Random thoughts

Proposal of a New Religion - 'Humanity'

2009-06-03T16:11:00.000-07:00

Dear friends, i would like take a shot at what most people, saints, philosophers etc. have been doing since our evolution. I would like to intoduce 'Humanity'!! Any takers?
Lets start by analyzing ourselfs, what do we think of the world. Is the worl d that we simply just live in, is it that gives us life, or is it that gives us meaning? My religion Hinduism beleives in reincarnation: but i donot. For me life is once, eternal and the most useful organism.
Just for a while i would like all readers to look into their heart, try to imagine who they love, beleive in, trust etc. I am sure that everyone has atleast one person on their list .... this is what is humanity. We Live for Others; We have no being of our own. If you protest try imagining yourself alone on a deserted island.
My "religion" encourages/teaches you to help others other than self; love others other than self; protect and take care of others other than self. The question is not what we can do, the question is what we should do. Just think about the victims in Haiti, Latoor, Tsunami, Katrina. I know this rings some bell; if it does, my friend you are on the right track. Not being all talk, please let me know of institutions where i can donate without being scared of fraud; ill love to do that.

-Ashish

How "Logic Taming" makes people illogical

2009-04-07T16:16:00.000-07:00

We have entered the information age where we need answers to all our questions. If not answered we search for it. If we still are unsuccesful, we argue with self/friends and bring it to a "logical" conclusion. Logic is built into the neural system of each and every human being. I donot beleive it in being 0 or 1, because a problem could have unimaginable number of solutions and is dictated by the person analysing it. If we agree, why do we still like being "Logically tamed" by certain people/organisations in our society for eg. the government?

I could with a reason and would encourage everyone to help me understand and contribute with their own ideas.

A common man doesnt like taking risks. Over the years of our evolution we have come to terms with the idea of some wise-men taking control of our lives. We didnt like taking risks and loved the idea of blaming someone if things turn haywire. Although convinient, this put us at an disadvantage - we had to play by the rules set by them. Years passed by and we kept getting "logically tamed" by these people, to a point where we actually are machines that tries to act and blend in with the other machines in the so called society. We stopped asking questions and reasoning! Now in the information age we are starting to realise our potential, but are so meshed up in the system that we are unable to come out, even if we want to. We accepted the rules imposed on us, we kept building on it, and now we donot want to start all over from scratch again. Its just like continuing to patch a buggy code of a legacy system. Hence we continue to do, what we are told to do. It is in times like these (i.e. current global recession) we actually start seeing the vulnerabilities (bugs) in the system. We keep working towards making it work, which in my sence makes me think that we are illogical.

A similar argument holds good for religion. Religion according to me is a protocol or lifestyle, a good way to lead our lives ethically, as envisioned and coined by the few old wise-men. How does that apply to us today? Well some moral values might still apply and I am happy to live by them, but a lot of stuff is obsolete and needs to be updated based on the lifestyle we lead today. If updated/edited 'today' (in the information age), it should be based on a common consensus. I know this will never happen and will continue to live by them for centuries to come, which in my sence makes me think that we are illogical.

Well I myself have no solution of my own, plus some people might not even think for this to be a problem. I personally would love to go back to the stone age and start all over again. If people need to live by rules and require to be "tamed", why not they live by my rules :).

-Ashish

Reviving the Economy - My way

2009-02-02T21:32:00.000-08:00

Dont mind...but I think Mr. Barack Obama is doing a stupid mistake, just like his predecessor G.W Bush, by going in for a stimulus package. According to me this would not help the current ailing american economy. $815 billion is roughly equal to american consumers (maximum) monthly spending, and hence if the economy does not revive it would last for only a month. What Mr. Obama has to do is to make the money flow in the economy like earlier days. Being a capatalist economy, the US cannot survive without its citizens spending money. So how do we make people spend in this pitiful economy? I have an idea...read on

Il'll like to talk about a 2 step approach, based on the type of consumer:
1st the american salaried worker:
For all the currently employed workforce, excluding the ones that unfortunately lost their jobs because of the recent turmoil; the salaries have to be paid in 2 sections. Let me take an example: If Mr. Bob is employed and earns $3000 a month (take home), he would be paid $1500 in cash and the remaining amount $1500 in the form of a cash card. The cash card expires in 2 months, hence he is forced to spend that money within 2 months. The emphasis here is laid on the fact that in todays market the american consumer is refraining from spending money, and if americans dont spend money, there is no US economy. Although this might be the violation of democratic rights blah blah...but drastic conditions require drastic measures. So given the fact that if you donot agree with this, seeing the current economy, you might be the next one to get laid off, i hope no-one will disagree with this.
The advantage: We get the amount mentioned by Mr. Obama in his stimulus package in the market within a month. Mr. Obama, please spend that amount in some useful activities. The rule that a mentioned stays in effect till the economy has been fully recovered, irrespective of whether a person recently got his job or not.

2nd the american business owners: Now the next question is, there are only 50-60% of the entire workforce that are employed, rest all are business owners; How do we get them to spend? The answer is simple. Tax them at the rate of 70%, dont worry I am not against business owners, but suppose you paid 30% tax initially, now you pay 70% tax, the 40% would be refundable by the government in the form of a cash card, that expires in 6 months. You have the option of investing this money in the economy by recruiting new people, or simply loosing it.

I hope i have covered the entire mass of the US affected by this slump. If not, I am sorry as I am still a layman who does not understand market economics :). But yes, again my advice to the americans would be, go spend!! only you spending can revive this economy, its not me or Mr. Obama. The power is in your hands. Today cars, houses etc are at their cheapest, get a good bargain and move on with it, you would not get this opportunity again in the near future.

Thanks,
-Ashish

Hullabu - A Customizable Meta Search Engine

2009-01-12T18:00:00.000-08:00

A good friend of mine recently launched Hullabu, his long awaited baby. The website is actually a meta-search engine just like the "recently launched Leapfish", dogpile, mamma etc; but with an additional feature: It is Customizable. To start off, for beginners a meta-search engine is a search tool that sends user requests to several other search engines and aggregates the results into a single list or displays them according to their source. Metasearch engines enable users to enter search criteria once and access several search engines simultaneously. Metasearch engines operate on the premise that the Web is too large for any one search engine to index it all and that more comprehensive search results can be obtained by combining the results from several search engines.

In short, Hullabu is very similar to kayak, with an exception that kayak concentrates entirely on travel, whereas Hullabu gives you the option of customizing your search by using the following variables:
1) It allows you to customise the Category in which your search item falls.
2) It allows you to select the search engines to send your search item feed to, for that particular search category.

The result is narrowing down your search to a particular category on specific search engines, instead of looking for the search items on different websites/engines by opening multiple browser windows. I know this might get a little confusing, but you will get the idea of what I am talking about once you log on to http://www.hullabu.com/. For eg. Before buying any electronic gadget earlier I always use to go to bestbuy, frys, walmart, target etc websites and search for the gadget and look for the best price, and I am sure you would too since you are spending money at the end of the day. What I did was simply create a cateogory called "Electronics", added these websites and now get everything in one click.
Just like any other product, Hullabu also has a learning curve (a very small one though), but once you start using it surely turns into a handy search tool.

I would like to congratulate my friend on his feat, and wish him all the best with Hullabu.

-Ashish

Recession: lies in the eye of the beholder.

2008-11-11T11:28:00.000-08:00

The topic above might sound funny; but the beholder above refers to the common man i.e. you and me. With this post I somehow want to establish a relation between how the mentality of a common man brings about recession in the economy. According to me true recession is brought by the fear the common man feels seeing his environment. I would like to define FEAR as "Fear Ends All in Recession". Ill like to start this post with my layman understanding of how the economy/industries operate today.

Most of the industries today typically make just enough money for the organisation to sustain and make minimal growth (considering the fierce competition). To obtain exponential growth most of the companies rely upon financial institutions (like banks, venture capatalists etc) and people (share and security holders). The actual growth in the world with respect to land prices, minerals, commodities etc is very limited. Now how do each of these organizations get a piece of pie from this growth (they also have to pay back debt taken from financial instituations); even though they get some it would not be significant. In order to maximise profits these organisations go ahead and anticipate/prepare for a much higher growth. The net result is higher prices of land, minerals etc. Lets now see how does this artificial growth move towards recession.

The National Bureau of economic Research defines economic recession as: "a significant decline in the economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP growth, real personal income, employment (non-farm payrolls), industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales." This decline (or negative) growth is because the economy was growing at a rate that is neither natural nor proportional to the actual growth. Lets see how a common man affects this and makes this condition worse.

When the economy is in recession organisations start losing money; hence they start cutting cost and try to get rid of employees they hired taking into consideration higher growth than natural. When people lose their jobs they tend to spend less; even the people who havnt lost thier jobs tend to start spending less in anticipation of bad times ahead. When people spend less, organisations make even lesser money and lay off more people. The result is more bankrupt organisations and more jobless people. Its a cycle that keeps going on, only till the mindset of consumer changes. Once the consumer feels it is a good time to spend (due to many reasons like low prices etc) the process reverses as organisations start making more money and start hiring more people. Remeber, in a capatalist economy the common man is the catalyst the fuels the economy for future growth. Today if the US is the largest economy, its because of the mindset of the citizens it has here, who just love spending. My advice would to be to spend, but be wise.

-Ashish

Is GOD Real?

2008-05-05T21:33:00.000-07:00

During the early days of my life, my Mom asked me to summon 'God' religiously. I was told God is an almighty figure who controls each and every entity in the Universe. God is the Creater, maintainer and destroyer of everything. Initially I used to fear God and used to pray so that i dont have to face his wrath ;) or get punished for my bad karma, but never really used to respect him. But over the years in my life I have come to respect him. Lets start off by discussing what/who is God.

God most commonly refers to the deity worshiped by followers of monotheistic and monolatrist religions, whom they believe to be the creator and overseer of the universe. Conceptions of God held by individual believers vary so widely that there is no clear consensus on the nature of God. So if God is such a varied concept, why does majority of the humanity (barring a few atheists) beleive in this concept. A Man is a creative as well as a logical thinker. If something is beyond his logical knowledge, he shifts his focus towards the creative side of his brain. Thats where the concept of God evolves. If this is what I think, why do I beleive in this concept and have come to respect him/her?

For a very long time now I have been living away from home. There have been times in my life where I felt very low, I felt nothing is working according to plan. What do I do in this situation, who do I turn to for support? When at home, the answer was pretty simple; "Dad, I am in trouble could you please help me out."; "Mom, i flunked in maths, please help me hide from Dad". What do I do today when I am sitting 8K miles from home? I turn my attention to the faith that I have in the concept known as 'God'. When things dont go as planned I turn to God for support. Although he/she is not present physically but you wouldn't beleive me if I said, it really works mentally. Now I will tell you the best part about beleiving in God. He never comes to you and never makes promises; hence you have nothing to expect. If things suddenly start going according to plan your faith in him/her increases; if not, it doesn't go down cause you weren't expecting anything off him/her. Beleive me or not, this has led to my increased faith in God. I think it is very easy not to beleive in God, but living without him/her might sometimes feel difficult.

Unlike the concept 'God', people around you are logical. They might not understand things that sometimes are bothering you. Speaking to yourself might help, but doesn't give you a sense of direction as you know noone else is listening to you. In the past millions of years this concept has never harmed anyone, it has only helped people gain confidence and make them beleive in themselves. If the concept of God helps me regain confidence when I am down and help me trust in my abilites, I am 'in' for this concept. What about you?

-Ashish

Parenting OR Child Abuse??

2007-12-28T08:09:00.000-08:00

Hello friends. Today ill like to express my views on a somewhat sensitive topic. Parenting is the process of raising your child. There are different models demonstrated in the society today and parents tend to follow these models based on their own nature and what best suits them. "Rules of the traffic model", "strict father model", "reward and punishment model" to name a few. Today ill like to discuss when is that parenting enters child abuse. Is there a fine line that differentiates this, and if yes when do we realise we have reached that line? Does spanking your child for wrong really make you cross that line or is it something else?

Before continuing, let us make an assumption. All the parents in the world love their child/children, even the ones that have been charged for child abuse. So if every parent loves their child, why would they abuse them? One argument says that parental choices and other unforeseen circumstances that place families under extraordinary stress ― for instance, poverty, divorse, sickness, disability and drugs are often associated to child abuse or neglect. This sounds reasonable as people do tend to break down under such conditions. But is it only this or is there something else that gets into a parents mind before he crosses that line? I would like to request all readers to please express their views on this, because in the next paragraph ill express strictly my views with no generalisation.

What I feel is when a parent reaches a stage where he thinks he completely owns his child, it is then he crosses the line. Let me put "completely" into perspective. Completely here refers to both physical and mental. The feeling of complete ownership gives the parent the mental ability to do bad for his/her child. If a parent respects his child a different human being, I think he would never come across this situation. Even if he occasionally spanks the child, it will be for the childs good, because the parent will have in mind to raise his child as a complete human being. People might say if we dont own a "thing" how will we show affection towards it. I agree to that, and thats where the difference between a "thing" and a "child" comes. "You buy a thing to love it, you love your child to reflect you". If a childs personality reflects good parenting, you will earn the respect of the society. A "thing " is an asset to your money, your child is an asset to your values.

I think I was able to make a point, and I kept it short because I was running out of words. If you donot agree with my views you can write to me and express your views on this topic. I really appreciate you reading through this post and promise you that I would try to come with better ones in the future.

-Ashish

.....and I thought India was bad !!!!

2007-09-18T11:23:00.000-07:00

**Before starting off with this post, I would advice user discretion. Comments in this post are strictly personal and mean no harm to any individual, organization, country, planet or galaxy.

Its been close to 9 months now since I have landed in the land of opportunities (Yes friends I am talking about the United States of America), I had a shine in my eyes and sigh of releif in my breath. Everything in this country is automized and fair, unlike in India, where most government undertaking are still manual and run on bribe. I had a dream (I still kindda have it), that Ill learn as much from this country go back and try my best to implement it in my country for the benefit of my countrymen. Well to be frank that dream is now fading out........

The first roadblock: Social Security Number
Most of the readers might be knowing, in the US each individual is a number. He lives, works, eats, excrets using this number. Without this you donot exist here. Well I came here on an H1-B and wanted to start my job, I had to wait for a whopping 2 months to get that. Everytime you call them you hear, "Sir please dont call us, we'll call you". In India, no-one is illegal. Probably you will find an illegal immigrant getting more respect and perks than a citizen. ...........and I thought India was bad.

The second roadblock: Credit Card
Getting a credit card in the US is a vicious circle for first timers in the US. Without a credit card you cannot create credit history and without credit history you dont get a credit card. Well you start off by taking a secure card, thats basically paying for the card out of your own pockets. In India there are 2 sects - an IT Professional and an non-IT professional. An IT professional has on an average 3 credit cards and can take virtually unlimited loans, and an non-IT professional struggle to get even one card. So if you are an IT guy you'll get sick of it and if you're a non-IT guy you'll never even try for it. ........and I thought India was bad.

The final roadblock(till now, expecting more in near future): Driving License
In India I was driving a car for rougly 6 years. Over here I flunked the written test once and the driving test once. It took me 1 and a 1/2 months to get a driving license. I understand its importance: very high speeds and the government is trying to be carefull. But I still have seen idiots passing the test the first time and driving all over the country, thretening the lives of others. In India you can order for a driving license at home without ever having to give the test. Result is unlimited number of cars on the road, more traffic and very slow speeds. You never have to bother to meet with an accident.........and I thought India was bad.

If you are still here, you might feel that I am getting on your nerves. Its better to stop before you hunt me and kill me.

Take care and keep reading,
-Ashish

Software Industry

2007-07-09T08:33:00.000-07:00

Well, I have not spent much time in this industry, so this post might feel unjust to a few people reading it. But frankly, everything you read here is my personal opinion. As far as I am concerned, I have spent a whopping 3 yrs in this industry where work is something you need to create and then sell.

Hi, this is Ashish Singhal, a Software Engineer. Today I am here to present a few thoughts of mine on the industry I work in. Well lets start with defining Software according to my dictionary. "Software is a combination of what you know i.e. the tools used, programming languages, operating systems etc. and what you architect with what you know i.e. logic."

With the advent of this relatively young industry, people have laid importance on the fact that "knowlegde (derived from information)" is the driving power in todays world. Pieces of information potrayed in a specific way aids understanding of an individual and drives an organization.

Now given this background I would like to start with what I feel about this industry. This industry has become the means of knowledge sharing for the whole world now. This industry is driving technology with in turn makes a persons life easier. But with the rapid pace at which this industry is growing there is a large percentage of people going berzerk as how to use the products, services of this industry even without knowing how it would really help them or their organization. Its just a trend that everyone wishes to follow, to make your organization flashy.
Similarly the other side of the coin is Software companies are coming up with ideas of thier own and trying to convince other organisations as to how their idea is beneficial for them. This might be true most of the times, but does not work out all of the time. In this event a Software company comes up with an idea, and convices other company to buy it. The result is a rat race, i.e. all the other companies enter the market with the same idea and start pitching in new customers.

Readers who managed to reach this paragraph might be thinking what is this guy trying to prove here. Well my point is, if this really is a rat race what is its future? Till when companies will keep coming up with ideas. There would be threshold where other organisations feel that i need no software anymore. What happens to these industries and the people working there?

I have no references to back my argument but would like people to post on what would be the future of this industry? I might be wrong and would ask you to point it out for me.

Thanks and although you might not have enjoyed this post (this being my first one), I hope this post will give you something to think about. I promise I will come up with better ones in the future.

-Ashish