Spires Afire

The Theme of the week ending today, at least to me, is 'Fire'.

At home, Mom and Dad experienced a Fire; which happened thankfully in their absence. The Emergency Fire Service department took a certain sum of money whose volume was equivalent to the Drachmas paid to receive the words of the Oracle at Sybilla. This is beyond the taxes. Thanks to their concerned and careful operation, the entire floor where the "smoke" came from had to be repainted. Three faulty equipment and one electric board were replaced.

The object that started the fire was an alarm installed internally whose objective was to alert everyone that the State provided 'Electricity' (something more precious than water or food) is available - and inverters can be switched to charge, generator-sets can be switched off.

Ironically
- Electricity is to be provided to the citizens of the state at a continuous uninterrupted basis by the power distribution networks endorsed by the state. Yet it is dispensed in a controlled manner, especially in Tamil Nadu in a controlled manner, ensuring that not more than 11 hours of electricity are domestically available causing a major expense.

The solution is for people to stop relying on Governments and develop resilient communities.

- The Fire Service department is to report to the district municipality and ensure that fires are put off before they spread and cause serious damage to property, human life and livelihood. Yet, the very fact that they need to take a sum to cater to their expenses is evidence that they are improperly governed and inappropriately administered and opaquely financed through unknown means.

- The Central Government, the State Government and almost every piece of administrative machinery in our country is rife with incompetence which is much higher than corruption itself. Not only do they expect bribes, they never guarantee any service. Uncertainty and Chaos within the Indian context have defeated Chronos who spells extreme order.

As usual hope floats, but without action hope remains an insignificant floating buoy.

The solution is to start changing ourselves and the world immediately around us. If you walked over a road and you found a ditch, then you have every reason to have it corrected lest it cause injury to you or another fellow citizen passing by. Taxes are unnecessary as they are directly shipped to Swiss Bank accounts or perhaps stowed away in subterranean vaults. Civil services can be governed through community ventures - which must be formed with a clause that they will not reach a head-count larger than 200 (or a suitable number based on population density/demographics.)

Imagine an Aircraft pilot who never takes off on time, never lands on time, never lands at the announced destination on time ever, or sometimes is absent for duty. Imagine all Bus drivers, Train drivers and Cab drivers subject their availability to randomness and perform their duty only with chaos. A cab driver taking someone to the airport accidentally drops them at the railway station, but doesn't do amends. --- This is exactly how the politicians are running India. It is not very difficult to see that they never achieve the goals they set, nor the modes they set, nor the principles they promise, nor the people they promise, nor the morals they promise and so on. In a commercial enterprise where merit, value generation is the core item, these people will be replaced by competent people. However in politics, the ecosystem permits only the chaos-worshippers to participate.

Our Country is on Fire. It surely does have the potential to become a super-power. Yet it is on fire. We need to put out this fire (metaphorically the political-administrative-chaos that has persisted for the last decade almost...) but take care that we do not set other things on fire whilst doing so. It will take at least 10 times our daily effort today to get India back. Gathering at places and stating facts that politicians are corrupt and must not be re-elected ends up as a joke - as it finally inconveniences people - akin to a failed attempt to put off a fire, but damaging several other items.

Are we ready, as Indians, to put out this fire and set the nation right (or) are we /weakly/ bothered _only_ about our daily income, bread, roti-kapda-makaan schemes?

Changes are hard because they must begin small. Kejriwal or Anna Hazare or XYZ cannot start a new party that will be a panacea for all ills for the nation -nor- will they achieve much if they get elected. Ensuring that garbage gets dumped in a quarry and not a neighboring plot of disputed land is a small step. Respect to blue-collar employees who don't seem to deserve it is another step. Forgiveness to those who wrong us, for revenge destroys both the avenged and the avenger. Are we prepared to make the small, yet necessary changes? --- Remember, nothing, including life was formed in a Day. India cannot become a superpower in a day or on a day during 2020, it can gradually grow and keep growing unstoppably into a better place.

I am all for hypothetical idealistic Rama Raj with distributed power centers to disallow full dictatorships from ruining the nation. People's decision is more important than a bureaucrat or politician. It is now or never, for we have reached an inflection point.

In the future, we will need to start a war to destroy the forces acting against our own nation with high probability. But today, there still remains an option of peace. History tells me laziness always prevails over patriotism. .... Shamefully, I agree.

Three Wise Monkeys (dont: see, hear, speak +evil)

Three Wise Monkeys : Reexamining an Ancient Teaching

The proverb of the "Three Wise Monkeys" has existed for long. It is often interpreted as Them that (do not see, hear or speak) evil shall be spared the three Vajras. There is a connection to body, speech and mind made.

Here is what I fathom. This is what the original was supposed to say (and was lost in literary translation.) 

"Do not see what you are not supposed to see. Do not hear what you are not supposed to hear. Do not speak what you are not supposed to speak." 

If you read that verse you will understand that within itself lies the paradox. "How will you know what you should not see if you do not see that and know the cause of its abhorrence? Applying the same to the next two actions, unless I have at least heard once what I should not be hearing how can I filter that? Unless I know what people do not want to listen to, how can I not speak that?"

There is enough evidence that the 'Three Wise Monkeys' and the paradox of morality dates back to extremely ancient times. There are figurines dating back to the mother goddess times and later to the times of phallic deities with similar symbols that suggests that this has been at least from the beginning (or renewal) of the five-thousand year old super-civilization we are.

If you went to school in India, you definitely associate these with (Mahatma) Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (presently the "unofficial Paterfamilias of India.") These were gifted to him by a Chinese admirer who traced back 4th Century BC Confucianism to 8th Century BC philosophy that was prevalent in India (too much in India is wrapped up under the umbrella term Hinduism.) That helped it to make its way to our primary school text books and hopefully still exists on them today.

If you have read "My Experiments with Truth" (M K Gandhi) which is probably one of his best contributions - leaving the rest of the political dogma and controversies to vaporize as they have; the actual point being made is: "Find what is wrong, and the only way you can stop hearing/seeing/speaking it is by eliminating it, or by accepting it, until which time, you continue to address it."

Simplistic teaching for Rote Learning is helpful if you can recall what was learned in Rote and re-examine it at a later point in life. For this very reason Rote learning is unacceptable for higher education but preferable for learning if you are under the age of ten (10) - as we tend to remember lots of prose/poetry from under that age.

Urgency over efficiency - A cause of Stress

Human beings, irrespective of their profession have always been affected by trends from various echelons of society. Reading news articles, especially from Scientific sources that are on the lines of "We probably found the Higgs Boson" (ref: CERN press release today)  or "We have evidence of extraterrestrial microbial life" (ref: Mars Mission) has been quite frequent of late. Scientific method demands verification, the possibility of an antithesis and the dismissal of the antithesis based on facts or conjectures that can be repeated.

The new trend is not restricted to scientific articles, but also to Consumer Electronic products, the arena of Embedded Software Systems I work on. The pressure today is to deliver solutions to customers almost at 1/3rd the duration they were being delivered in the prior year.

This is a clear indicator of the aggressive motivation of growth. This "unhealthy" phenomenon is further exacerbated by economics seemingly inclining in favor of asymmetric or asymptotic growth patterns of material value generators in society.

In this world, where the everyday rush is not unlike a gold rush, it has a significantly "unhealthy" effect on both the perception of services provided and products delivered. A new acceptance of the 'incomplete' solution has began to dominate sectors including the automotive sector. Telecom companies have resorted to solutions like Android, where the com.phone.android (the core phone application is bound to restart, and is not as rigorously tested as prior.)

On the one hand we have a lot of momentum on increasing our awareness to the Environment and the Hazards we generate. Yet, the root cause of this lies in the want and the need to deliver ahead of the prior benchmark, oftentimes without sound reason or at times against reason.

Having been a hyper-workaholic, I can easily associate my habits with the work culture that has impinged our society. I have grown to understand that a calmer, consistent, measured and sound approach based on factual reasoning has a higher probability to succeed than a quick hack. This is something that has to be imbibed by entire companies as part of their culture and thereafter entire societies or groups of associated people.

An approach combined with commitment and the ability to reason and resolve the root cause of issues can benefit everyone in the long run and relieve several people in the chain of work from unnecessary stress. This also has to be done with the understanding that we, humans, are not machines, and have our biorhythms that are not always aligned with the day/night or a company's working hour routine. A solution that benefits both can easily be worked out considering that the result will always be a win-win.

I would personally be interested in hearing different thoughts on the same, especially on methods to curb the 'urgency' syndrome in the larger part of our responsibility to society and the environment itself.

Traffic, the Deccan Queen: Lessons for Life

Driving through Pune traffic has never been a pleasant experience. This would apply to almost every Indian city considering the absolute lack of civic sense and the value of patience among those who use the roads. This includes vehicle drivers, pedestrians and any type of commuter.

The concept of lanes seems abnormal as people try to get their vehicle into the nearest available slot of free space. The one shown on the wide enough to be an 8-lane highway, but definitely not accommodate the chaos that is visible. Unsurprisingly people changing lanes in their personal life too is not unusual.

The time at which the roads get used to their maximum is one element that lends to the chaos. In the morning you do find alert commuters, but impatient commuters who are willing to break any rule. Lanes are for changing or worse yet blurring. This concept escapes the mind of the otherwise intellectually savvy commuters. The time is not essentially imposed by Daytime or by fixed office-hours, but largely by a biorhythm that forces people to use the waking hours to do all their work.

Self disregard

The next picture shows a slightly less dense crowd, except for the fact that two wheelers and four wheelers are attempting to use the same algorithm to place themselves on the road. If you take a keener look at the picture, you would notice a majority of those using two-wheelers not using helmets. Once they reach a highway for commuting to a far away office or industrial park, this becomes extremely unsafe. One can then diagnose that this self disregard will show up in the way individuals handle their own lives to a great extent.

The two wheelers, being the highest statistically in any city in India, cause extreme chaos - the riders do get fatigued because of the same chaos which doesn't seem to rid itself.

I have learned a few lessons from the Traffic here, which transcends the traffic in itself. This chaos resulting from a blatant refusal to follow any road rules is a cyclic problem that is being infused in the Indian psyche. The solution can only come from homes, schools and as the new generation gets educated.

Enforcement in populations at the scale of India is difficult. If anyone believes that 'enforcement' will work, they are advocating 'dictatorship' for I have seen smaller scales of the same problem and have seen that 'enforcement' in most cases tends to be dictatorship as all enforcers cannot be trained to follow a benevolent system.


Lack of Public Transport
The primary cause of the problem is the lack of proper public transport. Most Industries and Information Technology companies have created their own solution to transport which is an added cost to their operation. However tax free, their operations might be, this burden is borne additionally by the Employer and the Employee. In India Governance is a mere farce where the complexity of issues renders it impossible for anyone to attempt to effect changes to simplify and streamline systems. However, introducing public transport and preventing private vehicles from taking on the road cannot be a solution that would be rolled out in a day. This leads to delay in implementation. Every second of the delay results in the problem from becoming larger than it was prior. Postponement always makes the problem tougher rendering sense to Einstein's statement "A problem cannot be solved at the level at which it was created."

Lack of Personal Safety Concerns
In the land where human life is aplenty, the concern for human life itself becomes reduced. Worse yet, this problem resembles a "resource availability" problem. If a resource becomes plenty, its inherent valuation decreases. Hence each person cares much less for their own safety and almost naught for the safety of the rest of the populace. This is a huge issue.

Culture Shock
India, especially in cities like Pune is witnessing a transition from what is actually Indian culture derived from the days of the "British Raj" (colonial period) to present day Western Independent and Free-Thinking Culture. India has been existing with its cultural nuances for at least a thousand years and removing the cultural roots seems impossible. Hence the resultant culture shock is also absorbed with a sense of confusion. This is later displayed in every situation - "customer service", "bean counters", "queues", "stranger interaction" where the basic human psyche is so confused that people now identify themselves by language, geography, similitude but seldom relate to each other as human.

Lack of Self Management
What is often described as "Time Management" is truly Self-Management. This is one of the key necessities of any population transcending into a highly productive value group. Unfortunately, the culture shock and the 'chaos' of the plenty results in blatant disregard for others. This shows up as poor time management. The simplest test is to find out why something was late. The answer is usually that there was an external influence to blame on which the person or persons responsible had no control. This grows in complexity and ends up slowly as a huge disregard to self in various aspects of life that become visible slowly.

The fraction of the population who identify the problems and work towards pulling themselves out of these are kept down by the inertia of a system of massive proportions. This goes on to such an extent, that Aldus Huxley's "Brave New World" or a similar system might even work for a high-population environment like India.


The Nature of Traffic :: State of Society :: Chaos here
Chaos everywhere (evident in the nature of traffic), is the price we pay for the level of Freedom which we experience. Civic "conditioning", sometimes referred to as better civic-sense is in every sense another form of "Big Brother" control. Cooperative tasking in a large scale is possibly most difficult to achieve. That leaves India and China as the few countries who are experiencing a problem to which the world will soon be introduced to aplenty.

Here we are, with understanding of an issue that envelopes us and is easily visible in our daily life.

Will we get better or wait for a rather bitter event of rapid population decrease resulting from natural or unnatural circumstances to address and resolve these issues?

Social Networks and Tabbed Browsing

All of us browse the net using browsers which support multiple tabs for our convenience if not the Operating System's at the very least. Microsoft who tried to disagree finally was forced to provide a feature that was definitely something that was required - I hope know one patents that!

At this point the same social networks Google Plus, Google Mail [another chat client], Facebook, Orkut all have an in-browser chat client that pops up. To make matters worse, you can add Skype's website too without the standalone client and try out their pop-up. Need I tell you that there's tons more you can get to which have their own chat environment that keeps popping up!

Promoters of all the above products have forgotten what a user can/cannot do when all these simultaneous windows go up with people chatting - especially with a different number of people just saying hi on all of the tabs.

Open one more Google+ or Facebook tab, the problem gets more complicated. This is well known. The creators of these social networks use each others networks to gauge competition if not connect. Why then has this set of issues not yet been fixed?

None of these can co-exist, nor can 1,2,3 coexist at any point.

1. Multiple Tabs with Different Social Networks and Popup chat enabled
2. Multiple Tabs with the same Social Network and Popup chat enabled
3. Third Party website with multiple Social Network chat enabled through a client in Multiple Tabs

Lack of cooperating with your competition to deliver your customer the best in class result is one thing. But not adding a feature that is superfluous enough not to disturb the user by "default" (yes: default) and not switching it on whenever the multiple tab situation is present is just plain customer agnostic bitchy networks. No wonder GM pulled out ads and who knows who else pulled out their ad campaigns which were obviously not properly targeting.

Wait, when was the last time I clicked through to a useful thing in a social network advertisement? I've never done it in that. -- That should speak volumes about "sponsored/highlighted updates" et al. I am not nitpicking at one social network, but "the social network" coz everyone else ends up copying them - however intuitive the copying might be.