Reaching There

The world is divided into classes, based on socioeconomic system, based on education, based on color of skin and numerous other ways humans can think of satisfying their emotion that wants us to portray goodness over others. It's a human desire to somehow show I'm-better. I'm richer, I'm fairer, I'm smarter, I'm faster etc. are emotions that constantly hover around our mind as flies buzzing around a pile of dump. A rather strong analogy but whenever I'm suffering from any of these I've to say I'm dumping my mind with s%#t.  I'm an optimist but seeing a world full of bias and hatred sometimes is too overwhelming if given a chance to sink into the layers of my heart. In a world where the apparent ridiculousness of society can be measured by the malarkey of the media that is considered the voice of the society. This "coldness" was pointed out by Nicholas Kristooff in his NY Times column where new media was ready to discuss absurd co...

In the post-apocalyptic world of the movie Waterworld "dirt" is a rare commodity and used for trading. The soil of one's country is of paramount importance and some expats have gone through a lot of efforts to import soil from their home country to ensure their mortal coils can be buried in a familiar soil. In fact a whole industry has sprung to fulfil this human need. If that wasn't enough space burial seems to be catching on. Patriotism springs from the idea that one should be devoted to homeland like a patriarch or a matriarch. The soil of homeland is the key attribute that springs the feelings of devotion. Not surprisingly because who can deny the prosperity of nation that can boast lush green fields and blue rivers that can only be made possible from a fertile soil. The prosperity of Egyptian civilization was reliant on the fertility of the soil around the Nile Valley. The importance of soil traverses from the physical to the metaphysical realm. "Dust tho...

Nassim Nicholas Taleb I was watching Nassim Nicholas Taleb talk on his book Antifragility : Things that Gain from Disorder on Authors@Google. I was going through an interesting article on  Why Your IT Project May Be Riskier Than You Think on HBR. A new term " black swan " caught my imagination and a few hours later I ended up with Taleb's talk. Disclaimer - I haven't read the book yet so this is not a book review but a way to motivate myself and justify either buying the book or at least borrowing it from somewhere. I'm currently trying to laboriously and lethargically read the book The Signal and The Noise by Nate Silver. So it would be some time before I can put my hand to another one. What I found interesting in Taleb's Antifragile talk? So coming back to Taleb's talk there were a few key takeaways that managed to stuck in my mind because of the lighthearted conversation of the author as well as the simplicity of the idea; these key...

Politics and political satire go hand in hand. A little bit of Googling on these two keywords would result in the likes of Aristophanes  (called the prince of ancient comedy) to the modern day political satires in The Daily Show and The Colbert Nation on Comedy Central for those familiar with American television (or what's left of it after the flooding of realty shows that seem to defy rationality and creativity alike). I'm a big fan of The Daily Show which tags itself as political comedy and fake news. The show manages to bring out the ridiculousness of the various so called "news" channels which have become sources of sensationalist media that impregnates facts with heavy doses of fiction to bloat the straight facts to a state of perpetual chaos and bytes of information that can be fed to people through tubes rather than be chewed intelligently. IMHO! - Political parties are social unit of people whose aim is to gain authority and hopefully create enoug...

All of us have a lot of questions that seem to popup on a regular basis in the curious minds. Do I have a purpose in my life? Where do I come from and where am I going? What is life and death? I believe it's perfectly "sane" to think about these questions seriously and do research to make the answers more clearer as we progress in life (or as we come a day closer to an eventual death). I recently saw a video of a debate between Richard Dawkins and Rowan Williams the Archbishop of Canterbury. The topic of the debate seemed a very appropriate topic to listen about from two learned minds - Human Beings & Ultimate Origin. I wasn't expecting any answers to my questions but the curious nose leads to various directions and sometimes I let it lead me (yeah, guilty). The debate on Human Beings included the theory of Natural Selection propounded by Charles Darwin more than hundred & fifty years ago. The idea of tree of life that began in a primordial sou...

I started delving with the ideas of atheism and spiritualism lately. It all started with a comment that religious faith is blind with ignorance towards scientific methodology of evidence or mathematical proof. You can read more about the post here .  Which lead to further contemplation on the topic, which seemed to have permanently ingrained itself in my mind. However I realized there was a fundamental difference between Western atheism,   Abrahamic   religions and   Vedic   spiritualism. I'll only go into atheism and my spiritualism. Western atheism arises from the debate between creation versus evolution. Modern scientists refuted the claims such as Earth was at the center of the universe or the universe is a few thousand years old. Over the course of Western history it was proven the infinite magnitude of universe (even multiverse). Thus evolved the modern science, which included stalwarts like Sir Issac Newton, Nicolaus Copernicus  and other open m...