Happy!!

It was this usual 2 hour journey back home from my workplace in that overcrowded local bus, when this guy boarded the bus and sat next to me. After a couple of minutes he took a slip out of his pocket and showed me. I could not understand what was written (as it was in Kannada) and didnt pay enough attention (as I usually dont)  to realise  that there was a hindi translation of it in the same slip. My first reaction was no (full of negativity). It took me a while to realise that he was not capable of speaking. Then I tried to communicate through signals, hand actions. I was finding it really tough to make him understand that this bus does not go to the stop in that slip. I could not communicate to him and then went into my thinking mode with moist emotions. This guy was so strong, he still had that calm which comes when you accept the situation. I tried again to help him understand the possible route. During the whole discussion he had that gr8 smile and enthusiasm. His communication was more expressive and lively than mine. I got off the bus at my stop and starting walking towards my house which is a good 20 mins walk. I was still with my thoughts about the whole incident when this guy crossed me and waved with that happy smile just to say, here we meet again. And he ran to catch another bus. At that moment I realised  He LOOKS HAPPY!!
I should be Happy!!!

Arbit Gyan !

Johny Appleseed

Johny Chapman, was known for planting nurseries of apple Trees. He was a wanderer who planted these nurseries to most of the places he went, mostly in and around Ohio , Indiana in USA. He kind of brought about apple revolution. Most famous images of his, show him spreading appleseeds , which has brought about this name, Johny Appleseed.

He lived from 1774 to 1845, never got married as he believed women to be deceivers. He had great affection towards animals. One famous story exemplified it when he bought a horse which was to be brought down, bought green fields for him to recover and then gave it to some needy with a promise to treat the horse humanely.

Johny Appleseed can be used in language to refer to someone who developed any specific industry like father of IT Industry in India can also be stated as Johny Appleseed of IT industry in India.
Danilo Blandon is known as 'Johny Appleseed of Crack'


Celibacy tax

Celibacy can be referred to as the tendency to not to have sexual intercourse. Now it might sound a bit weird, as taxing somebody this.
In Romania around 1966, when Nicolae Ceausescu came to power, celibacy tax was introduced which used to tax a women who has not conceived. Tax was 10 % of the monthly wage. This was one of the horrible laws introduced by Nicolae to increase the population of Romania from 23 Mn to 30 Mn. He said ' The Fetus is the property of the entire society'.

Irony is he was overthrown by the protests by youth a lot of whom were born because abortion was made illegal. This policy let to drastic increase in crime rates, poverty and malnutrition.

Its Weird!!!!!!!!!!!!

How about the thought of going out for a movie alone!!!!!!!!!!

Its weird to most of us ……isn’t it ……….?

Probably we have been going to theatres to watch movie only with parents or friends ……… It has always been a group outing not an individual one!!!!!!!!!!

I was 7-8 when I went for my first theatre movie “Shahanshah” with parents, but to our disappointment its screening in that theatre in Panipat was delayed by a week. Having come so far we didn’t want to go back on that Sunday without watching a movie. Hence we ended up watching the D-grade movie “Ghabrahat” in the same theatre (Then there used to be only one screen in a theatre). This is how movie watching culture is cultivated as group activity in most of us.

Somehow we always feel comfortable in our space filled with conceptions, ideals, and ‘the’ way to do things. It’s always difficult to come out of it or think beyond it.

I think there are expiry dates to “the right” ways.

There is a hell lot of a difference in the way I and my dad watch movies, in fact my own way of watching movies have changed drastically in last 3 yrs.

SO it’s extremely important to question the conceptions that develop over a period of time.

TIMES CHANGE, PEOPLE CHANGE, YOU CHANGE ---- ‘THE WAY’ to do things can or should change!!!!!!!!!

Brain ...........from Fooled by Randomness !!!!!!!!

Brain

Its so ironic that we hardly give any thought to the functioning of our thinking engine. All of us think. What is it to ‘Think’?

One school of thought (Herbert Simon) relates it to optimization. According to him our brain is a big optimization machine. Another aspect related to this is about the level or extent of optimization. It takes infinite effort and time to bring most optimized solution.

It means our brain must have some indications on when to stop optimizing or when is it safe to approximate. We can call these as ‘set of rules’. So our brain is a big optimizing machine with a set of rules in it which helps in approximation. But there is a slightly contrary opinion to it from Kahneman and Tversky.

Our brains are always biased hence are not optimizers. They have a ‘heuristic’ approach to optimization which gets affected by the recent events. Brain does not have a central processing system . It does not process all the information it has to think. It is usually biased towards a more recent information or else affected by other attributes. It is more of local rather than global optimization. This can probably explain different responses to similar situations at different times

Nice Thought

A democracy is more about good courts than it is about good elections. ............Fareed Zakaria

"Nonlinearity"

This mathematical term is best described by Nassim in his book Fooled by Randomness by the concept of Sandpile effect.
Think of making a structure of beach sand. Keep on raising the structure with sand till the time it falls off. Now try to figure out the effect of that last grain of sand that would have brought about this fall. The one grain has that non linear effect on that complete structure.

Non linearity in life is something our brain always refuse to understand. All of us have small events in our lives which have transformational effects on it. This is what can explain that extra mile effort before which most of us give up. Those who don't reap benefits of nonlinearity in life.

Quotes from "Fooled by Randomness"

* A mathematician is absorbed in what goes into his head, while a scientist searches what is outside of him.

* Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost.

* Rational Thinking seems to do is to rationalize one's action by fitting some logic to them.

* Risk detection and avoidance are not mediated in thinking part of the brain but "emotional one"

*commonsense is nothing but a collection of misconceptions gained by age eighteen.

* Probability is an introspective field of inquiry.

*Past is always deterministic

* History flows forward, we envision it backward.

*Unlike other hard sciences history cannot lend itself to experimentation.

* Wealth does not count as much to one's well being as the route to get to it.

*History teaches us that things that did not happen before do happen.

* Science is mere speculation, mere formulation of conjecture.

*Generally attitude of epic heroism accompanies rapid enrichment.

* Work ethics is another name for Inefficient Mediocrity