation... so I don't know about these new instalments.... I really don't know.

V

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Question 2: who are you?

2008-08-13T18:06:00.001+05:30

If someone asks you, "who are you?", what comes to your mind? Really, who are you? Lets see some common answers:

Who are you?

I'm Steve.
I'm a student.
I'm a guy.
I'm a piano player.
I'm a DJ.
I'm a professional basketball player.
I'm an athelete.
I'm black.
I'm just a regular guy.
I'm a Canadian.
I'm a citizen of India.
I'm a Christian.
I'm a graduate doing MBA.

All the above answers are factual, and plausible. All seem correct. They are correct for most people, in fact.
But still, this is not what the question is.

All the answers are based on the following assumptions and things we are either given or acquire in our lives:

our name
our ethnicity
our education
our country and it's rights
our city
our occupation or profession
our hobby
our gender
our religion

But if you think about it, all of these things are given to you either by nature (your gender), by your parents (your name), or by your circumstances. Rest of the things you acquire, like your education. All of these things appear borrowed and are coming at a later date than you. Who are you? You're not a name given by your parents, for sure! That can't be you!

Suppose you say that you're a male. That's very right, you would think I won't be able to argue on that, its a fact right? Right? Wrong. If you die, your male body is lying there, not moving, dead, but you're not there, the body is still there, then why are people crying that you've gone? You said you're a male, the dead body is still male! So that is proven wrong. You can apply that logic on most of your answers.

Then what is the real, correct and factual answer for the question, "Who are you?"?? Only a Buddha knows who he really is, only an enlightened person really knows. For the rest of us regular people who are not Buddhist monks, the correct answer is "I don't know." It's the most intimate, factual and honest answer to that question.

V

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2008-08-12T18:23:00.002+05:30

what a bummer!

No, I'm not gonna fall like George Bush! But seriously, from a formula 1 car to a bicycle???!! That's an even bigger fall.....

V

(pic snapped by brother outside st. stephans college, New Delhi)

2008-08-11T22:22:00.003+05:30

Snapped: children eating ice-cream at a local Mcdonalds. What's so special about this, you would ask.....these surprisingly well behaved kids are taken care of by Child's Trust, a UK based Charitable organization. A team of selfless individuals actually do stuff that we don't ever think of doing, as we take our lives and previliges for granted. These underpreviliged children having ice-cream appears so nice, but it's really hard work to do stuff like this, to constantly take care, nurture, educate, and groom these children. It is beyond our "profit and loss" mindset. Most people would not even understand and would look for hidden agendas and profit making angles in these acts too. It's not their fault. They would not understand what selfless work is. Personally I can talk about it here, but would find it difficult to implement such a thing myself....... Vikram

(pic clicked on saturday, at mcdonalds, new delhi)

zero part 4: step by step

2008-08-09T00:11:00.001+05:30

I see people, observe them working, working hard, really into their work.

Everything they are saying on the phone, and whatever they are ordering their subordinates to do looks perfectly normal. I see them, to me they don't look normal, they are as if in a trance. They are zombies to me, not really aware of what they are doing, in effect. They are keeping themselves busy.
Anybody who walks by will see that they are pretty busy in their work. It seems like that on the surface....

There is so much repetition and so much stating the obvious (pretty loudly) that can be eliminated from the so called work of these so called white collar workers.... i am able to find 80 percent of the stuff that is discussed is repetitive and useless.

For example a person is standing on the top of a tower and can see a long stretch of road from there. He can easily see the entire road at once, the whole 2 mile stretch is visible at once, along with the potholes on the road. Now if another person is walking down that road he can only see a limited portion of that road, he can't see where it leads, where the potholes are, as he walks he discovers more, sees those potholes, jumps over them, goes further...again gets a pothole, jumps further, goes ahead....now this can be very frustrating to the onlooker on the tower...because he already sees where exactly the road is ending, and where more of those potholes are. If he tries to shout and tell it to the walker on the road, no luck, he is too damn far away and up in the sky on the tower.....

So as that walker has to take the entire stretch, the same way a worker is doing a slow job of getting to a particular solution after a series of steps that seem very unnecessary to me because of my vision being from the top. I would have said the same exact solution at the blink of an eye what the worker took so much time getting at...after working out a long series of steps.

Working through a process makes us exactly like machines. They have a specific process that is hardwired into them, and they have to follow it. If a banker for example does not follow the process and instead follows his gut instinct, he would be sacked pretty soon. There is a series of steps that a worker has to do....it is seen everywhere...the supermarket checkout, the bank, the courtroom, even a formal dinner party....there is always a process that is at work.

It is a standard protocol. There are proper flow charts made and published so that there is no mistake. Work is done smoothly, machine like....

Again, I see them working, see them doing what they do, i hear the whirring sound from their heads too.......

V

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Bliss!

2008-08-06T14:54:00.001+05:30

What is happiness? A good book, warm cinnamon toasts with honey, black coffee with milk on the side...this is happiness, this is pure bliss!

psychopaths

2008-08-05T19:22:00.001+05:30

A whole lot of living entities are parasites, snatchers and suckers.

At an individual level, any person would not like to see wealth among his peers, neighbors and with strangers, but like it to be only with him. He would kill and snatch that wealth if he could, but he only does that in his mind, sucking that object of desire inside out through his eyes....In India we call it "kaali nazar", which means the "black look".

Anything of value, be it riches, beautiful women, influential people, latest gadgets, respect, power. whatever else you can think of, is of a strong desire to them, and they can kill for it, furthermore, they hate to see others have anything like that. Example: If they have a car, they really hate to see somebody else they know have the same or better car, they fume if they find out about it. If they don't have a car, it's worse, even if you buy a bicycle, they would want to kill you. They keep on looking around, with their hungry eyes, looking for something to steal, something to take from anyone, they leer at pretty women, hungry to look at their skin, their cleavage. You can spot hundreds of such people in some markets in my city... these people hate to see other people being popular with girls, because they themselves are not. Instead of realizing this fact, they make enemies with those people and try to cause them harm. It is said that if you are living among the blind, and you are the only one who has eyes, sooner or later some blind man would try to crush them!

In the Bhagwad Gita, Lord Krishna tells us that there are a lot of basic people in this world, whose sole desire is to use up and abuse whatever is available in front of them. For example, if they see a group of trees, bearing fruit, they will start collecting all the fruit, then they will cut the trees and collect all the wood. They would consume or sell all the fruit and wood, and walk away from the now barren land. They are psychopaths who are not thinking of anything else but to use up any given object of any value. If these men see a woman walking alone in the night, their basic instinct would tell them to rape and/or kill that woman, and then go have a beer. It sounds ugly, but their thoughts are always like it is described.

Lord Krishna then continues saying that much higher above these basic men, are the "Rishis" and "Munis", who are a minority. When they see a land full of trees, their thoughts go to the proper welfare of the land, and of the trees so that more of the place is like that one. If they see a woman alone in the night, they have a caring, helping and respectful attitude towards her. These people are above the greed, hunger and lust of basic men.

There are more Psychopaths than we can imagine. There are mad men everywhere. They are not fully mad, and behave normally so it's hard to get hold of them, and put them in an asylum or a jail, and anyway these institutes won't be able to take so many of them!

Companies

Companies, in general, behave as a psychopath would. They are only concerned with the bottom line, profitability, cost cutting, and their basic focus remains on numbers. They kill through thier toxic waste, pollute the envoirnment, suffocate and remove non-performing employees, and basically do at a bigger scale what a psychopath would do.............. If they see a patch of land with trees bearing fruit, they will not think that they should give this land to the poor and the homeless, and let them make thier livelihood selling fruit from the trees. They would in fact, cut all trees and use that land for their work. The so called 'social conscience' initiatives happening in some companies nowadays is just a PR exercise to eye-wash shareholders. The internal workings and the real 'vision' remains vulture like.

Money, greed and power are the sole drivers of a companies workings. They are not concerned with an individuals feelings and emotions, but only of their business requirements. They continously lie to the shareholders, and the media, and hire expensive lawyers to defend thier cases, along with the PR agents to improve thier image. (see my post on the concept of image)

Some socially conscious companies like Google are exceptions that only prove the rule..

I know a guy who always wants to snatch and get hold of girls phone numbers from peoples cellphones. He even tricks girls he meets into calling him from her phone, or he himself dials his own number from thier phone, so that the girls number is known to him. Once he has that information, he thinks, he can easily call girls, and talk to them, fix dates, go to movies with them, and do stuff. He is a big time snatcher, who is very unpopular. He looks ok, well built, but when he opens his mouth, his mind is so full of shit and cobwebs, you can see and smell the rot....! But there is no one that can explain this to him and make him mend his ways, his mind is not flexible enough to change! It is frozen. He is a sucker, a psychopath, pretending to be normal and cool. Internally so many ugly things are going on in his mind! He is not a criminal on police records, but he is a yellow alert menance on the streets! There is nothing his family, me or the law can do to change him, he is not into drugs, does not even drink. The mind of his is so rotten from the inside, you have a potential killer/rapist loose...

V

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Formula 1 renault

2008-08-03T08:22:00.001+05:30

Me at select city walk mall at 3am...getting the ING F1 racing car on display...

Zero part 3: working

2008-08-01T00:12:00.001+05:30

Are you busy? Are you busy enough?

During a given day, a person is busy with work, busy having food, busy getting ready, busy on a deadline...the last date of some stupid thing, and a whole set of people become busy with something.

How busy is too busy? If I can't find time to go to the washroom even though I want to, then I will think I'm pretty busy.

People are always so literal in what they are doing. If in a meeting, or reading a newspaper, or doing anything at all, make themselves busy in that particular thing. Example: He is busy playing golf on Sunday, ok so was this a big plan, to get busy playing Golf? What if that guy stops playing Golf and starts doing something else on the way? Why does it have to be so literal? Do you have to do something? What if I choose to do nothing? Does it count? It's not good to be good for nothing, one has to be constantly doing something.

Monday to Friday: Busy with your work, keep yourself busy, and not even for a single moment, stop and look as if you're doing nothing....look busy, carry a document around when you're walkin in office, you will look busy. If you carry a newspaper around, walking, it'll look as if you're going to the bathroom...

Never let them see you doing nothing, daydreaming, sleeping, relaxing, nope. Your tie should be suffocating you, your socks pulled up and hands on the job, your face should not show any sign of contentment, happiness, relaxation, love...but you should wear a scowl all the time, your eyes looking to put some blame on someone, making people hide themselves when you're around, your face becoming that scowl....keep muttering something under your nose....

It's the weekend, that's actually a more difficult time to keep yourself busy. I've heard more suicides and other crimes happen on weekends! On weekdays, people are so busy pretending to work, or doing actual work, that they find lesser time to do illegal crimes. In fact they are busy doing legal crimes...

Sunday! Go to the beach! drive there go sit and play with those people who're doing the same thing on weekends... all of them trying to find something to do on a weekend, they all drive to the beach!

Why is it so hard to just be? To do nothing? To just walk when you're walking, just sit when you're sitting? To just eat when you're eating...

People keep on working, then they keep on having those bad meals, those cigarettes they keep having without realizing what they are doing, they have to have those, as they are too stressed out with their work....it's part of the parcel.

And then of course those sleeping pills and painkillers, and ulcer relief tablets and the list goes on.....work work work

Parents like that, very much, they never tell their kids to relax and not work so hard! I've never heard of a single example! Wives do tell their husbands to relax, take off etc, but parents want their kids to work as hard as possible.

Employers want us to keep on working....until we see a white light above us or hear dead relatives calling....then they want us to stop working for a few hours, as they don't want to pay insurance if we die in their permises...

Have a nice day!

V

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Zero part 2

2008-07-31T00:16:00.001+05:30

Zero. Nothing is happening. Zero is a state of Zen. A big nothing. Silence.....

I feel I'm the opposite of 'work'. Always been against working, against: planning, implementing, loving, hating, scheming, manipulating, acting, lying, deceiving, calculating, taking revenge, reacting.......

I just try to be. Why can't people just be? Is just being so bad? I'm considered a spineless guy. The buck stops at me. I'm not doing things. Not doing this, not doing that. I most of the times don't know I have to do a particular thing, how I have to react.... I just respond from my being, never reacting, or even getting angry.... I'm too aware of whats happening around me. Getting the entire story in a flash, giving a super fast response to a particular problem which after careful and tiring research, just arrives at the same answer... but otherwise I've to be told how to react to something, as nothing is news for me.

I'm fully aware of my surroundings, and I'm not shocked at the most shocking turn of events. My reactions are just not there. My response is hard to understand by most of the people around me. I remain straight faced while others are laughing or crying. And elsewhere, I am a bit surprised at things others don't find shocking....I notice things other people overlook. I overlook things that people notice with interest.

Small talk irritates me, the robotic nature of that particular talk makes it stale...I get bored easily, and become aware of the emptiness at the best of places....
My awareness makes people see my responses as off-beat and not part of the crowd.

zero.

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the number 3

2008-07-27T22:49:00.001+05:30

3.............. is one number which has some x factor! I can think of only the number 7 and the number 0 having any x factor apart from 3.....maybe 9? Anyways, It's common knowledge that Indians invented the number 0, but who has really invented all these numbers? Are these really something a guy can invent? It has to be something that was already there, like the universe, the sun, planets, something like that.

But of all the numbers, 3 is quite significant. Lets list out why:

We, sitting at Earth, are the third rock from the sun. (there was once a sitcom by this name, i vaguely remember!)

In the sacred book, the Bhagwad Geeta, there are 3 gunas: (three qualities), that exist together in equilibrium: Sattva (purity); Rajas (activity, passion, the process of change); and Tamas (darkness, inertia).

The 3 primary colours: red, green and blue.

In Buddhism: the three roots of evil namely greed, hatred and delusion.

The physical world has 3 dimensions.

In Architecture, 3 is the minimum number of pillars required to balance a construction, as a small example: only a chair with 3 or more legs will be able to stand, a chair with 2 legs will fall.

There are 3 Super Gods in Hinduism: Bhrahma, Vishnu and Shiva, which are respectively the creators, sustainers and destroyers of life and the universe. Together they are known as Trinity! I can think of same number of Super Gods in Greek and Roman mythology. Of course, we all know in Christianity: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit...the Holy Trinity.

The number 3 is called the lucky number by various magicians, numerologists, and astrologers. It's kinda fascinating.

If Two's company, and three's a crowd, thats because when there are three people, then it's no longer a closed connection, and is no longer a linear straight line, which was only possible when there were only 2 people. Lets take a simple geometric example:

Two straight lines cannot possibly enclose any space, or form a plane figure; Three lines are necessary to form a plane figure; and three dimensions of length, breadth, and height, are necessary to form a closed plane figure with some area inside!

So 2 people are just like 2 dots in a plane, forming a straight line, no complications, everything is great, but when a third person comes, and all 3 dots are joined, there is suddenly an area in between, a space...which could not exist before. So this number is a start of something solid.

Ok, quite a number... just my random thoughts...

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coffee

2008-07-26T23:35:00.001+05:30

mmmm.... wow! What a drink! what a discovery! what an aroma...what is this thing? this strange God-bean?

Say hello to the coffee bean! (applause!)

The mighty bean handed over by God to mankind....this should qualify as the most popular non-alcoholic stimulant in the world. (and what is the other one? Beer?)

What cannot be done with this bean and the caffeine it has? It's used in any commercial soft/energy drink you can think of. It has the same addiction as sex....it goes pretty well with chocolate.....can be had with water, milk, and hot, and cold...

Various industries, and countries survive on this humble bean. it is truly a gift from God.

What would you do without coffee? No Starbucks? No latte in your hand, It is not a cup of latte...... it is your therapy, your escape, your meditation, in this big bad noisy world, having a cup of hot coffee is your yoga, your small getaway, your 5 minute vacation....your one sip at a time hot break....

Bow to the coffee bean, it is an addiction whose health benefits and/or health problems are in the news every six months or so, coffee is bad for ________, coffee is good for ________, drinking coffee makes you__________, and so on!

Yes, again...what will you do without coffee? Coke will not give you that kick it does! It will become sugar water like Pepsi! Pepsi is selling sugar-water, people are drinking them....it has little caffeine, they don't mind, pepsi sells, still....wonder why.

Starbucks has an outlet everywhere in the US....they recently shut down their outlets across the nation for a couple of hours, just to give a drug break to the addicted Americans, make all of them tremble, sweat and long again for something they just have to have all the time....they want to just sip coffee...sip their lattes, their cappuccinos, their black syrups of hot water-bean combination....

The aroma does have an effect, yes I know. In CP, New Delhi, there is a place, Depauls coffee, serving vanilla flavored hot and cold variants...and doing unrivaled business every minute, for the past 50 years. And it's a very democratic place, the hot coffee is for 10 bucks(25 cents), the richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor, all stop there to get their fix! The taste buds are rejuvenated! They rejoice, want more! The addiction begins, it's like a temple, you just have to go there, sometimes just for going there people travel for miles....the vanilla flavored coffee is just too good. It is a drug, and they know it.

This drug is like sex/porn, like just about any illegal drug, once you are baited, you have to have more. In a coffee chain, a copycat of Starbucks, in my country, the Baristas have tee shirt slogans saying boldly "more coffee?". They are promoting the drug, obviously, more coffee is so acceptable, more water is not.....drinking more water will actually hydrate you, make you feel better, lighter, and cleaner, but no, the dehydrating, dangerously milky, frothy creamy chocolaty coffee is what you should order, and keep on ordering more...yes drink it, have more coffee, please.

Whoever thought this would be the state, that coffee will be the mass addiction across the world...... it is still so damn cool to have coffee, it is like doing nothing, but doing something...and it can be had anytime...coffee drinking has not gone out of fashion after all these years.

Coffee is so related to sex! When a girl invites you to her house for coffee, it is assumed she wants something else too....I think it's because the word "coffee" sounds so sexy! It's a cool word to speak, a smart word ....anyways, what I mean is: the girl will not say 'TEA', that is so uncool! so downmarket, tea houses are like poorhouses! Tea is something your mother would make for you in the morning, coffee is something you will like to have with your girl.....

In India, people drink a lot of both tea and coffee. But then tea is something husbands and wives have in the morning and evening, with biscuits and stuff...not coffee! Coffee is something you would love to go out for, have with friends, to chat over...coffee and conversations, what a combination. Like that slogan: A lot can happen over coffee.

V

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Man as a Machine: The sleeping pill

2008-07-26T22:49:00.001+05:30

A sizable population of our world takes sleeping pills regularly. I am often amazed at this assumption that people take while consuming the sleeping pill.
They think this pill is going to make them sleep. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Just how wrong these huge number of sleeping pill poppers are... that pill does not make them sleep, instead it's a forceful and brutal cutoff of the brain and the body forcing them to faint and be unconscious. They intentionally make themselves pass out. They don't wake up refreshed, they wake up as if someone hit them hard with a bat on the head and they passed out for a few hours. They didn't dream anything, they were in a mild coma! These people in most cases know all this, but their lives are so complicated and messed up they take the pill as an escape for a few hours, they konk themselves out for some time so that they feel they have rested.

It is common knowledge that taking a large dose of this pill is a form of suicide. If taking 10 of them can kill you right away, then isn't taking 1 killing you a little too?

Smells like machines!

Pill poppers want instant results. They want Extra Strength painkillers, super strong aspirins, Super fast 'sleeping' pills.... they want these results at the cost of their health. Make them sleep, fast....don't they know they already are in such a slumber sleep such a unaware state, they want to slide down further....

Gladly! Get your doses and pop those pills lets drown your sorrows, your pains, lets melt your mind, fuck with your stomach, your liver, your brain, your blood, your heart, let it clot, let it stop, don't stop those pills, brother.

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Man as a Machine: Faces brains bodies for hire

2008-07-21T10:33:00.001+05:30

Across the world, people are hired in various jobs/services, and recruitment is a huge industry.

Whether it's Google, hiring super geniuses for it's techie posts, or the vacancies in Dubai, for various manpower requirements like construction and hospitality, people are getting hired.

As you might have guessed already, I find hiring of people very machine-like. The fitment is done of the brain of the candidate to the job requirement as if he is not a person, but a cog in a machinery.

Various management consultancies, see hiring as a science, and everything can be known about the applicant by a series of written/online tests, face to face interviews, etc. They believe everything can be directly or indirectly asked by the candidate.

I once applied for a sales job and there was an online test to see if my brain is right sided or left sided. There were questions which tried to see if I'm logical and aggressive OR, creative and soft. I knew which question would lead to what result, so I answered each question to make my brain appear totally left sided, which it is not. The reverse-mode answering made that test result totally wrong...

So, over there they were harmlessly trying to see if I was fitted for that sales job. I was not, I know that, but they had a scientific tool to come to a conclusion about that, which was wrong in my case, but could be right with others, for sure.

But I believe the hiring agencies are only hiring brains, faces and bodies, not the person. In 2004, I worked for a brief period as an HR Manager. My boss one day tells me I should not talk with others like I do, but should remain quiet and work like a typical HR guy who is always busy, cribbing, stereotyped people-hater...and not like me who likes people, talks to them, solves their issues, is amicable, friendly and caring for his subordinates. I didn't look the part of an HR manager, from my bosses viewpoint.

Receptionists have to have a pretty face and are to be smiling, attractive and good to talk to. They have to be female! That's what? hiring of a face/body I think...

And what about flight stewardesses? In India, girls strive to be an air-hostess....giving a lot of money to shady institutes, dressing up everyday like a real life air hostess, which can be really tiring, and eventually some of them do get a job with an airline. Then they get about 30 to 40k per month (rupees), but have to do with irregular or no sleep, and have to cope up with a thousand other things...

During the selection process, fair complexion, good smile and good height are very important! You get the picture.

As I think of it, even the oldest profession in the world is just letting someone use your body for a while so that you get some money.

Bodies, faces....when did we hired people for what they are? Their being, their inner qualities, how good they are, not how useful for that particular job...but then who am I kidding? Why will they hire good but useless people? All across the world, hiring is done for useful people, they may be a real pain in the ass, but they are to be useful to their position....

I've been a really good but useless guy in some of my jobs! Circumstances and poor financial position made me do the same mistake more than once too...
I see them talking, see them reacting, see my bosses doing what they do, see the HR guys do what they do... I can almost hear the gears and levers from their insides....these machines dressed as humans.

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Obama vs. McCain: Black or White?

2008-07-17T23:29:00.001+05:30

BLACK? WHITE? lets talk about the good guy first:

Being Obama is so damn difficult, we cannot even begin to imagine. He is a very nice guy, intellectual, has got the articulation, and according to silicon valley, he gets it. There is no other like him, he knows when and how to speak. What to speak, when NOT to speak... it goes on. (all he is doing is speaking, anyway, so we have nothing else to say about him, yes he speaks great, that's all we can say!)

But that's about it. It's very tricky after that. He is walking on a ghostly wasteland, chanting a mantra, one wrong word gets out of his mouth the ghosts will haunt him...! Kinda like in those Sylvester and Tweety cartoons, when the cat is walking by a lot of sleeping dogs...... One small sound and all dogs wake up and eat the cat alive!

No, he can't sneak into the presidency like that, no matter how good he is. The whole of the US is not silicon valley. There are normal people out there too, who just don't get this international personality of Obama. They want an american guy for christ sake, not a black, muslim-afghani turbaned guy who might be a brother of Osama!!(yes a lot of people confuse him with Osama Bin Laden, more than you can guess)

The trouble with being good is that just being good is not good enough. (what did I just say?). His wife is a huge turn off for normal white voters. She has that strange unpredictable shittiness about her. Kinda like "Go fuck with your dogs now, people" look that she gives...

Then its his name, again. It's funny he himself said it's a miracle he's gotten this far with a name like Barack Hussain Obama. People think he is a muslim, and when he clarifies that he is not, he turns off the muslims! I could go on, ....inspite of being so damn good, he's gonna lose.

Why? Americans are supposed to be fed up with Bush and will surely want to have that 10 years overdue change, won't they?

No. It's the other way round.

Americans subconsiously don't want a very intelligent guy on the main seat. They want someone like them. They don't want Al Gore( in 2000), or Obama, who are too intelligent. They want a buffoon. A "school boy sex lover" Clinton, just like them! Or a monkey like "Bicycle faller" like Bush, who does not know where India was, and cannot speak the English language...and had to invent his own personal language....whatever.

Someone they can relate to. Like John McCain. Oh wow, what a guy! And what a name! All American, more than a hot dog or a banana split! As american as Coke!! A war hero, a POW, an aged, mellowed smiling white guy with a pretty whiter all american wife.

Yes, so what if he is a clone of Bush? That does not matter to the Americans. They lie when they say they want change. Inside their hearts they want things to remain the same. They don't want to shake up their lives and of others across the world by electing that black muslim, no, not at all.

It is so obvious Obama will not make it.....oh come on, John McCain loves "ABBA" have you heard their music, it's magical, believe me! He is so much more likable than Obama......

Of course, WHITE.

V

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Man as a Machine: TAX

2008-07-09T21:42:00.001+05:30

What is tax? I've tried to understand this "tax" thingie, it's always very unclear. At most It seems a big government fraud, at all levels.
People provide all sorts of logical argument explaining the concept of tax, it's good for the economy, development of roads parks, cities....oh really?

Why does the Government tax people? Why do you pay taxes? Every year, from your income, you pay a lot of money to Government....why is that? Even the answer to this is made up by them only, not you.

Why is the IRS so notorious? Why does it relentlessly pursue people to pay their taxes or face legal action? It's a government body, with a lot of powers, which are more often than not, seriously abused, even if they are wrong. There are many other departments, like Passport, Driving licence, why don't they behave like this?

Ok so you argue that we HAVE to pay taxes to the Government, as we are responsible citizens...point taken. Then why is all this so scarily complicated, across the world? Why are there hundreds of books about this? Why so many tax consultants, who earn their living off the complexity? Who made all this, and started all this tax thing? What do you feel when you fill the tax form with every details of yours, and give money to the system? Do you feel great? Do you feel you've done a great job and they will use your money for the benefit of society?

There have been times in the past where my monthly earnings have been nil. Zero. I didn't receive any check from the tax authorities refunding the money I paid over the years to them, saying they are sorry that I've not earned anything for so many days, maybe this money will help me now, in these unemployed times.... nope. I checked my mail everyday. Sometimes twice a day. No check from them.

What do they know? What do they care? For them I'm just a number. This system is complicated by design and is another attempt to put people "in line".
To respect and salute the system, tax is made complicated by default. Allow me to illustrate what my twisted mind has gathered:

Tax is:
extremely complicated by design
made mandetory to pay
having punitive consequences if evaded
what only the rich and the powerful can be exempted from.

Yes, all this is true, you know it pretty well. But read again, what's there in it for us? Nothing, but according to them, the so called "peace of mind".

I think this is all an ages old huge legal scam.

V

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Me at shoppers stop

2008-07-06T22:11:00.001+05:30

...direct from cybershot

Man as a Machine: The concept of Proof

2008-07-01T23:33:00.001+05:30

Ok... here goes:

Evidence. Documents. Written record. Receipt. Acknowledgment slip. Stamp of Authencity. Degrees. Diplomas, School/College certificates.... the list can go on.

Proof is an indispensable and inseparable part of our lives. We cannot function without it. Proof as a concept is build in the DNA of our society, across the world. We need birth, marriage and death certificates to prove that we were born, got married and died. We need insurance policies, SSN number or PAN card to prove our existence. We need passports, Visas, Train/Air tickets and travellers checks/debit cards to show people in other parts of the world that we are who we are, to prove our identity while traveling.

In India, the documents providing proof can be very easily fabricated. A fake driving licence is just 300 Rupees of expence. A fake degree only a few lakh of rupees. For ages, fake land papers are used to dupe customers. Fake and multiple passports can be bought by people requiring them for whatever reasons.

Yet the concept of official stamps, seals and authenticating documents to prove anything is used. Everything is documented. If it can't be proven, it's not true anymore. I cannot prove my being alive and being born in my country if I don't have the required documents. Even if 20 people vouch for me that I live here, if I don't have the documents, I very well could be just a refugee. If I'm framed for something and caught, I'll have to prove I am innocent.

Once two policemen from a neighbouring state came to my house. I was at work. They were after a car which had the same number as mine. They said a car by this color and this number commited a robbery in their state, about 100 miles from my city. They got my house address from the car dealer. They asked me where I was on that day, I said I don't take my car to work, it stays at home, I go by the subway and on that day too, I went to work in my city only, on the subway, and the car was at home. I had to get a written proof signed by my employer that I was present at work the whole of that day. Then they still tried to seize my car saying I might have given it to someone else that day and that guy must have commited the robbery. I had to sign an affidavit and also bribe them a bit ..... I came to know later the car that was involved in the robbery was from a different company....

So it was a guilty until proven innocent situation.

Anyways, this 'proof' thing is one of the many things I just don't get. If you don't have an MBA degree, which is proof that one is a post graduate and is more educated than you are. But you see those people who have those degrees, that piece of paper does help those duds. But they are still duds, almost half of them. But these people have proof that they studied at some place and got so many marks...

When I get to a new job I have to bring all my documents, school, college, and the diplomas. I find it funny when they check those documents and see if they are original. I know that most of those documents have taught me nothing. They are very valuable to them and they serve as proof that I have lived a life according to what they think is right. That everything about me is normal. That i'm the right piece of fitment that they want to fill...by seeing my documents they are fitting me at a set position.

Proof of any kind, from birth certificates to degrees, is just another way of making sure we are a machine. That we remain machines, and stay in line. Stay together, in a group. Stay members of their cults and not become individuals. Any paper from any authority is only there to say "hey I'm not an individual, look I have a drivers licence from our Goverment so I'm part of the society which this Government rules."

Remember a lot of Jews were killed during WWII simply because they could not take the "proof" papers out of thier pocket before the shot was fired....

Any document, serves as a reminder to you, that you are a slave. You are part of a system, that you can't live without your passport, which only your Government can give. Your Tax returns only remind you that you are not above anyone, you are just one of the millions who are filing their tax returns, every year, by the date and the way decided by someone higher than you.

With this documenting society, we are just continuing to be the machines that we are.

V

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Man as a Machine: the concept of routine

2008-06-28T19:57:00.001+05:30

"I'm having a problem with my driving to work", says a husband, to his wife. "I'm thinkin of changing my route to work, there is this particular lane I take where there are a lot of small kids playing on the road, and my car might hurt them someday. Yes, I seriously am thinking of changing my route to work."

This seems quite natural and perfectly normal thing to do. Then why do I have a huge problem with this? There is a distinct smell of routine here. An odor of sameness, of predictability. Allow me to explain.

Years ago, my lawyer says to me he's thinking of buying a car. He's discussing and consulting everybody he knows, about this:

Should he buy a car? or not?
If yes then which one?

His story was he only has to drive to the Income tax office about 4 to 5 times a week. Otherwise he is always at his office, which is near his home.

I couldn't understand him. I thought how can anyone chalk out his journeys and places he has to go, his daytime activities, of his future life, so accurately and limit himself like that? I don't know where I will be going to next monday. I could be out of town. I could not drive at all, I could take the subway. I could not go anywhere at all. My free thinking mind clashed with the closed cage like life he was talking about. "Is that all??", I thought. So this guy who's a successful lawyer, that is all he is going to do with his days, weeks and months? Has he chalked out his 80 year life too? Is he just following a well drawn out roadmap of job, marriage, kids, driving to work, weekend movies, more work, retiring, living on pension and dying? Has he already bought his clothes which he will wear when he turns 50? 60? and on his death? He must have bought his coffin already too, so that after 40 years he might get one at a hugely inflated price.

So he already knows and is planning about where he will be going, how much petrol he might spend every month etc. Yes I know all this is very normal and every person does this planning. This is what a routine life is all about.

Routine.

People have accepted in their minds that they are a machine, to earn money, to take care of their families. And to take care of their basic instincts like eating, sleeping and having sex. They do this routine, all around me, every day.

They are somnabulists, sleep walking through their life. Planning for making it even more routine and smoother, every day. A better life, according to them.

Where are those guys who are yet unpredictable? Who take unexpected decisions without thinking and consulting about it for months? Who don't react or get shocked at the most shocking of news? Who say things that have the 'Robert Downey Jr. in Iron Man' punch in them, making people scratching their heads for days....? Who really don't know what they will say or do the next hour? Whose lives have not jumped the shark? The ship of their minds have not yet anchored....where are they?

Lets see more people who respond with their entire being and not just react to thier surroundings like a machine. We need less machines, we need more human beings, individuals, alive and kicking with life, not sleepwalking, but awake. Not slave to routine.

"Change that fucking route of yours. Change your wife too, while you're at it." said the wife.

V

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Mcdonalds

2008-06-25T21:50:00.001+05:30

Mmmm...Mcdonalds.

I was so excited in 1995 when it first opened in New Delhi's Priya Complex. There were huge lines, 50 odd people in those zig zag lines, waiting for a burger. The Mcburger, a cheap, lamb burger used to cost Rs. 12. That is about 25 cents. I was a kid then, a fascinated one.

Things did taste so good at that time. Maybe because we were young and the taste buds were longing for new tastes....surely.

But now I see what is Mcdonalds, in reality. It is a hugely successful fast "food" chain across the world, which is a clone factory of synthetic food.

I don't like to call it food. It is plastic like, very unreal. Real food is not like this. The taste is artificial, programmed, synthetic, eerily consistent.
Lots of sugar and salt and oils are used. Lots of flour is used. So the basic components would be:

oils/vegetable oils
sugar
milk products
salt
flour

Any real food will not taste so consistent and synthetic, every time. It's a machine like food made with machine like hands, at a precise time of 10 or 30 seconds. Nothing is actually made, in fact it is just assembled in the premises.

Everything is pre-packaged and bought to the eating place just to unpack and put on a grill for "toasting" or a big oil pan in case of french fries...

Speaking of fries, they were using beef oil to enhance the taste of vegetarian french fries in the US, not too long ago.

But it is the most successful chain ever. They churn out millions of "clonic food" for us to put inside and feel as if we have eaten something. And it is not even a restaurant. As an analogy it is like Dell. They make computer clones....the very same way.

I remember once there was a movie made in the US where a guy just eats Mcd food for a month and ends up with serious and exotic health problems by the end of his experiment. The doctors are baffled. It just took a month to get so many health issues just by eating from Mcd?

In the upcoming Will Smith movie, Hancock, he sarcastically remarks a bunch of obese women that they all should just sue Mcdonalds for what they have done to these ladies...instead of suing him.

Yet people love this place. They flock to it wherever it opens. In New Delhi, CP area, there are three Mcd's, a few blocks apart from each other, all jam-packed, always. They open early, close really late still people can't stop coming in. The staff is so jaded there....

And the worst part is that they target kids. These kids then develop the eating habits early on and stay life long customers, having chronic health problems later on. Why do they lure them with toys and colors and sweet/salty tastes?? My God.

These guys are distributing this so called food in a very precise way, taking care of the logistics, and the sameness of the food. People flock to it for the same bland taste, every time. A lot of people can't live without it. They have to have their cokes, their fries, their chicken burgers.... they are addicted.

What is with this place? I guess its like a drug. The customers are not there to dine in a fine restaurant. They just want to stuff themselves with their junk, which has the addictive Sugar/Salt levels to keep them hooked in, drug like. The coke completes the addiction with the caffeine. Mcdonalds is the place to have your fill of junk...in a superbly efficient and fast way.

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2008-06-16T20:14:00.005+05:30

Man as a Machine: The rich and the super rich- part 1

The rich are saluted and respected everywhere. We already know that and I could give a million examples....but still:

In Dumb and Dumber, Jim Carrey and his friend are the most dumbest buffoons ever, but when they find loads of cash in the briefcase and spend it on a sports car, 5 star hotel accommodation, and the best of clothes and personal products and services, we see many plastic smiled faces around them, the hospitality people from saloons, hotels, etc who smile at them and salute them. In the illustration picture I clicked from a MasterCard print ad, the smile is as plastic and fake as can be.

In airlines, the first and business class customers are smiled and cared for not because they are very good looking, very nice, very pleasant, very sweet and very friendly customers, but because they paid more money to get those smiles and the glass of wine and the extra care.

If you get out of a snazzy BMW, wearing great clothes, and expensive glares/watch, then you will be saluted by the doorman at the hotel lobby in a different way than if you just went on foot wearing a pair of jeans and a tee.

Really evil and bad people, who are extremely rich and have the cash to do anything and go anywhere and buy anything, are a respected lot.

I know it's all obvious. That is not the point. But I wonder what is there to be respected of these rich people? It's obviously the money and the clout they buy from it that is being saluted. It's not them. THEY, those very rich people, the person that they are is not respected. The money they have is.

I wonder, don't they know it? Deep down inside, don't they know they are hollow, and not really worth the attention, caring and respect they get all around them?

My dad was a rich man when I was small. Our relatives, his friends and everybody else used to flock around him, and our family, all the time. If someone is coming to town, he is obviously coming to meet us, stay with us, pay respect to us, because my Dad had build a clout. He could do anything, say anything to anyone and nobody would say anything to him. He had money. In the 1970s he had a car when the whole city had very few cars and mostly had "Bajaj" scooters. So people used to invite him for marriage parties even though they didn't know him very much, simply because he would come in his car, and they would have at least one person who came to the event in an actual car.

Money attracts people, naturally. Somebody who is in power gets the attention and caring and loyalty of a lot of suckers.

I find this to be very machine like. Now that my father does not have that kind of money and clout, nobody talks to him as they did 20 years ago. He is not respected like he was. He is the very same man. I personally think he is much better and softer now, more likable. But he is now deserted, ridiculed, and criticized.

Again when I think about what money can do, I think what we have been taught is all upside down. The truth would be:

Money does mean everything
Money can buy happiness and anything else you can think of!
Nice guys get killed by rich guys.
It's all about the money.
Money makes the world go round.
The more money you have, the more God like you become.
Any problem can be solved by throwing money at it.
Money means freedom.
The rich people control the world, the Government, and the economy.

sad.....

V

Man as a machine-Concept of Purpose Part 2: ZERO

2008-06-12T22:25:00.001+05:30

Riddle: There is a space between two breaths, where nothing happens. It's a 10th of a second, but can be willed to be longer. When we have exhaled, but not yet begun to inhale... I'm that space. hmmm....who am I?

I'm zero.

Zero, the number, is strange, unique, and intriguing. Is it a number? No, it's a representation of something that is unrepresentative. It can only be tried to explain, like in the riddle.

It's nothing. The word is 'nothing'. In sanskrit it's called "Shunya", which is miles ahead in meaning than English.

I like to do nothing. It's strange, I know. I loved the 15 minute break between 2 hours of calling people on the phone, I lived for the break. Each minute felt better when the break was approaching...

I love to be in a zone where I have to do nothing. Just nothing. I long for that zone, since childhood. The recess break or the initial "zero" period (whoa, cool name!) used to be my favorite time in class... In a Zero period, we used to do nothing! And on some days when the Bus did not come we rejoiced like anything that we had a chance of getting an off today....it was great, I'm sure all of us felt the same...

I like the non-work mode. The time between 2 jobs. Or the time when I've quit the job, but going on a notice period for a couple of weeks, but doing nothing.... it's a serene, lovely, relaxed time. Everybody is neutral with you, It's as if you're a guest there, having coffee...

Or when it's a big thunderstorm, causing mass traffic chaos... I feel great, hey wow, it's impossible to go to work today! Everybody just stay home and do nothing! I felt great watching the movie Independence Day. It felt that the end of the world is so logical and right, this will stop all the madness.

People find it very very hard to do nothing. I was in a train once, the guy next to me read the newspaper once, twice, thrice... and then when he had nothing to do, felt jittery and confused. Trembling, he fumbled on his mobile phone, looked around for someone to talk to... he was a mess. And he couldn't stand me as I was sitting with utmost calm, doing nothing!

I like this concept. The resting time. Being in the neutral gear. The space, creativity, and freedom one can get doing nothing is tremendous. Many people will vouch for this: A person is at his creative best when doing nothing and being broke!!

I will say:

Newton discovered gravity doing nothing, just sitting under a tree when an apple fell....
J K Rowling was doing nothing when the Idea of Harry Potter came to her.
A scientist had a famous "EUREKA!!" moment while playing with bubbles in his bath tub...

But you will say:

TIME WASTER!
USELESS!
GOOD FOR NOTHING!

Yes, I know. I know I'm all that and more! I'm worse than a useless guy! I'm also a failure! But I accept that. And I don't have any ego or shame accepting that I have been a failure in the worldly view of my life, till now.

I listen to music, surf the net, browse the news, read a lot, make coffee, cook Maggi noodles, and just basically roam around, checking stuff out!
Yeeaah!! Thats what we men like doing the most, just checking things out!

People continue to do all sorts of things, get their life messed up big time.... In movies where they are showing a possible end of the world, like ID4, Deep Impact, Armageddon etc.. I've noticed the people start to love each other more, they start saying things they would not say otherwise, they hug, kiss, love, say sorry, say thank you, meet their estranged wifes, their divorced husbands, their forgotten parents, and say things they would not say on a normal day. But now, when the whole working world is being consumed by a big ZERO, they are suddenly aware, and awake.

That brings me to the point: The space between the two breaths, the zero time, is the only time when one is awake.
I'm already what the world will eventually be.

V

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Man as a machine: the concept of image

2008-06-05T00:21:00.001+05:30

Everyone is concerned about their image.

Politicians, media persons, film celebrities, Newspapers, TV channels, Companies, everyone. They all want to make sure they have an untarnished image.
Hillary and Bill Clinton, Britney Spears, Madonna, George Bush, Putin, The whats-his-name French president who has a model girlfriend who had dated Mick Jaggar.....everyone wants to improve their image.

See, image is the key word here. What is an image? It's a reflection of an object. It's not the object itself, mind you. There is a key difference. It's a shadow, a reflection, a xerox copy of the person or object.

In case of companies and media personalities, it's the version of you that you have made public.
A politician needs votes from a certain section of society, he goes to their homeland, tries to talk and behave in their language, to try and win them over, to improve his own image in front of those people.

Nobody thinks of actually changing themselves, make themselves better, their own mind better, to change their own old-world thinking, their own attitude, their actual thought process. They just try to "appear" more compassionate to the public but are really not even close to it....

It's like bending the mirror so that the image of your face appears better. It's just a special effect, a gimmick. It's a photoshop touching of your thinking.
You're not really that compassionate and loving person but you say those words and do those things to appear that way to the sheep like people around you.

Isn't that true?

V

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Google: the speed of acquistion

2008-06-05T00:02:00.001+05:30

Google is so fast in buying companies, whether small acquisitions, or the bigger Youtube type acquistions. How??? The answer is the google search box itself and the amazing search stream and click stream data it gets every minute from every person in this world. That is the goldmine to see how many people in the entire world are searching for and clicking for a particular thing...and all the other kinds of insightful data. It's kind of like it already knows which pop song will be a hit next month....

Google is able to find the next big thing on the net about 6 months faster due to their own little search box!

v

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Man as a Machine: the concept of sleep

2008-06-01T22:49:00.001+05:30

Why do we sleep?
Or to be more specific, why do we have to sleep? It's an inescapable part of our daily routine.

In India I see some people who don't sleep due to their commitments at studies and work, but otherwise, all over the world, sleeping is essential.
I find sleep pretty natural.

My school friends, at exam time, did not sleep the entire night, but kept on studying. I found this highly unnatural.
I used to sleep the night before the exam at around midnight, for about 6 hours. It seemed important to me, but apparently I was the minority.
My friends said they were too tense to sleep, and would rather sleep after the exam, than to waste precious study hours.

But do we understand why we sleep? Do we? I don't think anybody does.

Do we need sleep to rest? Our body is not resting while sleeping.... it's functioning. Blood is getting circulated, that is the heart is functioning...lungs are breathing.... and food is getting digested too! Ok so what is resting? Our mind? is it? We are dreaming, and our mind is active, the brainwaves change from beta to theta/delta, but otherwise, its not asleep, it's active.

So why do we still need to sleep atleast 6 hours a night? We spend so much time sleeping our entire lives, yet we don't really know why we have to do so.
And we feel rested after a good nights sleep, why is that?

Consider this, it is SO important to sleep that our mind, if very tired, sleeps while driving. So even the risk of death is insignificant compared to the need to sleep....ask any tired driver!

My 2 cents? I think we connect to a 'main server' somewhere near the core of the the galaxy, where our souls have come from. Our soul needs the body to stop "active functioning" for a few hours so that it connects to the main server, and update all new information to that main server. It also recharges itself during the process.

Pretty freaky to read?

Think of your iPod. Out of the box, it needs to be charged and synced with your laptop after about every 12 hours of usage. It needs to do so, otherwise it will not function, the battery will die out, and it will have the same old songs! The iPod also updates any newer software version for it, and put into your laptop the song ratings it saved when u were using it....so it's a two way syncing.

One eminent scientist once concluded after years of research on sleep, that:
The main reason we sleep is in order that the nobler part of our soul is united by abstraction to our higher nature and becomes a participant in the wisdom and foreknowledge of the Gods.

So it's not just our tired legs which feel good in the morning, there is something pretty huge going on while sleeping. Our inner PC is getting synced with the mother ship!

So in conclusion: Human Beings are like PCs, connected to the main cloud....and during sleep they get synced and recharged every night...

hmmm.. sleep over this!

Vikram

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Man as a Machine: The concept of Purpose

2008-06-01T22:48:00.001+05:30

"Hey you useless fellow, do something productive!"
"So you spend the entire afternoon in front of your laptop? What did you get out of it?"
"Reading this trash will get you nowhere!"
"Why are you doing this? What good will come from your doing this?"

I bet you have heard some of your family and friends saying the statements listed above, to you!

What is purpose? I think it is to earn the maximum amount of money, per hour. If you do that and are earning round the clock, your life has a purpose.
Even on a Sunday, go to the golf course to relax.....and to interact business transactions with fellow golfers! So you did something productive.

In 2002, I went to a very famous doctor who just saw me for 2 minutes, did not listen to me, snapped at me for using a wrong word, and ordered an expensive test with a machine installed at his clinic, and rushed to the next room to meet another patient. His minutes were money. In 2 minutes, I was poorer and he was richer by a good amount. Later I found out he ordered every patient he saw the same test with his in-house machine...

So he had found purpose in his life. His purpose was to use his name and reputation mint him good money by the minute...

So what is purpose? Anything that can be translated into money, profit, or used to make money later is productive and purposeful.
That is why creative people have to listen to so much shit. Artists, musicians, writers are not understood by a majority of people and are generally considered useless, unless they turn very successful which 98% do not, anyway.

So according to a majority of people, human beings are machines to earn money.....(refer to my post: Stupid People Part 2). Just keep on doing useful things, all the time! Keep on churning, keep on printing, keep on slogging, there is a lot of money to be made....Keep your focus on.

Vikram

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Me at select citywalk

2008-05-31T23:31:00.001+05:30

After a long time...

"I don't believe in ________"

2008-05-31T23:25:00.001+05:30

I always hear people say they don't believe in something or the other... like:

spirits
ghosts
pre-notion about a fact through a dream(or ESP)
luck
aliens/life on other planets

.... and the list can go on endlessly.....
Though I'm not disputing whether any of the above mentioned thing is to be believed or not, it says a lot about the person's state of mind.

In their twisted thinking, they feel this is all about them.
They think if THEY don't believe in something, it is not there; it does not exist; It is not true. They think they are the center of the universe.
Their believing or not believing is going to change the world. I'll give the cliched example about everyone believing that the earth is flat, only
about 500 years ago.

What these people don't get is that their believing or not believing does not change the actual fact itself.
For example, if they don't believe in ghosts, that does not mean that in this world ghosts do not exist. If they one day see a ghost, that does not change any fact either....

And by the way, every point made above is true!

Don't believe me?

Vikram

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Questions

2008-05-31T23:04:00.001+05:30

Hmmm........ Asking questions.

People are always asking a whole lot of questions. There are only 2 kinds of people: those who are dead, and those who ask questions. Out of those there are some who ask more questions than others.

You get introduced to a colleague at office, or a guy at a party....just see the stream of "?"s start, a steady stream.
Most of the people asking questions are pretty smart. More than half of the time they already know the answer themselves.
But they still ask because:

They want to see if you know the answer
They want to see what do you have as an answer
They play innocent or pretend not to know the answer, by asking.
Asking about it is easier than answering about it, if in case you ask them.
It keeps the conversation in their control.

Example (new joinee comes at an office)

Where have you come from?
where is the office you worked located? which department?
what designation?
what is your total experience?
and where did you complete your MBA?
which other companies you have worked?
married?

Asking a question puts the ball in the other persons court automatically. They ask, and wait for your answer. You are cornered. You have a second to think about your reply. But it's rude not to answer, or not to listen to the question. They make full use of this social etiquette. They have cornered you just by a seemingly harmless and simple question.
The smarter ones ask you an indirect question, having a hidden agenda built-in inside, when they can't ask you something directly and now, you have to give an answer.

In the above example of the stream of new office guy questions, asking " so where did you complete your MBA?" even before any mention of MBA has been done is to imply that they want to know if you are in fact an MBA or not, but can't ask it directly.

In various sales and marketing courses, we have been told:

ask customers direct and indirect questions;
open ended and closed ended questions. (depending on the type of customer)

and to ask trick questions, like:

Sir so what time should I call you tomorrow morning?
Would you be paying by check or cash sir? Or do you have a credit card?

What they are applying scientifically is the power of asking questions. Human beings are programmed to fall in a mild trance when being asked questions, and give answers to it as if there is no choice but to answer.

A person who is aware, can choose not to answer the question, but to kill the question itself. One needs to be fully aware of the environment around him, and the mild hypnotism the other person is doing on him. The other person(the questioner) will feel extremely irritated though, because this, he hasn't seen before!!

Recommended Checkmates to kill the question:

no comment.
i don't think i need to answer that.
yes and no
fill in the blanks yourself.
why ask me when you already know it?
why are you asking?
Are you asking because you don't know or because i don't know? (the other person will say he doesn't know). Ok, I don't know either!
You tell me.
Is this an interview? Show me your ID.
I'll tell you but then I'll have to kill you. (ok that one was a cliche but had to be included!!)
This is not the time to play 20 questions, mister.
Why not?
Thats a good question.(and then keep quiet!)
where's your microphone?

Once I meet an old friend after a few months, we sit in a south indian restaurant. He starts to ask a series of questions which get annoyingly sharper and more private, one by one. Then when i realize this, I start to answer as if I'm a rockstar celebrity and he is a journalist. I start to put my answers in that language, adding fake names, stories, events, and movie references with each answer. He is then out of his agenda automatically, and shuts up, looks around. He doesn't know how to handle me....

Vikram

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"extra large only"

2008-05-18T15:55:00.001+05:30

In retail and hospitality, there is this scam going on for years.

At Barista I once ordered a cappuccino and the guy automatically charges me for the GRANDE cup, costing 65 bucks while I think i'll pay him around 40 bucks. I ask him how much and then I politely tell him not to assume things and give me a NORMAL cup of cappuccino. He does oblige. He has to cancel the order.

Mostly when people are shopping, enjoying, and are in groups they are in sort of a trance, they are concerned of the impression they are making and are not in their true practical senses, including me sometimes. But when I'm out alone, I try to be aware...

In another incident I catch a guy, he was charging me for a large glass of iced tea while I just said to him "one noodles, one iced tea". I see his computer put 35 bucks for one item.... i stop him right there, i said hey, give a NORMAL glass of iced tea, which costs only 20 bucks. He says they don't have those small glasses in stock. I say thats not my problem, put that much drink in your bigger glass, why should I pay for your lack of plastic glasses.
After 2 minutes they sheepishly give me iced tea in a NORMAL glass, which they had all along, but were not giving. They thought they lose less by giving it in a small glass than in the large one. There were 3 other iced tea orders just like mine within that time, and all those 3 people got a large 35 buck glass. Two of them did notice this but didn't know what to do.

(pic courtesy flickr)

Our favorite movi e hall, PVR, does it all the time. The SMALLEST glass of pepsi is a 60 buck 650 ml cardboard cup.
I had an argument once at one such PVR, when I asked for a small pepsi. I got this huge glass I mentioned. I told him that you give me a totally diluted brown sugar-water with no fizz, just full of ice... take 60 bucks from me... and say this is the smallest size you have? I hold that long long cup near my mouth and say a few words which echo inside the cup, just to let her know how small or large this smallest cup is. I do have to pay though, coz I don't really have a choice inside the theater... we're in a lockup, until the movie ends, can't get any outside food, can't go out...nothing, we are trapped, we have to buy that stuff they sell for whatever price they demand..that is how it works.

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My first punch to you: why are you a non veg?

2008-05-17T22:52:00.001+05:30

This one might be hard, bear with me.

So, are you a non-vegetarian? why?

It's a taste thing right, why don't you admit that you are an unethical bastard with no moral values, so you can easily eat chicken, beef, pork and fish?
And eat them everyday, just because they taste so good? Meat does taste good right? You think vegetarians are unmanly, and a real man eats meat...

Eating flesh is a sin, just like killing someone is. Your body becomes a graveyard....of pigs and cows... and goats.

Ok so you say animals are also non veg eaters, like tigers, and lions? Well they can't eat grass, they will die if they only eat grass, but you, you asshole, can easily eat vegetarian food and live. Does an elephant eat meat? There is no real NEED to eat non-veg, mind you. Don't make it a need, it is just a lust. A taste fetish of flesh.

What argument do you have to support your flesh eating behavior, other than that you like to eat meat? What scientific reason can you give? PROTEINS? Soyabean and cottage cheese have them too. AMINO ACIDS? Just shut up! VITAMINS? take a pill.

Vegetarian diet is complete. A man does not need to eat meat, just as he does not need to kill people, or cut trees, or pollute but does anyway.

Now, come on, bring out your swords and lets start the fight!

Vikram

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Google is doing Everything

2008-05-11T18:48:00.002+05:30

Yes Google is now apparently doing a lot of things. Their mixture of services can be used for all the online needs, including commercial needs, and eventually for profit.

Following are the various FREE applications and services from Google which can be really useful:

Gmail: online industrial strength email application
For starters, Gmail is super fast and has unlimited space. Its up most of the time, and is industrial strength. It also beats outlook in ease of use and can also be configured in Outlook for free.

Google Documents: Your Microsoft Office online
Now we're talking. Google Docs has Excel, Word and Powerpoint online! everything is done on the browser. It can be published, shared, revised, edited and emailed right there at the press of a button inside the browser window. Now it also has offline access to document viewing and editing. This is one big boy application suite from Google.

Google News: For research
You can search news by keywords and also search archives for old, really old new articles.

Google Alerts: Get your stuff to you from the world
Wow, this one is good. Suppose you want to know all the stuff you can about IBM. And also to keep yourself updated for anything that may happen. If you just give the keyword "IBM" to Google alerts and subscribe with your email id, it will deliver everything IBM to you. From News to Blogs to articles... what not. Good to keep track on stuff.

Google Books: all the books, scanned.
Scanned, and made searchable by content. This is in process and all the major libraries in the world are getting online, very fast.

Google Calendar: Organize
Organize your life with an online calander, syncable with everything.

Google Earth: The World for you to see
Yes zoom into every nook and corner of any place on earth. This is hard to explain, the kind of service this is. It covers the Sky, the moon, Mars, and this is still totally free.

Blogger: Publish your thoughts
Blogger makes it easy to publish your work, and has the desired tools to publish from your phone, by e-mail and edit really fast.

Google Base: what is this?
This is really unknown. It lets you publish anything, give out an advert, a resume, a report, anything online in minutes. It is very flexible.

Orkut: social network
...that all of us know.

Google Groups: this is dejanews
The decades old service, Dejanews was bought by Google and is the largest forum in the world. Some of my posts I gave in the late 90s are still there....

Google Images: Photos
The most popular web image search, much more than flickr

Google Desktop: search your PC
This neat little thing lets you search your computer for documents music emails names numbers anything. Search INSIDE spreadsheets hidden in your PC.
This is an awesome tool. In 2004 when I gave this tool to my boss ( I was in a consultancy), he went bonkers... he could put a name there and click search and all data related to that name came on screen. He was working with thousands of names at that time and this was Godsend for him!

Youtube/Google Video: search videos and put your videos
This is the lethal combo from Google, everything video, your own videos, This is caused a revolution.

Google Blog search: self explanatory

Google Reader: the best RSS reader
subscribe to feeds in your browser, this is good works like Gmail.

Google Photos/Picasa
How could Google forget user created photos...

Google Scholar:
Lets you search documents written by university professors, thesis, PhDs what not...(i don't know much about this thingy!!)

Google Notebook
is a web clipboard

Google Talk: the simple IM.
It lacks many features which makes it very simple and cool to use.

Google Mobile services
These guys have search, Gmail and some other services for mobile devices...

Google Pack: software
This is an interesting collection of essential PC software, including Firefox, antivirus, antispyware, media players, readers, and is packaged for easy installation.

Google Search: how could i forget that?

So these are some of the things that Google is doing. There is also iGoogle, Google Adsense, Google.org and many other things.

This is huge, guys. This really is. Let me know if I'm leaving out anything.

Vikram

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Meet Mr. Vinci

2008-05-09T18:14:00.003+05:30

I have an ex-colleague/friend, whom I can easily compare to Leanardo Da Vinci. He's good at every creative field; singing, dancing, DJing, painting, choregraphing..... infact, he choreographed the dance steps of an office dance skit that I took part in, last year, and he is fresh out of college.

He's good at Math. Very good at computers. Tries to be organized but has way too much information in his head...

He also forgets a lot. The surest sign of a genius! One day he told me he forgot his girlfriends name, while she was with him, and had to ask a friend of hers sitting beside, by sign language....

Anyways, the main point I needed to make was his choice of music. While our dance/skit team spend time rehearsing, I got to know that he loves every kind of music. Every kind. He does not have any favorites or genres. He loves sound itself. The collection on his laptop was very varied. It had rock, pop, hip-hop, and bollywood... I asked about it. He said "all kinds of music is good, any kind. No music is bad music"

There I had it. He has a much broader bandwidth in his mind. There is a much fatter faster pipe installed there. Not many people have that.

So here is the CHECKLIST of a true genius:

very short memory
very short attention spans
likes anything creative
very unpredictable
cannot do a routine job for long

what else can you guys add?

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miss you

2008-05-08T02:23:00.001+05:30

Hey wow, this is that really obscure and rare video of a disco remix of the stones hit "miss you" . This, my friend, is a trippy number with a video that I saw on mcm 6 years ago and was spellbound... phew!

Embedded Video

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Stupid People (again?)

2008-05-07T20:12:00.001+05:30

My so called theory that was read across the world, and is an underground hit(!!) published in a single page (all 3 parts)... click here..

Vikram

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The worst crime

2008-05-06T16:30:00.001+05:30

What is the worst crime you can think of?

The World War 2 Nazi Germany's killing of Jews? Remember at that time it was all legal and no country in the world did any action to stop it.
The Bombing of Hiroshima? Nobody talks about it much as it was done by the US.
Serial Killers? The media glorifies them like sportstars, even updating us with their score.

The worst crime would be to kill one's own newly born baby girl, in front of the entire family and with all the neighbours and relatives knowing about it.
This is happening so often in Indian villages, that it is not even considered a sin. It is something like lying. We all know everyone lies, all the time, but still we say we should not lie.

This murder of innocent newly born baby girls, called female infanticide, is quite common in rural India. According to this article on rediff.com, the practise is "alive and kicking"

I would not bore you by facts, statistics and figures which are alarming but seem to lack soul.

If you get to know that 100 people died in an earthquake then it is a figure, but if you get to know of a story of one little girl who died in an earthquake trying to save her mother, then it's a tragedy. Our mind works in mysterious ways.

Somehow killing little baby girls by their own mothers, mother-in-laws and aunts and then they giving convincing, practical and logical reasons for doing so is a metaphor of this war ridden times. We all respect logic and do things logically, and practically. But life is not logical, it is dialectical. It follows its own course. If you believe logic totally, then logically you are a burden on earth, and do nothing but pollute the environment and consume resources. Logically your doing this everyday is a waste of time and resources. So you should commit suicide right now, thats the most logical and practical solution to your problems, and the problem of life.

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Stupid People Part 3: The Conclusion

2008-05-04T00:58:00.003+05:30

In my first post I observed that most people are stupid, as in they lack real intelligence.
in part 2, i got into the mechanical machine like quality of most of these people.

Now in the final part, the nailing analogy:

If we compare a human being to this laptop, the brain or the memory will be the amount of RAM (Random access memory) in it. More memory makes the computer more fast and efficient in it's tasks. It can store more things in the memory and use what is stored in a flash, that is why it is also called flash memory.

Now the real intelligence in a person can be compared in the laptop analogy to the processor. That is the real mind, the spark of intelligence. It does not store anything, it is dynamic in its processing. This chip is the intelligence and the brain/intellect is the RAM.

Fig 1 shows the Memory and Fig 2 the mind/intelligence.

Now see how this analogy comes to a close. The memory can remember a lot of information and do the preprogrammed work faster.
But it cannot create anything new by itself. Like in a spreadsheet, the memory can remember numbers but the intelligence/chip will do the real calculation and give the answer. Likewise, it's the chip which creates new stuff out of all the information.

So anything new can only be created by intelligence. New horizons, new music, new ways to do things, new technologies, new services, the memory cannot do any of this. It can only remember and process the old. It is important but it's the chip which is the real master.

In our education system, learning by mugging up is given importance. "rattafie" all information and vomit it out in the exam. No processing happens inside. No need to understand. One of my friends was doing law, she told me she had to mug up 700+ different law cases/judgements in an exam. She had a very good memory and she threw all information into the exam, but no processing happened. It was all like putting information in a pen drive, just storage. This is what the teachers want us to become, big hard disks. Real intelligence is not recognized in our education system. It's purpose is to ruin our intelligence by putting a lot of information in our heads, fill it up to the tank. It destroys our real spark, inside us.

Anybody who creates something new is using his intelligence.
Anybody who is processing and remembering old information is using his memory.

Get it? Well you would need to process it with a good chip!

Vicki

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Stupid People (Part 2): Man as a machine

2008-05-03T14:40:00.002+05:30

Stupid People Part 2:

In my earlier post one of the things to notice were that the "Stupid" people also happen to be very efficient and/or good at what they do for a living. If a Stupid guy is an accountant/CA, he is working very hard and earning money for putting food on the table.

This efficiency will sound like a paradox. How can I say somebody is stupid and yet so good at his work? How can he keep doing what he does and still not understand what real intelligence is?

That person is a bio-robot. He is mechanical. He does his job and lives his life in a mechanical way. Very efficient, very fast, very good at his core job, and his responces towards his surroundings are very reactive and mechanical as well.

He is a product, a mechanical being, a Bio-robot who gets software implanted to his brain in his school/college years. (better MBA institute means a better version of the software) and goes thru his life earning his living through what he has been made to do. That is why in consultancies we refer to an IILM graduate as a "fine IILM Product".

I was once in a workshop and the trainer asks us a rhetoric " All of you know what we are, right?" she said. "All of you know what we human beings are?" I wasn't sure what she was getting at, so I kept quiet, but she then answered herself: " Obviously, We're machines to earn money." and everyone agreed and nodded. I was struck by this not so obvious answer to which I don't subscribe to! Apparently all these guys are from a different planet, I thought. Little did I know I am the alien!

By Reactive responses, I mean only your mechanical brain is involved in making decisions, you are using your cleverness, your shrewdness, your mind, your memory and responding to a situation. Lets say somebody slaps you hard on your cheek. You will feel angry, you will cry, thats what the situation is, you will surely feel angry and feel bad.

But a true response of a real intelligent person would be to not be angry, and not to react to the incident! He will respond through his being, and not his brain.

To be concluded....

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Stupid People: Part 1

2008-04-29T00:33:00.005+05:30

Not many people are intelligent. A person can be very efficient in all aspects of his life, and go thru the routine of:

school/studies
high school/college
youth life/friends
job/work/earning money
marriage
raising kids
middle and old age/retirement

...and still be very stupid.

He will be very efficient in whatever he does, whether he is a Doctor, an accountant, even a lawyer.

Efficiency is not intelligence. A computer is very efficient but is not intelligent. It can do a same repetitive task with utmost accuracy, but still be very dumb. A spark of intelligence is very rare. We generally think a person who can cram a lot of books and studies for 20 hours and gets a 90 is very intelligent.

Yet we see a very basic level of understanding in these individuals. Sure they use their brains a lot. Those people will be shrewd, greedy, hungry for money, sex and power, but yet be very stupid. How can this be? This is an unthinkable paradox, yet it affects 80% of people around us.

Think of Homer Simpson and you'll get the drift. He has a wife and 3 kids, a job, 2 cars, big house etc.. yet, as we found out when we watched the Simpsons, that he is incredibly stupid.

In the movie, the Matrix, the main guy, Keanu Reeves is shown to be an intelligent, detached and dizzy guy. He is confused by the workings of the world around him and is freed by the people outside the matrix. In one scene he is shown a policemen giving a parking ticket and is told that people like that policemen cannot be freed from the matrix, as they don't have the inner capability like our hero has, and would die instantly.

In the book "Blink" the author explains the hidden intelligence in our intuition.

Closer home, in Taare Zameen Par, our hero kid explains the real meaning of a poem. because he is intelligent and understands what the poet means. But he is slapped, as the answer is not the crammed repetitive answer given by the lesser mortals.

There are small hints given to us everyday to come out of our regular habitual thinking patterns and to respond in the "here now" instead of just reacting to a situation.

Response comes from the being, but a reaction comes from your hardwired brain, which is a mechanized reaction, totally old, belonging to the past and not the present. A response is from the present.

Intelligence and intellect are two different things but we confuse one for another. What all the brainy students and the lawyers have is a lot of intellect, which is good for the job they are doing, they can cram a lot things, remember a whole bunch of stuff, have all the textbook answers but still lack the spark in them.

I see so much of mediocrity around and people being slaves to the primal drives of sex and money and booze that i feel this is an epidemic. Advertisers are smart. They know all this and make good use of it, and fool people in various levels. For example, the radio channels still cater to the lowest common denominator, the stupid people. The people who don't change the radio channel even on commercials, kind of like they are in a trance, the jingles going inside their brains, making them buy the stuff.

to be continued....

Stupid People Part 2: Man as a Machine
Stupid People Part 3: The conclusion

puppies!

2008-04-25T23:57:00.001+05:30

Embedded Video

these puppies have grown big in a few weeks, in my local park, just downstairs of my home.. and u know why? coz i make it a point to feed them whenever i go there. this was 10pm tonight!

i get to see Mr. Bachchan in a mall....

2008-04-22T00:04:00.001+05:30

Embedded Video

ipod shuffle ad. this little thing is so damn sexy! song is "Who's gonna sing?" by the Prototypes

2008-04-21T23:59:00.001+05:30

Embedded Video

2008-04-21T09:51:00.003+05:30

Our Brain: A programmable computer.

What does beer, sex, temple bells, coffee and meditation have in common? They all change our brainwaves. Our brain has 4 different states, as documented on an article stub i published(click here). And why am i interested? because these states can be altered by digitial drugs(specific sounds to change brainwaves)!

Vicki

Me in reflection

2008-04-20T18:14:00.001+05:30

Was at kirpal bagh and clicked a pic at the main samadhi... Live sunday april 20th

Ipod girl

2008-04-20T17:34:00.001+05:30

Testing direct posting from my phone...

2008-04-20T15:54:00.009+05:30

Simplified Silence: The White-Pastel effect.

Ok enough of my theories!
I always have an urge to simplify and foolproof anything, to make things easier and convenient, more intuitive, more smoothened for easier consumption or usage.

Lately as our lives get more and more complicated, this is gonna get big. It already is very evident. Just a few hours ago I was switching thru the car radio channels and each was bombarding me with adverts shouting the second i switched to it, so that I may buy what they are selling.... "BUY IT BUY IT! FREE! FREE!" they shouted, even the music and the jingles for the radio station appeared very loud and the kind of things they were saying it sucks you into listening to them, they use all kinds of techniques.

But what I'm into is the opposite of this. One channel i finally settled had some good soothing "quiet" music playing. The music had a silence to it(what is that?). It had space.

So the buzzwords are: Simplify, Silence, Space.

Now notice in the two images: a homepage of a popular internet portal above was cluttered with a lot of things. It still is. But the undisputed darling of the net, whom every grandma and grandpa know about, is the homepage of the second image.

Notice the homepage is very spacious, and simplified. It has silence. Google deployed what I call the "White Pastel Camouflager" or the White Pastel effect. There is high tech hidden underneath, but it's invisible. What is visible is very less, very simple, a box to type on, inducing you to type something, as there are very few links anyway, the box is your genie. Type it in, there is nothing else to do in the homepage anyway!

Similar effects can be seen on software such as itunes, products of Apple (iPod, iMac), where high technology is hidden and simplified silence excludes out of the product/service.

iPhone has the greatest technology, not seen anywhere. Apple has filed 200+ technology patents with the iPhone. Yet the phone has only one button! rest all is multitouch, very intuitive, very natural, very simplified. It is all screen, so very very spacious.

This Simplified Silence can be applied to other areas of our lives:

Transportation
Traffic management
Banks
Post Offices
DL offices
Passport and Visa services
Big corporations
Customer service of various MNCs

I'm just getting started here, I think I have a life long project with me with this!!

Vicki

2008-04-20T11:29:00.002+05:30

Hey!

Years ago i published in various online places, my original infinite universe theory (click here), I am reading it myself now after my original post back in 2001 I believe and it couldn't be truer. It has stood the test of time I think!

center of galaxy theory

2008-04-03T13:54:00.006+05:30

Hey!

Check out my completely original new theory!

Center of Galaxy Theory (mini presentation below!)

Me at my terrace

2007-05-15T15:14:00.001+05:30

This is Vicki....summer 2007

Kill Poverty

2006-10-20T22:03:00.000+05:30

A radical new way to eradicate poverty from the third-world countries. The more people know about this project, the more people blog and digg this, the sooner the results will surface. So you are helping the poor just by reading this! Highly recommended.

read more | digg story

2005-03-17T21:58:00.000+05:30

The servers of Google know everthing imaginable. In addition to that, they know the behaviour of all internet users! What If those servers start behaving like the master computer HAL or more recently VIKI (in I, Robot) , and develop a consciousness? Its gonna be a war..... Man vs. Machine!

2005-02-15T01:52:00.000+05:30

hey guys!, we had the Industrial age when our parents were born, that was about machines replacing our muscle, now as we are adults, this era is about computers replacing our minds, that is the routine task oriented minds, not mine!

The information age is about to destroy all the fucking lawyers/CAs and other people who are not at all creative, but strive on routine tasks, however boring they may be. Fuck you accountants, because the next age is about creativity and thinking out of the box, it's called the Conceptual Age!

Read on (from Wired, again):

Revenge of the Right Brain

Logical and precise, left-brain thinking gave us the Information Age. Now comes the Conceptual Age - ruled by artistry, empathy, and emotion.

By Daniel H. PinkPage 1 of 2 next »

When I was a kid - growing up in a middle-class family, in the middle of America, in the middle of the 1970s - parents dished out a familiar plate of advice to their children: Get good grades, go to college, and pursue a profession that offers a decent standard of living and perhaps a dollop of prestige. If you were good at math and science, become a doctor. If you were better at English and history, become a lawyer. If blood grossed you out and your verbal skills needed work, become an accountant. Later, as computers appeared on desktops and CEOs on magazine covers, the youngsters who were really good at math and science chose high tech, while others flocked to business school, thinking that success was spelled MBA.

Tax attorneys. Radiologists. Financial analysts. Software engineers. Management guru Peter Drucker gave this cadre of professionals an enduring, if somewhat wonky, name: knowledge workers. These are, he wrote, "people who get paid for putting to work what one learns in school rather than for their physical strength or manual skill." What distinguished members of this group and enabled them to reap society's greatest rewards, was their "ability to acquire and to apply theoretical and analytic knowledge." And any of us could join their ranks. All we had to do was study hard and play by the rules of the meritocratic regime. That was the path to professional success and personal fulfillment.

But a funny thing happened while we were pressing our noses to the grindstone: The world changed. The future no longer belongs to people who can reason with computer-like logic, speed, and precision. It belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind. Today - amid the uncertainties of an economy that has gone from boom to bust to blah - there's a metaphor that explains what's going on. And it's right inside our heads.

Scientists have long known that a neurological Mason-Dixon line cleaves our brains into two regions - the left and right hemispheres. But in the last 10 years, thanks in part to advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers have begun to identify more precisely how the two sides divide responsibilities. The left hemisphere handles sequence, literalness, and analysis. The right hemisphere, meanwhile, takes care of context, emotional expression, and synthesis. Of course, the human brain, with its 100 billion cells forging 1 quadrillion connections, is breathtakingly complex. The two hemispheres work in concert, and we enlist both sides for nearly everything we do. But the structure of our brains can help explain the contours of our times.

Until recently, the abilities that led to success in school, work, and business were characteristic of the left hemisphere. They were the sorts of linear, logical, analytical talents measured by SATs and deployed by CPAs. Today, those capabilities are still necessary. But they're no longer sufficient. In a world upended by outsourcing, deluged with data, and choked with choices, the abilities that matter most are now closer in spirit to the specialties of the right hemisphere - artistry, empathy, seeing the big picture, and pursuing the transcendent.

Beneath the nervous clatter of our half-completed decade stirs a slow but seismic shift. The Information Age we all prepared for is ending. Rising in its place is what I call the Conceptual Age, an era in which mastery of abilities that we've often overlooked and undervalued marks the fault line between who gets ahead and who falls behind.

To some of you, this shift - from an economy built on the logical, sequential abilities of the Information Age to an economy built on the inventive, empathic abilities of the Conceptual Age - sounds delightful. "You had me at hello!" I can hear the painters and nurses exulting. But to others, this sounds like a crock. "Prove it!" I hear the programmers and lawyers demanding.

OK. To convince you, I'll explain the reasons for this shift, using the mechanistic language of cause and effect.

The effect: the scales tilting in favor of right brain-style thinking. The causes: Asia, automation, and abundance.

Asia

Few issues today spark more controversy than outsourcing. Those squadrons of white-collar workers in India, the Philippines, and China are scaring the bejesus out of software jockeys across North America and Europe. According to Forrester Research, 1 in 9 jobs in the US information technology industry will move overseas by 2010. And it's not just tech work. Visit India's office parks and you'll see chartered accountants preparing American tax returns, lawyers researching American lawsuits, and radiologists reading CAT scans for US hospitals.

The reality behind the alarm is this: Outsourcing to Asia is overhyped in the short term, but underhyped in the long term. We're not all going to lose our jobs tomorrow. (The total number of jobs lost to offshoring so far represents less than 1 percent of the US labor force.) But as the cost of communicating with the other side of the globe falls essentially to zero, as India becomes (by 2010) the country with the most English speakers in the world, and as developing nations continue to mint millions of extremely capable knowledge workers, the professional lives of people in the West will change dramatically. If number crunching, chart reading, and code writing can be done for a lot less overseas and delivered to clients instantly via fiber-optic cable, that's where the work will go.

But these gusts of comparative advantage are blowing away only certain kinds of white-collar jobs - those that can be reduced to a set of rules, routines, and instructions. That's why narrow left-brain work such as basic computer coding, accounting, legal research, and financial analysis is migrating across the oceans. But that's also why plenty of opportunities remain for people and companies doing less routine work - programmers who can design entire systems, accountants who serve as life planners, and bankers expert less in the intricacies of Excel than in the art of the deal. Now that foreigners can do left-brain work cheaper, we in the US must do right-brain work better.

Automation

Last century, machines proved they could replace human muscle. This century, technologies are proving they can outperform human left brains - they can execute sequential, reductive, computational work better, faster, and more accurately than even those with the highest IQs. (Just ask chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov.)

Consider jobs in financial services. Stockbrokers who merely execute transactions are history. Online trading services and market makers do such work far more efficiently. The brokers who survived have morphed from routine order-takers to less easily replicated advisers, who can understand a client's broader financial objectives and even the client's emotions and dreams.

Or take lawyers. Dozens of inexpensive information and advice services are reshaping law practice. At CompleteCase.com, you can get an uncontested divorce for $249, less than a 10th of the cost of a divorce lawyer. Meanwhile, the Web is cracking the information monopoly that has long been the source of many lawyers' high incomes and professional mystique. Go to USlegalforms.com and you can download - for the price of two movie tickets - fill-in-the-blank wills, contracts, and articles of incorporation that used to reside exclusively on lawyers' hard drives. Instead of hiring a lawyer for 10 hours to craft a contract, consumers can fill out the form themselves and hire a lawyer for one hour to look it over. Consequently, legal abilities that can't be digitized - convincing a jury or understanding the subtleties of a negotiation - become more valuable.

Even computer programmers may feel the pinch. "In the old days," legendary computer scientist Vernor Vinge has said, "anybody with even routine skills could get a job as a programmer. That isn't true anymore. The routine functions are increasingly being turned over to machines." The result: As the scut work gets offloaded, engineers will have to master different aptitudes, relying more on creativity than competence.

Any job that can be reduced to a set of rules is at risk. If a $500-a-month accountant in India doesn't swipe your accounting job, TurboTax will. Now that computers can emulate left-hemisphere skills, we'll have to rely ever more on our right hemispheres.

Abundance

Our left brains have made us rich. Powered by armies of Drucker's knowledge workers, the information economy has produced a standard of living that would have been unfathomable in our grandparents' youth. Their lives were defined by scarcity. Ours are shaped by abundance. Want evidence? Spend five minutes at Best Buy. Or look in your garage. Owning a car used to be a grand American aspiration. Today, there are more automobiles in the US than there are licensed drivers - which means that, on average, everybody who can drive has a car of their own. And if your garage is also piled with excess consumer goods, you're not alone. Self-storage - a business devoted to housing our extra crap - is now a $17 billion annual industry in the US, nearly double Hollywood's yearly box office take.

But abundance has produced an ironic result. The Information Age has unleashed a prosperity that in turn places a premium on less rational sensibilities - beauty, spirituality, emotion. For companies and entrepreneurs, it's no longer enough to create a product, a service, or an experience that's reasonably priced and adequately functional. In an age of abundance, consumers demand something more. Check out your bathroom. If you're like a few million Americans, you've got a Michael Graves toilet brush or a Karim Rashid trash can that you bought at Target. Try explaining a designer garbage pail to the left side of your brain! Or consider illumination. Electric lighting was rare a century ago, but now it's commonplace. Yet in the US, candles are a $2 billion a year business - for reasons that stretch beyond the logical need for luminosity to a prosperous country's more inchoate desire for pleasure and transcendence.

Liberated by this prosperity but not fulfilled by it, more people are searching for meaning. From the mainstream embrace of such once-exotic practices as yoga and meditation to the rise of spirituality in the workplace to the influence of evangelism in pop culture and politics, the quest for meaning and purpose has become an integral part of everyday life. And that will only intensify as the first children of abundance, the baby boomers, realize that they have more of their lives behind them than ahead. In both business and personal life, now that our left-brain needs have largely been sated, our right-brain yearnings will demand to be fed.

As the forces of Asia, automation, and abundance strengthen and accelerate, the curtain is rising on a new era, the Conceptual Age. If the Industrial Age was built on people's backs, and the Information Age on people's left hemispheres, the Conceptual Age is being built on people's right hemispheres. We've progressed from a society of farmers to a society of factory workers to a society of knowledge workers. And now we're progressing yet again - to a society of creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers.

But let me be clear: The future is not some Manichaean landscape in which individuals are either left-brained and extinct or right-brained and ecstatic - a land in which millionaire yoga instructors drive BMWs and programmers scrub counters at Chick-fil-A. Logical, linear, analytic thinking remains indispensable. But it's no longer enough.

To flourish in this age, we'll need to supplement our well-developed high tech abilities with aptitudes that are "high concept" and "high touch." High concept involves the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty, to detect patterns and opportunities, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to come up with inventions the world didn't know it was missing. High touch involves the capacity to empathize, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one's self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning.

Developing these high concept, high touch abilities won't be easy for everyone. For some, the prospect seems unattainable. Fear not (or at least fear less). The sorts of abilities that now matter most are fundamentally human attributes. After all, back on the savannah, our caveperson ancestors weren't plugging numbers into spreadsheets or debugging code. But they were telling stories, demonstrating empathy, and designing innovations. These abilities have always been part of what it means to be human. It's just that after a few generations in the Information Age, many of our high concept, high touch muscles have atrophied. The challenge is to work them back into shape.

Want to get ahead today? Forget what your parents told you. Instead, do something foreigners can't do cheaper. Something computers can't do faster. And something that fills one of the nonmaterial, transcendent desires of an abundant age. In other words, go right, young man and woman, go right.

2005-02-15T01:42:00.000+05:30

My Question to all: about 40 years ago, the age of Star Trek/Star Wars and the galaxical comics, we were looking forward, at the future. Now in the Information/Digital age, since the year 2000 A.D., the 'watershed' year, we no longer look forward at the future, but are IN the future, looking at the past. Why? Why? Why? Why do I listen to 80s Retro, and not the latest band? Why?

My take in the future: in 8 to 10 years, we will be able to download PHYSICAL objects from the Internet. Think pizzas, jeans, jewellary, water, coke!! Warez sites and other illegal areas of the web would have the other cokes, and stuff! sounds crazy? Just wait, buddy!

in about 20 years, well we would be able to have some kind of Nano Technology repairing and maintaining our body, allowing us to LIVE FOREVER! Take a look at this article from Wired:

Never Say Die: Live Forever

Associated Press Page 1 of 1

03:46 PM Feb. 12, 2005 PT

WELLESLEY, Mass. -- Ray Kurzweil doesn't tailgate. A man who plans to live forever doesn't take chances with his health on the highway, or anywhere else.

As part of his daily routine, Kurzweil ingests 250 supplements, eight to 10 glasses of alkaline water and 10 cups of green tea. He also periodically tracks 40 to 50 fitness indicators, down to his "tactile sensitivity." Adjustments are made as needed.
"I do actually fine-tune my programming," he said.

The famed inventor and computer scientist is serious about his health because if it fails him he might not live long enough to see humanity achieve immortality, a seismic development he predicts in his new book is no more than 20 years away.

It's a blink of an eye in history, but long enough for the 56-year-old Kurzweil to pay close heed to his fitness. He urges others to do the same in Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever. The book is partly a health guide so people can live to benefit from a coming explosion in technology he predicts will make infinite life spans possible.

Kurzweil writes of millions of blood cell-sized robots, which he calls "nanobots," that will keep us forever young by swarming through the body, repairing bones, muscles, arteries and brain cells. Improvements to our genetic coding will be downloaded from the Internet. We won't even need a heart.

The claims are fantastic, but Kurzweil is no crank. He's a recipient of the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT prize, which is billed as a sort of Academy Award for inventors, and he won the 1999 National Medal of Technology Award. He has written on the emergence of intelligent machines in publications ranging from Wired to Time magazine. The Christian Science Monitor has called him a "modern Edison." He was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002. Perhaps the MIT graduate's most famous invention is the first reading machine for the blind that could read any typeface.

During a recent interview in his company offices, Kurzweil sipped green tea and spoke of humanity's coming immortality as if it's as good as done. He sees human intelligence not only conquering its biological limits, including death, but completely mastering the natural world.

"In my view, we are not another animal, subject to nature's whim," he said.

Critics say Kurzweil's predictions of immortality are wild fantasies based on unjustifiable leaps from current technology.

"I'm not calling Ray a quack, but I am calling his message about immortality in line with the claims of other quacks that are out there." said Thomas Perls, a Boston University aging specialist who studies the genetics of centenarians.

Sherwin Nuland, a bioethics professor at Yale University's School of Medicine, calls Kurzweil a "genius" but also says he's a product of a narcissistic age when brilliant people are becoming obsessed with their longevity.

"They've forgotten they're acting on the basic biological fear of death and extinction, and it distorts their rational approach to the human condition," Nuland said.

Kurzweil says his critics often fail to appreciate the exponential nature of technological advance, with knowledge doubling year by year so that amazing progress eventually occurs in short periods.

His predictions, Kurzweil said, are based on carefully constructed scientific models that have proven accurate. For instance, in his 1990 book, The Age of Intelligent Machines, Kurzweil predicted the development of a worldwide computer network and of a computer that could beat a chess champion.

"It's not just guesses," he said. "There's a methodology to this."

Kurzweil has been thinking big ever since he was little. At age 8, he developed a miniature theater in which a robotic device moved the scenery. By 16, the Queens, N.Y., native built his own computer and programmed it to compose original melodies.

His interest in health developed out of concern about his own future. Kurzweil's grandfather and father suffered from heart disease, his father dying when Kurzweil was 22. Kurzweil was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in his mid-30s. After insulin treatments were ineffective, Kurzweil devised his own solution, including a drastic cut in fat consumption, allowing him to control his diabetes without insulin.

His rigorous health regimen is not excessive, just effective, he says, adding that his worst sickness in the last several years has been mild nasal congestion.

In the past decade, Kurzweil's interests in technology and health sciences have merged as scientists have discovered similarities.

"All the genes we have, the 20,000 to 30,000 genes, are little software programs," Kurzweil said.

In his latest book, Kurzweil defines what he calls his three bridges to immortality. The "first bridge" is the health regimen he describes with co-author Dr. Terry Grossman to keep people fit enough to cross the "second bridge" a biotechnological revolution.

Kurzweil writes that humanity is on the verge of controlling how genes express themselves and ultimately changing the genes. With such technology, humanity could block disease-causing genes and introduce new ones that would slow or stop the aging process.

The "third bridge" is the nanotechnology and artificial intelligence revolution, which Kurzweil predicts will deliver the nanobots that work like repaving crews in our bloodstreams and brains. These intelligent machines will destroy disease, rebuild organs and obliterate known limits on human intelligence, he believes.

Immortality would leave little standing in current society, in which the inevitability of death is foundational to everything from religion to retirement planning. The planet's natural resources would be greatly stressed, and the social order shaken.

Kurzweil says he believes new technology will emerge to meet increasing human needs. And he said society will be able to control the advances he predicts as long as it makes decisions openly and democratically, without excessive government interference. But there are no guarantees, he adds.

Meanwhile, Kurzweil refuses to concede the inevitably of his own death, even if science doesn't advance as quickly as he predicts.

"Death is a tragedy," a process of suffering that rids the world of its most tested, experienced members -- people whose contributions to science and the arts could only multiply with agelessness, he said. Kurzweil said he's no cheerleader for unlimited scientific progress and added he knows science can't answer questions about why eternal lives are worth living. That's left for philosophers and theologians, he said.

But to him there's no question of huge advances in things that make life worth living, such as art, culture, music and science.

"Biological evolution passed the baton of progress to human cultural and technological development," he said.

Lee Silver, a Princeton biologist, said he'd love to believe in the future as Kurzweil sees it, but the problem is, humans are involved. The instinct to preserve individuality, and to gain advantage for yourself and your children, would survive any breakthrough into biological immortality -- which Silver doesn't think is possible. The gap between the haves and have-nots would widen and Kurzweil's vision of a united humanity would become ever more elusive, he said.

"I think it would require a change in human nature," Silver said, "and I don't think people want to do that."

2004-11-04T08:18:00.000+05:30

Bush is back!
4 more years, 4 million more murders?
what, more than that?
What the Democrats don't understand is getting a highly qualified, academic type debater does not mean the American voting public would like him. Bush's simple looking nature made fool of them again, it seems. His simple, short and complete sentences had the desired response. Kerry turned out to be a better Al Gore, who also had thousands of statements which confused all. Hey Democrats, learn something from Google! Why people love the search engine is that while all web portals/pages have hundreds of flashing links, only Google.com is as simplistic as ever, and it's the most visited site. It's the simplicity stupid!

Vicki

2004-04-23T16:03:00.000+05:30

here in this new life, things are strange, life is going in a new direction........

2003-12-25T10:14:00.000+05:30

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hello world!