UFO Religion !

We the human beings are physically one of the weakest life forms ever walked on this planet. However by understanding and adjusting to external situations, we learnt to adapt and survive under most of the circumstances. No matter how trivial this fact might appear, but we always tend to forget this trivia in order to reassure the prowess of our 0.5 kg grey matters sitting right on top of all of us. We all want to identify the purpose of our lives, the sole purpose for which the matter of this planet is transferred from elements to us.

Let me share with you one true, historically important story, which I just made up ! Hundreds, perhaps thousands of years ago, One fine day, a wise man sitting alone, idle (yes, that's what wise man have been doing ever since!) near a lake, saw something in the sky. It was windy that day and some swirling dust particles floating in the distance took some mesmerizing form. With moon in the background and ever twinkling stars added hallucinating aura to the whole scene. A thunder bolt, a streak of lightning pierced the sky and the 1000s of bulbs lit-up. The wise was hit upon by a marvelous business plan of all time. Rest we know is history. Yes, you got it right. That was the day, wise man discovered God !

Somewhere else, on some other part of the planet, few hundreds and thousands of years later, Deja-Vu. By now, the wise-men has created and accumulated enough wealth, health and prosperity for himself and his entire clan. So he no-longer was interested in wandering outdoors in harsh environment. So this time, a common man with mango face was sitting near the lake, wondering about purpose of his life ! The common man has learnt from the wise men that God has created everything and though he resides in everybody's heart, its imperative for the common man, to regularly pay some fee as token of appreciation to wise men, so that wise men can connect the mango faced men with the God. So, after witnessing the scene almost similar to what wise men saw thousands of years ago, the common man, logically concluded that whatever he saw, experienced and perceived cant be God. So he coined a new acronym for that as  Universally Foolable Objects, UFOs, the flying saucer.

Lets do some math. Everyday lighting strikes close to 100000 times, somewhere and everyday some kind of cyclone or hurricane or whirlpool appears in another 96378 locations, according to some leaked calculations from extremely reliable sources. So all in all if we add just these 2 events, 196378 life threatening things are happening all around us.Multiply this number by 365 and then multiply this by 5 billion, so close to 30000 trillion life threatening events have taken place on our plant, ever since the big bang. Scary, isn't it! Of-course we can relate to only few hundreds of such artificial incidences happening everyday around us. So to cut the long story short, the probability that you are reading this blog is less then 1 / (Zillion Zillion), and yet you are !

So, now I hope you can calculate the the probability of what happened to our us and our planet, something similar will/might happen to some other planet, at some place far away from us in the same sequence ! 

Whatever non-sense I have jotted out so far, you might be wonder what is this post all about ?

So as some legends might put it, lets try to connect the .......(dots) ! We know that its highly improbable that life exist in similar shape and size as it is on earth, anywhere else in the universe, yet we want to believe in UFOs sometimes also referred as God. We know that if we were not as lucky as we are, we would not have been where we are and still we don't want to believe in our luck and instead happily, readily give credit to the wise men and his creation, the God. Perhaps some unlucky mango person, in order to get lucky created the first recorded, publicly available proof of the UFOs.

Everything written about God became religion. Each and every religious story, commandments, rules or regulations were written by some lucky individuals like us, who happened to be born few thousand years before us. Perhaps they wrote all those sacred texts out of innocence, guided by their personal encounters, perceptions with the Nature, the UFOs and the people (I hope we can call aliens as people !) sitting in or on those UFOs. I am sure even those lucky people would have never imagined, that we will stick to their stories so ardently, with zeal and passion so much that we will make their stories ours, we will live our life as per their beliefs, so as to make everyone around us happy, perhaps except us !

Some of us might argue that UFOs and the entire Science is nothing but act of God while some other might say that discovery of God is a simple case of mistaken identity because God is actually the first alien ever visited us on his (or her?) UFO !


Life possibly exists in different shapes and sizes within our solar system and if we are to believe the man in Black, they are out there, in our neighbourhood, living peacefully. A planet full of aliens all whom visited our planet at different points in time in past 4.5 Billion years, might be thriving right on our planet in a parallel universe. Each of their visits might have given rise to a specific event, which was decoded either by part of science, religion or fiction !

So where is this post heading now. Simple linear deductions, yeah that's it. To summarize we are just made of all those tiny, non brainy things ! Our planet is an insanely lucky planet to have survived so far. Thanks to this intra-celestial conspiracy, we the mortal human beings today are busy shopping, posting pictures taken through iPhone sharing instantly on Facebook. While most of us are still busy perpetuating our perception of what is written in those sacred texts.

Imagine this. Out of trillions of accidents happened to our planet, just change one and The Purpose of Life, The God and even my entire Blog Post will no longer be relevant !  

Information Pollution !

Sometimes we tend to believe that by reading everything, by writing whatever we want to and sharing whatever we like, we are exercising our fundamental right to free will which is also reinstated by the founding fathers of our nation via document publicly known as constitution.

You and me, i.e We, want to take unbiased decisions out of our own free will. We want to process all the information available to us and then would like to decide, what is right and what is wrong for us, them and everybody else around us. No matter how much powerful we think our brain is, at least the conscious brain has some severe limitations. It can only process X amount of information at a time and only a total of Y amount of information every day and after analyzing and processing all that information, it needs Z amount of rest.

Today anybody randomly can generate Data by touch of a button. And randomly we keep feeding, harping and sometimes even critically analyzing those pieces of irrelevant information.

What happens next! Fatigue, tiredness, sore eyes, loss of appetite, headaches, cramps, never seen/heard/ experienced before cravings, liquor as we gain weight on our way to Consumption Nirvana !

I am not against consumption, don't get me wrong. Infact I think that's the purpose of our lives. This post is only about the by-product of Consumption Revolution, i.e Information Pollution.

Marketers, Media and a very less know, but perhaps world's best know marketers knows about this Information Pollution very well. Infact they are sitting at the helm, with desire and power to worsen this pollution, create a hazy cloud of information always in front and even behind our eyes, so that we see what they want us to see, dont act and always react, so that they can make hay even when the sun is set. Yes, I am talking about our age old friends, our so called representatives, who are here to serve us, so that their interests are served to the maximum, our friendly, but not living in neighbourhood anymore Politicians!

Those of us who can, in order to save time, are busy buying gadgets and later on updating and upgrading them simply because we need them inside our toilets, cars and offices and bed-rooms. We are spending this saved time or whatever time left with us, in consuming more things and in the process generating more and more data about what we consumed today, who's the biggest consumer among us, what our friends must consume and what they should not etc.

We try to analyze all the advertisements, test, taste free samples and buy the most appropriate Cream or Mobile phone for us. We tend to believe that we have made a rational decision by buying the best product. I think actually we are simply buying the best marketer. All the shampoos and toothpaste available in the market claim to solve all your problems, yet none of them does solve anything. Perhaps we know it as well, yet we buy, consume something, because we have to. So is this A battle of creating most luring pieces of information (by the ways of advertisements, paid reviews, social media campaign, save the world campaigns, videos, news paper ads etc) only ?

Call it Irony or Travesty, but we don't realize Our mind works on the same basic principles on which a computer works. Yes, its widely know as GIGO - Garbage In, Garbage Out. No matter how much we try to be a Free Thinker,  we become what we consume !

They (the marketers,the media and our cute politicians) also know about an almost forgotten principle in an era of Quad-core processors, FIFO- First In, first Out!

That's why our cute politicians tend to chillax, make money day and night for the first four years of their tenure and announce some populist policies, attend marriages, opening and closing ceremonies and feed us with whatever possible, in the last year of their tenure, so that we recall them after we enter the Ballot Box. They know that Elections will happen on a hot, sunny day. Their will be a huge ocean of people behind each of us, and our GIGO mind will FIFO the candidates, confused by the plethora of information bombarded by several sources (including the neighbourhood uncle-ji, brother-in-law from Patna and Boss's sister's husband from Rai-Bareily) muddled with intrinsic desire to consume something as soon as we get back home, will take only few seconds to decide, push the button or put the stamp to handover our future in safe hands.

So next time, whenever you are thinking, think before thinking whether your free willy thoughts, your assumptions and even your seemingly innate desires to Consume and Act Freely are actually influenced and literally governed by this Information Pollution!!

At last First !!

After a log hiatus, I came first !

Back in school days, when everybody clamored to grab the top spot, I was happy with top 5 and sometimes even top 10.  I had my own reasons then.Only later I realized that grades, marks and rankings do matter and it hurts the most, when you have everything else except those which matters.

Some wise man wrote this long ago- Success is Counted sweetest by those who never succeed !!

Definitely applicable to me. No lies, have never achieved anything exceptional, never came first but this time it was different. It was bound to happen someday and so it happened today, as if it was a part of a great plan. Whatever happens, happen for good, that's how my parents would console me, whenever I was not first. And so over years, I started feeling pity, not for me, but for them, those at the help of things, for their loneliness.

Things were about change. Something happened which never happened before and so finally I kissed the moment of glory. I made sure that I enjoy my loneliness to the full. Soon I realized what all I was missing by dismissing the desire and thus the situation of being at the top. When you reach the top, even in your own world , suddenly the people in that world start seeing and treating you differently. But the  fun does not last long. Either I had to do anything under the Sun to retain my lone spot or someone else will do something and soon my charm and karishma will vanish.

A rush of blood, dilapidating pupils and my moments of joy and glory were snatched away from me. I was helpless, I could have done few things, but I could sense the outcome, so I decided to save my energy. Once again I became the ordinary me, which I always deserved to be.

Damm it, I was last and so he denied the admission because it was overflowing with homo-sapiens. I was left with no other choice but to wait for the next Bus. Within fraction of seconds tens and almost hundreds of people started queuing behind me from nowhere.
   

From Wall Street to Ballot Box in Middle East AND Back !

The innocent looking, mathematics and business wizards, who were slogged in for 12 hours a day 5 days a week and partied for 24 hours on the weekends, who stood on their feet high, self made, a bit greedy at times for all the right reasons mostly never would have imagined how their shorting of all the traded asset classes, will affect the life of people sitting 5000 miles away in the middle of a desert.

At macro level when I think I am surprised to discover that by first half of 20th century imperialistic powers were thrown out and democracy was established in several third world countries, but many second world countries were and are still controlled by their own home grown imperialistic regimes who have allowed a selective or should I say restrictive freedom !

Interestingly the recent upsurges which swindled the thrones of hitherto venerated and often celebrated flamboyant, reasonably autocratic rulers such as Qaddafi, Mubarak and Ben Ali, have not impacted the GCC countries, despite their close political, cultural and religious ties. Instead the GCC countries have maintained the precious golden silence about all these surges, movements and have neither supported nor opposed any of the sides vehemently. Even more interestingly elections at various levels were organized within 3-4 months across these GCC countries.

The power in GCC countries is concentrated with very very few members of the royal family and almost anybody who has spent reasonable time in GCC knows this. The Kings and the Queens of these countries have used all their power and money to wield even more power and earn more money for themselves and for their people. All the royal families of GCC nations are popular amongst local nationals, are western educated and reasonably liberal too. So despite their old friendship with the likes of Gaddafi, they were wise enough to judge the changing times. Before their peace loving national could find spare time from shopping in the newly built swanky malls and artificially created islands, elections were declared, candidates were nominated, electoral lists were prepared and elections were organized peacefully and efficiently. While people were busy watching Al Jazeera and CNN to find the truth of what actually happened in Middle East, showcase reforms were conducted in a sweeping manner at the speed of light in this mighty oil rich part of Middle East now called as GCC. The local media and newspapers went all Gung-ho about these lip-service elections, but despite all the attempts to create buzz, voter turn out remained low (20%-40%). The voter list was prepared a bit arbitrarily though and not all the members of the family were allowed to vote. To impress the west and the rest, some women candidates were made to contest elections, but not many women were allowed to vote. The low voter turnout indicates the interest, perhaps necessity and efficacy of such elections.

In the increasingly connected world, the information is already being democratized at a much rapid rate and the consequences have been beyond what anybody could have ever imagined. The otherwise orderly GCC nations witnessed for the first time the chaos which was accompanied by movements/uprisings/struggle for freedom and democracy. At present the GCC nationals does not seems to be too much bothered about the idea of democracy. The generous government spending will ensure a high disposable income in the smaller of the GCC nations. However the not so oil rich and not so small nations are already facing the heat of dissent and public anger. The seemingly never ending supply of the Black Gold and its near all time high prices will ensure a constant source of revenue and hence prosperity for these nations. But for how long and how far, is the question which nobody wants to face right now. When all the developed socio-economic-cultural powerhouses of the world are busy in saving their today, these GCC nations can very easily afford to forget the distant future, which is very very difficult to predict in any case.

Tunisia and microscopically speaking the recession which was born and bred in the Wall Streets of the first world has catalyzed the process of democratic transformation in the second world but surprisingly most of the third world seems to be reasonably insulated. GCC nations have white washed their countries, the other Middle Eastern nations are celebrating their success, are busy pondering about their respective futures. Because of the autocratic regimes which lasted for decades, a political and leadership vacuum got created without anybody noticing it. So the new generation revolutionaries who knows how to Tweet on Facebook and fire AK 47 are digging mud to bury their past and fill up the vacuum.

The bizarre world we live in is getting more wired and weird every day. We are back to where we started this post, Full Circle as they call it. The snapshots are the same but the faces on both sides of the table are bit different this time. The flashy, egocentric, tyrants are being replaced by the suave, educated, liberal, capitalists, who are interested only in minding their own business. Infact they too would have never imagined, that such a day would come within their lifetime. As of now, they seems to be committing the same mistake which their counterparts from the Middle East committed, denial! Before they will realize things can become more ugly and violent.Will it end the same way?

 .Chaos the only Order.

Soft Bomb !

All of us in some way or the other played part in this explosion! This time around the noise is and will be played on demand, inside our minds, without causing any damage to the ears. The eyes, sometimes hands and the wallets all the times will be playing the instrumental role in making these explosions happen one after the other, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad but most importantly at will. This bomb has the ability to influence far more people in ways beyond imagination of the creator, the diffuser and the consumer. Yes, you read it correctly, there exist consumers who are more willing then ever to consume this explosion, so that they can create their own.

At any given point, so many people are working on their bombs and so many explosions are taking place that, some bombs despite potential, fail to create the craters or sometimes the moment you and me decide to make an explosion of our own, create our craters and enjoy our own Popcorn Happiness somebody else will create a bigger, wider or deeper crater with different shades. And so the people who were planning to fall into your and mine craters will instead be lured to the newly created friendly neighbourhood crater and after a while, your soft bomb and crater will be forgotten as if it never existed. But dont worry, every explosion no matter how small or insignificant it ever was, it will will always exist, forever before you yourself or the guy on who's land you made that explosion chooses to fill it up with sand and stones.


Some wise man will plant saplings out of explosion. These saplings will quickly grow into fruit bearing trees. Fruits for you and me to consume and enjoy, but once again this time around, things wont be same as before. The tree will indeed bear fruits, but unlimited number of people will be able to eat and enjoy these fruits for as long as they want.

The interesting aspect is the same bomb which created crater in my mind can give birth to a sapling in your mind !!

What have you created today ?


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Image source- Google.

Recession- Is the World Falling Apart - Part 2 !!

An Unexpected Part 2 !! I hope it does not turns into a trilogy !!

Back in December 2008, I wondered and mused whatever is happening to global economy, but the political and financial leaders are not taking the necessary, bold, corrective steps in time. Unfortunately the world leaders kept on salvaging the old stalwarts of Wall Streets, left, right and centre, perhaps that was the only option left. Unfortunately not many people are punished for committing financial crimes of by over leveraging in a hope to make quick buck and multiply the effect of that quick buck several times.

Low interest rates in developed world for decades and the compulsion of printing T Notes and Bonds and Currency, especially in the United States caused the Public and Private debt to grow into a monster, beyond control of almost anybody!

A temporary blip happened in the market sentiment in later half of 2010 and once again gold, crude, stock prices started going up, baring Real Estate! In ability of EU to create jobs, high spending habits of the people and the government led to massive accumulation of enormous public and private debt, utlimately causing the economies of whole countries such as Greece, Spain and Portugal to collapse. Now the fears are that of collapse of Euro, because the comparatively better off economies of Germany and France cant bear the burden of Italy, Spain, Portugal for a very long duration.

If Euro did collapse in coming months, years it will once again ensure the Numero Uno position of USD ( it is even now, but at least Euro had some chance) and another failed attempt (earlier being Japanese Yen and Chinese Yuan). What an irony once again ! Couple of years ago OPEC was contemplating of switching from USD to Euro and now we are wondering whether Euro will be dead alive in 2012 !!

An amazing war, conspiracy, symbiotic and parasitic relation is developing between the current and future no.1 country (on the basis of GDP). In order to compensate for reducing wages and unemployment, US still wants cheap Chinese imports of day to day items and perhaps luxury items as well ( habit! dont change overnight), despite what so ever anti-dumping laws, hue and cry in the public ! China's love affair for Exports ensures that it keeps accumulating USD from USA and from several other regions from all over the world. And with surplus USD in their kitty and a possible fall of Euro, they are left with nothing but investing in US bonds every now and then. So by printing more Currency on one hand US is receiving wrath of OPEC and on another of China, but the irony is both (all) of them cant do anything about it!

Sudden demise of Euro can increase the demand of USD and can strengthen the $ thus reassuring China and OPEC! So while fall of Euro will be really unfortunate, it can bring windfall profits to somebody else in seemingly unrelated relation!

So being poor and underdeveloped for decades finally started paying India in unexpected manner! We are resilient to global shocks and crisis, because we have far too many internal problems to solve. Fortunately, we have lots of gold and silver reserves hidden deep inside but in safe custody of our Lazy Gods for centuries!

So to summarize, I would like to repeat and age old adage especially in rural India -' Sab kuch Bhagwan bharose hai' ( Everything depends on the mercy of gods!), finally worked really well for us, in a way which even our Bhagwan would have never imagined thousands of years ago :) !!

Anmol Water

Scott Harrison - charity: water from Big Omaha on Vimeo.

Amazing story of Scott Harrison and his inspiring journey. His speech touches hearts and souls because its honest and he really knows what he is saying and he genuinely cares about what he is doing. Simple sentences, no blabber about all that is wrong in Africa, India and other developing and under developed nations, plain simple, practical and powerful solution to one of the most dreaded problem of modern times.

It is so heartening and refreshing and inspiring to hear such people who are real, bubbling with confidence, enthusiasm and optimism and yet subtle, real and feel very much human.

Life started in here billions of years ago and fast forward to present and still over a billion people don't have access to the most fundamental necessity -Water. Unfortunately the governments in developing countries somehow don't focus on most fundamental issues such as food, water, electricity, health facilities and hygiene and sanitation. And so, slowly over a period of time, people start adjusting with situation, some fight with it, some surrender, a few win and few other loose their lives during this battle. As Scott very correctly says that these people don't have time for micro-finance or education, because they are wasting their precious time and efforts to obtain water.

However I feel that a holistic approach will be much better and that should be undertaken by local authorities, government perhaps using the Public Private Partnerships (PPP) model. Unfortunately all the fundamental problems ( Education, Poverty, Livelihood (food, water, electricity), Health, Hygiene and Sanitation) forms a vicious circle and all of these issues must be addressed if possible at the same time so as to ensure that communities, regions and countries can get rid of such circumstances, slowly and steadily and can feel happy to be born as human!

Several non profits have decided to take on and solve this problem so that in years to come, safe drinking water is accessible to everybody all across the world.

Water.org

Focused on solving the issues pertaining to lack of access to safe drinking water for over two decades now.

Operation Blessings International

With focus on some of the key areas such as poverty, hunger, disaster relief, micro enterprise. Runs several programs to make drinking water available to rural communities.

Just a Drop

Another notable non profit in operation for over a decade

The battle is on and stalwarts like Scott will make it happen. As he mentions its about you, me and everybody, our stories, our believes, our action, so lets do our bit, feel happy and most importantly make someone happy who has almost no idea about what does it mean !!

Chaos - The Only Order ?

Growing up is never easy, especially when everything else in the world is growing with you in quantity, quality and in almost every possible dimension. Lets take look at some statistics -

Estimated Number of registered websites in the world-
1998- 2.4 million
2000- 7 million
2010-180 million

Question - did anyone in the year 1998/99/2000 imagined that the number of registered websites will increase 25 times over next decade ?
Question 2-any guesses for the number of registered websites by 2020? 500 million or 5 billion?

Estimated World Population-
1000- 0.25 billion
1500 - 0.50 billion
1810- 1 billion
1910 - 1.8 billion
1965-3.6 billion
2000 - 6.1 billion
2010-6.9 billion
2020 - projected - 8 billion

Question - did anyone in the year 1000 AD imagined that the world population will shoot up 25 times in next 1000 years ?
Question 2 - any guesses for the population in 3010-150 billion? OR back to 0.25 billion?

Estimated Mobile users in the world -
2000- 0.5 billion
2005- 2.1 billion
2010 - 5 billion

Question- did anyone in the year 2000 forecast a 10 fold increase in next 10 years?
Question 2 - projections for 2020? definitely not 40 or even 20 billion right !!

Year 1910 - did Britishers ever imagined that 100 years fast forward and Indian and Chinese economies will be ruling the world, despite of them looting the world for 300 years !!

Will United Nations/US/UK government will ever succeed in reducing the Chaos/Entropy of this World, i.e reducing the poverty, wars, coup, terrorism etc?

These might be sample and apparently random statistics over a completely diverse time frame and on similar lines we can analyze the number of TV sets from 1900 to 1930 to 1950 to 2000 and many more interesting statistics. But the question remains - is it possible to predict any trend over a 'long time frame' in future for almost anything/event/behaviour!

Perhaps not! Why? Simply because the human mind does not have the ability to comprehend the outcomes of billions and billions of macro and micro events taking place everyday, everywhere, everytime ! No matter how smart we become in foreseeable future, we wont be able to run aMonte Carlo simulation for the whole world in our head to predict the outcomes of random events.

With world becoming more complex then ever, with the advent of internet and social media, the possibilities of interactions and so the total volume of interactions has grown out of proportion in the past decade. So, the definition of 'long time frame' itself has reduced and most analysts are caught on the wrong side, in their attempt to predict the stock price over next 6-12 months!!

So, is Chaos the only order? With increasing population and more rapidly increasing 'things' (mobile, internet!!) around human beings, the number of interactions between man-man, man-thing, thing-thing are bound to increase in leaps and bounces which will further increase even more random events in almost any field - science, technology, politics over next 10 years !! So perhaps the next decade be most eventful decade in past 20000 years? I think so, provided some comet/s (force majeure as they call in business :)) etc does not happen to our dear planet!

What about Religion? Almost 80% of the world population firmly believes in some religion or the other, still the number of people attaining salvation/ moksha, which tend to reduce the Chaos/ Entropy of the world have not succeeded either? But what if no religion ever came into existence, perhaps we would still be in jungles! So religions have definitely succeeded in temporarily reducing the randomness, aberrations in the society at large.

We can find the most interesting application of Chaos Theory in - Politics!! Politicians know that its impossible to predict the behaviour of voters after 4/5 years, i.e during next elections. So, they start their hidden and public campaign to woo voters just few months/ weeks before the elections!! Perhaps we need to establish a new branch of studies - Thermodynamics of Politics and Religion!!

But the next question is to all "Thermodynamicists" (please don't mind the extension of Science- Scientists association, if you prefer Mathematics - Mathematician kind of usage then I can rewrite "it" as Thermodynamicians but it does sound weired, right!), so coming back to question outside the brackets of terminology, Can the Entropy and so Chaos of our System will keep on increasing forever from here on or will the end be same as the beginning- A Big Blast?

Chaos - The only order, from ever since, forever !