Best perk you can get at work

As corporate policy, Baskin-Robbins employees were allowed to eat all the ice cream they wanted

(link)

Thats probably the best, yummy perk you can get at work :)

Is Dr. Dolittle phenomenon possible in real life??

Received the link to this video as a email forward. Trust me, I was completely floored by what I saw in the video. I am not sure if this a doctored video, but if we assume the other way then we do have lot to think about;

- Are animals intelligent to have a sense of shape and proportionality?
- Can animals develop the cognitive ability to visualize objects?
- If they do develop cognitive abilities to visualize objects, can it develop to such high order that they can see objects in 3D(how elephant actually looks) and then reduce it to 2D(on a drawing sheet)?
- It had the dexterity in its trunk to start from the point where it had stopped. Is such dexterity common among animals?
- If you see the final image, three legs are in the ground while the fourth is in air. This is how they walk in reality. How is it possible for a animal to self evaluate (how it walks) and then reproduce the same as a painting?
- At the end of the film you will see that the elephant re-traces all the lines in the picture which are not bold because of lack of ink in the brush while drawing those lines. This is two step process, first, realize that the line is not bold and second trace the same line once again. If you ask me this is simply amazing
- When it drew the flower, the leaves are placed in a symmetrical fashion. Now you need a sense of symmetry to accomplish that task. Do animals have that?
- Also the elephant did not overshoot the drawing page and it made sure it drew all the objects of the painting within the boundary of the paper canvas. This is another skill of very high order.

So after watching this video I wonder;

- Can non-humans be trained to develop skills and cognitive abilities which equate to so called "uniquely human" faculties like Language etc. in short, is "Dr. Dolittle " phenomenon possible in real life?
- Looking at it the other way, are there any aspects in the way humans communicate that makes conveying certain messages unfeasible but is possible to do so by the way other animals communicate?

I don't have the answers. But am sure seeking answers to these would be one really fascinating journey touching upon diverse fields like linguistics, biology, physical anthropology , sociology etc..

Global Warming - Why we need to act?

Does data like..

Increase of 0.14 degree Celcius in 1906-2005 100-year linear trend when compared to 1901-2000 100-year linear trend

Increase in average Artic temperature is twice the global average rate in the past 100 years

There is very high confidence that the globally averaged net effect of human activities since 1750
has been one of warming, with a radiative forcing of +1.6 [+0.6 to +2.4] W/m2

or graphs like


from environment assessment reports leave you overwhelmed with tons of data which makes little or no sense or jargon like radiative forcing, surface temperature of permafrost layer leave you completely confused as to whether you need to do something or not and you end up doing nothing.

So here is a "keep it simple stupid" argument as to why each of us need to act in our own capacity to at least slowdown the global warming and thus avert the impending doom we are slowly but surely heading towards..

Whats the big deal climing a hill which is taller than all others??

Its was on 29 May 1953, amid most inclement and in-human environment conditions, two people, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, dragged themselves to a point where heavens seemed just a hand-stretch away. They were the first to climb to the highest point on this planet, peak of Mount Everest, standing tall at 29,029 feet. By doing so little did they know that they would become the icons who would inspire the spirit of Adventure for generations to come.

Today after almost 6 decades, both the icons are no more with us. The unsung hero of that epic journey, Sherpa Tenzing, expired in 1986 and on Friday(11 Jan 2008), with the arrival of the sad news of Sir Edmund Hillary's death a chapter came to an end, a chapter that tells stories of real heroes who represented the indomitable human spirit.

So what the heck is the big deal about climbing to the highest point on this earth? Why is an act which did not help any cause continues to inspires and is still remembered? Why two people who were just normal people before accomplishing this climb, were catapulted to iconic status after this act?

Jane Morris of Time in a brilliant article titled "The Conquerors" says

Geography was not furthered by the achievement, scientific progress was scarcely hastened, and nothing new was discovered. Yet the names of Hillary and Tenzing went instantly into all languages as the names of heroes, partly because they really were men of heroic mold but chiefly because they represented so compellingly the spirit of their time

represented so compellingly the spirit of their time.....thats exactly what they did. They showed the world how even people with ordinary abilities but extraordinary perseverance can reach stellar heights.

Jane in another part of her article says;

it was a measure of the men that over the years they truly grew into the condition. Perhaps they thought that just being the first to climb a hill was hardly qualification for immortality; perhaps they instinctively realized destiny had another place for them. For they both became, in the course of time, representatives not merely of their particular nations but of half of humanity. Astronauts might justly claim that they were envoys of all humanity; Hillary and Tenzing, in a less spectacular kind, came to stand for the small nations of the world, the young ones, the tucked-away and the up-and-coming

This is probably the reason which makes them heroes and so eligible to become your role models. When you speak of Hillary and Tenzing, its not about the name and fame(which they achieved after the climb), both of which they had in abundance, but its what they did with that name and fame.. both used it to stand-up for people who were less fortunate than themselves and to me this is truly the measure of man. Hillary and Tenzing spent rest of their lifetime working towards environmental causes and conjure humanitarian efforts on behalf of Nepal and the Nepalese people. The spirit of this selfless service to a country which consumed almost his everything is something to commend on.

So I guess climbing a hill which is taller than all others is indeed a big deal because once in a while it leads to discovery of man like Hillary or Tenzing, a man to match his mountain.

The quintessential Kiwi - Sir Edmund Hillary

Sir Edmund Hillary(1919-2008)


"you defeated me but you wont defeat me again, you have grown all you can grow but I am still growing"

- Sir Edmund Hillary

You will continue to live on forever in our memories, fueling that spirit of adventure in our lives.....

Why do we pray??

Last week end was not like the usual laze around week end, thanks to my mom who was on "mission Temples". What started as a excursion trip to Mysore and Bandipur was actually a mini-pilgrimage in disguise. Starting with Ranganathaswamy temple, Nimishamba temple, Chamundi temple, Gopalswamy betta, couple of temples inside the Mysore palace, Nanjundeshwara temple, Sri Ganapati Sachchidananda Ashrama and the Venkateshwara temple inside the ashram.. The weekend temple dosage was so high that I am like.. Did I ask for that shining new red Ferrari in Nanjundeshwara temple or the Venkateshwara temple? yeah I was that confused soul whose "must have materialistic pleasures" list had gone completely
haywire..shucks!! I forgot to ask for that magic wand to make my boss disappear :(

Anyways when I looked back on the trip in the comfort of my bed back home..I was left with many lingering questions... why do we pray? Whom are we praying to? and as the famous quote from Bible goes

"shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith"

does this
"he shall have whatsoever he saith"
really work or is it like
"he shall have whatsoever he saith*"

* Conditions apply

so with these questions started a conversation, a conversation with myself;

me to myself: Whats a Prayer?
myself to me: Its probably a language for you to interact with this source of energy which when we embody, becomes the one with eternally ebbing spirits, infinite body and immortal life, something we have labeled as the divine. Its a conversation that inspires you, a conversation that reveals the profundity, the gratuity, the fragility of a blessing called Life, which we often tend to ignore because of our preoccupation with "myself" and "my problems".

me to myself: "which we often tend to ignore..."....why would we do that, not appreciate the blessing?
myself to me: probably we don't know to recognize a blessing thats why the indifference or practicalities of life is such that you are forced to construct a facade and hide the real you. Probably that for some extent explains the success of "Second life"

me to myself: So is Prayer like scrubbing the pretense off yourself and looking at the true "Naked" you?
myself to me: Yes, when you strip yourself of the pretense you wear and look at yourself, thats when the real introspection happens. Probably this is the reason prayers are called for when you need to structure your life or need a honest "balance sheet" accounting of your life

me to myself: So whom do we pray to?
myself to me: As mentioned you construe that source of energy by embodying it and calling that entity as God. As you need a recipient for your prayers, the entity called God is not that bad a choice. So you pray God.

me to myself: But who is this God we are talking of anyways and why pray God only?
myself to me: There is probably no answer to that. But for understanding purpose things can be made simpler by looking at this problem in a different perspective. Consider a nuclear fission, you bombard a heavy elements with neutrons, so the question here would be is it worth the effort to find the exact atom of the radio active fuel which would be the first to split thus triggering the nuclear fission? I am sure you agree its wasted effort to find such information(if you can find it in the first place). Why the heck would I bother until I can control the energy generated. So to paraphrase in spite of our ignorance towards some details we are able to meet our objective of harnessing the nuclear power. So if we apply the same logic, we might be ignorant of the fact as to who exactly is this God we are praying to, but like in fission analogy, it might be irrelevant and we will do as good in spite of the ignorance.

me to myself: Why does God have to be this someone with eternally ebbing spirits, infinite body and immortal life, why cant that entity be someone like us, more human to say so that we can relate to him?
myself to me: As said prayer is kind of code review and you would want some one better than yourself to accompany you for this review and as humans are flawed creatures in themselves, it makes sense for us to look-up to someone who is more-than-human, someone who is inscrutable, someone before whom humans feel humbled.

me to myself: When to pray?
myself to me: Hmm..not sure...When you went to the Leh trek and when you saw that stunning beauty of Nature what did you do? You would have some said something on the lines of "thanks lord for making me be here today"..yeah a prayer. What would you do if you were to be on titanic on that fateful day when it sank.."I should have listened to mom and learnt to swim, lord my life jacket"..yeah again a prayer...so it not just in adversity that we pray but other times too..So I guess whenever you are confronted with events which trigger a passion in you, you pray.

me to myself: How to pray?
myself to me: According to Christianity there are five steps to any prayer praise, thanksgiving, confession, petition and intercession which basically tell you how to pray. Even in Hinduism you will find similar patterns, for example if you take the two most famous prayers


Meaning:O God Ganesh (large bodied with a large belly), radiant as millions of Suns, Please, remove obstacles in all of my tasks all the time

As we can see there is praise(radiance compared to million suns) and petition/Intercession(remove obstacles)

Similarly when we see in

त्र्यम्बकं यजामहे सुगन्धिं पुष्टिवर्धनम्

उर्वारुकमिव बन्धनान्मृत्योर्मुक्षीय मामृतात्

Meaning: We Meditate on the Three-eyed reality. Which permeates and nourishes all like a fragrance. May we be liberated from death for the sake of immortality, Even as the cucumber is severed from bondage to the creeper

Again we can see there is praise(fragrance) and petition/Intercession(liberate us)

This way the conversation is still on with many more questions like whats the significance of silence in a prayer, What are the do's and dont's for petition section of the prayer?, Bible says its fair to ask lord for the food, so on the same lines is it fair to ask for a Ferrari?, Why do we groan/murmur while we pray and why is it that we are not aware(happens at subconscious level) of what we murmur about? why do we close our eyes but not other senses like ears and nose while praying? Whats the significance of posture in a prayer? etc..etc and an attempt to find answers is also on...

Probably my plea for a Ferrari and the Abraka dabra Boss tu hoja disappear magic wand might or might not come through, no regrets either ways, but if the prayers lead me to that critical introspection thus empowering me to appreciate Life better than I do now.. I will ask for no more..I will consider my prayers answered.

(Photo source)

Ash-Abhi hysteria continues...

IBNLive reports that Aishwarya rai on her spiritual sojourn at Benaras, Bangalore and Ayodhya with her in-laws, married a peepal tree at Benaras, a banana tree at a Bangalore temple and a god's idol in Ayodhya inorder to appease the gods and to rectify the "Dosha" thats because of presence of Mars in the 2, 4, 7, 8, and 12 houses of Ash's Kundali..

Since "will they? wont they?" questions regarding Aishwarya and Abhishek has been answered, the whole nation and understandably is now deeply concerned about the impending Ash-Abhi marriage...The question on top of everyones mind is not about disgusting human rights violation track record of Army in North east or why we are not a wee bit concerned when this "untouchability" concept takes such ugly turn almost every day, but we are riveted to know if Mangalik traits of Aishwarya jeopardize the "made-in-heaven" marital bond between Ash-Abhi.

Such is the hysteria in this country about what Ash-Abhi do that we have a site to suggest what color undergarments should Abhi were on the day of his last bachelors party(which also happens to be his 31 birthday) and we also have people like Shruti Singh who apparently has filed a PIL(public interest litigation) saying the above act of Rai is a direct violation of Article 17(what ever in the world it is) and promotes "untouchability" and violation of fundamental human rights...

If I remember correctly, this isn't the first time we have read about weired "marriages" ...we had cases of women marrying a snake, a girl marring a dog or a women being married at gun point, but I don't remember our top notch human right activist and Saviour of suppressed and repressed classes Shruti Singh doing anything, so you wonder why now?

anyways, I seriously hope Aishwarya chants "Om gan ganpate namah" regularly...With great difficulty has India come to terms with Tulsi and Mihir seperation in KKSBKBT and it cannot take another.

Why do they hate me? woooaaaaa ..sob.. sob..

Last couple of days have been different. When I enter the office these days, I no longer hear questions like which brand of liquor will Salman endorse in his new Devdas avatar after Ash marriage or was the visit to Varanasi temple by the big B familily a cleansing ritual for Ash after the liplock scene with Hritik in Doom 2, but these days its..what are the odds of Danielle Lloyd(of Big brother fame) calling our bollywood tinsel town "babe" Shilpa Shetty(now of big brother fame) a pig?

Its amazing how there is such a emotional upsurge in our country when a bollywood actress is involved..firstly with 24*7(almost) live coverage of Aishwarya's engagement saga. Such was the coverage that it took a personal request from big B himself to convince the camera crew to at least blur parts of footage which was shot while Abhishek was taking a leak in between the engagement and I was personally unhappy and felt let-down by the government because a national holiday was not declared on account of such a important occasion and now the whole Indian media Juggernaut is all guns against Big Brother. How dare some moron calls our babe a dog? Our babe and dog!! Maa Kasam! Woh milgaya tho, Main uska koon peejaunga uska koon test karake peejaunga(there goes another enlightened citizen, thanks to "Know AIDS, No AIDS campaign on Doordarshan)...

So what is this Big Brother show?

Its pretty simple contest, you hand pick a bunch of half wits, generally less than 15, lock them up in a house that has nothing that belongs to the era after Adam&Eve(no pen, pencil, mobile, music players etc..), for say couple of fortnights and film every move they make so that the rest of half-wits who were not fortunate enough to qualify can derive voyeuristic pleasure watching the film. If any participant is unable to deliver that punch(something similar to e-orgasm or i-orgasm depending on who is reading) to the viewers then he is voted out of the competition and the one left out at last wins loads of cash.

Is it sleazy? I mean is there racism and content that needs to be watched only after all at home are asleep?

you are kidding right? Who knows such things, only Sharmila Tagor(i.e. if its beamed in India). But from what I heard, the show packs in a healthy dose of sex, nudity and "borderline" pornography. Today we can add racism to this enviable list.

So why did our bollywood babe take part in spite of the reputation of the show?

With our babe's career almost over in Bollywood, she was looking for alternate way to earn her livelihood and 3 crores plus 25000 pounds, hey common you understand right, its hard to resist such things and for our babe it was good enough to shove the previous reputation aside. But I wont say that..nope its not in our culture to say such things. So here is the "Andar ki baath" as to why she accepted to participate.
there exist a organization called "Vishnu Sena" which has the whole and sole responsibility of saving and propagating Indian culture. After a high level meeting the saviors of Indian culture realized that there is very less representation from India in Briton. So they decided to send our babe to participate in this high visibility show as a representative of the Indian/Asian community. But our babe refused on the grounds of self-respect and dignity. So left with no choice Vishnu sena kidnapped babe's great great grand father and demanded that she need to take the 3 crore and participate in the contest. Rest as we all know is history.

When sick things were told against our country Why didn't our babe say anything?

Shilpa feels that she represents the Indian/Asian community and doesn't want to let them or herself down by retaliating...wow let me read that again. Look at it and we crib that our value system is breaking down. Again as we are Indians and the whole values thing that's inculcated in me is holding me back from saying; "represents the Indian/Asian community", bull shit. She does not represent me or my country, she went there to better her cash flow position.

What are the positives to come out from whole of this episode?

- As they say there is no better publicity than bad publicity..so Probably the biggest outcome of all this is our babe is going to win...Yepeeeeeeee.

- J*** T**** is a dolt with brains no bigger than the size of a pea. You hold and shake him, the sound thats produced when his brain strikes the inner wall of the skull can put even the Big Ben to shame. I personally feel Indian government need to gift him a atlas free of cost and teach him that babe is from India and India is not the same as "Paki"

- Really love the easiness with which you can vote some one out..I guess it would be a fine addition to our constitution..send a sms and give a laath to our non performing ministers


Look at this case, you have people burning effigies of housemates, PMO office and Ministry of External affairs voicing their concerns, Online petition being signed, Ofcom receiving highest number of complaints(not even Saddam's last video could achieve this fete), this issue being discussed in British parliament. But I wonder why the same billion voices which are crying for justice and equality for our babe get stubbed the moment we talk about the in numerable cases of discrimination based on cast, creed, language, sex, colour and what not that happen in our own backyard?