2009:The year in review
Here are some of the things that
I stumbled up on/ touched me/I enjoyed/ inspired me.

Book : Finding Flow

Movie :
The lives of others

What a coincidence, I ordered a netbook for Dhatri just a few days before watching this.

This talk also resonates with my recent read, one of the classics in child development 'How children learn'

Saving Bill Watterson's commencement speech for myself, Dhatri and everybody else

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE REAL WORLD BY ONE WHO GLIMPSED IT AND FLED
Bill Watterson
Kenyon College Commencement
May 20, 1990

I have a recurring dream about Kenyon. In it, I'm walking to the post office on the way to my first class at the start of the school year. Suddenly it occurs to me that I don't have my schedule memorized, and I'm not sure which classes I'm taking, or where exactly I'm supposed to be going.
As I walk up the steps to the postoffice, I realize I don't have my box key, and in fact, I can't remember what my box number is. I'm certain that everyone I know has written me a letter, but I can't get them. I get more flustered and annoyed by the minute. I head back to Middle Path, racking my brains and asking myself, "How many more years until I graduate? ...Wait, didn't I graduate already?? How old AM I?" Then I wake up.

Experience is food for the brain. And four years at Kenyon is a rich meal. I suppose it should be no surprise that your brains will probably burp up Kenyon for a long time. And I think the reason I keep having the dream is because its central image is a metaphor for a good part of life: that is, not knowing where you're going or what you're doing.
I graduated exactly ten years ago. That doesn't give me a great deal of experience to speak from, but I'm emboldened by the fact that I can't remember a bit of MY commencement, and I trust that in half an hour, you won't remember of yours either.

In the middle of my sophomore year at Kenyon, I decided to paint a copy of Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam" from the Sistine Chapel on the ceiling of my dorm room. By standing on a chair, I could reach the ceiling, and I taped off a section, made a grid, and started to copy the picture from my art history book.
Working with your arm over your head is hard work, so a few of my more ingenious friends rigged up a scaffold for me by stacking two chairs on my bed, and laying the table from the hall lounge across the chairs and over to the top of my closet. By climbing up onto my bed and up the chairs, I could hoist myself onto the table, and lie in relative comfort two feet under my painting. My roommate would then hand up my paints, and I could work for several hours at a stretch.

The picture took me months to do, and in fact, I didn't finish the work until very near the end of the school year. I wasn't much of a painter then, but what the work lacked in color sense and technical flourish, it gained in the incongruity of having a High Renaissance masterpiece in a college dorm that had the unmistakable odor of old beer cans and older laundry.
The painting lent an air of cosmic grandeur to my room, and it seemed to put life into a larger perspective. Those boring, flowery English poets didn't seem quite so important, when right above my head God was transmitting the spark of life to man.
My friends and I liked the finished painting so much in fact, that we decided I should ask permission to do it. As you might expect, the housing director was curious to know why I wanted to paint this elaborate picture on my ceiling a few weeks before school let out. Well, you don't get to be a sophomore at Kenyon without learning how to fabricate ideas you never had, but I guess it was obvious that my idea was being proposed retroactively. It ended up that I was allowed to paint the picture, so long as I painted over it and returned the ceiling to normal at the end of the year. And that's what I did.

Despite the futility of the whole episode, my fondest memories of college are times like these, where things were done out of some inexplicable inner imperative, rather than because the work was demanded. Clearly, I never spent as much time or work on any authorized art project, or any poli sci paper, as I spent on this one act of vandalism.

It's surprising how hard we'll work when the work is done just for ourselves. And with all due respect to John Stuart Mill, maybe utilitarianism is overrated. If I've learned one thing from being a cartoonist, it's how important playing is to creativity and happiness. My job is essentially to come up with 365 ideas a year.
If you ever want to find out just how uninteresting you really are, get a job where the quality and frequency of your thoughts determine your livelihood. I've found that the only way I can keep writing every day, year after year, is to let my mind wander into new territories. To do that, I've had to cultivate a kind of mental playfulness.

We're not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery-it recharges by running.
You may be surprised to find how quickly daily routine and the demands of "just getting by: absorb your waking hours. You may be surprised matters of habit rather than thought and inquiry. You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see your life in terms of other people's expectations rather than issues. You may be surprised to find out how quickly reading a good book sounds like a luxury.

At school, new ideas are thrust at you every day. Out in the world, you'll have to find the inner motivation to search for new ideas on your own. With any luck at all, you'll never need to take an idea and squeeze a punchline out of it, but as bright, creative people, you'll be called upon to generate ideas and solutions all your lives. Letting your mind play is the best way to solve problems.
For me, it's been liberating to put myself in the mind of a fictitious six year-old each day, and rediscover my own curiosity. I've been amazed at how one ideas leads to others if I allow my mind to play and wander. I know a lot about dinosaurs now, and the information has helped me out of quite a few deadlines.
A playful mind is inquisitive, and learning is fun. If you indulge your natural curiosity and retain a sense of fun in new experience, I think you'll find it functions as a sort of shock absorber for the bumpy road ahead.


So, what's it like in the real world? Well, the food is better, but beyond that, I don't recommend it.

I don't look back on my first few years out of school with much affection, and if I could have talked to you six months ago, I'd have encouraged you all to flunk some classes and postpone this moment as long as possible. But now it's too late.
Unfortunately, that was all the advice I really had. When I was sitting where you are, I was one of the lucky few who had a cushy job waiting for me. I'd drawn political cartoons for the Collegian for four years, and the Cincinnati Post had hired me as an editorial cartoonist. All my friends were either dreading the infamous first year of law school, or despondent about their chances of convincing anyone that a history degree had any real application outside of academia.

Boy, was I smug.

As it turned out, my editor instantly regretted his decision to hire me. By the end of the summer, I'd been given notice; by the beginning of winter, I was in an unemployment line; and by the end of my first year away from Kenyon, I was broke and living with my parents again. You can imagine how upset my dad was when he learned that Kenyon doesn't give refunds.
Watching my career explode on the lauchpad caused some soul searching. I eventually admitted that I didn't have what it takes to be a good political cartoonist, that is, an interest in politics, and I returned to my firs love, comic strips.
For years I got nothing but rejection letters, and I was forced to accept a real job.

A REAL job is a job you hate. I designed car ads and grocery ads in the windowless basement of a convenience store, and I hated every single minute of the 4-1/2 million minutes I worked there. My fellow prisoners at work were basically concerned about how to punch the time clock at the perfect second where they would earn another 20 cents without doing any work for it.
It was incredible: after every break, the entire staff would stand around in the garage where the time clock was, and wait for that last click. And after my used car needed the head gasket replaced twice, I waited in the garage too.

It's funny how at Kenyon, you take for granted that the people around you think about more than the last episode of Dynasty. I guess that's what it means to be in an ivory tower.

Anyway, after a few months at this job, I was starved for some life of the mind that, during my lunch break, I used to read those poli sci books that I'd somehow never quite finished when I was here. Some of those books were actually kind of interesting. It was a rude shock to see just how empty and robotic life can be when you don't care about what you're doing, and the only reason you're there is to pay the bills.
Thoreau said,

"the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."


That's one of those dumb cocktail quotations that will strike fear in your heart as you get older. Actually, I was leading a life of loud desperation.

When it seemed I would be writing about "Midnite Madness Sale-abrations" for the rest of my life, a friend used to console me that cream always rises to the top. I used to think, so do people who throw themselves into the sea.


I tell you all this because it's worth recognizing that there is no such thing as an overnight success. You will do well to cultivate the resources in yourself that bring you happiness outside of success or failure. The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive. At that time, we turn around and say, yes, this is obviously where I was going all along. It's a good idea to try to enjoy the scenery on the detours, because you'll probably take a few.

I still haven't drawn the strip as long as it took me to get the job. To endure five years of rejection to get a job requires either a faith in oneself that borders on delusion, or a love of the work. I loved the work.
Drawing comic strips for five years without pay drove home the point that the fun of cartooning wasn't in the money; it was in the work. This turned out to be an important realization when my break finally came.

Like many people, I found that what I was chasing wasn't what I caught. I've wanted to be a cartoonist since I was old enough to read cartoons, and I never really thought about cartoons as being a business. It never occurred to me that a comic strip I created would be at the mercy of a bloodsucking corporate parasite called a syndicate, and that I'd be faced with countless ethical decisions masquerading as simple business decisions.
To make a business decision, you don't need much philosophy; all you need is greed, and maybe a little knowledge of how the game works.

As my comic strip became popular, the pressure to capitalize on that popularity increased to the point where I was spending almost as much time screaming at executives as drawing. Cartoon merchandising is a $12 billion dollar a year industry and the syndicate understandably wanted a piece of that pie. But the more I though about what they wanted to do with my creation, the more inconsistent it seemed with the reasons I draw cartoons.
Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in. Sell out, and you're really buying into someone else's system of values, rules and rewards.
The so-called "opportunity" I faced would have meant giving up my individual voice for that of a money-grubbing corporation. It would have meant my purpose in writing was to sell things, not say things. My pride in craft would be sacrificed to the efficiency of mass production and the work of assistants. Authorship would become committee decision. Creativity would become work for pay. Art would turn into commerce. In short, money was supposed to supply all the meaning I'd need.
What the syndicate wanted to do, in other words, was turn my comic strip into everything calculated, empty and robotic that I hated about my old job. They would turn my characters into television hucksters and T-shirt sloganeers and deprive me of characters that actually expressed my own thoughts.

On those terms, I found the offer easy to refuse. Unfortunately, the syndicate also found my refusal easy to refuse, and we've been fighting for over three years now. Such is American business, I guess, where the desire for obscene profit mutes any discussion of conscience.


You will find your own ethical dilemmas in all parts of your lives, both personal and professional. We all have different desires and needs, but if we don't discover what we want from ourselves and what we stand for, we will live passively and unfulfilled. Sooner or later, we are all asked to compromise ourselves and the things we care about. We define ourselves by our actions. With each decision, we tell ourselves and the world who we are. Think about what you want out of this life, and recognize that there are many kinds of success.
Many of you will be going on to law school, business school, medical school, or other graduate work, and you can expect the kind of starting salary that, with luck, will allow you to pay off your own tuition debts within your own lifetime.

But having an enviable career is one thing, and being a happy person is another.

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.
You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you'll hear about them.

To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble.
Reading those turgid philosophers here in these remote stone buildings may not get you a job, but if those books have forced you to ask yourself questions about what makes life truthful, purposeful, meaningful, and redeeming, you have the Swiss Army Knife of mental tools, and it's going to come in handy all the time.

I think you'll find that Kenyon touched a deep part of you. These have been formative years. Chances are, at least of your roommates has taught you everything ugly about human nature you ever wanted to know.
With luck, you've also had a class that transmitted a spark of insight or interest you'd never had before. Cultivate that interest, and you may find a deeper meaning in your life that feeds your soul and spirit. Your preparation for the real world is not in the answers you've learned, but in the questions you've learned how to ask yourself.
Graduating from Kenyon, I suspect you'll find yourselves quite well prepared indeed.


I wish you all fulfillment and happiness. Congratulations on your achievement.

You know, actually we have no love - that is a terrible thing to realize. Actually we have no love; we have sentiment; we have emotionality, sensuality, sexuality; we have remembrances of something which we have thought as love. But actually, brutally, we have no love. Because to have love means no violence, no fear, no competition, no ambition. If you had love you will never say, "This is my family." You may have a family and give them the best you can; but it will not be "your family" which is opposed to the world. If you love, if there is love, there is peace. If you loved, you would educate your child not to be a nationalist, not to have only a technical job and look after his own petty little affairs; you would have no nationality. There would be no divisions of religion, if you loved. But as these things actually exist - not theoretically, but brutally - in this ugly world, it shows that you have no love. Even the love of a mother for her child is not love. If the mother really loved her child, do you think the world would be like this? She would see that he had the right food, the right education, that he was sensitive, that he appreciated beauty, that he was not ambitious, greedy, envious. So the mother, however much she may think she loves her child, does not love the child. So we have not that love. - The Collected Works, Vol. XV Varanasi 5th Public Talk 28th November 1964

I am posting this blog on leechblock before adding my own blogspot to the blocked list.
So, no email, news sites from 9-5 on weekdays, hurray!

Leechblock - to manage focus and avoid distraction

Mindless 'Use and Throw'

I wonder how somebody can routinely dispose a plastic spoon after a single usage out of it. One possible explanation is that we don't concern ourselves with anything/anybody other than ourselves. I want to celebrate my kid's party in style, of course I don't want to spend 2-3 hours loading up the dishwasher with reusable plates and cups. That time is better spent watching my favorite movie for the nth time.
It's time for some party planning. First - appetizers, next cutting the birthday cake, followed by lunch or dinner and lastly dessert. So, over four courses, four spoons/forks for each person. For fifty guests, it means 200 plastic spoons. Two hundred spoons to be added to a landfill or an ocean floor to live on forever and kill the marine life, and all this to save an hour so that I can watch TV? Seriously!


The Problem with Plastic

The main problem with plastic -- besides there being so much of it -- is that it doesn't biodegrade. No natural process can break it down. (Experts point out ­that the durability that makes plastic so useful to humans also makes it quite harmful to nature.) Instead, plastic photodegrades. A plastic cigarette lighter cast out to sea will fragment into smaller and smaller pieces of plastic without breaking into simpler compounds, which scientists estimate could take hundreds of years. The small bits of plastic produced by photodegradation are called mermaid tears or nurdles.

These tiny plastic particles can get sucked up by filter feeders and damage their bodies. Other marine animals eat the plastic, which can poison them or lead to deadly blockages. Nurdles also have the insidious property of soaking up toxic chemicals. Over time, even chemicals or poisons that are widely diffused in water can become highly concentrated as they're mopped up by nurdles. These poison-filled masses threaten the entire food chain, especially when eaten by filter feeders that are then consumed by large creatures.

Plastic has acutely affected albatrosses, which roam ­a wide swath of the northern Pacific Ocean. Albatrosses frequently grab food wherever they can find it, which leads to many of the birds ingesting -- and dying from -- plastic and other trash. On Midway Island, which comes into contact with parts of the Eastern Garbage Patch, albatrosses give birth to 500,000 chicks every year. Two hundred thousand of them die, many of them by consuming plastic fed to them by their parents, who confuse it for food [source: LA Times]. In total, more than a million birds and marine animals die each year from consuming or becoming caught in plastic and other debris.

No Gift Policy

Every year for Dhatri's b'day party, we request friends not to bring any gifts for Dhatri. I know that almost everybody that I know is used to giving gifts on occasions like this, and it rather feels odd to go empty handed to a party. I myself feel it odd, but when I think about it in bigger context, I don't mind it at all. But I at least owe an explanation to all my guests for making them feel that way. So here it is..

Impact on resources

Our world population is almost 7 billions. When I fly, I look at the vast land beneath me and think that there is no problem of running out of resources, but I know that it is just plain ignorance, and perhaps a convenient way to justify our unsustainable and irresponsible lifestyles.
Polluting chemicals due to manufacturing have already reached the polar regions. If you care about the future generation, now is the time to question your consumption patterns. Here is an excellent video to educate people about how consumption negatively effects everything else.
The story of stuff

"We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children" Navajo Proverb.

Non biodegradable stuff

Most of kids gifts these days are made of plastic. The cute "educational/fun" plastic toy will live on forever in a landfill. I know, you did see some plastic stuff in my home, but most of it is stuff I bought used on craigslist. In my opinion, that's better than buying brand new stuff.

Unmanageable living space

It is a tough job to keep everything back in its place when there are so many toys. there actually is "no place assigned" for a given toy because there simply are too many toys.

Materialism and the culture of expectations

Kids should be able to value friendships more over the gifts they bring.

Money that could be spent on better causes

I don't mind donating money(donation in-lieu-of gifts) for some cause, but Raghu doesn't like that idea. He feels that we shouldn't be asking others to donate money and should leave it to their will.

Stress of buying a meaningful gift

Buying a gift for another person is always stressful for me. Unless you know what the other person has and what he wants, you can't buy a good gift. Yes, there are gift receipts, but getting it exchanged is stressful for the recipient. It may not be stressful, it is time consuming at least.

Sneaky repackaging

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18524.cfm

I've been drinking Silk soy milk for five years. This product's packaging has changed and I thought that must be some marketing idea. Luckily I noticed the missing USDA sign on the new cartons. Now they are going to lose my business. I'll also try to spread this as much as possible. Good that I noticed this, otherwise I would have been fooled into buying their products for several more years.

Don’t Be a National Park Bagger

Keith Goetzman summed up every bit of how I feel about travel.

http://www.utne.com/Environment/Dont-Be-a-National-Park-Bagger-5425.aspx

Sour grapes? Maybe. I once thought I would travel to many of the world’s most beautiful places. The Patagonian Andes, Antarctica, the Galapagos Islands—all awaited my intrepid exploration. Now, with the reality of climate change hitting full force, I see that even if I had the means, visiting all my dream destinations just wouldn’t be right, and that in some ways staying close to home is the best way to honor the earth. So yes, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that there are some national parks I will never see, and that photo or video images will be my only acquaintance with them. Which is why I’m watching every last episode of The National Parks, which can be viewed online through Friday.

Atrocious Advice from "Supernanny"
-Alfie Kohn

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Copyright © 2005 by Alfie Kohn. This article may be downloaded, reproduced, and distributed without permission as long as each copy includes this notice along with citation information (i.e., name of the periodical in which it originally appeared, date of publication, and author's name). Permission must be obtained in order to reprint this article in a published work or in order to offer
it for sale in any form. Please write to the address indicated on the Contact page at www.alfiekohn.org.

My post on hypnobabies yahoo group.

Hi Hypnomoms,
I used hypnobabies and had my dream birth:) yet to post my birth
story(my baby is 9 months already). In the mean time, I just want to
inform other moms about Elimination Communication.

In the book Diaper-free baby, Ingrid Bauer talks about gentle
elimination communication with babies and I can't sing enough praises
for her and EC. I started ECing when my baby was two weeks old, now I
can figure out when she wants to pee/poo. I rarely had any accidents
and it's working so well!

As I said earlier, I can't praise enough.

I've seen some negative feedback on this forum about EC. Please don't
let that effect your decision making. There is a nice support group
for all your EC questions(with 2003 members!). Lots of EC wisdom/tips
there to support you all along.

Please check out this group.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eliminationcommunication/

Pregnancy is a special time, I miss my pregnancy days :) I wish you
all the very best and hope to see you at the above yahoo group(for EC).

Love,
Chandana

PS: I am not affiliated with that yahoo group in any way other than
being a regular member. I took the time to post this message because I
love EC and the fact that
1.my DD doesn't have to suffer from diaper rashes.
2.it's easy on the planet(no disposable diapers)
3.easy on my wallet
4.easy for me and my husband(DD potty trained around one year !!)

This original post is located here.

The following article was published in chicken’s digest monthly – May 40016 AD.

Author: Golden Chick.

Chicken population is getting fed up by the activities of CETH (Chicken’s for ethical treatment of humans). Yesterday they vandalized a restaurant of KFH(Kentucky fried humans) protesting against alleged ill treatment of humans in slaughter houses. Before a couple of months they ransacked research labs of chicken & chicken medical co protesting against scientific experiments being conducted on guinea humans.

This inchicken behavior failed to draw enough public attention. Thus these vegetarian terrorists gain confidence and are encouraged to do more such humanely acts. The meat industry and scientific community are suffering huge losses because of these veggie terrorists.

They spread a lie that humans are ill treated in slaughter houses. It’s true that men are castrated without sedatives in slaughter houses, but I would like to point out that this is perfectly legal. Further these veggie terrorists forget that earlier humans castrated bulls in slaughter houses without sedatives. Actually every act of alleged cruelty pointed out by CETH terrorists were all earlier done on animals by humans.

CETH argues against de teething of humans in slaughter houses. But if human teeth aren’t removed these dumb witted humans will kill each other by biting. Space is a luxury in slaughter houses with each human getting 1 square feet of space, so they keep on fighting. Top avoid damage to human flesh, we de teeth them. And no we cannot administer sedatives while de teething. If we administer them meat prices will shoot up by 20%. Further, humans de-beaked chickens without sedatives in the past, so why should we care now?

CETH points out that stunning is ineffective. They say that as a result humans are killed with consciousness and at times are skinned alive and with consciousness. But I would like to point out that the meat industry has reduced this number to a large extent. Earlier around 10% of humans were skinned alive, but now that number has dropped down to 2%. Now let me describe this process and the precautions taken by our industry.

Shackling

During shackling, humans are hung upside-down by their legs on a line of shackles moving fast—approximately 182 humans per minute. Leg deformities and other injuries typical of large broilers may exacerbate the pain as their sensitive periostea are pinched and compressed by the metal shackles. After shackling, 3 percent of humans will have broken bones and 4.5 percent had dislocations. But this is immaterial since they will be slaughtered within an hour of shackling. If the industry tries to reduce shackling speed, then our production time will be drastically reduced.

Stunning and Temporary Immobilization

After dumping and shackling, humans proceed to the stunning area, where they are passed through an electrically charged water bath before having their throats cut. “Humane slaughter,” as defined by law for most species in many developed countries, requires that humans be rendered unconscious and, thus, insensible to pain prior to slaughter. But it is almost impossible to ensure that every human is rendered unconscious because the varied nature of the species hinders the effectiveness of the electrical settings. Doing so would increase our costs by many folds. As a result around 3% of humans escape stunning.

Throat-Cutting

After being stunned—or rather, temporarily immobilized or even entirely conscious after completely missing the stun bath due to avoidance behavior—humans are conveyed toward an automated spinning blade, commonly referred to as the “killing machine,” which is designed to cut their necks. Some conscious humans are able to avoid this blade, as well, by lifting their heads or flapping their sides. Many humans dodge the knives, some completely, some partially, because they are not fully stunned.

Scalding

Humans are dipped into the scald tank, which contains scalding hot water, to facilitate skin removal. It’s true that sentient humans are, indeed, sometimes scalded. Red-skin human carcasses, commonly found when electrical stunning methods have been used, are caused by a physiological response to heat when live humans enter a scald tank. But I would assure you that this number is very low, just 3.7 million humans per year which shows that our plants operate at 97% efficiency levels.

From the above said arguments it would be clear that CETH is exaggerating the activities done in slaughter houses. I would like to point out that chicken gospel says that humans were created for the well being of chickens. Everything was created for chickens and thus religion doesn’t prevent eating human meat. Further from a biological stand point it will be clear that chickens have sharp beaks to tear of human flesh. Chicken Godcreated chickens as carnivorous beings and thus its unnatural for chickens to become herbivorous.Veggie chickens lack essential nutrients and thus lead an unhealthy life style.

Hence I would request government and public to stop the atrocities of CETH and save the meat industry from these vegetarian terrorists.

Much Ado About Nothing
Celebrate Buy Nothing Day by sitting on your derriere

Traditionally the biggest shopping day of the year, the Friday after Thanksgiving sends millions of Americans, drone-like, to the malls to kick-start the holiday consumption orgy. But before you foil-wrap the roast beast and stash the organic cranberry dressing in the fridge, consider celebrating another holiday: Buy Nothing Day. Officially observed Nov. 25 this year in the U.S. and Nov. 27 internationally, Buy Nothing Day calls on consumers -- formerly known as "people" -- to forego the siren song of day-after sales and protest overconsumption.

Activists the world over will be staging events to highlight facts like this:
20 percent of the world's population consumes more than 80 percent of its natural resources.

Americans alone throw away 5 million more tons of trash between Thanksgiving and Christmas than during any other month.


Do your part to curb the waste by doing, well, nothing.

If you ask the question why you should care about the environment, the answer is, it's not others you are helping, you are going to help yourself to get off "the treadmill". I am not a good writer.. somebody has already done an excellent job of explaining it.

Your MONEY or your LIFE...
From Excess to Enough

Prisoner's dilemma is one of the most popular examples of game theory..

Get to know about 'The prisoner's dilemma'

If you are not upto going to some other website, here I have reformatted it to look good in plain text.

The classical prisoner's dilemma
___________________________________


Two suspects are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and having separated both prisoners, visit each of them and offer the same deal: if one turns Kings Evidence against the other and the other remains
silent, the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence and the betrayer goes free. If both stay silent, the police can only give both prisoners 6 months for a minor charge. If both betray each other, they receive a 2-year sentence each.

It can be summarised thus:

	A Denies	A Betrays
B Denies	Both serve six months	B serves 10 years, A goes free
B Betrays	A serves 10 years, B goes free	Both serve 2 years

Assume both prisoners are completely selfish and their only goal is to minimise their own jail terms. Each prisoner has two options: to cooperate with his accomplice and stay quiet, or to betray his accomplice and give evidence. The outcome of each choice depends on the choice of the accomplice. However, neither prisoner knows the choice of his accomplice. Even if they were able to talk to each other, neither could
be sure that they could trust the other. Now, let's assume our protagonist prisoner is rationally working out his best move. If his partner stays quiet, his best move is to betray as he then walks free instead of receiving the minor sentence.
If his partner betrays, his best move is still to betray, as by doing it he receives a relatively lesser sentence than staying silent. At the same time, the other prisoner thinking rationally would also have arrived at the same conclusion and therefore will betray. Thus, in a game of PD played only once by two rational players both will betray each other and the world will become a place for monsters. Betrayal is their only rational choice. However, if only they could arrive at a conspiracy,
if only they could be sure that the other player would not betray, they would both have stayed silent and achieved a better result. However, such a conspiracy cannot exist, as it is vulnerable to the treachery of selfish individuals, which we assumed our prisoners to be. That is where the true beauty and the maddening paradoxicalness of the game lie.

If only they could both cooperate, they would both be better off; however, from a game theorist's point of view, their best play is not to cooperate but to betray. This treacherous quality of the deceptively simple game has inspired libraries full of books, made it one of the most popular examples of game theory and made some people appeal for banning studies on the game.

If reasoned from the perspective of the optimal interest of the group (of two prisoners), the correct outcome would be for both prisoners to cooperate with each other, as this would reduce the total jail time served by the group to one year total. Any other decision would be worse for the two prisoners considered together. However by each following their selfish interests, the two prisoners each receive a
lengthy sentence.

In our day-to-day lives, we are the prisoners who betray, as it serves our selfish interests. Some situations where people betray(don't cooperate) are..

• loudly wafting your music through the entire neighborhood on a fine summer's day;



• not worrying about speeding through a four-way stop sign, figuring that the people going in the crosswise direction will stop anyway;



• not being concerned about driving a car everywhere, figuring that there's no point in making a sacrifice when other people will continue to guzzle gas anyway;



• not worrying about conserving water in a drought, figuring "Everyone else will";



• not voting in a crucial election and excusing yourself by saying "One vote can't make any difference";



• not worrying about having ten children in a period of population explosion, leaving it to other people to curb their reproduction;



• not devoting any time or energy to pressing gloabal issues such as the arms race, famine, pollution, diminishing resources, and so on, saying "Oh, of course I'm very concerned- but there's nothing one person can do"

When there are large number of people involved, people don't realize that their own seemingly highly idiosyncratic decisions are likely to be quite typical and are likely to be recreated many times over, on a grand scale; thus, what each couple feels to be their own isolated and private decision(conscious or unconscious) about how many children to have turns into a population explosion. Similarly, "individual"
decisions about the futility of working actively toward the good of humanity amount to a giant trend of apathy, and this multiplied apathy trtanslates into insanity at the group level. In a word, apathy at the individual level translates into insanity at the mass level.

(Written by Douglas Hofstadter for 'SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN', can be found in Metamagical Themas' chapter 31).

Author unknown..


LIFE OUT HERE
-------------
It's time for a confession. Truth that no other bottled water sipping,
Ralph Lauren wearing, "oh I can never drive in India" NRI has ever
dared to
divulge. Come closer now, I must confess this closely guarded secret
after
all.


Our life is actually - yes, you heard it right - pretty boring,
monotonous
and uneventful! Shocking, eh?
Here's an insider glimpse into what we NRIs do in our spare time. Our
weekends are largely spent on one of the following activities:


1.The NRI weekend get-together - This is our default weekend activity.
Various NRIs, mostly IT professionals with a smattering of doctors and
MBAs, gather at a restaurant, or at someone's house.


These events typically begin about ninety minutes later than their
scheduled time. As people arrive, jokes are cracked about their sense
of
schedule, or the lack thereof. These are the exact same jokes that were
cracked the previous weekend and the weekend before that.


Everyone laughs. Men and women split into separate groups. Bottles of
wine
are popped open - red for the men and mostly white for the women.
Discussions are usually centered on a few major issues - how India has
completely changed in the past ten years, how Bollywood movies are so
different, how cheap it is to call India now, and why we all should
move
back to our homeland soon.


2.The NRI "Surprise" Birthday parties - These are occasions when
someone,
in most cases a woman (the chief conspirator), throws a surprise
birthday
party for her unsuspecting spouse (the victim).


The activity begins with the chief conspirator sending out emails to
her
friends (co-conspirators) informing them of the upcoming event. The
victim
is excluded from these emails, to maintain an element of surprise. A
plot
is hatched.


Plans are made to lure the victim away from home at a predetermined
time,
using a lame excuse. Hushed phone calls between conspirators generate
tremendous excitement.


The day of reckoning arrives. The conspirators turn up, one at a time,
and
park at secret, pre-designated spots. They enter the victim's house and
wait patiently. They keep a close eye on the driveway, through the
family
room window.


As soon as the victim's car pulls up, a stern "silence" warning is
issued.
Everyone complies. Except for that one odd guy, who despite ten years
of
attending surprise parties still hasn't quite grasped the concept. A
child
begins to cry.


The hapless victim enters the house, thoroughly bored. People wait with
baited breath. As soon he walks past the corridor and into the kitchen,
everyone pounces.


"SURPRISE!!" they all yell in unison. The victim acts shocked and the
conspirators break out into rounds of self-congratulatory
back-slapping..


They recount exhilarating tales of how the event was planned. The chief
conspirator talks about the difficulties encountered in convincing the
victim to leave the house. Everyone asks the victim if he was aware of
the
plot. Unwilling to extend this torture anymore, he quietly shakes his
head.


The women squeal in sheer delight. Bottles of wine are opened, red for
the
men and white for the women. Discussions begin. On how India has
changed,
on Bollywood movies, on international dialing rates, and on how great
it
would be to move back to India.


3.The NRI getaways - At one of these above mentioned parties, someone
mentions the need to break away from it all, to do something different,
to
be adventurous. A getaway! Everyone nods in agreement. Vigorously.


In the coming weeks, schedules are reviewed. Suggestions are made. The
absolute essentials for such a getaway are listed. They are identical
to
the last getaway of course. A table tennis or a pool table, a
fireplace,
preferably a hot tub. Oh, and definitely not more than two hours' drive
from home. There are limits to adventurism after all.


The internet is googled. Phone calls are made. A decision is arrived
at..
Everyone concurs. Everyone except that one hard to please couple.


So, the search starts afresh. After a few attempts, a consensus is
reached.
On the designated long weekend, everyone arrives at this paradise on
earth,
a 90 minute drive from home. The men hit the beers and the pool table.
The
women hit the wines, white of course. The kids hit whatever they see in
front of them.


The hot tub goes unused because the women are reluctant to wear
swimsuits
in front of other desis, no matter how friendly. So, a few rounds of
Antakshri are played instead. Discussions begin. On how India has
changed,
on Bollywood movies and?.well, you get the idea.


So the next time an NRI gives you any grief about the exotic, alluring,
bacteria free life in the US or England or Canada or Australia, just
remember this NRI's confession, and smile. Oh, and pass those
unhygienic
jalebis and paan please - they are to die for!

In My Humble Opinion
(c) 1997-2005 Chandra K. Clarke

Hot But Not Bothered

People tell me things.

Sometimes I think it's because I must have been born with a "you can
trust me" aura. Maybe I look empathetic. Whatever the reason, the upshot
is that strangers have always felt comfortable talking to me, sharing
opinions or intimate details about their lives. Usually within about a
minute of meeting me. This means that 1) I never had the "embarrassed"
phase as a teenager. I'd heard it all by age nine. 2) Every time I
travel it's an exercise in sociological research.

Take the gruff fellow I met at the gas station yesterday. He was
filling up his quad cab pickup, and very incensed over the cost. Bent my ear
for fifteen minutes. "We're three months into that Kyoto thing," he
huffed, "and I don't feel any cooler, how about you?"

That, for me, neatly summed up how scientists and environmentalists
have blown the global warming debate.

The message for the past 20 odd years, you see, has been that we need
to reduce pollution because it's one of the chief causes of global
warming. This message has failed for the following reasons:

The Scientific Method - Scientists fight amongst themselves, in public,
over details. This problem isn't helped by the fact that this week's
science reporter was last week's lifestyles editor. Consider the
following scientific discovery headline cycle:

* Researchers suggest guar gum may possibly improve blood circulation
if ingested on Sundays
* Studies link guar gum to improved blood circulation
* Better blood with guar?
* Chewing gum: Does it make you live longer?
* Major chewing gum manufacturers investigating guar, debating new
product lines
* Cola bottlers announce plans for guar supplements in your favourite
fizzy
* Nation gone guar crazy!
* Scientist at another institute says original guar study flawed;
author forgot to carry the one
* Guar.com launched
* Original guar study author claims critic's mother wore army boots.
Did not forget to carry one
* Guar industry analysts worried
* Guar critic says did too, did too forget to carry the one

* Another new study: Guar linked to heart disease?
* Guar.com folds, 3500 IT employees now seeking work in India
* Year in review - Remember guar?

Vested Interests -- Advocates of global warming are researchers,
volunteers, and environmentalists - you know, people who are happy to have
enough spare change to be able to afford a fair-trade coffee sometimes.
Critics of global warming research tend to be car makers, oil companies,
and manufacturers - you know, people who are happy to have enough spare
change to be able to afford a coffee producing country now and then.

Whodunit - Even if we were able to get everyone to agree that global
warming is happening, it's difficult to say if human activity is the
cause. It could be a natural Earth cycle; it could be bored children on
planet Neefnoof aiming a really large magnifying glass at us. Okay,
probably it isn't that, but you get the idea.

Whither the weather? - The average non-scientific Joe on the street has
difficulty believing long term predictions about climate, when we still
can't reliably predict if it will rain in Philadelphia next Thursday.

So what *should* the message have been? Air quality.

It's personal: We all breathe. It's scientific: We've got instruments
that can tell us exactly what we're breathing in. It's immediate and
health related: What was that about asthma rates again? It's tangible:
Even guys in pickup trucks know when they can see, smell, and practically
chew the smog.

Plus it's really, really tough to spin the benefits of smog: "Just look
at that brown sky! Doesn't it just make you want to... to... oh, never
mind."

One last ponderable: In most of North America, it's now socially
unacceptable to light up a cigarette. But it's still okay to fire up a smoke
stack.

I suppose I should be careful. Without these kinds of strange
contrasts, I wouldn't have any material for a column. And then I'd have to...
ARGH!

Work for a living. Forget everything I just said! No, really...

An interesting read.

People so often equate wealth with happiness. While some individuals know what true happiness is, it's for the first time a nation is giving importance to happiness over wealth. Bhutan is pursuing an increase in Gross National Happiness, rather than Gross National Product.

Disater averted?

This article is surprising & interesting!

"We need an energy bill that encourages consumption."

-President Bush, Sept. 23, 2002, Trenton, New Jersey, speech

Here is why this quote is worth mentioning, if you are too dumb to understand the pun! This is the heights of Bush's stupidity! Do you have to encourage consumption in America? Aren't we consuming enough already? I dont remember the figures exactly, but it is something like this. US's population is only 5% of world's population, but it consumes 20-25% of oil. Isn't that enough?

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

-Margaret Mead

Live Like You Were Dying :: Tim McGraw


He said I was in my early forties
with a lot of life before me
when a moment came that stopped me on a dime
and I spent most of the next days
looking at the x-rays
Talking bout the options
and talking bout sweet time
I asked him when it sank in
that this might really be the real end
how?s it hit you when you get that kinda news
man what?d you do

and he said
I went sky diving
I went Rocky Mountain climbing
I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named BluManchu
and I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter
and I gave forgiveness I?d been denying
and he said someday I hope you get the chance
to live like you were dying.

He said I was finally the husband
that most the time I wasn?t
and I became a friend a friend would like to have
and all the sudden going fishin
wasn?t such an imposition
and I went three times that year I lost my dad
well I finally read the good book
and I took a good long hard look
at what I?d do if I could do it all again

and then
I went sky diving
I went Rocky Mountain climbing
I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named BluManchu
and I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter
and I gave forgiveness I?d been denying
and he said someday I hope you get the chance
to live like you were dying.

Like tomorrow was a gift and you got eternity to think about
what?d you do with it what did you do with it
what did I do with it
what would I do with it?

Sky diving
I went Rocky Mountain climbing
I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named BluManchu
and then I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter
and I watched an eagle as it was flying
and he said someday I hope you get the chance
to live like you were dying.
To live like you were dying
To live like you were dying
To live like you were dying
To live like you were dying

There is more harm than just caffeine due to a Coke can. Please don't support organizations like coke.

Please do your bit, it's just takes a minute to sign the petition.
The Nobel Prize for Sustainable Development

When I was young and bold and strong,
Oh, right was right, and wrong was wrong!
My plume on high, my flag unfurled,
I rode away to right the world.
"Come out, you dogs, and fight!" said I,
And wept there was but once to die.

But I am old; and good and bad
Are woven in a crazy plaid.

-Dorothy Parker.

The self hides in many ways, under every stone. The self can hide in compassion, going to India and looking after poor people, because the self then is attached to some idea, faith, conclusion, belief. The self has many masks, the mask of meditation, the mask of achieving the highest, the mask that I am enlightened, that ‘I know of what I speak’. All this concern about humanity is another mask. So one has to have an extraordinary, subtle, quick brain to see where it is hiding.


-Krishnamurti
Saanen, July 25, 1983

Scamway
Don't miss this.
Scamway

dark skies..
this is to those who love dark skies, and also to those who don't see anything to appreciate. For me, the dark skies signify the unfathomable mystery, and the twinkling stars - the joys of creation and the beauty of life. Too sad that we have to see the skies polluted with light.

one good news is that there is an association for people who love dark skies, and I stumbled up on it just today.

www.darksky.org

There are 10,500 people members in this organizations and it makes me glad to know that there are some people out there who love dark skies just like me...

Plastic bags consumed this year:*
173,526,157,350

173 billion.. can you believe that?

Top facts


Each year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are now consumed worldwide. That's comes out to over one million per minute!


Ireland has reduced plastic bag consumption by over 90% since the PlasTax was implemented in March 2002.


US annual plastic bag consumption requires an estimated 12,000,000 barrels of oil.


Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, birds and other animals die each year from swallowing plastic bags mistaken for food.


"Plastic bags have been dubbed the national flower of South Africa because they are such a prevalent form of litter."


Each high quality reusable bag you use has the potential to eliminate hundreds, if not thousands, of plastic bags over its lifetime.


According to the American Forest and Paper Association, in 1999 the US alone used 10 billion paper grocery bags, requiring 14 million trees to be cut down.


According to the industry publication Modern Plastics, Taiwan alone consumes 20 billion bags a year – 900 per person.

one more attempt to get a GMail offer. However, to reward you for your interest in my blogspot, here is an useful link.
http://www.stumbleupon.com
Great site. Helps you stumble up on a lot of great sites, faster.

I am justing posting this blog so that I may get the offer to try Gmail. I dont want to append any numbers after my name, so hope I can get the mail id I want.