Happy New Year 2009!

Interesting Indians

The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest. - Albert Einstein

Cartoon Source: Tony Watson

There's one often-cited example of the power of compound interest. If Christopher Columbus had placed a single penny in a 6 percent interest-bearing account and instructed someone to remove the interest every year, the value of the interest earned by 2005 would be almost 31 cents. But if he had placed the same penny into the same interest-bearing account but left the earned interest to compound -- earning interest upon the interest -- the resulting balance for 513 years would be $95,919,936,112. That's $95 billion!

Most of us can crunch the numbers and calculate financial scenarios.  But only a few among us have a feel for these numbers in the back of the head, 24/7.  I used to travel via STL pretty much on weekly basis, for couple of years.  During that time, I had an opportunity of watching the rapid growth of an Indian food place (near the airport) started by a Gujarati gentleman, who freshly arrived from South Africa; from a narrow joint with a few benches, to a spacious full-size restaurant.  PIOs own about 50% of the hotels/motels in the US!  I guess 90% of these folks came from Gujarat.  I find some genetic traits amazing.

Don't Beat Around the Bush!

Picture source: Cinematic Wallpaper

A blast yesterday killed twenty-eight people in Iraq. Routine reports of this kind of death since the beginning of this unjustified war, reminded me of the following dialog from Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of the Sith.

Anakin Skywalker: Sometimes I wonder what's happening to the Jedi Order. I think this war is destroying the principles of the Republic.

Padmé Amidala: Have you ever considered that we may be on the wrong side?

Anakin Skywalker: What do you mean?

Padmé Amidala: What if the democracy we thought we were serving no longer exists, and the Republic has become the very evil we've been fighting to destroy?

Anakin Skywalker: I don't believe that, and you're sounding like a Separatist.

Padmé Amidala: What this war represents is a failure to listen. Now you're closer to the Chancellor than anyone, please, ask him to stop the fighting and let the diplomacy resume.

Anakin Skywalker: Don't ask me to do that.

Of course, I am not supporting terrorists in Iraq or any kind of terrorism.  Answer to the question "who is a terrorist?" is merely a point of view.  How do we define the word "terrorist"?  If a person who caused more than million deaths for no good reason is not a terrorist, who is?  Mr. Bush's record is on par with that of Pol Pot.  It is about time for the US to unequivocally (and officially) admit to the world, "(we) our ex-president made a terrible mistake in Iraq and caused grief to millions here in this country and abroad", and hand over President George W. Bush to the International Court of Justice for his war crimes.  On a second thought, may be not.  After all, George Washington's cherry tree story is a myth.  We don't take morals from urban legends.  Do we? 

Merry Christmas 2008!

Source: Stu's Views

Question: Why is Christmas just like a day at the office? 

Answer: You do all the work and the fat guy with the suit gets all the credit.

Renouncing Renunciation

One of the Sai Austin news letters read:

Shirdi Sai Baba advised that renunciation (sanyas) is not the path for most people. If you try and renounce a bad habit, it may just get stronger and provide more temptation. So it is better to try and do some service for others each day as a means of self purification. When we serve a holy person we start to align our mind with cosmic mind. When we serve others we start to see God everywhere.

Makes a lot of sense to me. Using a similar concept, Basketball is being used as a vehicle for promoting positive habits in the inner-city kids.  When these kids do good things (like keeping their bodies fit), they will have less time to do bad things (like doing drugs).  More importantly, the positive energy gained through sports creates an upward spiral of mental and spiritual benefits.  

This concept works in many areas of our lives too. For example, most of the diets fail in the long run because they focus too much on not doing the bad things (like, eating cakes). If we ensure that we eat sufficient quantities of good foods (like greens, grains and fruit), we would gradually cut down on foods that aren't good for us. Transformation will not be quick; but it will happen slowly and surely. A good positive step for a better health in my opinion is, drinking the recommended 8 x 8 oz glasses of water every day.

Golden Grumps

Image Source: Petafoo

Recent research shows it could be the grumpy workers who are actually a company's most creative problem-solvers, said Jing Zhou, associate professor of management at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management at Rice University.

It's the happy, cheerful folks who tend to think things are going well and that there are no problems to be solved, she said. They're less likely to be pondering potential pitfalls and often don't see problems until there is a crisis.

It's a departure from the general management philosophy that a positive mood leads to creative problem-solving, said Zhou, who based her findings on the results of 161 responses from employees and their supervisors at a large oil-field services company.

A positive mood means getting along, said Bob Hogan, president of Hogan Assessment Systems in Tulsa, Okla. A contrary attitude, however, can lead to advancement.

A mood of contentment doesn't fit with creativity, he said.

So what kind of employee does a company want to hire? It depends on the type of job, according to Hogan.

A company that runs a call center wants employees with good moods because they're focused on acceptance and getting things implemented.

"They will get punished if they're creative," he said.

But companies want "overcaffinated, energetic and agitated" employees for advertising, marketing and product development, he said.

Hogan said he follows his own advice when it comes to his own hiring.

When he's looking for a customer service representative, he looks for the person who is "sweet and smiling."

A research position? "I don't care about sweetness. It's focus and intensity."

In an effort to hire the best employees, Steve Hines has learned to pay close attention to the emotion he sees during job interviews. And when he doesn't see any, he gets worried.

"If you are happy all the time, it sends up a flag," said Hines, vice president of human resources for Armor Holdings, a defense and law enforcement manufacturing company.

People whose moods go up and down are living in the real world, Hines said.

Hines said he tries to get at that range of emotion in job interviews by asking applicants to describe the best thing they've done in the past couple of years and the most disappointing thing.

That range is especially important for the engineers and other technical and professional employees, said Hines, who has seen first-hand how bad moods can spark creativity.

Makes sense.  Discontent folks see more problems in the world than those who are content.  And, grumpy people are generally discontent.  Therefore, grumpy people see more problems.  Since we can't solve problems we don't see, we need grumps to find problems in fix them :-)

Achilles' Heels

Cost of Acoustics

A pair of these B&W Nautilus speakers cost $60,000! Pretty pricey, but they didn't even make it to the list of most expensive speakers! I wonder if human ears can sense the difference between say, a decent $5K system and a $60K system.  May be our urge for gaining social status through acquiring exquisite paraphernalia, and the design of the shell, have more to do with this exorbitant price tag than superior sound reproduction. 

A Dream Within a Dream

Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly...Suddenly I awoke...Now, I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming that I am a man. - Chuang-Tzu

Image Source: Moodflow

Generally, I sleep like a log, and I don't experience many dreams (at least, I don't remember them).  The few I get, don't make a lasting impression.  Though I get them in 3D with 1080p resolution, they are easily forgettable and are mere meaningless dreams - that's all.

But a few months ago, as I mentioned to my buddy Raama, I had an amazingly vivid dream that knocked my socks off.  The content was (apparently) bland, but the imagery was surreal.  It is impossible for me to describe this experience in words, but here is my feeble attempt (in italics).  The setting was our home in Vizag.  

My siesta was disturbed by a snoring sound.  While still lying in bed, I turned slowly to my left, and to my amazement, it was my dad (who passed on earlier this year)! I just couldn't believe my eyes.  I knew that it couldn't be real. But it was! I noticed his chest moving up and down as he was breating.  He was alive! I shook his shoulder gently and woke him up.  I was looking into his eyes and he was looking into mine.  I could clearly see his eye glasses, hairs on his chest sticking out of his banian, texture of his skin, ...all minute details.  Out of utter disbelief, I pinched myself hard on my forearm, to make sure that I wasn't dreaming; I immediately felt the twinge.  So, it had to be real.  In excitement, I held his hand, and walked him into our living room, where my mom and siblings were sitting and chatting with each other.  My mom was shocked to see him.  But my siblings were indifferent, as if it wasn't a surprise to them.  At that point, my dad looked at all of us with a sad expression on his face, and slowly walked into the bedroom (which faces south).

At that point, I woke up with a jolt.  The phantasmagoria was so real that I still remember every detail - the colors, the smells, the emotions,....

I am not jumping to conclusions on supernatural phenomena based on this XP.  It probably was just nostalia.  However, it made me add Freud's work to my "to read" list.  I wonder if dreams are analogous to disk defragmentation!  Perhaps when we are in hibernate mode, our brains archive all important image, smell, emotion, and sound files!  And may be our brain sees some of these files in a random fashion, analogous to our watching of time-warped scenes while fast forwarding DVDs!  

From the movie, The Matrix

[Neo sees a black cat walk by them, and then a similar black cat walk by them just like the first one] 
Neo: Whoa. Déjà vu. 
[Everyone freezes right in their tracks] 
Trinity: What did you just say? 
Neo: Nothing. Just had a little déjà vu. 
Trinity: What did you see? 
Cypher: What happened? 
Neo: A black cat went past us, and then another that looked just like it. 
Trinity: How much like it? Was it the same cat? 
Neo: It might have been. I'm not sure. 
Morpheus: Switch! Apoc! 
Neo: What is it? 
Trinity: A déjà vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something.

US Auto Industry

Industry in dust?

Source: Riber Hansson

Clint EastWood's Take Life

Caricature Source: Interesting.....at least to us

From Reader's Digest, October 2008. 

Great stories teach you something. That's one reason I haven't slipped into some sort of retirement: I always feel like I'm learning something new.

There was a time in my life when I was doing westerns, on the plains of Spain. I could have stayed there and probably knocked out a dozen more. But the time came when I said, That's enough of that. As fun as they were to do, it was time to move on. If a story doesn't have anything that's fresh in it, at least for me, I move away from it.

Take your profession seriously; don't take yourself seriously. You really only matter to a certain degree in the whole circus out there. If you take yourself seriously, you're not going to be able to move forward. You're going to be hampered by always wanting to look in the mirror and see if you have enough tuna oil on your hair or something like that.

Marvels of Memory

Memory works in mysterious ways.  The other day, I smelled something that reminded me of a smell that I experienced about 25 years ago, while I was playing chess on a particular day, in the backyard of our house.  That immediately brought up the visual memory of a kettle of water being boiled close to me on coal fire at that time, the heat from it, our maid servant fanning the flames, ...everything. I am sure everyone can relate to similar experiences.

The key thing for memory is making connections, as scientists have discovered; the more the connections, the better the memory.  I read a book How to Develop Super Power Memory while I was working in Alirajpur and it listed some nice memory techniques.  Using methods in this book, I used to be able to perform exercises like memorizing 15 random things and their sequence, just for fun; with tons of free time, I had nothing better to do in that teeny tiny town in the middle of no where.  

Few examples - I will never forget that Bobby Fischer died at the age of 64, as he was a chess champ, and chess board has 64 squares (memory by association).  I used to have a tough time in remembering the direction for tightening (or untightening) a screw, until I heard "lefty, loosey - righty, tighty" (memory with rhyme).  Also, I know that Stalactite grows from the ceiling, as the word has letter "c" in it, and stalagmite grows from the ground up, as the word has letter "g" in it.  These memory aids remind me of a Seinfeld episode :-).  Lastly, I may be able to find a Bata store in Tamil Nadu, even when store signs are posted in Tamil language.  When I visited Chennai in '89, my friend Sarma gave me a mnemonic for Bata sign in Tamil - U Pi L Dot L Pi (UπL^.Lπ) and I just can't get it out of my head!  

Of course, there are folks out there with amazing memory powers that may not be achieved with easy techniques.  For example, Mr. Akira Haraguchi recited the first 83,431 decimal places of Pi, and Mr. Ben Pridmore was able to memorize a deck of shuffled cards in less than 27 seconds!

Creditors have better memories than debtors. - Benjamin Franklin

Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person? - Rochefoucauld

The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.  - Nietzsche

God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December. - J.M. Barre

A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness. - Elbert Hubbard

Happiness is good health and bad memory - Albert Schweitzer

Material World

Recently, I had a nice long chat with my childhood buddies Rambabu and Mohan. While chatting about life (and other 40+ stuff!), Rambabu theorized that, generally speaking, the more successful (career wise) the kids are, the less attention they pay to their parents in their prime years.  His theory reminded me of this Harry Chapin's song. I remember that my dad brought me this single on an audio cassette from Canada in early 80s, and I loved it from the moment I heard it.  

I agree with Rambabu.  In addition, like in this song, it can go both ways.  While my dad was far from the character in this song, I feel that I turnout to be the son:-(

Sikhs Parade for World Peace

I couldn't help but laugh out loud when I saw a photograph (in voice of Asia) of Sikhs parading for world peace in Houston recently! A peace march with swords?! What's next? 

Photo Source: Sikh Center, Houston

To an outsider, this probably would look like a group of Taliban folks pledging to execute a Fatwa!  It takes an Indian to understand the cultural significance of swords in Sikhism.

On a slightly different note, I wonder if I could justify attending these parades on skipping work, by calling in Sikh :-)