Political war of words

Over the last 2 months or so the war of words between Congress-BJP and BJP-JDU have increased, even more so after Modi has been named as the chairman of the election campaign committee. The politicians have been bickering between bad, worse and worst with their rhetorics and idiotic statements which are nowhere near ground realities (A meal at Rs.12/Rs.5/Rs.1). They have tried to compete with each other in making more outrageous and stupid remarks. Probably, the noise in the media (read television news channels, digital newspapers and printed newspapaers) will get even more and become unbearable as the elections due next year come closer.

But, what I am wondering is how much of all this noise actually reach the majority of the voters in the rural areas. How much of it will they hear and how much will they read/hear about and consider it considering the following factors: illiteracy, availability of newspapers, power for viewing televisions, interest in national politics, considering that in villages the head of the village or the head of the house decide which party to vote to power, big political parties throwing money and liquor at the villagers to buy their votes.

Is all the noise generated worth it?

How to find the truth behind what your (financial) agent tells you?

Here's a list of things that are mentioned here to detect lies by an agent.
How to tell when an agent (insurance, loan) is lying to you
Beyond this, there is one true test because at the end of the day, because actual "Numbers don't lie"*

Many agents typically sell you an investment product saying you pay x amount yearly for y years and the end of it, you get z amount. Plus, there is a bonus amount paid at the end of m years and every n years later. The agent says it as if the bonus is something free, something over and above what the company generally gives/supposed to give. This is just 'playing into' the customer's mind. Since, there are a number of different products, each with its own different flavour and rules, it is very difficult to comprehend what is the real returns expected out of the product. To decipher the real return expected out of the product, do the steps below. If you are not familiar with xls, take help of someone to follow the steps mentioned below:
Ask your agent to give you year wise, the ouflows (investment made, premiums paid, basically money going out of your pocket) and the inflows for every year (typically, a single or multiple bulk amounts at end of a number of years).
Open a new xls and enter the dates, the amount going out of your bank accounts as negative, the expected amounts as positive (in forms of bonus, returns, dividends, etc.) in three different rows.
Add these two amounts (outgo and inflow) in the next row (Row 4). (Click the pic below to zoom)

Then use the XIRR function with the net amounts as the first parameter and the dates as the second parameter to get the real compounded annual growth rate(CAGR).
CAGR describes the rate at which an investment would have grown if it grew at a steady rate. You can think of CAGR as a way to smooth out the returns.
Read more on CAGR

* Numbers don't lie, but reading the numbers in a false context/background/with bias, interpretation of numbers could lead to lies. e.g.: The Indian stock market had gone up by leaps and bounds between the period 2003 and 2008 and those numbers do not lie. But expecting that same kind of growth at any other point in time (as the environment would be different wrt to interest rates, policies, inflation, currency rates, oil prices, global liquidity, attractiveness of Indian stock market vis-a-vis the other global stock markets, investor sentiment, etc.) could be equivalent to lies. If an agent shows you the best period of growth and tells you that this can be expected in the future also, do ask for the worst period of returns and ask him/her why that the worst could not repeat.

Addiction of Internet

How to tax the Rich

An article by Scott Adams

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703293204576106164123424314.html

Being Human - What does it mean?

The second question that strangers usually ask other strangers is "Where are you from?" or "From where do you belong?". Very apt. The key to being human is "to belong" to something. At a basic level, we belong to a family and have friends. We belong to a place or a home or an environment. At a later stage, we belong to an organisation and a society and clubs. When none of these physical things are no longer there and to still be sane and be human, we associate ourselves with God and consider belong to him. Religion and faith is the last saviour of connecting us to something for our need to belong.

This belonging helps us understand and relate to many things. For one thing, we are not all cannibals because almost all religions and most countries teach the people to be belonging to the category "human" or "people".

Can a human be totally alone and not belong to anything? I think the person cannot be very sane doing this for long.

Just belonging to something for the sake of it is of no use. The "belonging" should be engaging, else it is of no use. We maybe an alumni of a school, but if we truly dont engage this relationship/belonging atleast mentally or emotionally, if not anything tangibly, we really are not belonging to it.

If you truly want to belong to something, it must be engaging you continously, else the belonging or the relationship fades.

Belonging is such a basic need of a human and possibly why people miss their loved ones so much after they are gone. Yet, they engage with the lost ones in their minds continously and find it so hard to disengage with them. Possibly why, people are scared to get out of bad relationships as they will no longer belong to someone.

"The need to belong" could possibly explain a lot of our human behaviours - why we act and do the way do.

eEtiquette

With so many more communication channels open today to communicate, there are a number of questions that come to mind when we have a task at hand to complete or while selecting the mode or how to use them.
The below website has a number of good etiquette practices that should be followed for better communications.
http://eetiquette.com/

Typical investor behaviour

A WSJ article:

"If people were watching their investments, they would not sit idly by and be victimized, but would act. Instead, people are busy with everything from their favorite TV series to golf, and are blind-sided when they find out about their losses. These people pay the same amount of attention to the political issues and candidates. They are like deer wandering around in the forest with targets painted on their sides."

Which social network?

London riots - Proof of Deindividuation - "Civil society": An oxymoron phrase

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/02/10/deindividuation/

The London riots just prove that the innermost bad desires are inherent in every person irrespective of whether they are in the developed world or in the developing world, whether in a civil society or not. As a matter of fact, the phrase "civil society" seems to be an oxymoron phrase now. People are civil by intimidation or by force, it just doesn't seem normal. Greed, action, thrill, survival instincts are all part of true human nature. It is only by continuously conditioning that we stop doing it and think twice before burning down other's properties and looting others' things.

P.S: written long ago, but forgot to post it.

Dance moves

Procrastination

An excellent article on Procrastination (long but worth it)
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/10/27/procrastination/

In diagrams

Src: www.thisisindexed.com

Encountering the third kind

Walking on Marine drive, I just escaped getting into an encounter of the third kind. But some others werent so lucky. The busy couples were so busy doing what they were doing and just didnt see it coming. Then it started. The acts, the begging, the blessings and even the haggling. But I indeed wonder, what would be the best response that would not only get rid of the 'problem' but make all involved happy and smile. Imagine you are on a romantic date on and suddenly encountered with the people called 'chakas', what do you think would be a response that will make you sound nice in front of your special one, make the intruder happy and you too at the end of the day?

Society's changing address

When our generation was young and in school, we all used to call all people even slightly elder to us as "bhaiya/didi" (north India) or "anna/akka" (south India). Even people who were a year older were called like that and if people below your age call you only by your name, that would be disrespectful. Times have changed. Now people prefer to be called only by their names with no suffixes even by people twenty years younger. There are two possible reasons for this: People are more age conscious and more international exposure/norms. The first is obvious when my female friend and cousin sister dont want to be called aunties by even their 4 yr old niece/nephews. Maybe the popular image of an aunty is a 40 yr old with enough girth that even a baby elephant gets inferiority complex.

The second is perhaps because of the software companies' culture wherein people are addressed only by their first names mostly.

Just an observation and hence no conclusion!

Do something nice

Well, this post is a bit late considering Christmas got over a few days ago, but being generous and nice neednt always be associated only to Christmas. You can start it, do it and should do it at any point of the year.

Here is one B-E-A-U-tiful idea of being nice, generous, make your brain work too and make the people a little surprised and happy and give you that goody-goody feeling.

"The Generosity Game

The following concept, created by John Stoner (and monitored for the Institute by Matthew Mezey) has many similarities with the Random Kindness approach.
Here's another possibility, close to my own heart: the Generosity Game! It's my own project, and you can see the website if you haven't already (at http://www.generosity.org).
For those who haven't seen it the idea is this:
You do something good for someone, and you do it anonymously. For example, you could pay the toll of the car behind you at a tollbooth. One thing we've done is go to a wonderful bakery, and buy a treat for the next person who walks in the door after we leave. Be creative!
And you pass on one of these cards to the person you do it for. On one side, they say
'It's Your Turn.'
On the other, they give these instructions:
'This is for you! Now it's your turn: go do something good for someone else. Do it anonymously. Pass on this card.'
So, you see, the card passes itself on! Someone is the recipient of your good deed (and the card), goes and does something for someone else, passes on the card. Then that person has some good thing done for them (and gets a card), and they do something for someone else ... isn't it great?

Anyway, I've found that doing this a lot does open your heart in a particular way. It opens your heart to being generous with others as a part of your life, and it opens your mind to what resources you can bring to that generosity.
Honestly, I've been very weak in taking it on as a personal practice. But the few times a week (or month) that I do it myself have turned my attention more towards what I have to give. Which I'd say is a positive thing.
"
http://www.generosity.org/download.html

Go ahead, do something nice and make the world a happier place to live in and help someone smile today :)

Way of addressing

The way some Indians address their friends indicates the area they have mostly likely spent their childhood/college time. Take for example the following addresses:

Thanks yaar

Thanks di

Thanks maga

Thanks re

From my non-scientific analysis, I have so far identified some of the places these are most commonly used. 'maga' is from Karnataka where maga literarily means son. Sentences ending with 're' are from Mumbai. Usually people using 'di' are from Tamilnadu while yaar is a commonly used in North India.

So when you hear someone talk to their friends, you can atleast make out where they have most likely been brought up in. There is no gaurantee however as people may want to sometimes portray a certain image and may use a certain style to be identified with.

Polyamory

The next big revolution is underway.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/209164

Polyamory—relationships with multiple, mutually consenting partners.

Strange relationship

A very interesting article on the lives of many Japanese people...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26FOB-2DLove-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2

Excerpt:

.....Nisan is part of a thriving subculture of men and women in Japan who indulge in real relationships with imaginary characters....... According to many who study the phenomenon, the rise of 2-D love can be attributed in part to the difficulty many young Japanese have in navigating modern romantic life. According to a government survey, more than a quarter of men and women between the ages of 30 and 34 are virgins; 50 percent of men and women in Japan do not have friends of the opposite sex. One of the biggest best sellers in the country last year was “Health and Physical Education for Over Thirty,” a six-chapter, manga-illustrated guidebook that holds the reader’s hand from the first meeting to sex to marriage......

Radical evolution

It is said that evolution occurs slowly over hundreds of years. But I think evolution is occurring very fast in bouts. Evolution of the mankind, the societies and the organizations. First of all, where am I coming from? Having read "God's Debris" by Scott Adams sometime last year, I somehow believe what he envisages in his book. He says somewhere that as a cell in a body does not know the existence and the effect it has on the organism, similarly, the humans in the planet don't know the existence and the effect they can have on the planet. He goes on to tell that all the humans (equivalent to cells) will form a network and be able to direct the course of earthkind that will shape the planet (equivalent to organism) which in turn will shape the universe. We can see this formation of networks in the form of the internet and how it is changing the way people think, organise, form thought and take action. In the book "Year million"
(http://www.amazon.com/Year-Million-Science-Edge-Knowledge/dp/1934633054/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213445875&sr=8-1),
one of the author says about the future of humans as "a gigantic system of solar-orbiting structures to trap the sun's energy". Dougal Dixon speculates on continental drift and changes in the Earth's magnetic field. From such sources of ideas, I optimistically think that the humankind will evolve into something like this, rather than pessimestically saying that they will die maybe in a few thousand years. If that is the supposed vision of the human kind, then I think and also see the next change in the society and the organisations that will enable us to go to this vision. In the past, we have seen socialism where the government controls everything, today, we see capitalism and free markets, and I stick my neck out today to say that the future will see the very people in the society control everything. By this I mean that the people of the society will not elect leaders the way it is done now. Relevant people who consider that they should contribute for something will directly take part in that activity and contribute. People will hate organisations that make profit. People will kill the organisations that make profit by making them untenable. People will contribute to things they want to and they do it for free. Everything will be user generated and what initially is for profit will turn to non-profit and for the betterment of the society. This will make profit making organisations bleed to death. The word competition will not exist. Even today, with all the price wars and ever lower transaction costs, every organisation is finding itself in a harder position to survive everyday. Today, with the credit crisis, people are angry and are loathing people who make a lot of money, and who because of their greed brought everybody's world down. In the coming decades, more such crisis will be blamed on greedy people and a general thinking of "for non-profit" and "for betterment of society" will come. The "for profit" people will become outlaws and will be forced to live secretly away from the society. The only rule of economics that will stay is the definition of economics "the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses." The human behaviour will change, today's economic rules of demand and supply will not exist as the concept of price will disappear. In the past, there was one currecny: gold. Then there were hundreds of currencies. Then in 1990's a lot of countries joined together to form the Euro. There was a similar idea for Asia too. Today, the pound has crashed against the dollar. Britain would like to rethink the concept of joining the Euro(They would then have not lost out so much value). Cloud computing is in. The concept of storing everything you want in a third party system is in (Google's Picasa, gmail and G drive). All the data in the world is getting collected centrally. The point I am making is that we are in a phase of human evolution and transition where things are changing very rapidly and simultaneously. Things have got so worse being split that things are again getting together but in a much different way than before. This time unitedness is in the form of networks that are distributive and have the power to take on more faults without the whole system going down. This is the way I see it. The readers are free to agree or disagree to whatever I have said. This is just my hypothesis which cannot be proved. Only time will tell...

Framily

I couldn't find the meaning for this word in my wordweb, but fortunately found it on the web. wiktionary: Etymology Blend of friend and family Noun Singular- framily Plural - framilies Meaning:A group of friends, who are close like a family. Found at another website: 1. framily when friends become like family, they're framily. closer than close, they may know you better than your own family. "we're framily, all 9 of us." 2. Framily A member of your circle who is more than a friend but not a blood relative. Combining the words friend and family. Someone very significant in your life not in your family. Joined by hearts and souls, not bloodlines. Linda Smith, John Jones, Sam and Jane Doe are all people I have met over the years. We spend holidays together, take care of each other's families when necessary. Our Framily reunion each year rotates between houses. 3. Framily When members of your sibling's boyfriend/girlfriend's family become close friends. They are not your siblings inlaws yet and may never be. You will always consider them FRAMILY. My new Framily are like sisters but not related to me at all. And here is an interesting article I found:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1059236/Friends-increasingly-framily-search-support-network.html
And thanks to my framily members for supporting me and helping me in times of need.