Innovations in the washrooms

There have always been television ads on italian/porcelain bathroom fixtures usually showcasing the shininess of the products. And print ads containing attractive females to add to the fixture.

How come none of these bathroom fixture makers ever advertises on the benefits of using their products? Like, the commode whose design enables waste to be cleared with the least amount of water usage per flush? Or the tap which is rust proof/drip proof?

Even after all these years, it is difficult to see why innovations in the washroom space have not yet become common in India. Why cant I have a shower that shows me the temperature of the water coming out of it? Which brand do I have to see if I want commodes that heat up the seats during winter? Do I have a commode that does make sound while flushing? Do I have toilets made of anti-bacterial material? How about a special geyser that not just heats water, but also has an option to make steam so that I can have a sauna bath in my bathroom.

Where are the innovations in the bathroom? I demand euphoria in the most private of spaces to start the day off!

Aligning the interest of govt. and its people

There is a serious lack of alignment in the interests of the government and the collective of the people ruled. How else can anyone explain the future government's intention to liquidate the state/country in the name of helping the poor people.

Take the example of Tamilnadu. The DMK government came to power promising a television for each household (along with )if they win the election. They won the elections and this time upped the ante. Now, they want to give grinder or mixie to all the women. Plus, a laptop to all the students studying in govt. and govt aided colleges. The opposition party, AIADMK, is desperate to win and is playing the DMK's card even better. If they win the election, they promise to give grinder, mixie & a fan to all the women. Students of govt, govt aided and private colleges will get a laptop each and even class 11 and 12 students.

One question that begs to be asked here is: at whose cost? Is it at the  leader's personal cost? Of course not. It is with OPM. Other People's Money. In this case, the very people they will rule.

This problem is occuring and re-occuring due to two different reasons. One, the politicians and the government say that the ultimate test is people's vote and thats all that counts. Easy for them to say. After all, they have no stake or interest in the common people and it is the people who are going to suffer in the medium to long term.

They are no KPI (Key performance Indicators) that their bosses(the common people) or an independent arm of the government have setup or are monitoring. And there is no reward/punishment for the government and its officials based on these KPIs. The KPIs are usually used as a passive parameter to compare the policy initiatives with the effect on the ground by statistical organisations and is used more for academics and deciding policy directives. They are not currently being used as a strict performance measure of the government based on which its rewards are based.

Two, the government is able to exploit the differences between the poor and the others (working middle class and rich). The non-poor have televisions, fan, can afford spending on gold in marriage, etc. The poor on the other hand cant think of months or years ahead when they are focussed on earning their next meal to survive another day. This difference in interests gives the government ample leverage to play the pro-poor populists game while ignoring the long term impact of the decisions. This is equivalent to selling the family silver to get some income to dispose off immediately. I am not against poor, but providing televisions to all of them doesnt serve the purpose of taking them out of poverty. Where will they keep the television? Whats the use of the TV if the government doesnt have enough money to setup power plants and hence doesnt provide electricity to run the TV.

This problem of differed interests in similar that of secured and unsecured lenders in case of a distressed company. While the secured lenders would like a restructuring to happen and turn around the company, the unsecured lenders would like to see the company liquidated. The secured lenders have nothing much to lose as they have security cover over what whatever amounts have been lent. On the other hand, the unsecured lenders have some amount of money to get out of liquidation and if the restructuring doesnt turn the company around, they lose everything. One of the solutions used to align the interests of the secured and unsecured creditors is the concept of strips. Here, all the debt(secured and unsecured) is pooled up and stripped into equivalent pieces. So now, each creditor has both secured and unsecured portions in his 'strip'. Once, these strips are there, all the lenders can come to the best effective way to solve the problem (restructuring or liquidation) based on the business risks involved. 

A similar approach needs to be planned and used to align the interests of the poor and the non-poor so that the government doesn't play the divide and rule game with its people. I am yet to figure out how to make the 'strips'.

The wasteful small hundis

I visited a temple yesterday and saw a person struggling to put a Rs.10 note into the pot hundi with only a small slit used to drop coins into it. To try to put the note in it, the person had folded the note into a small square of less than an inch on each side reducing the life of the note by many hand exchanges instantly. Another smarter fellow, just folded the note continuously in the vertical side keeping the height of the note constant. He then kept the note on the slit and pushed it down smoothly into it without the note getting stuck anywhere.

I guess some things are only learnt by observation.

But as I saw the first one, I was left wondering how much the central bank in India struggles and tries to educate the public to not spoil notes (by writing on it, folding it many times, soiling it, staple it, etc). By the rules of the RBI, the notes we now get in the banks are never stapled as it previously used to. The RBI spends crores of Rs. each year replacing old, worn out and soiled notes. It can definitely save a few crores if it bans small hundis and other small collection tin cans with a small slit sometimes used by beggers and sometimes used as donation boxes in shops and during crises.

Another thing that would be useful is for someone to come up with a better donation box design which is one way (money can go in, but wont drop out of the box when turned around or if the box falls). A possible enterpreneural idea? Perhaps...

Only theory, no practice

:(

That is my current state. I still dont know how to practically buy/sell certain securities in the market to try and make a few trades.

If anyone can tell me how to do the below as a retail investor in India, please let me know:

* How can I lend securities (stocks I plan to be invested for long) and make some risk free money?

* How do I buy a Nifty call option and how do I exercise it? How do I sell it at a profit when it is in the money?

Vision of Mankind 2

Referring to my previous post on the vision of mankind, http://ajitjagan.blogspot.com/2009/11/vision-of-mankind.html, I think I have found a solution...

The vision of mankind is same as that of cockroaches. And that is to propagate and have continue the generations.

I think the cockroaches are better at risk management than all of mankind combined. They have survived for millions of years with just one technique: "When you sense risk, run like crazy". We human imbeciles haven't even learnt that well. The amount of humans dying/suffering as a ratio of total human population is greater than a similar proportion for cockroaches. The mighty cockroaches have survived metrorites, ice ages and what not.

Humans also just want to survive and keep propagating. They want to reduce the risk of dying and being extinct. So they started cultivating food to avoid starvation, started using fire to protect themselves from animals and from the cold, etc. One day, when the next ice age occurs or meteors strike, temp of earth reaches 50 degree celsius or water submerges all land, we may have technologies and ways to survive extinction.

Say for the next ice age of 100,000 years, humans may freeze themselves in machines and come out automatically when the ice age stops. We may genetically modify ourselves to breathe underwater or live in 60 degree celsius without being burnt.

Humankind sees the benefits of diversification. From experimenting with ligers and tigons, now we have gayism nad a few crimes of people mating with animals. What next? Interspecies mating? Maybe the human genes can get better with the diversification and a hardier gene pool with hardier characteristics for better survival for gene propagation.

Humans dont want to accept a simple reality of death of the human kind at some time. So the adventurous imbeciles keep doing something or another to change the reality. So far, so good imbeciles! But at the end of every millennium, you are no greater than a cockroach whose goal is to just survive and propagate its genes to the next generation.

For what?

What will you live for?
What will you die for?
What will you fight for?
What will you stand for?

Vision of Mankind

I realised the value of a vision or a dream sometime ago. Every individual and every organisation needs it so that it can continuously go forward and keep on its path and to overcome obstacles in times of difficulty. It gives a certain drive, motivation, energy and something to look forward to each day. So I wonder what is the vision of mankind as a whole? What does it want to achieve once all the infightings are sorted out or not?

One should read Scott Adams book "Gods Debris" and from there comes certain ideas... I can see things happening as predicted in that book. The world is coming together as a whole, especially with the help of the internet. People all over the world can come together and decide on various important topics staying far away. Internet unites everyone like nothing else has ever done before. It is a social fabric in a way intertwining everybody's life into it. And as more people use it, more people are going to spend sufficient amounts of time on the net. So what next? Similar to people vote in a country to choose elected representatives to solve people's problems, what will the people of the world come together to do? What is it that Humanity wants? What does the mankind look forward to? What is the vision of Human existence as a whole?

Many of a kind

Many of what kind?

The kind that are not males or females.

There are so many of this kind in this world and I feel bad that no society recognises them. I have never seen a form where there are three boxes for sex/gender - male, female and other.

Despite all the claims of proudness of all our civilisations, this discrimination against recognising millions of people is a shame on our civilisation.

For more details about the number of people and all the science behind this, read along:

As many as 4 per cent of people are born with neither a clear male nor clear female identity, according to the Gender Trust. Most may be unaware that they are classified as "intersex" and suffer no discomfort or distress as a result.However, some babies are born with ambiguous genitals which leave their sex unclear. They may resemble those of a female with a large clitoris and the labia fused together, or they may look like those of a male with a small penis and an empty scrotum. Surgery may be carried out so the baby can be assigned as either male or female.

Others are born with genetic abnormalities. The sex of a baby is established in the womb according to whether they have an XX chromosome pair (female) or XY (male). The commonest gender disorders are chromosomal abnormalities such as Turner's syndrome (X0, where the second X chromosome is missing), which affects one in 10,000 girls, and Klinefelter's syndrome (XXY or XXXY) affecting one in 1,000 boys.

Girls with Turner's syndrome mostly have normal genitals but the ovaries do not develop and they remain infertile. Boys with Klinefelter's syndrome may have small testes or produce low amounts of testosterone and can develop breasts. They may also have signs of a womb and ovaries.

People with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, or AIS (one in 20,000 births) – as described by Janet – are genetically male (with the XY chromosome) but due to a failure to respond to testosterone do not develop male genitals and at birth appear female. They are thus usually raised as girls. They can develop breasts at puberty, but the vagina is small or absent, and they do not menstruate. Some AIS women have had modelling careers because their lack of male hormones means they are unlikely to develop body hair and are less prone to skin conditions like acne. But society is often unkind to people with such disorders.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/i-was-treated-like-a-circus-sideshow-1786139.html

Living the memory and wanting to Re-live it

The date : 31 Dec, 2005. One of the most memorable days for me. The reason: 15 classmates (including 2 Gods and an angel) descended at our(my roomies and my) bachelorpad making it a total of 17 classmates.Most were expected and some were uninvited surprises.

I still have that beautiful photo of that day of my friends. (My curent desktop background)

Looking at their faces, I see the beauty of those days that I miss. In their faces, each one of them shows a combination of happiness, pride, confidence, humbleness, optimism, hope and many beautiful smiles.

I want to relive that moment and hope one day we can have a similar photo after many years for a show & tell of 'then & now'.

Missing you guys and gals...

Intriguing question

"To have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part."

I was recently reading an article written by a widow and she asks a very intriguing question: "What after death does us apart?"

Whats the solution

I read a message from a middle aged corporate manager who lost his job in 1988 and still without permanent work in 1992 say "I have lost the fight to stay ahead in today's economy... I was determined to find work, but as the months and years wore on, depression set in. You can only be rejected so many times; then you start questioning your self-worth" in the economics textbook regarding unemployment. I am wondering what kind of motivation or event will be required to get this man out of his psychological scar.