Missed Miss's call

I was on leave yesterday, and a beautiful colleague of mine called me. Damn it! I missed her call. Perhaps I should inquire before taking a leave.
"Hey! I hope you are not gonna call me tomorrow because I'm planning to take a leave."

Just kidding. I can call her on Monday anyway.

Rise of wikileaks and information age

What does the rise of wikileaks signify? Does is signify an age where there is no personal privacy? With the rise of micro-cameras and microphones, with the rise of sting operations, with the rise of Google, have you arrived in an age where you have no personal privacy.

But what does this mean? From an optimistic point of view, I see this as an age where honesty will be valued again, transparency will be obvious. I see this as an age where a killing in Baghdad moves hearts in New York. I see this as an age where planning a war will become impossible without the enemy getting to know about it. I see this age as वसुधैव कुटुम्भकम

Give your best to whatever you do

Perhaps this is not what I want others to read. This blog is accumulation of negative thoughts that I don't want to disclose in public and more importantly I don't want any sympathetic comments.

This world is not place of genius or perhaps it is (which means I am wrong). This world is a place of mediocrity; by it's definition mediocrity should be the be the most prevalent adjective in the world. Best is one and worst is one, rest all are mediocre's. In a population of 6 billion people, to win over mediocrity we need 1.5 billion skills/sports each having different *Best* and the *Worst*.

I am trying to prove this because I am a mediocre. And I don't want to condemn myself on being a mediocre. Yes, I do want to improve but in case I don't succeed, perhaps it's OK. May be I am not doing what I wanted to do, but I can give my best to whatever I do.

I hope this clears my mind and let me give my best to whatever I do.

My life my morals

Morals of a persons are specific to himself. My morals are negative in nature; that is they define things not to do. Furthermore, perhaps my morals are the minimalist subset of what a normal person's might be. Here's a key principle that can define most of my morals.

1. Never do a thing to a person that you won't like to be done to yourself. In case you are expecting an unfavorable action from the person, it's permissible to take a similar action that avoids the unfavorable circumstance for you. The unfavorable circumstance created for the other person should be less or equally severe to the unfavorable circumstance that you expect to be created by the person. The order of severity for the other person is same as yours. 
2. Never do a thing that, if extrapolated, makes sustainable life impossible on the planet. By extrapolation I mean that if every person on earth starts doing the same thing. 

The first principle enforces the morals of honesty, equality, healthy competition etc. but allows the possibility of self defence. The second principle enforces global responsibility like fighting against global warming etc. Interestingly, second principle classifies voluntary celibacy as immoral.

My experiments with Pick Up Science (Part - 1)

Abstract

This series of paper discusses four experiments on two different strategies of inducing attraction in humans. Incidentally, all the humans involved in this experiment were men and subjects were women, hence this paper presents may mislead the reader to skewed perspective of laws governing attraction among humans. I want to clarify that this paper discusses only 1 of 4 permutations (not combination because attraction is vector having direction) of attraction among normal species of humans.

Experiment 1 on passive disinterest

Experimenter : A, a male with handsomeness = 7/10 and conspicuousness = 3/10.
Subject: P, a female with beauty = 7.5/10 and conspicuousness of 2/10
Environment: Office. A and P are in different departments, no one deals with each other professionally. The probability of random interaction between the two is illustrated by the following equation:
P(x) = (1/number of employees) * (time when they are drunk/time they stay in company)


Procedure

Day 1: A adds P on company chat engine. ( active interest ? )
Day 4: P accepts chat engine request.
Day 7: Conversation begins

P: As stupid it may sound asking you, but as far as I remember we have never talked, met or interacted before. May I know why did I you add me as a friend on the chat engine ?
A: I had some work in HR deptt., so I added you, but now that is resolved. You may not worry about it.
P: I am not in HR deptt., I am in Resource development.
A: Oh! I thought both are the same, anyway "Resource" is common.
P: No, Resource Development deals with developing resource, HR deals with exploiting it.
A: ok, i can't understand a word you are saying.
P: So, how come you know my name ?
A: I was going through HR area, somehow your name stuck with me. I believed anyone who sits in HR area must be an HR.
P: You read my nameplate ?
A: I heard someone calling you ....
P: lolz, strange that you remembered only my name.
A: Sorry for all the trouble that I may have caused, please feel free to delete me.
P: no, no, I didn't mean that

Post this interesting conversation there have been a few friendly and unfriendly exchange between A and P.

Analysis:

In the above mentioned experiment, A violates all the principles laid down the literature so far by pioneers like Mystery, Ross Jeffries . 3-second rule, first demonstrate value rule, active disinterest strategy are only a few of the principles being violated. Still A is not only able to open up P, but also produce a mild attraction towards himself. In spite of the deviation from conventional strategies a few patterns must be observed.

1. Initial, addition on chat engine and inactivity by A for 3 days looks similar to activeness followed by disinterest. Mixed signals.
   
2. It must be noted that A was successfully able to avoid a barrage of questions from P, thus demonstrating his smartness hence value. Such a demonstration of value was sufficient enough to hold the final push "feel free to delete me". Pull-push theory.
   

Conclusion

Although the experiment do not complies with most of the strategies documented in the literature so far, it do contains some identifiable patterns which further strengthen the efficacy of those patterns especially Push-pull pattern. Having said that it must be noted (as it will be demonstrated in next papers) that this pattern is too difficult to repeat and is largely subjective to the subject as well as experimenter.

Another sci-fi (2040)

I just saw a video where Nicholas Negroponte shows his vision in 1984 and many of his predictions have come true today.
So, I just thought, "had I been Nicholas Negroponte, seeding a project so noble and purposeful as OLPC, and having seen my vision coming true in front of my own eyes, I would have lived the life I always wanted to."

Now let me imagine year 2040. Domestic robots have become a reality. They can cook food, drive cars (in case car can't drive itself), clean home, clothes and utensils, shop in from POSIX compatible grocery stores, maintain themselves, get themselves repaired and earn money by renting their services to those who can't yet afford robots.
Challenges to this vision:
1. Voice recognition: Voice recognition is erroneous and unreliable. 95% accuracy in a local area should be enough for commercial viability.
2. Batteries that can hold power to serve a robot for 16 hours. Either batteries need to be more powerful or robots need to be more power efficient.
3. Image recognition: Processing images seems to be quite slow. We need faster computers. If cars can drive themselves based on vision only, then we are ready.
4. Learning: How much self-learning we need to introduce machines to the domestic environment ? May be we can do without self learning. Machines can be pre-programmed to do these kind of stuffs and auto-install from open repositories.

Your relationship with yourself

We all have two selves. Remember the last time you wanted eat high calorie pastry, didn't you split yourself into two selves ? One telling you about the health factors and other telling you about the sensation of hot black chocolate pastry that is about satisfy your dry mouth and taste deprived tongue.

Of the two parts one is logical and the other is emotional. And of the two logical one behaves as senior mature person, while the other one behaves as a child who forces you to do all the crazy things that the logical part thinks bad.

If you are a kind of person that concedes to your "childish" self wishes then you may have found yourself in trouble often. Have you ever thought how your logical self treats you in such situations ?

Do you reprimand yourself for doing such a thing ?
OR
You just calmly tell yourself that you won't do this again ?

Which one of them is better ? Obviously, the second one. Let me know if you feel otherwise via comments.

*How to* stay positive

It has been a long time since I wrote something; my last post was in September. All this time I have been busy or more appropriately-psychologically busy. If you satisfy the following 3 conditions then you are psychologically busy:

1. You have a lot of work to do.
2. You do cancel trips and postpone enjoyable activities (like watching movies, playing cricket, going to Goa) so that you can find time for completing the work pending on you.
3. You do not complete that work, instead end up sleeping the whole weekend or doing some entirely unnecessary piece of work. (like writing a blog)

That's enough of digression from the topic. Friends, this blog is about: how to stay positive!!! Well, it's bit strange that I want to write on this topic. Even though, I have some much more interesting topics to write about--like my encounter with a gay and then with a girl in auto-rickshaw--, yet I chose to write on staying positive. The main reason can be attributed to that fact that I had been feeling quite negative a few days back, and the lesson I learnt has allowed me to feel positive again (so far).

Let's start with a question. When you make a mistake, suppose you missed a deadline because of procrastination, how do you treat yourself; what do you tell yourself ?

1. You missed a deadline, what a horrible looser you are ! you won't get anywhere in life. Anyhow be careful from next time; or
2. You missed a deadline, what is happening to you ? you are not like that ! you are awesome at time management, you should find a solution so that you don't miss other deadlines.

Yes, you are right; I followed 1st approach for a long time, and I recommend using the second approach for staying positive. (It's natural aspect of philosophy, you always know what's the correct way to live, but you forget to apply that when it is most required.) Tell yourself that you are a super star and ask yourself to live up to the reputation; that is a much more effective way of managing your mind.

When you are feeling lazy to press your shirt or to make shave, tell your self how good looking and handsome you are and you will find motivation to press the shirt.

When you are feeling lazy to get out of your bed to do some enjoyable activity, tell yourself that you are the most energetic person in your friend circle and you will find the energy to jump out of the bed.

When you are feeling meek to get a daunting task done tell your self how courageous you are to get the courage to do the task.

In short, positive motivation works for me (and may be for all) better than negative one. Best of luck and stay positive.