A Look At The Science Of 'Avatar' : Discovery News

A Look At The Science Of 'Avatar' : Discovery News

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Two Lives

Sitting alone everyday, I have this growing concern that we are so much into ourselves, our lives, our neighbors that we tend to really forget what's happening outside us, outside our homes, our states, our countries.

I really wonder, what a girl in Afghanistan would be doing at this point in time, when I am busy ranting this thought process of mine. How different are the people of my age outside my orbit? What is it that they like to do, how is it that they like to spend their time on earth? I am thinking of starting this little project, Project 2 Lives, where I'll search for people of my age and look around what really concerns them. I believe females are more vocal and expressive about their personal lives than men, so I'll track species of my gender. This is something I really wanted to do, and with the advent of blogs and twitter, I know the task won't be impossible.

Let's see, wish me luck !!

PS: The image that you see here was the first one I got, when I typed in Two lives on Google Images. ;P
The image is courtesy : Flickr  

Confessions of a dangerous mind

It's such a fluke I know,
You love me and I love you,
there are better things to do,
money and velocity,
admiration and jealousy,
issues of heart and soul,
better left to the poets and philosophers,
I would never be able to bridge that chasm.

Age of innocence

Age of innocence,
like gaudy colored candies, dancing in the eyes of skimpily clad cousins,
hysterically jumping at the drop of rain on their noses,
carols and hymns getting lugged up with the school notebooks, like the dried roses,
age in evanescence


Pencils so priceless, rubber bands so precious,
all gone like a whiff of smoke
a window of black clouds, looming large over my tiny treasure,

Urban purdah

In ways more than one, a woman's life is interesting to the core. Sprawled across the green, the vast expanse of a sky whose length and breadth is governed by someone else, they chart their life journey.

The moods and spirits taking cues from the whimsicals of their men. The earth beneath at the mercy of the gods. A beautiful picture of contradictions. Locked inside the prisons of their own volition, they have to demonstrate a ballet of pseudo freedom and emancipation. Give someone, the full rights to sell your soul to his twisted desire and tell the world that you are liberated.

Laugh at her, because, she doesn’t stop at this. The entire episode of portraying herself as the free bird, which she isn’t pushed her into a pit of make believe emotions. Power becomes ample use of your beauty, ignorance can pass away as pristine innocence, and lack of authority can be replaced by your pseudo satisfaction of bowing to your love.

Ayn rand says, “Existence is identity, consciousness is identification.”

Absence of the identification that you are worshipping nothing but street smartness. Your god isn’t the all knowing, omnipotent vehicle of your emancipation. The absence of this consciousness will lead to ugly games of forged power .

You know the result?

You are the winner and you are the loser. You win spasmodic joy and lose bits of what was deemed to be your perpetual partner, your own self.

Who asked you to give away the power and the authority to own yourself to people who least deserve it? And it’s not about deserving, no one, except you, deserve every atom of your identity. Don’t conceal your weakness in garbs of love and respect. It’s time to burn the urban purdah. 

Image courtesy : 

http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/enlarge/ojibwa-woman_pod_image.html

WebOword - Visual Vocabulary

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WebOword - Visual Vocabulary

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Day 1: The entrepreneurial dilemma

China's ewaste solutions

Time magazine's photoessay shows the Chinese industry taking the toll on itself, it's country, it's environment in liu of doing what most dump.

Division in Diversity

I'm involved with a startup, named Pictualize and I'm blessed to work with great people as team members. One of the consequences when you start working on your own idea, is the fact that you see business everywhere. Business, more in terms of the management lessons than ideas to mint money ;)
It's not been much of a time being associated with my company, so every lesson I get, I try and accumulate it in my nerves. I've been reading this book called " India Unbound" by Gurcharan Das, and I'm onto deriving some managerial lessons from it. It's hugely surprising how academicians divide the course of a nation piecemeal and give explanations for the behavior of it's people.
It is this behavior which is shocking, disturbing and enlightning.
A part of the book says " Poor teamwork is pervasive in India. Take any institution, scratch it's surface, and one finds factionalism. Whether it's a company, a university, a hospital, a village panchayat, or a municipal board, it is beset with dissension, and it affects national competitiveness."
And there is an explanation given as well, for which I'll recommend you to read the book, but the important part is the presence of a void which is still present. If I talk of a corporate environment, I don't know why, not many Indian corporates look beyond the achievement of their easy and often narrow goals. There aren't many partnerships in existence which go beyond the scale of local businesses. More so, because, scaling up often involves a huge amount of trust between the founding members. Businesses in India are still vey family oriented, is it because of the fact that the profits should remain all in the family ? Family businesses are also not immune to the usual feudal wars for power. Tatas, Birlas, Ambani's all have had or are having their share of sibling rivalry when they should have concentrated more on competing globally. Even the theory of game theory and competitive behavior lays emphasis on being honest for a long term sustenance and productivity.You fight today, lose money, power, image and then fight again to reclaim the lost glory. I wonder have we ever tried to alter the feudal tendency of medieval India.
I have a company today, and are a closely knit group today. I shudder to the thought of facing such a fiasco ever. I will do everything to keep everything working as smoothly as possible, and when it concerns inflated egos, better do something about it soon.

Will read more on competitive behavior and try to establish why it hurts to cheat. Keep you posted as well.
Peace. 

Before and aftermath

Now, photoshop is one thing I've been ignoring for ages. Inspite of my brother yelling at me, I was quite happy in the ignorance quilt. I'm addicted now. I know, it's like, some light years late and all..bt then...it's okay !!

Here are the first things I tried.   The images are taken from Abduzeedo's blog

Lessons learnt.

Okay, so I was lonely and I  was cranky and I was what not. But, now, it's all "was".   Sense?? I don't think so. Two hours of calvin and hobbes doesn't leave you with much sense anyways.

I've been given real good lessons today, while I was chatting away on phone when a class was going on, and unabashedly, I went to the teacher making a face and saying some crap..

But let's focus on lessons.
I think I need to
1. Accumulate enough pride in myself and for the work I'm doing. I tend to take the second handers on my nerves. I mean show offs, stupid girls, et al. They tend to get on my nerves, and I get cocky. Need to stop that now. It hurts people I love.

2. Need to read more comics. :)

3. Need to smile more often. :)

.........................................................  :)........................................................................I'm happy..yey!!....

Credit Crisis Pictualized

Credit Crisis Pictualized

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Ready but not there..

Taken from here

Some words unspoken,
some unheard smiles,
a few tears unseen,
some moments unspent,
blank stares, deep voids,
New roads, lonely woods,
that pinch in my heart..
it's still there ...

Naked reality

picked up from here

quote..

“Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.”

Dag Hammarskjold

random images

Random images from the web.
This one's taken from
http://luspictures.blogspot.com/
and the previous one was taken from http://wirelez.blogspot.com/

Just to make sure, I din't mean to steal it !!

Moments of festivity ..

Here am I
Yet another goodbye!
He says Adiós, says Adiós,
And do you know why
She won't break down and cry?
- she says Adiós, says Adiós, Goodbye.

One by one my leaves fall.
One by one my tales are told.

It's no lie
She is yearning to fly.
She says Adiós, says Adiós,
And now you know why
He's a reason to sign
- she says Adiós, says Adiós, Goodbye.

One by one my leaves fall.
One by one my tales are told.

My, oh my!
She was aiming too high.
He says Adiós,
And now you know why
There's no moon in her sky
- he says Adiós, says Adiós, Goodbye.

No Goodbyes
For love brightens their eyes
Don't say Adiós, say Adiós,
And do you know why
There's a love that won't die?
- don't say Adiós, say Adiós, Goodbye.

- don't say Adiós, say Adiós, Goodbye.
- don't say Adiós, say Adiós, Goodbye.
- don't say Adiós, say Adiós, Goodbye

Chapter: Two : Philosophy – Who needs it?

YOU. You as an entrepreneur need philosophy the most. By philosophy, I don’t mean the constant pondering over the meaninglessness of life. I mean the code of values, the ethical foundation of your actions. Some people might dismiss philosophy as something of a theoretical nature and not something to be applied in someone’s life, but it is actually everything contrary to this belief.

Let me first illustrate why of all the people on the planet, you need to understand and apply it the most.

Any individual who is conscious and rational needs to have a solid ground of his ideals and ethics. They are as mandatory for the existence of a rational individual as the lungs in a living body. Sometimes, it just boils down to defining your rights and wrongs. Talking especially of the risk-taking entrepreneurs who constantly defy the set limitations and the rules, they need a background and a foundation on which they’ll build their judgement. This ground serves not only as the building block behind any judgment but also as a scale against which they can measure their success.
The power of having this ground at an individual level is so important that it becomes strikingly evident for a business model to incorporate these rules.
It is quite possible that the young people who are just embarking on the journey of entrepreneurship find it an unnecessary burden but as one walks on this path, he may find himself confronted with choices which not only challenge his logical abilities but also require him to challenge his ethical limitations and expectations. In cases like this, if you don’t have a benchmark based on which you may take sound decisions; you are not for the long race.

When we were involved with precimark, which dealt in the concept of precise marketing and head hunting for startups on social networking sites, we were faced with a crucial decision regarding spamming. Spamming is usually the fastest way to spread word about you and your company, but we decided against any form of privacy invasion and followed the longer route.

It takes time, but let me tell you, it pays to respect and understand the private virtual space of everyone. We had our ethics and moral practices in place and the journey was made easier. I don’t know if we had adopted the unethical way, how far we could have gone, but we thought the success achieved by such unscrupulous means won’t be worth achieving at all. There are times when you can’t shirk off your duties by believing that’s the way the cookie crumbles because the cookie is now in your hands.

Reverting back to philosophy, every would be- entrepreneur must enlighten himself and be prepared to face such issues head one without loosing one’s cool. Alan Greenspan in his book, the age of turbulence admits to being impressed by Ayn rand and her philosophy of objectivism. One is not supposed to read Aristotle but whatever feeds your intellectual hunger.

My Two Cents : Chapter One

I remember sitting in a physics class preparing for the highly brutal competitive examinations for entrance in engineering colleges when my teacher closed his mammoth problem book and gave us a small pep talk.

I confess, I don’t remember anything associated to that class even in my remotest memories but the pep talk remains fresh as ever.

He said that in order to do a problem correctly, one has a single way, but there are infinite ways to do it wrong. Even in a ten step problem, one could write the numerals wrong or do a silly mistake in addition, but when the problem is right, it is correct all the way. He said that we belonged to the Homo sapiens species and we are bound to make mistakes, so if we wanted to do the problem right in the examinations, we should practice it so much that the wrongs get eliminated.

What he said that day was of course valid for physics but is all the more valid for startups.

It’s a closely established fact that out of hundred startups only a few survive to breathe in the returns for the sweat behind them. What makes them so vulnerable to failure and what would you call a failure? What goes on in the minds of the college students or undergrads when they decide to take a chance with probability? What is the secret recipe or is there any recipe at all?

After have been associated with two startups, these are a few questions which haunted and intrigued us and I decided to share my two cents with all the entrepreneurs out there waiting and working to strike gold.

CHAPTER ONE: Eggs or the Hen?

What should come first in the order of things for the perfect startup stew? The eggs or the hen? The idea or the search? One might not find any co-relation between the two metaphors that I’ve used, but this is one of the starting dilemmas entrepreneurs face.

How should you startup or rather when do you decide that the time to start your own venture has knocked on your doorstep?

The answer is pretty simple and straight- when you decide to let it go.

You decide to let the fear go for a ride, you decide to let go the external controls which had you by neck and you let go the laxity you had in your day-to-day existence.

I had read it somewhere that entrepreneurship is not something you do; it’s more about something you are! More importantly, there is a difference between an entrepreneur and a person having an entrepreneur-like-tendencies. But we’ll get to this point later. We were discussing about the idea.

When our team decided to start, it wasn’t as if we were born with an action plan or we always knew what would click. So, we sat down together and decided to systematically hunt for ideas. One of the friends in my team made a small notebook, the idea notebook and he meticulously made note of what was working on the internet, what was fetching money and was easy to implement with a few modifications. Looking back, I don’t think I can call it the best strategy to start with, but we, as students did not have much options.

We didn’t want to be one small speck in the million heads but we didn’t know what to do? So, we racked our brains and searched on the internet.

So, did this strategy work?

Yes, it did and here’s why.

The way internet and the users on the internet are growing is faster than any bacteria multiplication. The main disadvantage for startups, especially for young entrepreneurs are the bourgeoning services based startups. Entry barriers being relatively low and the technology required to start a website being relatively commonplace, every one wants to have a website to sell something or claiming to sell you a service. As a result, the internet starts seething with websites who have more-or-less the same product and the same service to offer. Nowadays, there is a wave of fashion-trends on the web too, wherein for every new idea, there are more than ten different versions of it, each one claiming to be better than the rest. Now, as a budding entrepreneur, should you jump in the pool and contribute to these me-too sites? I would say, think before you leap.

My Two Cents

Some time  back, I started penning down my experiences on entrepreneurship in the form of a short book, which I named " My Two Cents". Due to some reasons or pure laziness on my part, I abandoned the project. Now,the writer in me is calling me again and I'll pursue it till fruition. But, I've decided to give my readers a chance to know what all I am writing and to know whether they like it or not. I request you to be a  part of  my book and all the readers/contributors who give me suggestions on improving upon it  will be included as co-authors of the book. :)