There was Siddhartha, a prince who set out of his palace and saw a lot of suffering in this world. He was pained by this suffering. So, he meditated and searched for an answer under the famous tree at Gaya. He attained enlightenment, discovered the middle path, became the Buddha and left this world for a higher state.

There was Mother Teresa, a lady who set out of her country and saw a lot of suffering in this world. She was pained by this suffering. So, she stayed on with these people, worked untiringly towards alleviating their pains and problems. She did this for as long as she could. For as long as she lived she helped everyone around her.

Received via e-mail:

By now, you’ve already heard about global warming and climate change. They’re talking about it on TV, they’re talking about it in the newspapers, they’re even talking about it in their sleep.

What nobody’s talking about is that ordinary people just like you have the solution in their hands… If you plant a tree, you cool the planet. It’s as simple as that.

For over two years, Greenpeace has been successfully running the “Trees Against Climate Change” program across the country. You too can do your bit by planting a sapling, caring for it, and watching it grow over time into a tree that helps fight climate change.

And it’s easier than you think. All you need to do is send in your name, phone number and address, including city of residence in reply to this email, and we will personally come over and deliver your sapling. We’ll even provide you useful information on how to nurture and look after your sapling.

Best of all, it doesn’t cost you a single paisa! So ACT now. A few more years and it might be too late.

For those whom the reply link doesn’t work, please send an e-mail with the required details to greenpeace.in(at)gmail.com with the Subject line: Send me my Sapling!

I plan to ask them for a sapling soon. Do your bit too.

A lunch with a lot of leftovers (thanks to affordability).
Packed the leftovers to give it to some beggar.

The beggar was an old woman sitting on the pavement. She spread her palms out by virtue of habit as we passed her.

Gave her the packet of food. She accepted it, folded her palms together towards us, and kept her arms that way as long as I could see. As long as we were out of sight or probably even after that.

So much gratitude for our food-ordering indulgence. So much gratitude for having left something on my plate.

So much.

Why do most South Indian songs have their heroes and well-endowed heroines wildly throwing their bodies in obtuse angles and always, always, performing furious pelvic thrusts?

I need to point out quickly – I am definitely not complaining and in fact appreciate this fine ‘performing’ art. Just want to know the reason behind it though.

Chilli might solve this one for me

A brilliantly cool animation video here:
http://home.iitk.ac.in/~hussain/fav/Animation.swf

Must watch!

An easier problem as compared to the one posted yesterday.

Find the total number of solutions for the following equation:
x to the power n – y to the power n = 2 to the power 100
where n > 1

( I couldnt get the superscript option to denote the powers, hence the text above).

Hint: Start with n = 2 and find the total number of solutions of the equation.

This month’s puzzle from IBM Ponder This:

You are playing a game in which you can ask for numbers. Each such number is a random value uniformly (and independently) distributed between 0 and 1. After you receive each number you can decide whether to request an additional number or to stop. When you stop your score is the sum of all the numbers you have received. Let 0< x < 1. We ask two questions.

1. Suppose you are trying to achieve a score between x and 1. What are your chances of success?
2. Suppose you are trying to achieve a score between n+x and n+1. What are your chances of success in the limit as n –> infinity?

In both cases assume you are following the obvious best strategy. The answers are simple functions of x. Both questions must be answered correctly for credit.

Time for some quotes:

“Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment.” – R. Buckminster Fuller

“Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.” – George Bernard Shaw

“The thing that impresses me the most about America is the way parents obey their children.” – King Edward VIII

“Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.” – Gertrude Stein

Quotes Courtesy: QuotationsPage

After some hectic activity in the morning and noon, my work has now finally started making me feel bored.

Making a presentation on a day which looks as cloudy and pleasant as today is not really my kind of work.

I have gotten bored, walked out of the office and around the lobby a couple of times doing nothing, observed the number of people walking with their cell phones stuck to their ears, read my mails over and over again, stared out of the windows and drank a bottle of water in one go. All this, I realized, took only 15 minutes.

Now I am back to the presentation which will apparently, probably and hopefully shape the future of a new product. Next venting out coming up shortly.

David Brin Predicts the Future.
In this article published in the Discover magazine, David Kushner tells us how David Brin, a sci-fi author, was able to predict the future including the current state of the Web, global warming and all that stuff.

What I found interesting is the way Brin makes use of patterns in ideas to predict the future. The article gives us a brief insight into the techniques and tools that Brin uses to foresee the future of many things including technology, environment, culture etc.

Excerpts:

When prediction serves as polemic, it nearly always fails. Our prefrontal lobes can probe the future only when they aren’t leashed by dogma. The worst enemy of agile anticipation is our human propensity for comfy self-delusion.Peering ahead is mostly art. We all have tricks. One of mine is to look for “honey-pot ideas” drawing lots of fad attention. Whatever’s fashionable, try to poke at it. Maybe 1 percent of the time you’ll find a trend or possibility that’s been missed. Another method is even simpler: Respect the masses.

A contrarian trick that has served me well is to ponder a coming technology and then imagine, What if everybody gets to use it? In really smart ways? Most of those imaginings have come true.

Read the article here.