Annus Mirabilis

26 years of Life completed on 21st August. Yahoo !

Annus mirabilis is a Latin phrase meaning "wonderful year" or "year of wonders". A year where many dreams blossomed and similarly many nightmares ended. So life was never better than previous year (Though just late but not too late for me). Between the end of the illusions and the awakening as a different person.

I am missing my friends today. But now, they have all gone into parts of India -- and I remain alone here, with only their memories in my heart, and tears in my eyes.

"When the facts change, I change my mind," said Lord Keynes once. I am also doing the same while understanding the tussle, cooperation and competition between development sector and corporate sector in academic life here.

The motto of life in the busy schedules of life has changed to न दैन्यं न पलायनम् !

Ten Issues - 17

1- Why Zappos Offers New Hires $2,000 to Quit : The policy of providing a let-out after one week has gained worldwide attention. Columnist Keith McFarland explains why it makes sense.

2- Who Was Milton Friedman?: Keynesianism was a great reformation of economic thought. It was followed, inevitably, by a counter-reformation. A number of economists played important roles in the great revival of classical economics between 1950 and 2000, but none was as influential as Milton Friedman.

3- End Financial Control of European Governance : In developing countries and now in Europe, government debt allows creditors to exercise undue power over decision making. The Euro crisis is clear evidence that we need to break out of the economic straitjacket imposed by an over-powerful financial sector, says Susan George in an interview with Nick Buxton.

4- Who needs a bank? : Should we make banks better, or just make them redundant? Peer-to-peer currency schemes like bitcoin.org offer the possibility of networked money without banks. Should democrats embrace the possibilities?

5- Free Enterprise Vs. Regulation : Raghuram Rajan had seen the impact of over-regulation in an underachieving economy. Years later, he also saw the perils of under-regulation as championed during the Alan Greenspan era. The Eric J. Gleacher, Professor of Finance at the Booth School of Business discusses the question of achieving the right mix of free enterprise and sensible regulation

6- Too much information : How to cope with data overload

7- Good Ideas and Great Ideas : A worthy idea needs to be nurtured and developed, rethought and reworked, often thrown away and picked back up again. There’s a substantive difference between a passing fancy and groundbreaking concept. It is our approach to ideas that makes that difference.

8- Johann Hari: How to survive the age of distraction - As in the book The Lost Art of Reading – Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time, the critic David Ulin puts it: "Reading is an act of resistance in a landscape of distraction.... It requires us to pace ourselves. It returns us to a reckoning with time. In the midst of a book, we have no choice but to be patient, to take each thing in its moment, to let the narrative prevail. We regain the world by withdrawing from it just a little, by stepping back from the noise."

9- 5 Principles of Creativity : So to compete in today’s marketplace, you have to be able to create. That’s much different than just working faster or harder or longer. The good news is that, while we can’t all be a Picasso or a Mozart, there are some simple principles we can follow that will enhance our ability originate ideas that are truly new and important.

10 - The game theory of discovery and the birth of the free-gap : Too many things to choose from, more every day. No efficient way to alert the world about your service, your music, your book. How about giving it away to help the idea spread?

Ten Issues - 16

1- Great compilation of cultural article at BBC Hindi : Enjoy Reading about Hindustani Tahzeeb

2- ऑन स्‍क्रीन ऑफ स्‍क्रीन : बहुरुपिया का माडर्न अवतार आमिर खान

3-Death by Dialogue By Trisha Gupta : What does it mean for the future of Hindi cinema if most films are now in fact conceived, thrashed out and largely executed not in Hindi but in English? Will filmmakers only tell the stories of a minuscule section of the population?

4-National Film Awards : The absurdity of censorship - An open letter to Hon’ble Minister for Information & Broadcasting on July 14, 2005 by Rakesh Sharma, a prominent Indian documentary film-maker.

5- Paradoxes of memory by Helmut König: Lasting peace agreements after wars and civil wars were for a long time considered to be conditional upon damnatio memoriae – the deliberate and reciprocal forgetting of violence and injustice. However, the established amnesty clause is only realistic where certain rules were not broken during war. The First World War is beyond its scope of applicability, the extermination war of the National Socialists even more so. Where forgetting is impossible, remembering is all that remains. Such remembrance is inextricably and paradoxically linked to forgetting: only what has been remembered can actively be forgotten.

6- Fighting Mr Smith : The Indian Murdochs will not apologise. Nor will the Indian Rebekah Brooks resign. Mr Smith has spread rapidly in Indian media. There are no Neos here to challenge him. PADMAJA SHAW says the Indian ecosystem of news has imbibed some of the negatives of Murdoch’s news empire but is not about to admit culpability.

7- Philadelphia University Commencement Speech – May 15th 2011 : Steve Blank is a Silicon Valley-based retired serial entrepreneur, founding and/or part of 8 startup companies in California’s Silicon Valley.

8- Am I A Product Of The Institutions I Attended? Unstructured learning in structured learning environments: A personal view of Amitabha Bagchi

9- From Technologist to Philosopher : Why you should quit your technology job and get a Ph.D. in the humanities By Damon Horowitz. Thank You Namit Sir.

10- The Brain on Trial by David Eagleman : Today, neuroimaging is a crude technology, unable to explain the details of individual behavior. We can detect only large-scale problems, but within the coming decades, we will be able to detect patterns at unimaginably small levels of the microcircuitry that correlate with behavioral problems.

Introspection

Welcome, there is a change in the Blog outlook to make it more simple and sober. I did this after struggling with slow internet connection. I am wandering in the landscape of loneliness. Today, I writing this blog in order to comprehend, not to express myself. A paradigm shift in mine thinking !

How many memories/information can a person stand, and how many does he need? Does one need either huge academic knowledge or field work only to prove his case of merit ? What is the definition of luxury or necessity for a family (not individual)? These are some basic question that is haunting me. Leave alone these question on fate.

Despite introspection, We Are Strangers to Ourselves. Ability to be ourselves is crucial, not flowing in the shallow water of superficiality. There is inbuilt existential frustation and restlessness in humans. No person can escape from the thoughts buzzing in the mind. The difference between getting lost and finding new ways distinct achievers in the fighters.

One has to eliminate what one does not aspire for and then start search for what one aspires. When everything is at stake there is nothing to lose. The phase of learning is always unglamarous and difficult in the nature. But when inspired by inner zeal, nothing in the world can stop what must rise. There will be lot of failures and setbacks in the initial years. And a floating question : Is it worth it ? But life goes on with unanswered questions.

The paradox happens when one read something like that : Doing what you know is fun, but doesn't improve you. That really hits your instinct and challenges for uplifting your standards.

A life well lived for others and with others is mine aim. Otherwise, In the words of Anton Chekhov - "Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out." Do anyone wants such meaningless life ? I'd rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate. Need a little dose of madness to become free. One need to ask : What's next? How to improve? What's this worth? Why is this happening?

Thought of the Day : ‎"He’s freed from his loneliness by the word. Isn’t that the point of poetry? Breaking through the walls of solitude. Poetry is the great S.O.S. of loneliness." --Anna Kamienska

Two Videos and Five Points Observed

Derek Sivers: How to start a movement

With help from some surprising footage, Derek Sivers explains how movements really get started. (Hint: it takes two.) A pioneer with courage has just to stand up and do it first :)TED Video



There were five points that I came across in recent days. Each of them opened a new door of analysing the world and mine life in different manner.

1- One question recently bumped me off : Am I A Product Of The Institutions I Attended? I am caught in the web of traditional outlook of liberal, conservative, socialist, anarchist or even fascist. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That is the human nature emerges as a complex patterns out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions.

Much of learning is not done in the confined environment of the institute. Institutes are just facilitator for providing suitable environment for the growth of an individual. But an institution should balance insanity and genius activity of the individual. Institution that reduces risk taking ability of the student as per trade off of the luxury harms overall welfare of the society. Here, the catch is that the idea of 'luxury' and 'necessities' is subjective in nature. Institutions end up in becoming one's brand/identity for lifetime that holds opposite of the development of an individual.

2- A question is not a test of memory, but a test of understanding. That should be an ideal way of learning about new field. Exams are more oriented towards memory cramping rather than understanding. Open book test gives better idea of genius in the class :)

3- The most marketable skill in India today is the ability to abandon your identity and slip into someone else's. The loss of one's identity so easily for economic reasons appears a complex issue to me. On one hand, it proves adaptability while on other, an unsustainable way of development.

4- All heroic acts are foolish to your contemporaries! The acts may be original rather than research but society gives importance to mediocrity at any moment of time. The people who have been understood are third rate. They are understood because they are saying the same things that you already believe in. It is always better to be Socrates rather than Gandhi at any moment of life for me. It will land great part of your life in loneliness but that is another story of different aspect.

5- Decorum is linked to policing in India. Yes, the study of Indian Government will prove this right.

Why You Need to Fail - by Derek Sivers

The video shows the importance of failure - for effective learning, growth mindset, and quality through experimentation. The message of the video is inspiring and worth remembering : Doing what you know is fun, but doesn't improve you.