Honor Killing

We read and hear lot of news everyday. But some causes ripples in your thought process and makes them go back and forth inter-mingle them. Here is one such.

I listened this in NPR on my way back from work. An Iraqi guy was narrating with the help of translator.

“Honor is everything in our society. How can our family show our faces to society? After the incident we were humiliated and embarrassed. Though she is beautiful, intelligent and nice, we have no choice but to kill my sister. What else we can do?”

It ripped my heart when I learn that “crime” her sister committed was getting abducted by some unknown kidnappers. She was away one night and released by the kidnappers.

They did not even ask the girl whether she was raped. But they decided merely the act of abducted for a ‘night’ is enough to bring down the Honor of the family. So, they decided to kill her – just to make sure their honor is intact.

Worst part is ‘Honor killing’ is accepted phenomenon and police turns other way.

The guy who killed claims he did this for the family and wouldn’t mind doing it again if required. He sounded very genuine. He also said, if it were a guy they would have celebrated with feast (sacrificing a goat). Instead they sacrificed her.

Leaving the male dominated society issues aside, (which I agree is the problem) I started wondering about how a human mind can think that killing another person (in this case a loving sister) is for good cause. What is the difference between this and a military guy killing others for his country’s good cause?

What a world apart we all live in. I was wondering how can someone believe the above said. But that is exactly the problem around the world isn’t it? People have their own belief system and think everything else as wrong.

I was disturbed, irritated and sad after hearing that. But after an hour I was sitting in front of TV and watching some sitcom and laughing. Somewhere else a guy is pulling a trigger with heavy heart. GOD help us all.

Legal terms that one should know

I am an avid reader of all novels linked to law. I have this collection of Perry Mason novels ( I think I have almost all of them) and find it really interesting the way he handles certain cases. These are some terms that everyone should know unless you have a very good lawyer and lot of money . If you have seen "Practice"( not "Boston Legal") in TV or read any of Perry Mason novels( not "John Grisham's"), you would have heard the term "habeas corpus" quite often. Infact, almost always Mr. Mason files for a habeas corpus as soon as someone comes to him to defend a case. Well, this is what habeas Corpus means.

Habeas Corpus
habeas corpus n. Law A writ issued to bring a party before a court to prevent unlawful restraint. [Source: AHD

The basic premise behind habeas corpus is that you cannot be held against your will without just cause. To put it another way, you cannot be jailed if there are no charges against you. If you are being held, and you demand it, the courts must issue a writ or habeas corpus, which forces those holding you to answer as to why. If there is no good or compelling reason, the court must set you free. It is important to note that of all the civil liberties we take for granted today as a part of the Bill of Rights, the importance of habeas corpus is illustrated by the fact that it was the sole liberty thought important enough to be included in the original text of the Constitution.

Now that we have the most important part covered and you know that you cannot be held without a reason, there is something called the Fifth Amendment. You would have seen people saying," I invoke the fifth amendment" in many of these novels.

Amendment 5 - Trial and Punishment, Compensation for Takings

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

This would mean you have the right to go on a trial and get a lawyer before anything happens. Ofcourse, you may never see this happening in Indian movies. I am not sure about the Indian constitution anyway. If you see the underlined words in 5 Amendment " be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb" ,it is called "double jeopardy".

Double jeopardy is a term used in law. Double jeopardy is forbidden by the Constitution. Double jeopardy is what would happen is someone were to be charged with a crime and be found innocent, and then be charged with that crime a second time. For example, if you are charged with stealing a car, and a jury finds you innocent, you cannot be charged with stealing the car again.

There is an interesting Perry Mason Novel where he uses this . The brother gets charged with murder of a guy, though he is actually framed . Mason helps him getting acquitted with very good investigation and arguments. Just around the same time, his sister actually kills the guy and the bro takes the rap saying he killed the guy. But, he cannot be tried 'coz he has already been acquitted for the same crime!!!

Archer Fish

I have been doing some reading on how rainbows are formed. If you have time, do some google searches on rainbows, halos and glory. It is just fascinating. In the process, I've been clearing out my basics on optics. Some of the concepts, like snell's laws of reflection and refraction reminded me of the school days when I had unconsciously stuffed in all these materials into my head without understanding its significance or application. Anyway, I read about the behaviour of this interesting species called Archer fish and how it finds its prey.

To give you a quick tutorial on optics, when light enters from a less dense media to a higher denser media, it undergoes reflection (light emanating outwards) and refraction (light that passes through the denser media). The refracted light has a different degree from the normal when compared to the incident ray. The point is, to a normal eye, because of this refraction thingy, particles on the denser media appear slightly shifted. Explains why a pencil half dipped in water appears broken at the interface.

What does archer fish do? It stays inside the water and squirts a jet stream of water on its prey which hangs onto a grass or some form of vegetation near the surface of the water and knocks it off. Once the prey falls into water, it quickly rushes to the place where the insect fell. Sometimes, the archer fish goes out of water, of upto 20-30 cm and grabs the prey by its jaw. The mystery here is that, for a fish inside the water, the insect should seem to be in a different place (due to refraction) and yet, the archer fish accurately streams the water to the target with greater accuracy. One solution that partly explains the situation is that, by snell's law (ni*sin(theta-i) = nr*sin(theta-r)). So, when theta-i=0, theta-r=0, which means that when the light enters perpendicular to the media, it doesnt shift inside the denser medium. So, if the archer fish is perpendicularly beneath its prey, it can exactly pinpoint where the prey is. However, it has been studied that the archer fish is able to predict the prey correctly even when the prey is at an angle. It is just interesting to know how nature works in mysterious ways....

Spaced Office

In day to day work, I cannot stand people who dont wish to understand what is being conveyed. One category of people genuinely do not understand stuff, which I can agree. But, the other category of people stay by their ideals and do not bother to listen to what the other person has to say. As a caretaker of this free world, it became my moral responsibility to quantify such behaviours..:)

In a professional setup, I categorize people into two groups. One of them is the educated group and the other one is the trained group. Educated group comprises of people who can venture into any given problem and try to find a solution. Their abilities are often not bounded to a specific field. The educated group tries to understand new technology or new software and what not and reason out if it makes sense or not. They do not admit to stereotypical existence. The problem with the educated group is that they may not be greatly specialised in a specific area. On the other hand, the trained group contains people who are extremely specialised at their job function. However, they cannot open up to new technologies. They are very monotonous and if they have come across a technology that worked well for them, they just stick to it and even campaign that it is the best technology around. It is difficult to convince them to do things that dont fit their specialisation, not because the new tasks are different, but it is just that they wouldnt budge to trying out new things.

Personally, I think both of them are key components to running a team. But, the more the educated people get, it is better. This is something that resonates in me when I hear about offshoring. I always hear people saying that we can train people to do things. I completely agree. But, I believe, a trained work force cannot be an innovation incubator. For a growing company, the number of cross-links within the company for each new individual increases exponentially and implementing new methodologies are a necessity. I think, people should be trained to be in the educated group...what an oxymoron ? As individuals of unparalleled potentials and the highest calibre, I think this is something that deserves our attention...:)

Hello HDTV Shoppers...

In the high paced techno world that we live in, we are posed with all sorts of technical jargons everyday. One such thing that has caught up a lot of attention recently is HDTV. Having bought an HDTV myself several months ago, I did some research and thought of collating my thoughts on the topic. My friend Srihari deserves a lot of credit since he already did most of the research and gave me the right insights to buying our TV. One of the fundamental misinterpretation that leads to a great deal of confusion about HDTV is the distinction between display technologies and HDTV transmission standard as such. The display technologies that you will hear most often are LCD, Plasma, DLP and the conventional CRT. It is completely different from the HDTV standard as such. What it means is that, you can watch HDTV channels on any of the aforementioned display media.

As one can guess, HDTV contains more information about a picture and hence needs more bandwidth. In this context, you shouldnt confuse between aspect ratio and pixel information. As most of us know, HDTV has an aspect ratio of 16:9 when compared to 4:3 for a conventional TV. Most people think that, the aspect ratio is the reason why HDTV has better quality, which is blatantly false. Aspect ratio just defines the width to height ratio. It was 1.33:1 (4:3) previously and for HD it is 1.77:1 (16:9). This just means that the screen will be a little wide angled. In a normal TV, the resolution is mentioned in terms of 640x480. This just means that there are 640 pixels in the horizontal column and 480 lines (vertical). You can see that the ratio between 640:480 is 4:3. This could mean that, you can create an HDTV with, say 640:360, it would still obey the aspect ratio rules. Anyway, the standard pixel count for an HDTV is 1920x1080 (around 6.75 times more pixels than a regular TV), and you can see that the number of lines to be scanned has increased from 480 to 1080 as well. There are intermediate points chosen and marketed in the names of EDTV, SDTV etc., Some manufacturers try to take a HD-transmitted data and down convert it to, say 720 lines and market it as HD compatible TVs. When people refer to 480p/480i/1080p/1080i, the p and i mean progressive scan or interlaced scan and the number preceding it denotes the number of lines. EDTV is a nice sweet spot till sometime back since it can provide DVD quality (852x480). When you watch DVD in a HDTV, it just does extrapolation (up-conversion of pixels to fit HD quality) to fill all the pixels. One should also bear in mind that bigger TVs still have the same number of pixels in a row, only bigger. This is the reason why the bigger the TV gets, you should watch it from a distance (8-10x the diagonal size of TV) to have a better quality. Otherwise, you will start distinguishing the pixels.

According to FCC, all TV transmissions should eventually become HD in the next 4-5 years. This deadline has always been a moving target. However, with better display technologies and lower cost, people are already switching in large numbers to HDTV. Needless to say that one of the key thing to be considered before buying an HDTV is its cost to performance ratio. You can get the best performance with LCD/Plasma (L/P) displays since they are light, thin and have better quality. Plasma TVs have historical issues of burn-in (a condition where parts of display which gets used more often and displays worse over time). Plasma display makers are making conscious efforts to get over that problem. LCDs are equally good. However, cost for L/P televisions are fairly higher (around 2 to 3K even for a 42" TV). Dont be caught by LCD projection TVs. Projection TVs are a completely different beast. Basically, it is about projecting a smaller picture through a lens (transmitive or reflective) onto a bigger screen. The main advantage of a projection TV is that it costs considerably less than its L/P counterparts. DLP (Digital Light Processing) is a technology from Texas Instruments which uses micro-mirrors to do image projection. It has no perceptible quality difference compared to L/P with no burn-in issues, no pixel level issues and the cost is almost 50% lesser than L/P (46" DLP costs ~$1300). However, it is not as thin as the L/P TVs. Also, the quality is determined by the spacing between micro-mirrors in a chip, which is of the order of 1 um now. 1um is a large enough space to dilute the resolution of the TV. Not perceptible to naked eye unless you have very good eyes..:) Finally, you will have a choice between HD-ready-TV and HDTV. In the case of HD-ready, you will not have a built-in HD tuner. Its not a big deal. Most of the cable receivers, dish-network receivers have an HD tuner inside. So, you dont need it unless you want to watch things through OTA (off-the-air) antenna, though dish-network HD-receivers have an antenna input as well. You can always buy an HD tuner seperately and hook it on to your antenna output.

To sum it up, be prepared for the following questions when you buy an HDTV. Size? The bigger the better. For anything above 35", CRT shouldnt even be considered. It is just massive and gets very heavy. Between 40"-45", L/P and DLP all fit into the domain and it is a personal choice, given the money to performance aspect. If it is anything above 45", projection TVs are the best option. You can choose between DLP and LCD-Projection TVs. We have a Samsung HLP5685 (56" DLP) and it absolutely amazing. It is probably a good idea to buy the warranty for atleast 2-3 years for these TVs. I havent touched upon the different cable standards that connect the HDTVs, but then, I hope you will figure it out pretty easily when you buy these TVs. Above all, the experience of watching HD-quality cant be explained in words. It just needs to be experienced. So, go for the best !! Happy Shopping !!!

REALITY CHECK

I AM ALIVE
I can SEE,HEAR,TALK
I can WALK
I can SMELL,TASTE
I can THINK
I can SLEEP

Some of the things that we take for granted in life including LIFE. Be thankful that you can do all these things . There are millions around the world for who this is not a simple task . I remember the days when my sister always used to scold me for not finishing my dinner and wasting food,chiding me with" Do you know there are millions who starve without dinner?". My thoughts used to be "Yeah...blah..blah.., whatever". Next time, when you complain about a head ache, think about others who get migraine head aches and suffer for days together. Next time, when you complain about walking a few steps to get something, thing about disabled people who would love to just walk around whenever possible, if they can. These are just the basic necessities in life you take for granted. Of course, we can extend it to money etc.... and lot more.

Above all, the next time when you have a bad day and wonder why life is treating you so bad, think about millions who are fighting for their every day survival and be THANKFUL that you are ALIVE !! . The most volatile thing in this world is LIFE.

Must we commit to something?

I have often been told that commitments are important and once you say you will do something, it must be done. I wanted to explore this line of reasoning. The dictionary defines commitment as an agreement or pledge to doing something in the future, an act of committing to a charge or trust. But does everything we say qualify to be a commitment? The answer is, perhaps not. Could we say (speak) something that we do not commit to? Sure, why not?

Let us assume everybody said something without intentions to do it, or, everybody said something and intended to do it, but just changed his/her intentions over time. How chaotic would the world be? The airline agent would say, “I’ll block your tickets for the cheapest rate” and rightfully forget to do so. The father could say he would be at the daughter’s wedding, but could rush to work because he preferred that. At any point in time, one must wonder or predict whether the speaker would really do what they said they would do.

I believe it is a much better world, where people intend to do what they say they will do and further do what they said, where people are committed to delivering on their words. However you might not agree with, “Do unto your neighbor as you would have them do unto you.” Lets assume you really did not care about others not committing or not keeping their commitments. Do you still have to keep commitments? I definitely believe it is favorable to do so.

A person’s credibility is based on the ability of a person to commit to something and to deliver upon it. If a person repeatedly commits and fails to deliver, people’s reliance on him/her will reduce drastically. People would start taking the slacker less seriously and trust would decline on his/her ability to keep commitments.

For techies, I’d like to present another analogy. We all know about how commitment control is implemented in transaction processing. What would happen if the database did not commit transactions? This could have serious and unpleasant consequences in real-world businesses. We know its implication and as software developers we take up the task of using commitment control seriously whenever we code OLTP systems. Software that has no commitment control or improper commitment control is termed as unreliable, useless, buggy, and inconsistent. The goal of commitment control is consistency and integrity. This can be extended to humans. Without it we are unreliable, our integrity is questionable and we cannot be trusted.

Commitments do not have to be written or carved in stone. Commitments could be verbal or even a thought in one’s mind. Commitments could be towards yourself, towards your future, towards financial or governmental institutions, towards your family. The important thing is to think twice before committing to something, but when you do, make sure you make your best attempt to deliver whatever it is you committed to.

Black Hole

As part of my physical existence in this virtual world forced me to think about what it means when we talk about memories....moments... I read somewhere out on the ether that things that you learn or undergo early on in life stays with you. I think it is absolutely true. As we grow, I think we weave strands on top of what is already construed as a dubious underlay, or rather use that as our foundation. Unwinding all those strands back is as if, we are trying to break our foundation. I dont know if that is possible. I dont know even if one should attempt such a thing.

The biggest problem with our unconscious mind is that, it is always original in its thinking and it is pure in terms of what it wants to do. Is it what people term as conscience? I always have a secondary shadow around me telling me about things that I ought to do. I mostly go against it, and later feel that, may be I shouldnt. Is the shadow my real self? Am I just trying to fool myself by not accepting the norms of my shadow-me? I've heard people saying that, one should follow their instincts. I keep wondering... Does brain apply its cumulative knowledge of ours to come up with a right way and yet, based on the physical contexts of environment comes up with another solution to the same problem? That doesnt make sense. How can there be a conscious and an unconscious based solution to the same problem out of a single brain. May be, its just the way it is designed. One knows that keeping their hand in fire would burn it. But yet, if you are in the middle of a group that you would want to impress, what do you do ? One could rationally argue that both solutions are okay from different perspectives of mind. Coming to think of it, most decisions of ours is just a reflection of how much one wants to overcome the preset ideals into venturing into new things that poses more curiosity, thus fulfilling their fantasy of the unknown. Isnt it always about the fantasy of the unknown that keeps our curiosity ticking. It is not the end result, it is just the means that we are interested in. If we stop following the path that fantasy sets in, may be the world will totally be a different place. I think we will probably be all animals if we dont have fantasies.

I sometimes wonder about the life that an animal passes by. It eats and sleeps and mates with all the possible opposite genders of its own group and eventually dies. Our life is a lot similar from a macroscopic view, except that, as part of our evolution, I think we inherited fantasy. That said, it is a vicious cycle, for we all fall victims to our own fantasy. Sometimes, though we realise that the fantasy is over, we still adhere to it, starting another fuzzy thread. We end up having nested fantasies to the umteenth degree. That keeps life all the more interesting and yet, meaningless. But, who really cares, for when you die, your thoughts in the context of your own self dies as well. If mind doesnt have a physical structure, and if it was really a shadow, wouldnt it continue to exist in ether. It could even keep ridiculing the various path that fantasy took you through. But then, isnt it always about the path rather than the end. No matter how long you travel, if your start and end at the same point , the displacement is zero. Afterall, a human's life is nothing but a vacuous dot. These vacuous dots, however are like black holes. They are infinitesimally small dots with infinite density in an immeasurable universe. Nothing, yet everything...

India - Call centers

C-Span showed a 3 hour program long ago about development of outsourcing in India and also included a significant portion about how call centers trained their new recruits to change their accent, the speech mannerisms, courtesies, etc. It went further to show how employees were willing to be referred to "Sam" when their actual name was Shanmugavalli! The program itself was unbiased and only reported the facts, not taking any slant at commenting about the practices.

However, in more than one instance I have heard snide remarks about this in my classes, where students are predominantly non-Indian as are the professors. One Professor brought a video clipping so students could be exposed to other countries. It must come as no surprise that the video showed cows on the road, the unimaginably noisy traffic (you know how that goes) and the most poverty ridden-neighbourhoods from our country. Also the Professor narrated her experience of riding the autorickshaw and her terrifying experience when a man was trying to sell her snakes on the street. People laughed. I couldn't see why nobody appreciated the multi-purpose dynamically shifting lanes. People have to go to Six-Flags here (and not to mention pay through their hats for the tickets) to experience what we do when we travel to and from office in India everyday. I somehow attributed the snake-selling story to the fact that the Professor was Chinese..

Another thing to be ridiculed was the fact that many representatives from the call centers change their names, so it will be easy to understand for customers from the US. This snide remark totally offended me. I feel its a significant sacrifice for people to be referred to by a name that is not their own. I wouldn't change my name even when I got married, and I have retained my maiden name. I don't see any reason why that should change. I am sure a number of people feel the same. When reps give up their own name to adopt a new one so the transition of the call to a foreign land remains seamless, I feel its customer service at an extreme end. I don't disagree that there are many experiences that I personally had, when I felt call centers must work more towards enhancing reps' knowledge about the business they are dealing with. There was this rep who was quoting car rental prices and emphasized "unlimited miles" many many times! That is not a real differentiator, everybody offers unlimited miles.

The few of us in class from India made every attempt to nullify the effects of the video to paint a more fair and true picture of our country. I suggested to the Professor (who made the snide remark) that maybe he would like to call me by my full name henceforth (no, not bumblebee) which is considerably longer? The mood was light and their were peels of laughter from the class. The Professor admitted that this was a "politically-charged" issue and he immediately backed of the topic. In the past, I have also been asked if riding an elephant is the preferred transportation method! There are numerous other ridiculous stories and I don't want to recall all. I was wondering what similar experiences others might have had in this regard and woud love to hear some.

Mirror, Mirror on the wall...

It was spectacular! Colors and shiny clothes, prim and proper princes and graceful damsels, elephants, palaces, islands all on ice skates. It is that time of the year again, when Disney on Ice comes to town. For those who are new to this, this is an ice skating extravaganza with Disney's costumed characters.The excitement on every kid's face was enjoyable. Many of them were dressed as fairies and even hadmagic wands. Even adults were almost kid-ish. The whole show was expertly practiced and executed. Nobody slipped on the ice (some did deliberately as a part of the show-especially Cindrella's wicked and clumsy step-sisters).

Ariel, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Cindrella all came one after the other. I was totally transported to a different world, as were a number of people around me. All the fairy tales we read as kids came back rushing to me. It was amazing to see a little girl screaming "no, Snow White!" when she was about to take a bite of the poisonous apple pie. The girl had tears in her eyes, when Snow White went on to eat the pie and then swooned.


The characters on ice seemed so casual, yet they were impeccable. I wondered how many times they would have rehearsed this. It seemed so hard to believe - especially when I think of the ice skating lessons I took just 3 years ago. Just skating slowly with arms outstretched was difficult enough. I can still remember the number of times I fell. It looks so easy when we see figure skaters on TV. I remember thinking that the trick is to let go. I tried that several times, but only fell on my backside. Ouch! I realized then that you must have some balance. I admit, I was severely challenged in that area!

Many times (every time I fell-make that many, many, many) I questioned why it is I felt this would be easy and why at all I joined those classes. But looking back, I am glad I did. Now, I appreciate those figure skaters all the more and I am glad I had that first hand experience and I would even try it again. It seems every experience brings some new knowledge and new perspectives.

Who is the real culprit ?

I was filling up gasoline yesterday and the ATM/Credit Card machine at the pump asked me for my zip-code. This is not the first time it asked for it. I've always filled it up as part of my regular routine without thinking too much about it. For some reason, probably due to lack of things to brood about, I started thinking about the variations in pricing in gas-stations as we go from one to another. It is strange that, even the same branded gas station in an area have different prices.

How is gasoline priced ? (I am consciously not using the word 'gas' to keep people in the same page than deviating their minds to more effusive counterparts) Consider 3 gas stations in a area approximately 0.5 mile apart. If you are not very price sensitive, you may not care which gas station you are going to choose. Also, if you happened to be in an area which you are not familiar with, you probably wouldnt take a chance to find the lowest priced gas station. However, for a gas station owner, eventhough there is a constant demand for his product, he really would like to know the prices of the other two gas stations in his vicinity inorder to maximize his profit.

Proximity to a freeway exit, shopping mall/complex, etc., might influence the pricing decision. All it comes down to is to bet on the laziness/psychology of people and price it high enough. But, the problem is not as simple as that. Since the parent companies know all about these tricks, they zone different places and price differently based on where a gas-station is located. Anyway, we shall restrict the scope of this problem to just the final price to consumer. For people who live near the vicinity, since they are going to know about the price savings at the other gas stations, eventually they will start switching. At this juncture, it is clear that, all the pricing decisions in a given gas station depends on the mix of people who visit it. If you enter the zip-code, the gas station owner can judge how his revenue is distributed across the different and price accordingly. If a gas station has been visited by a lot of local folks, it would make sense to price a little lower than the nearby gas stations. Also, if you decrease the price considerably, you can see the impact of attracting far-off customers or lack there of. Interesting thing about this whole thing is, prices at gas-station have very very high sensitivity. Irrespective of a 1 or 2 cents difference, people switch between gas stations.

On an orthogonal note, most states have a law that mandates that the price at the pump should be atleast 8% marked up. This is to avoid big guys like Walmart who recently attempted to slash down the prices to attract more customers. It is interesting however that the parent oil companies have a 41% markup on an average. Who owns and benefits from these oil companies is another subject of discussion...So, the gas station owners are not really the culprits for increased gasoline prices.

PS:
If you dont know already, you can find the cheapest gas price in your area from http://www.gasbuddy.com

Food for thought...

I get inspired by reading about Scientists and their life history. Feynman is undoubtedly one of the top person in my list. I was going through a book called "No Ordinary Genius" by Christopher Sykes and I found certain things that really induced my interest and I decided that it was worth sharing. These concepts are quite simple but yet, needs a different eye to realise it, and thus, becomes quite fascinating.

All of us have studied geometry and we have computed circumference of circle and its area for a very long time. This is how Feynman's father, who is supposed to have had a real influence on Feynman taught him about the significance of "pi". The circumference of a circle divided by its diameter is a constant (pi), irrespective of any circle you pick (pi*d/d). Also that, if you pick any circle and pick identical circles and place it along the periphery of the original circle, you can only place 6 such circles. When I thought about it, all that needed to be proven in this case is that, if you place 2 coins in the periphery, the length of arc covered between the 2 coins should be 2*pi*r/6 (pi*r/3), which means that it has to subtend 60 degrees at the center. This is easy to prove. If you connect the mid point of all the three circles, you will see that the triangle formed is equilateral (with sides equal to diameter) and hence the angle subtended at the center is 60-degrees. Pretty cool...isnt it?

The following is a question that feynman was asked when he was at MIT. When you look into the mirror, things seem intermingled between left and right. However, top-to-bottom stays the same. Why doesnt the top-bottom intermingle itself was the question.. Feynman made his study and came out with an answer. It is not the left-to-right or top-to-bottom, but it is front to back. If you think about it, when we look into a mirror, the real image should be that the head should be seen in the mirror. The mirror takes the nose and the face and collapses it into the front. That is why, there appears to be a left-to-right intermingling, when it is really front-to-back.

I would like to end this with a comment on Feynman by Marc Kac. "An ordinary genius is a fellow that you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what they have done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians. They are, to use mathematical jargon, in the orthogonal complement of where we are and the working of their minds is for all intents and purposes incomprehensible. Even after we understand what they have done, the process by which they have done it is completely dark. They seldom, if ever, have students because they cannot be emulated and it must be terribly frustrating for a brilliant young mind to cope with the mysterious ways in which the magician's mind works. Richard Feynman is a magician of the highest caliber".

Weird thoughts..

As we all know, our mental thoughts are usually dependent on the ongoings in our life at a particular time phase. Some of them are too weird and we dont ever let it out.

I remember the instance when my parents were looking for a groom . I was 21 and I guess they were eager to get me married then. I looked at some photos and even met a couple of would-be grooms.There was this guy,US settled (no Susheela, not the one I saw when you were in my house) and his parents came to SEE me. I smiled and didn't talk much as I was not sure if I was going to end up in their list for their supposedly all-in-all son. I saw the BOY's photo , didn't find it very impressive in the first glance and during that phase of life, not knowing the importance of life,looks were sorta my main criteria for shortlisting.They asked for my resume !!YES ,RESUME and gave me the guy's bio. His height was specified as 5'4'' . I jumped up and down saying he was too short ( no Sri !! I know what you are thinking,NO smart ass comments about my height) . My parents were gaping open-mouthed at my acrobatics and tried explaining that height doesnot matter in relationships. Anyway, my decision was final. For the next few days, my thought was revolving around guys' height. Whenever I walked into the elevator at work, I used to look at all the guys around me and wonder what their height could be and how tall they look when compared to me. This went on for a few days and I used to laugh at myself .Finally, it stopped when my thoughts started drifting elsewhere.

Tomorrow, if I see my look-alike infront of me, I doubt if I will ever be able to recognise her. In the climax scene in movies, when two long lost brothers meet, have you seen how they stare at each other and go,"Wow!You look just like me." I dont think I can recognise myself . I just dont look at myself that often. My face was a thin,long one and changed to a round,chubby face after some time. People who had seen me during my college days and who were not with me during the changing phase, have never recognised me with the change. My thoughts always revolve around how I might have looked then. Till today, whenever I see a lanky,thin,dark girl with reasonable features in SunTV, my first question to Suresh will be, "Does she resemble the Shoba of olden days?".This intriguing thought is not momentary but is always in the background.

Recently, when I was undergoing chemo, it was always difficult for the nurses to find my veins as they are thin and deep. From then on, if I see a vein in anybody's arm that is very visible, I go,"Wow ! Isn't that great " . I started noticing people's arms , including the tele actors. Suresh , having seen my difficulty started thinking the same. Well..it stopped when my chemo got over and my thoughts started moving elsewhere. If you get a chance to watch Mr.and Mrs.Smith, you will find that Angelina Jolie's veins really pop out in some scenes.

Ofcourse, some weird thoughts are better unsaid !! :-)

Turning Point...

It was a cold morning and Ram got up and had his breakfast as usual. He was getting prepared to perform, what to him, was one of the major turning point of his entire life. Being the eldest son in the family, he had to set an example and live an exemplary life. Though one could have too many credibilities to their regard, every new thing that needs to be accomplished always portrays a new form of challenge.

Interviews, Exams and Races are all about timing. You have very little time and you have to prove to the world that you are the best. You could have put in hours and hours of hard work into learning, but it finally comes to those few minutes which could turn your life upside down. It is the nature of life. Ram was not an exclusion. If he doesnt perform, he is going to be thrown out and be considered among a big group of losers. On occasions when there is just one winner, it is a paradox that everybody else is marked as a loser.

Though Ram had just shared a few smiles, he knew that she was the one. He would do anything to gain her love. To him, it was about winning someone's heart. It is not as same as everything else that he had put efforts into. On top of his already nebulous mind, worries about his parents' acceptance started creeping. Acceptance forms a major role in a societal network. Especially, parent's acceptance for a marriage is not something that can be considered lightly.

Ram was more nervous than ever. The worst part of selecting only one person in a given challenge is that the remaining people dont even run a chance once the selection is made, however capable they might be. Though, it is good in a way because they could term themselves as "winners" since they didnt really compete. A better consolation than being considered as a loser. Today, Ram had to win and that would mean that everyone else before him had to lose. It was his turn... time passes by....Yes, he DID it... He broke the bow so easily that Sita came running by to offer the garland...Ram's life changed...And Ramayana took a new turn...:)

Artificial Intelligence in a Globalised Market

Artificial intelligence and this whole concept of machines taking over man is a concept which I never understood, fundamentally because, men make machines and so, how could machines get any more intelligent than a man who is producing it. But then, recently, I was doing some reading on globalisation and its impacts and it suddently occurred to me that concepts of artificial intelligence make a lot of sense, from an orthogonal view. Though the connection between globalisation and AI is a little far fetched, I will try my best to give a flavor of how they can be compared.

The real question behind my analysis lies in this fundamental question.. What is productivity? How can it be improved? If you define productivity by the amount of (wo)man-hours spent in producing a given product, there is an area of vagueness in the definition. The missing factor is "how is the product made?". You can have a worker spending all his time into making a product in, say 1 day. His productivity is 1 unit/day. However, let us say he has a machine which can do the work in approximately 1 hr, the productivity has jumped up by 24 units/day. Ofcourse, there is a cost element to the equation. What if, you can get 10 people who collectively produce the same 1 unit output of the original man at 1/10 the cost. The productivity in terms of output per man-hour reduces. But, the cost/unit is still the same. What if you get 10 people at the same cost as the original man and they are all as productive as the original man. Now, the productivity increases 10 fold for the same cost. The point I am trying to make is that the absolute definition of productivity cannot be defined in simple terms from a black-box perspective of using man-hours. It is much more than that.

If you look back at history, you will notice that, the cycles of low-cost labors was in turn followed by a technology that obviated the necessity of such low-cost labors. The main question here is, if something can be done very repetitively by following a proper sequence, it can almost always be optimized by a machine. As industries mature, more and more of this keeps happening resulting in the need for a larger number of highly skilled workers who handle lot more than just a sequence of predetermined events. So, in a way, the machine has already taken over a lot of man's repetitive job. As optimizations in the form of machines take place, the resultant work force is left with higher and higher skills than the regular labors. One immediate solution to rising the productivity in this group is to find people who can do the same job at lesser cost. But then, the big question is, can we incorporate the knowledge of such a worker into a machine that can learn just enough to perform a specialised job function efficiently or atleast simplify the job of a skilled worker to a greater extent. If that happens, which is highly possible, may be in the next couple of decades, the so-called knowledge workers need to find even more competitive skills to cherish. Extrapolating furthermore, in the next century or two, machines will certainly take over most of the man's skills, and who knows, if they accrue intelligence of that sort and take their "own" decisions, they might take over the mankind....

'tis the time to shop

This holiday season, as a dutiful daughter & daughter-in-law I will be visiting my parents and in-laws in India. This statement is enough to give everyone a glimpse of what I will be doing during the weeks before I leave for India. My weekends will be spent buying gifts for all relations and friends. There are some you are close to and some that your parents know. If you are married you can double that number. Sometimes I get requests to get a gift for someone who has done my parents a favor. I don't have a clue who they are but still I spend a weekend afternoon getting gifts for them.

The first time I went back I was a novice at "India shopping" as many call it. I made a list of all my uncles, aunts, cousins and all. My gifts were personalized. I thought through what each one would like. I even went to the extent of gift wrapping each one of them. Soon after I went to India, I opened my treasure box surrounded by kith and kin with eager looks on their faces. I proudly handed out my gifts to each one of them as their face lit up. Even a felt pen or colorful pencil that is "Made in USA" is enough to lit up the faces of my dozen little cousins. But none know the stress I had to go through to see that smile. The next time I got smarter, I got several pounds of chocolates, almonds and pistachios for all my relatives. Along with that I took Ziploc bags for non-discriminatory distribution. It was my mother's task to fill the Ziploc bags based on the kids in the family & the relationship with the elders. Personalized gifts were only for parents and siblings.

Fast forwarding to current day, gifts from USA do not bring excitement to folks in India as it used to few years back. Almost every educated household has a representative abroad be it USA or Dubai. Most of the parents make an international visit once in a couple of years. When they leave their suitcases are stuffed with goodies that will last for 6 months after they go back. I could say that my parents do their holiday shopping in USA ever year. Either I do the shopping for them or they do it themselves. Added to this you get everything from Hershey's to Ferrero Rocher in India. This has made life easy for me. I just get sweets from Grand sweets or Krishna sweets when I visit my relatives.

Now for my parents. I no longer feel like taking shampoos, Facial Bars, Lotions, shaving creams, Handbags, Perfumes and that endless boring list. Not just me, my parents request me not to get any of the above as they still have stuff I got them last time + they are all available in India. Since they have been here a few time they know exactly what they want. That makes life easier for me. I will get just what they ask for. It makes better sense to buy my mom and nice Kanjeevaram saree and 22K gold Jeweler than a family size pert plus shampoo bought at Costco which will sit in the bathroom shelf until I visit next year to use it! I hope some day I will be able to visit India with just my carry on luggage. Now that is freedom in traveling.

Crowded last mile

I blogged my first marathon experience in srikris.blogspot.com, please check when you find some free time (it is bit long)

Hidden Traps

We all shop online. The sequence is usually to scan through all the possible websites which offer a product and choose the one with the best price and have a reliable background. Once we do this exercise couple of times, we end up with a preferred vendor with whom we trade often. As a preferred customer, we would hope that the vendor gives us reasonably good deals. But, that is not entirely true.

As I just heard recently, internet based online shopping companies use some dubious strategies to price a customer.One of the common method followed is that, the online retailer looks at your stored cookies to find out how many other similar sites you have visited for a given product. If they know that you have been doing a lot of searching, they try and give you the best deal. If not, they raise prices. Apparently, a customer who was searching for a product in "amazon" found to his surprise that the price dropped by 15% as soon as he cleared off his cookies in the internet browser. If you log-on to a vendor's website, you are the all the more sure to get a not-so good deal. This is one of the many tactics used by vendors as a strategy to do product pricing. I am sure there are many similar tactics used. So, make sure that you do a reasonably good comparison before buying a product online. A "preferred customer" might be the first one to get ripped off afterall...

Worth a thought

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. -- Albert Einstein

There are two types of people- One who categorize people into two types and others who dont.

Things are the way things are only to the people who see them that way.

Be careful of your thoughts, they may become words at any moment.

Happiness is a path, not a destination.

The 50-50-90 rule:
Any time you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there's a 90% probability you'll get it wrong.

Look at life through the windshield, not the rear-view mirror.

Love is not finding a perfect person, it is seeing an imperfect person perfectly.

Its not Flight or Fight - Its FRIGHT

The flight or fight response, also called the "acute stress response" was first described by Walter Cannon in the 1920s as a theory that animals react to threats with a general discharge of the sympathetic nervous system. The response was later recognized as the first stage of a general adaptation syndrome that regulates stress responses among vertebrates and other organisms.

An example:Suppose that you are out on a picnic with your family and decide to go off on a hike by yourself. As you come around a bend in the trail you suddenly see a large snake that is coiled and prepared to strike. You will probably recognize this as a threat and your body will go into a stress reaction. You feel your muscles tense as your heart rate and breathing increase. You body is preparing you to act by either fighting or running away.

Our body is made to respond to every single situation in life with either flight or fight reponse. But, I think our mind is more motivated by FRIGHT than fight or flight. I have been motivated to fight or flee away from a situation because of fear of the consequence. When I was young, the fear of my parents' bickerings made me study hard and always be the first ranker in the class till it became a habit and I was fully motivated to be a winner in every exam . If my Mom had cajoled me , showering all her love and asking me gently to study hard, I doubt if I would have shined in my studies as I did. There are many teenagers who behave strangely , sometimes even harshly just because of the fear of not being accpeted by their community . At the same time, for the same reason, some of them change their characters to be better persons just to get accepted.

Yes, we all know that exercise is good for our health. But, till we see a high cholestrol in our blood report, we are not motivated to join a gym or reduce our intake. It is the fear of a heart attack that motivates you to improve your health. The fear of losing your job makes you work harder at work. Imagine a workplace where everything is very leisurely ..there is no way you will be able to grow in such an environment. Once you know a layoff is on the way, you can see every Tom,Dick and Harry at work .

Ultimately, it is the fear of death that motivates life. The only sure thing about life is death. But, we are all afraid of it and it motivates us to become better, braver souls and enhances our fight responses . It might feel good to say that LOVE is the most intense force in this world . I agree, love is definitely a strong one but in my opinion, FEAR supercedes it as being more forceful.

Neat freak

There’s a cost to being finicky, or as some would say “neat freak”. That’s exactly what I have become. And many times I pay the price. It pains me to see clutter. I cannot seem to ignore what’s around. That would be ideal, of course, to go about unruffled even when there is chaos and a total lack of order. But, it drains my energy, if I try to ignore it. I deal with it by quickly setting things right, by putting articles back in their place.

But, I realize everyday that it might not be the best way to deal with things. One has to learn to be neat, but I think one has to learn to manage disarray and mess. After all, things are not always under our control. We have no right to put things back in order at a friend’s house. What if hurricane tosses things around my house, I must make sure I don’t get a cardiac arrest before I have a chance to rebuild!

Recently, a kid visited my kid-less house. Things took a quick re-ordering to accommodate the child’s pranks. We don’t have toys around, except for a little stuffed dog called Kethu, a bear called Ballu, and a pair of tortoises called Tipu and Rocky. Anyone who has kids, know that these 4 toys are just enough to keep the child’s attention for roughly 1 minute and 20 seconds. It turns out I was wrong. There are many more toys in my house than I had imagined. Coasters and potatoes were rolling, baking dishes came out of the oven to see daylight for the first time in months, rolling pins, spoons, forks, bucket, stepping stool, the list is endless.

The kitchen had stuff all over the counter, tissue paper and newspaper, crayons, toys strewn all over the floor. The living room was like a battlefield. Kethu and Ballu lay injured, Kethu’s neck was arched backward in a position I haven’t seen before. There were peels of laughter and the fun had just begun. I spent as much time away in the least cluttered room. My energy was draining, I couldn’t stop what was going on and I couldn’t clean the mess. And I wondered why I have become so uptight that I cannot enjoy the bigger things, such as the joy on a child’s face? I remember the joy I had when I sat on the window sill in our 14^th floor apartment blowing bubbles outside the window, as I chased around my brother for the tricycle, the joy I experienced drumming empty Bournvita cans.

I wonder where that kid in me is. I have to learn to filter out the things that are not in my control, to adjust with status quo, to let thins be, and to find and enjoy the little things that are all around me. I realize I should try to turn things around to where I can ignore the external interruptions to my sanctity without trying too hard. Anything else is too costly for me.

Got to have Faith. Got to have Tolerance.

What is Faith? There are multiple definitions in the dictionary for faith. My favorite one is "firm belief in something for which there is no proof ". From faith springs Religion, Miracles, Confidence, Love etc. Religion is faith in god, Miracle is faith in something beyond our control, Confidence is faith in oneself, Love is faith in others. When people develop uncritical devotion to their faith it can assumes a darker shade. Faith becomes fanatism. Many lives have been lost right from the crusades to anti-hindi agitation due to soem form of fanatism. What do we need to prevent fanatism? Where should we draw the line?.

I believe that every human being has right to believe what they want to. At the same time we should not expect others to believe in what we believe. This is tolerance. we should learn to co-exist in an environment where everyone can pursue what they believe in. The first place tolerance should start is at home. This could start right from choosing the movie you want to see with your family to deciding on what car to buy. We should learn to adjust to the choices that others make. Tolerance starts building when we expand our social circle. The more we interact with others, we start learning how to be tolerant. At the same time when others question our belief one should have enough confidence in themselves to hold on to it strongly. We should however not be blinded by our faith that we cannot see the faults in it. If these simple(??) rules be followed with faith, the world will be a better place to live in.

PS: Mindframe we seemed to have touched on similar subject. But since we have a different perspective I thought it would be interesting. I swear I did not read yours before I wrote mine.

Coexistence

Coexistence has always been a very controversial concept to me. Let us look at it from the scope of the earth. Humans, Animals, Plants, Bugs, Sea Life etc., coexist in earth. That makes us all some kind of unified system. If you scope it back to the divisions of each entity in the system, we know that coexistence is more of a territorial problem than a sharing problem. Ofcourse, plants dont do much to defend themselves. But, most entities that have life defends for its territory. After all, survival and reproduction are the two major commonalities among all living things. Now, let us scope it just to the extent of the humans. We all have our own territories (countries). We usually dont allow people from one country to another without a properly authorized mechanisms. Reducing the scope further, we have states and regions and what not. If you reduce the scope of it all the way to an individual human, what do we think about coexistence is a question to ponder about...

I always wanted my space. There have been trade-offs when I lived with my parents or shared rooms with my friends in college or elsewhere. But, I always wanted my own territory...:) Well, then, I got married..:).. Territory now took a different dimension. I had to share my space with someone else too. Since I was fortunate enough to get married to someone whom I knew before, it became a lot easier. But, coexisting is a lot more than just "knowing each other". All of my habits had to somehow adjust and align with the other person and still keep us in "balance". Given the uniqueness of human behaviour, it is very difficult to characterize what "adjustment" really means. But then, miraculously, we got adjusted to each other's behaviour. I guess, time takes its own course in balancing the coexistential requirements.

Now, I am at a point of life where I have to let people to coexist with "us". Either my parents or my wife's parents visit us on an average of once in a year. The problem is, all models of coexistence that had existed between me and my parents have changed. Also, I am introduced to a new set of people (my in-laws) with whom I had to coexist. I hope you all agree to the fact that meeting people at a dinner party and sharing a "hi" or travelling with someone on a vacation is completely different from "living" with someone. Here, there is an added condition is that I should not screw up the relation, especially while they are here. What do I do?

When it comes to living with parents or in-laws, following are some of the common issues that I have faced. There is a generation gap which tends to create differences in the definition of what is rational or rather irrational, their perception that Indians living in US think that India is inferior (arguments comparing US with India and the talk about culture, tradition, values, relatives and all that... ) and the third issue, especially from my parents is that I have changed. I dont know why change is wrong... Anyway, I think, for some reason, they all like to argue and win. I have tried my own strategies to get around/through that. But, most strategies have been difficult to implement and almost always it failed at some point of time.

Based on what I seen and heard and experienced, I have realised one thing, coexistence is all about giving up one's "self". It not only applies to long-term coexistence (as in living together), but short term coexistence as well. I think, the moment you start talking to someone, there exists a coexistential cloud between those two. There is always a careful balance as to how much one can give-up their "self" and at times it fluctuates either way and thats what causes most of the confusions or lack thereof. I think our mind needs people with whom we are comfortable. So, it is all about giving up our "self" for the greater benefit of accomodating the other person in our mind or vice versa. As long as I dont have any long term negative impact, I am usually prepared to give up my "self" anytime...the key being, right set of people.

Peter F. Drucker - Paradigm for Excellence...

I dont know how many of you have heard about Peter Drucker. He is hailed as the "management guru" of the century. He passed away on Nov 11, 2005 at age 95. I had the oppurtunity to be in class with a professor who once studied under Drucker. This professor idolised Drucker's principles throughout the course. But then, I am the kind who doesnt take other's words unless I know it myself. Especially, I always considered the concepts in management to be "glorified commonsense". So, I couldnt possibly perceive the fact that someone could be a visionary on that topic. But, when I studied more about Drucker, I realised that he was a great human. Though some of his principles sounded very basic from a higher level of abstraction, I found them to be extremely helpful in reality. Since it is beyond the scope of this blog to summarize all his sayings, I would like to point out a couple of things that influenced me.

One of the major question I have in managing my career is, what do I do next? When I talk to more and more people, I only hear more and more of the same answer. Earlier in life, the choices were laid on a platter and it was very easy for me to pick a choice. In some cases, I didnt even had to make a choice. When I did my 6th std, I knew that I was going to be doing 7th, 8th-- +2 and then a college degree. There was very little ambiguity. But, the same is not true now. The most common perception is that, if one does their job to everyone's satisfaction, they will progress. This is true only to an extent. If it was true in your case throughout your career, then it implies that you were one of the fortunate few who had a very good set of managers. In reality, it is not true. Drucker talks a lot about managing oneself. He says that, the key to managing oneself is to identify your strengths. He says that, one should capitalise on the strengths and continually improve than trying to improve on their weaknesses. One should constantly seek for oppurtunities where their strengths match a given requirement and show how one can perform. He also says that, if you are a "knowledge-worker", you should reinvent and revitalise yourself with knowledge. This is the way I see it. If you are selected for a job that you do very well, 4-years from then, if you are doing a similar job with not a whole lot of productivity/skills improvement, you could very well be replaced by someone 4-yrs younger to you without much difference in output, and that too, for a lesser salary. The company is not there to educate you for future market needs. They only use you for your current expertise. So, you are responsible for formulating your career. Another key ingredient to doing this is to manage your boss successfully, even if it takes flattery..:).. Simply put, the answers to most problems lie within you.

Apart from his philosophical outlook, the thing that inspired me the most is his life itself. He lived for 95 years. During the time, he has published 38 books and numerous articles in the field of management. He was a liberalist from the beginning, in that, he wrote articles against Hitler. He identified the importance of managing people and was one of the first ever to formalise management as an academic topic that needs to be taught. He constantly learned throughout his life and enlightened others to learn as well. He strongly believed that future oppurtunities are nothing but current oppurtunities. That said, he was able to predict the state of management and its impact on people, well before it happened. He predicted globalisation and its impact dating as far back as in 70s. He was undoubtedly a great visionary. He pursued his passion and never got tired of whatever he undertook. That is one good example to live life by.

References:
1) The Daily Drucker <- Book
2) Managing Oneself, Managing Your Boss <- Publications in Harvard Business Review
3) Latest Business Week Issue cover page article on Peter Drucker

What's in a language?

As we all know, it is very tough to be without thoughts while meditating. Usually, my thoughts wander everywhere while I am in supposedly deep dhyanam.Last week, my half-hour meditation with my perceptor went something like this:
8:00AM:Meditation starts.
8:00 - 8:05AM: Trying to get into a comfortable position and start meditating.
8:05:05AM:I am trying to get into a trance when few thoughts pass by.I started wondering about what food to cook that day .I finally decided," Pesama verum rasamum , beans currium pannidalam .Simple-a mudinjidum".You see, the key to meditation is to finish your thoughts and slowly set them aside so that you can concentrate on meditating.
8:05:06 - 8:10AM:Getting back to Meditating...
8:10AM:Oops! Another thought. I started thinking about the argument I had with Suresh the previous day.Since I was meditating,my BP did not flare up but I started thinking,"Maybe I should have just kept quiet. But, still how could he have said something like that".
8:10:05AM:Then , for no apparent reason,I was thinking about the Murukkus sent by MIL.I started thinking,"Pavam Aunty,kashta pattu avalvum senju anuppuchirukanga". I guess Suresh formed the link to my MIL.I forced myself to set aside my thoughts.Back to meditation.
8:10:06- 8:20AM: Deep meditation.
8:20:01AM:There I was ,experiencing levitation, when out of nowhere came this thought that I should not forget calling my parents that night. "Maridhe Ammange Call madbeku".
8:20:02 - 8:30AM:
I was totally out of meditation as I started thinking about writing this blog. Have you ever wondered in what language you usually think.People are supposed to think in the language that they are fluent with.For most of us, it could be our mother tongue.Since I am not fluent in any language, I found out that I think in almost all languages known to me except Hindi.It also depends on what language I usually use to converse with a particular person. If it is mostly in Tamil, then I tend to think about them in Tamil etc.If I am angry or frustrated,my language invariably switches to English regardless of whom I am talking to. If I am thinking about my office work, it is always in English . I have to admit though that I never think in "C,C++,JAVA". Just so we are clear about that.Next time, when you are deep in your thoughts, note down what language you are thinking in. I am sure you will find it interesting.

Intolerable Cruelty

Well, if you had watched the movie, this blog is nothing about it...:)... I have a question for you. From childhood, how many bacterias, fungi, and similar micro-organisms have you killed ? Expanding the scope further, how many ants, mosquitoes, spiders and such small insects have you killed? Expanding the scope still further, how many dogs, cats, chicken and the like have you killed? Think about it...

My educated guess would be, the answer to the first question should be in the order of billions, the answer to the second question should be in the thousands and hopefully, the answer to the third question should be zero. It is interesting to think that, we, as humans, irrespective of whether we boast about eating vegetarian food or not, kill a lot of small bugs and not even think about it twice. Sometimes, we even take pride in it. However, we have major protests and animal rights activation group when the size of the animal gets larger. When it comes to humans killing humans, we even sentence the killer to death. Are we as a society, okay with killing innocent creatures and are against the killing of bigger animals. I just dont understand. My guess is that, it is probably the suffering that we cant tolerate. If we were able to see how an ant or a spider suffers, through audible sound and action, we probably wont kill them again. But, thats not an excuse...is it? Hold on a second... I just hit a spider that crawled under my desk.. I rest my case...

How Funny is Funny ?

This is a question which I always think about. We all talk about being funny and being sullen. Is funny funny ? If you think about it, you will find that funny need not really be funny. The same argument holds the other way as well. Is sorrow really sorrow ? Once again, it is all context dependent and if you dig deep into it, you will find that it is rather ironical.

I was watching "America's Funniest Videos" the other day. They show all kinds of home made video clips which are supposed to be funny. An old lady trying to get out of the boat and falling into water, a kid beating up his father with a stick, an animal getting scared about some event, an ice-skater/roller blader skidding and falling out of balance, etc., Are these events really funny? Do we all smile at it because we have a group in the TV audience to back it up? Not only that, the title says it is funny. So, it is supposed to be funny. So, does that mean that, if one's sorrow can cause a lot of people to be happy and elated, it is funny ? And if one's sorrow causes a lot of people to be sad, is it sorrowful? Being funny always has its cost. Almost always, someone's happiness needs to be sacrificed, isnt it? What if that somone feel's bad about the fact that their act turned out to be funny? There is nothing they can do about it. Even if they act serious about it, they will be considered morose... is it how it works ? Now, is funny really funny ? I dont think so...

Naguthar Porutandru Natpu

There is a Thirukural which starts as the title. Here is the summary of what it says.

Friendship is not only sharing fun times but also you should point the mistakes and/or provide correct advice to the friend.

So many times I thought about this and wondered about its implications.

Could or should we say/advice a friends if we think they are doing something wrong?
How much of that is very subjective thing?
Are we so perfect that we can advice or point mistakes?
When is the right time to point issues? And when is the time to keep quiet?
Will I be open to criticism from my friends? And what if I think they are wrong?

Questions, Questions and more questions!

Being a diplomatic person in general, I am scared of pin-pointing others problem or probing others to give my thoughts on what I perceive to be their problem.

I feel it is also character dependent and how friendships are built. Some people point your problems without you getting hurt while if I try the same logic, it will come out as condescending. (Or so I think)

Kushboo M.D vs. Thangar Bachan M.L.A

Except for couple of blogs I am involved every blog which is remotely related to India have written about this issue. So, I thought of bringing this issue to our blog too.

Well for those gossip/rumor mill illiterates among us, here is the issue.
India today surveyed people all over India for AIDS awareness and asked some celebrities about their opinion on the matters surveyed. One of the issues was pre-marital sex. Since, survey said (co-incidentally, Kushboo’s program on Jaya TV is Tamil equivalent of Family Feud, in which every thing decided based on survey – well I digress) pre-martial sex was happening thing around, she said, it is not uncommon. But people who have pre-marital sex should use proper protection. And she added some more along the lines that it is very common these days.

Latest update: There are around dozen cases put on Kushboo stating that she insulted Tamil people all around TamilNadu. And court after few sessions issued a Non-bail able arrest warrant against her. (All for expressing her opinion about some issue)
In yesterday’s news they showed that women’s liberation group throwing eggs and tomatoes. (I wish they threw omelet instead! – Oops! Did I say that aloud?)

When this 15 minutes (or days) time was over, Suhashini said in one of the speech that Tamils should be ashamed for what they did. And now the entire group started chasing her instead. And when you thought she will stand up and take the fight, she apologized immediately.

And all this issue started with Kushboo actively getting involved in making Thangar Bachan (director of movie called Azhagi – which was critically acclaimed) apologize for his comment that any actress who have only money in her mind is like a prostitute.

Now, Thangar Bachan is from a same caste as Thiruma Valavan. This Thiruma valavan and Ramadass (Yes, The same guy who said naming movies in English was NOT right) were the key political figures behind Kushboo episode.

(Hmmppph! I left so many smaller threads just to stay on core issues.)

Lots and lots of questions and comments come to my mind. But let me open this for others to comment. I will certainly add my comment and another retort I read in web later.

Undiscovered Mind...

I am a very lousy reader. Some might join me in saying, lousy writer too..:)..I can never read a book, especially story book. I tried it several times...But, it just doesnt work. I can read, may be 20-30 pages at a time. So, reading a full book is almost an eternity for me. Recently, I mustered all my energy to read this book which I bought almost 3-4 years before. The book is titled "The Undiscovered Mind" by John Horgan. I bought the book since the title and cover was attractive and it was available for a reasonable price and also that I have some inclination in understanding brain. I havent completely read the book. But, I read some interesting things that I thought were worth sharing...

The book is all about how neuroscience is lagging behind and where is it heading towards. The author has interviewed some of the eminent scientists in the world to make it more informative. It makes up for a great read if you are interested in the topic. There are some key problems facing neuroscience that still remains unanswered. One such thing is the controller.. People have done research to find out how each section of the brain is associated with a particular activity. The left brain is associated with logical/analytical/objective thinking whereas the right brain is associated more with random/intuitive /holistic or more subjective thinking and in synthesizing things in entirety. There are also researches which points to specific sections of brain dealing with a specific activity. The million dollar question is this. If brain power is spread across the whole gamut of different regions, how does human brain work in unison. What/Where is the controller ? No one has answer to this question. One possible theory is that, brain has a portion called the "working memory". It is almost like RAM (random access memory) and is volatile. So, one can view it as a scratch pad where all temporary information reside. This gives the integrity of thought and continuity of context. When you start speaking, you should constantly and cumulatively remember the context and the content that you are talking. If not, you will have a serious discontinuity. Apparently, having less of the "working memory" leads to neurological problems. This, to some extent seems to bridge the gap of the controller. But, it is not complete.

Another thing that was quite interesting was about emotions. There is no logical way to explain the concept of emotions and consciousness using brain. They are considered as random noise...:)... Again here, the million dollar question is about the distinction of mind and body and how are they interrelated. Interesting discoveries have been made as a byproduct of research, though it hasnt lead to the understanding of the "big picture". For example, research has lead to how certain portions of the brain respond to chemicals. In other words, some of our regular tasks, in turn produce/consume certain chemicals which in turn is produced/consumed by other portions of the body. So, adding those chemicals artificially into the system to simulate such characteristics have been studied. Most of the anti-depressant medicines are built around that. In the future, we will see medicines which can, "really" make a person smarter. Already, different kinds of medications that fix certain neurological abnormalities have been invented. But they all seem to have long-term side effects.

In essence, there is currently no unified theory to explain the operation of brain and it is still at a very very primitive stage. I will keep you posted as I read more. My guess is that, I will keep posting for eternity...:)

Ideal Teacher...

I was watching Prudential Health's latest advertisement. If you havent watched it, they show videos of different animals during their sleep. A Koala sleeping followed by a monkey followed by a tiger and then a polar bear and so on. It just reminded me of my Chemistry Master from school. He was a very wise man. Not that he or I slept during the class...:)... When he taught about Ideal gases (remember PV = nRT), he used to say that, in reality, nothing is ideal. He added that under certain conditions, you can envision ideality. For example, no humans in society are ideal. But, imagine them when they are sleeping. Look at it from an observer point of view. We dont harm others, we dont lie, we are not jealous and so on. My extra fitting...:)...Similarly, imagine a person in prison who doesnt have any other human contact. Under this condition, he is ideal as well, provided ideality is measured by impact of one's "harmful" actions on others. If we think back, this would mean that we could be considered ideal unless we interact...sounds strange..isnt it? Is that why a lot of saints choose places where there are no mankind ? Trying to experience idealism ? Next question would be, should we be ideal ?

Anyway, my chemistry master was quite a character and I still remember some of the classroom incidents vividly. I used to have a class mate who often slept in class. One fine day, as our master started talking about catalysts, he saw our class mate sleeping. He told my class mate, "Get up Senthil...Please dont sleep. Not that I have trouble seeing you sleeping. But, sleeping has a catalytic effect on others. I am worried about others sleeping because of you. Now, someone tell me what catalysts are meant for...." [As we might remember, a catalyst speedens the reaction without undergoing any chemical change by itself..I thought to myself, what a great analogy]. On a different incident, I told him that I had trouble understanding a particular principle. He tried explaining me and when I felt like I "kind of" understood it, he told me this, "If you dont understand something. Read it again and again till you remember it by heart. By then, you would have understood it". Once he met with an accident and everybody in the class decided that we were going to get a new chemistry master since his right hand was fractured badly. In just 2 days, he came back and guess what, he started writing fluently in his left hand. I heard from my friends who went for private tuition with him that he practiced his left hand for the past couple of days before he came to class.

My favourite pick among his sayings goes like this... There are many times when students ask him something that doesnt make sense or outright silly. He used to respond as follows..."Why is 'Kaka' (crow) called Kaka...The answer from a typical student would be, because it Kaws with the sound of 'Kaka'. His reply would be... If that is the case, does 'Kuruvi' sound 'Kuruvi Kuruvi'...". To give some of his background information, his credentials were impeccable. He was a gold medalist in both in B.Sc and M.Sc (Chemistry). He worked at IIT Madras as a research associate and quit his job because he didnt make enough money. He scored 99% in physics, chemistry and mathematics in his high school and didnt join Engineering because one of his class master told him that the demand for engineers didnt exist at that time. He is someone whom I still adore for his creative thinking...

Greed...ier....iest...

I was just watching the program 20/20 about being greedy. The first part of the serial focussed on the greedy aspects of Walmart and how Walmart only gives very low wages to their employees and how they dont offer good healthcare options. It also had comments from Walmart employees and managers who contended that, if Walmart is so unjust, why would people be willing to work there in the first place. They showed an employee who was once a homeless person and now has a reasonably good job with two assistants reporting to her. Extending the concept of greediness, they showed how some of the richest people in America spent their money. Then, they showed some people who did "extreme charity". One person gave away all the 45 million dollars that he earned during his lifetime. Another woman donated all of the 3 million dollars that she inherited. Yet, she stays in a 250 sq. ft. apartment with her boyfriend. The third person is a math teacher whose only aim is to donate upto 1 million dollars in his life time. To optimize his efficiency in achieving his goal, he lives in a very small place to maximize his charity out of his salary. On top of it, he volunteers for a charity in their construction of housing for poors, during his weekends. I was very moved by the episode...

The major contention is this. Are business people greedy? Any business person comes up with a new thing to sell and they market it and solve people's "problems". When Ford or GM made new cars, they revolutionised the automobile industry. In the process, they made money. Also, we know that any business person tries to optimize on the invested money to make the maximum gains. And it is obvious, as we have seen in the past, that new inventions and finer technologies almost always reduces the cost of an existing scheme. If Microsoft or Intel hadnt come out with a personal computer, we would have been stuck with IBM mainframes or other such expensive machines. Similarly, Walmart reduced the prices of items by optimizing on low-cost laborers within and outside the United States. Assuming that we all shop at Walmart, have we ever thought about how Walmart is able to such lower prices? Most probably, no. Because, as long as we get stuff for cheap prices, we are happy. If someone gets benefited, let them be...Isnt that true ?

Interestingly enough, we all feel bad when we hear unjust happenings and share a word or two to others as if we care. In my dictionary, there are only 2 kinds of people in the context of looking at something unjust. People who do something to change it and the others who dont. There are no intermediate people. There is no distinction between people who "want" to do something about it and people who dont, since it doesnt make any difference either way...

If you have ever filed your taxes, you must have gotten to see the column corresponding to Average Charity Contribution by people belonging to your income? I was surprised to see that the average charity contribution was of the order of 15-20X more than what I contribute. I dont know about others. But, to me, it was rather an eye opener. It just tells me that I am greedy too. Suddenly, it dawned on me. What rights do I have in criticizing someone else as greedy. I am a mini Walmart in my own respect. I am another one of those person who tries to optimize my gains. Out of curiosity, I tried to calculate the percentage of income that I spent on charity and compared it with the published numbers. It wasnt even 1% and I think that applies to most (almost 70% of people in US) of us. Think about it...The thought by itself had a great impact on me... But then, looking back at my earlier definition, I want to transform my impact to some real quantifiable action. I hope this blog has similar effect on you too...

References:
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=1300757
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/institutes/csls/Cooter%20&%20Broughman%20paper.pdf

FY-money

I went to lunch with a group of friends. As usual, we talked a whole lot about office gossips and rumors. Suddenly, one of my friend said that one of his old friend has got f**k-you-money out of his start-up (will be replaced by FY to conserve language etiquette). I initially smiled along with everyone else as if I understood what FY-money meant. Then, I slowly (with a lowered voice) asked him what FY-money really meant. He told me that FY-money meant that, if you crossed ~50 million dollars in income, then your threshold is such that you dont have to give a damn about what your company or manager says. Basically, you dont have to care too much about managerial BS.

I started venturing to find if FY-money is all you need. Is FY-money the only thing that can get you to not give a damn about what others think of you. Other important things could do the trick as well. One can have FY-attitude though they dont necessarily have FY-money. That was interesting. Invariably, the question would be if FY-attitude wouldnt cost him his job. The response is that though an FY-attitude without FY-money is not good, it is still okay if you have FY-connections. An FY-connection can build a lot of FY-attitude in you. But, FY-connection by itself may not help you under all circumstances. So, building an FY-network is critically important. So, remember that it is all about building network. If you have a fool-proof FY-strategy, you can easily create an FY-network and thus make your way to FY-money... The other way or rather the hard way would be to start your own company...:)

Fairness ?

Sometimes, the way we think is purely gated by how a given problem or issue is presented to us. If we take time to wonder how we all fit into a complex network of society, it is just amazing how it would look for an outsider to envision the way we operate. In order for a complex society to thrive, I guess some amount of fairness needs to be distributed across it. If not, there will only be chaos. This is not to say that the world is a fair place. But, on a macroscopic scale, I believe fairness prevails. This brings up the important question, what does the term "fairness" really mean? I believe that fairness is a context dependent issue which has different meanings in different contexts. Also that, being fair to everyone is impossible. So, where is the trade-off? This blog is an attempt to characterize a queuing problem for different facets of fairness, just to see how fairness is influenced by various schemes. If you think about it, all schemes discussed below do acheive fairness of some sort. If you think otherwise, it is probably because you did not do a lot of thinking..:)

Assume a parking lot with "m" columns (c1,c2,c3,..cM) and 1 row. The 1 row being the one through which people exit a parking lot (c1 is closest to exit). Each of the m-columns join with the exit-row only once. Let us assume for this problem that no new cars are entering the parking lot and that all cars are trying to exit the parking lot. Also, assume that the exit row is already filled up with cars trying to exit. Now, the question is, what strategies can be used make the process of exiting fairly?

In approach1, the condition is that you cant exit from a column until the ongoing traffic in the row exits out of the parking lot. So, if you are in c1, you will not get to the exit until there is no ongoing traffic in the exit row. This would mean the person in column c1 will get to go only till all cars from c2 through cM have left. Now, let us consider that at each junction point, each person in the column will only wait for one oncoming car to pass through and then gets the right of way. This would mean that a car in column 1 will get to go out for every 1 car out of all the remaining columns. But, this would be unfair across the different columns since car in column 1 gets 50% chance of getting out and the car in column 2 will get 25% of chancing of getting out and so on. If you want to establish fairness, one can say that a car in column 1 should wait for, let us say 4 cars before it can go out. This would distribute fairness across the different columns.

Looking at the above notion of fairness, an engineering mind could add that, why not build more than 1 exit from the parking lot. This would simplify the problem not only by the number of exits, but also distribute some of the exponential delay factors in the problem. A business person's perspective would be to assign a cost based on the "unfairness" associated with a car to exit from a given parking lot. So, someone who pays more could get out much easily. A statistician could argue that, if the arrival distribution of people who want to take the car out of the parking lot is such that the low cost folks populate first and if there is a varying degree of cost distribution, then the distribution of cost wouldnt make sense. He might also add that, having a seperate parking lot to serve high cost customers and low-cost customers could be a good idea. A socio-economic point of view would be to avoid having a parking lot and offer a shuttle service to transport people to a different place where parking is distributed enough that they can all go out easily. Even if the parking lot is cramped up as in approach1, we can assume that the passengers in the car are uniformly distributed in terms of the positions in the parking lot and hence can get out fairly in shorter time span. Here, the size of the shuttle and its frequency of operation would decide the number of people transported. Also, the fairness of populating the shuttle would depend upon the arrival order, which sounds fair as well.

The list of take aways from this problem are, being fair to someone would not mean that you are being fair to everyone else, Being fair to everyone would mean that it is not an efficient system, in some cases money could buy you fairness, if you try to limit fairness to a small group of individuals it is usually quite successful. The discussion above is just glorified common sense. It is just that I wanted to glorify it my own way since I had "some" time at my disposal...:)

Someone's watching

I can't help but feel paranoia when I type a mail using gmail. Have you noticed how the side bar on the right reflects something related to the subject of the mail. Sometimes this might be helpful, but if I really want to know more about the subject, I could always go to their search engine, yes?

I don't know if there's a way to turn this feature off. I feel my privacy is at stake. "stop reading my mails, you twerp, that is rude", I feel like yelling. But I guess gmail doesn't recognize voices, so that would be a waste. I was wondering if some others had the same experience? And do you mind it?

From the Real world into the Reel world

Movies hypnotize me. I am oblivious to what goes on around me when I am watching a good movie. My sensory organs are receptive only to the visions and sounds from the movie. My better half could be screaming my name and I would have no inclination to respond. For the 90/120 mts I forget any event, sad or happy that is going on in my life. It makes no difference to me if a movie is good or bad. I have heard some people say that they stopped watching the movie half way through since it was terrible. I just don't get it! How can you say for sure that the rest of the movie is not going to be good? My tolerance level with movies are high. If I say that a movie is bad it has to be REALLY terrible.

Some movies are sooo good that I feel the emotions that the actors are going through. I cry, laugh, fall in love, dance with them. After watching the movie I have a feeling of riding an emotional roller coaster. Movies can also be an outlet for emotions that you keep locked inside. The cheapest way to get a therapy when you are depressed, get a sad movie. The other day I watched Viruddh which is about old aged parents avenging their son's murder. I wailed through the entire movie. At the end I felt light and refreshed. Instant private therapy for 2$. A movie for every mood.

I don't like to be disturbed when I am watching a movie at home ( a problem you don't gave when you are at the theater). Especially phone calls. Sometimes the phone ring manages to pierce through my movie shield and reach the ear. For a few minutes my mind refuses to accept it. If the caller is persistent enough I get to it and irrespective of who they are, I promise to return the call once the important work I am doing is complete.(survivor, I have never done this to you ). I should get a board reading "Please maintain silence Movie in progress".

For the same reason mentioned in the paragraphs above I don't have cable connection at home. Not because I don't like watching TV or a movie but because I like it so much that I will not able to be do anything else. Now I watch it only when I want to escape from the real world.

Hype about India !

I was digging for a file in my mail folder and I hit upon this uncompleted article that I wrote. I get into this funny mode once in a while where I think upon something really big and even go as far as putting it into words. This is one of them. It always gives me a smile when I look back at it.

Couple of years back, I had this urge to write a book and I thought it was a great idea. It was about outsourcing jobs to India. At that time, I had strong feelings about it and I still do, in terms of the success in Indian outsourcing companies. Since I didnt write the book..:( and the article is open-ended except the title which kind of has a negative connotation (I chose that title to stimulate interest and attention) about outsourcing, I thought that it would make up for one of those blogs where everybody can throw darts at.

Here it starts....

HYPE ABOUT INDIA !

It is human's nature to listen and hear things about the general phenomena that happens around us and formulate a quantifiable structure to a topic and believe it. Recently, the phenomenon of outsourcing has attracted or rather frustrated the minds of a lot of white collar employees. I couldnt stop but notice the plethora of perceptions about India and Indians floating around in every major meetings, forums and what not. Having brought up in India and having worked there for a couple of years, a lot of my Indians friends and I had mixed feelings and concerns about a whole range of topics that are being talked about in media, which are partly true, but as a whole, a little misleading. I have attempted to analyse the essence of what is happening in Indian Startups and established firms and present the snapshot of what is really going on in India. Is Outsourcing Real? and Who will Survive? I also discuss the potential ups and downs of the Indian economical structure as a whole and present the impact of IT firms in India. This book is intended for a wide variety of audience ranging from budding entrepreneurs who want to start a company in India, VCs who are eyeing around to choose the next best company to fund with, people employed in US to understand the impact of outsourcing and how they should position themselves and to the business community in general who want to educate themselves with more real facts than the generally presented numbers.

Chapters

1) History of Indian Tech Companies in pre-90s
2) US Migration Portfolio
3) Y2K, WWW and beyond
4) Optimality Equation
5) Work Culture in India and US
6) Services to Startups?
7) Success & Failure Stories -- Up, Close and Personal
8) Case for a good outsourcing/offshoring model
9) Fear of Jobs..Who shouldnt be concerned..
10) Planning for the next big wave

Dear Diary

As a teenager, I would always put my deepest thoughts or feelings in a diary. I always made sure it was hidden well from all other eyes. It sat camouflaged amidst the mountain of my books and notebooks of various sizes. I never found out why our schools made us buy and carry so many note books, maybe it was the school's idea of strength training. But, I digress. Nobody but me could find this secret vault and unravel my most personal views, not that it had a secret password or PIN, but because people got so disgusted at the mess of my shelf, they did not want to look any further.

Yes, the diary was my vault. Whenever I thought life was unfair or someone was unjust to me, my diary was my only confidante. When I didn't win in the running race, I went to my diary. When my parents punished me because I initiated the gruelling battle of both wits and fists with my dear (not so dear in those times) brother, and tears ebbed and flowed from my eyes, I went to the diary. The diary was my refuge in times of "sorrow" (even the tiniest things could drive me to sorrow-land then) and also in times of joy. I was as loyal and committed to it as it was to me.

It is strange, I went to weep on the shoulder of an object, rather than a person. I felt the diary would somehow rid me off my woes. By the time I finished writing what I felt, I'd already be much lighter and then I could move on. The diary was my closest pal, it would not judge me like other humans could. It would not tell others about me, simply because it could not. As, I remember it, keeping a diary not only diffused the situation and soothed me, it also improved my writing.

Once one of my aunts caught me in the act, there I was sitting and writing my diary. She thought it would hurt my parents if they read it and she quite frankly said that many pages were rude. I was already forming the para that would go in next "Dear Dairy, it seems it is rude to write your feelings in the diary, but somehow its not rude if others take your personal diary and read it?" But, I think the fact that I had grown in age by then, somehow must have affected my decision. I manually shredded my friend and never saw it again.

It seems to me that in life too, I pursue friends that possess the same characteristics. I look for people who will reciprocate my loyalty, who will listen to me, who will act as a safety vault, one who will not feel the need to judge my actions and behavior. And I have found quite a few of them and I am thankful I am blessed. I really don’t ever need a diary anymore!