Happy Earth Day 2009

Let’s mark this day as important day in our calendar and learn how to contribute something to stop polluting earth. The issue is, we can’t continue doing what we are doing now, we shouldn’t be greedy to take all earth’s resources and leave some waste and unlivable condition to our future generation. Even simple things can make big difference and don’t be intimated by i'm not not doing more to save the earth or obsessed with go green. The world we are living is beautiful one and saving money/wealth only not enough for our kids and grandchildren, we have to give them a better living condition.

When ever I thought of going green, I always thinks to hit 100% like sell my car to buy an electric one or convert my home appliance into energy star compatible, but practicality wise those are unattainable. But slowly and steady we can achieve more things to become eco friendly. There are so many “low hanging fruits” to stop polluting our earth,

1. Don’t print papers unless necessary. Use black and white printing more than color one.

2. Recycle more, trash it in appropriate bin is easy and no brainier.

3. Quit smoking or cut down smoking, smoking is injurious to health as well as not eco friendly. As an ex-chain-smoker, quitting this habit is hard but we can, millions of million people did it then why can’t we.

4. Use online bill pay more, which save papers, checks, and stamps.

5. Use public transportation more, again some parts of country, we don’t have public transportation hence it is unattainable for now, but use bicycle for short distance, car pool and even walk if weather allows.

6. Opening and closing garage door less, don't close windows or doorways completely because use as much as natural lights. (Thanks to wife for this tip)
   
7. Buy energy star appliance when ever we buy new appliances. Buy LCD TV instead of Plasma. Use cloths to wash hands instead of paper towels. (Thanks to wife for this tip)

There are some still arguing that, we and our future generations are okay and these go green is waste and earth is clean as before like 100 years ago. There are several scientific research showed that we are polluting earth faster than before, ice melting faster than before in north/south poles, skin cancer increasing, childhood asthma increasing, these all are proved and we have evidence and statistics. A question was asked to Al Gore who is a champion of environment friendly concept, that why his home is not environmental friendly yet? And why he is still traveling in plane which is main source of damaging ozone layer? As I said before, there is something we have to live with it, even though those are not eco friendly. Because we are not advancing fast enough to invent new eco friendly items. One main reason is, we within our self still not clear, whether we are polluting this earth or not? But as per my opinion, yes we are polluting this earth and the awareness is very low to slow down it and our kids, grandchildren going to live in a glass door world, not like us in a natural world.

Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_gore

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_day

Blink’ers

It was the boom IT time in Silicon Valley most of IT companies required to fill up both Software Engineering position to top level executive jobs. For top level executive position they went to East, Midwest, and South U.S.A based blue chip companies. Once the top executives settled with new, young Silicon Valley companies, they hired their subordinates from the same place where they came from, because understandably they want to work with trusted and friendly, cohesive team, rather than with unknown geeky Silicon Valley brought ups. It is very common all the places, for example, President Obama hired most of his friends and well known to him for his top level jobs. But the problem with Silicon Valley was, they spent millions of million dollars for those executive’s relocation charges, as .com burst these issues came up and most of them fired.

The point is, as an experienced executive leaders why they couldn’t trust and friendly with some unknowns and builds a cohesive team quickly. The trusting people is not an easy task, we want to confirm everything and double checked. But as per my opinion, we can trust and form a cohesive team within short amount of time, rather than always work with same team. Based on my experience, people who trust others with in a “blink of time” is most successful than others who took so much time to trusting others, that is, intuition.

How this successful Blinker’s trust works? Malcom Galdwell wrote the book “Blink”, he mostly covered intuition but not how it works and what are the main factors which lead to conclusion in social context? For onlookers, this highly blinkers seems to be a “push over” or “easy goers”, but each decision this blinkers made required enormous amount of analytics and cognition skills.

The fundamental of these blinker’s success is no prejudice, no jump into conclusion, flexible stereotype fixation and most importantly not seeing things black and white, good or bad. Each one is different and they are champion of one thing but not good at some other thing, that doesn’t mean that they are bad people and not trustworthy.

Crucifiction and Resurrection

Happy Easter. The crucifiction and resurrection should not consider in religious context. It is an excellent motivational tool to coming up again. The motivational speakers all over the world from all religion used Good Friday and Easter to motivate people. As a Roman Catholic dominate neighborhood grown up, I have more information and exactly know how Christians all over the world celebrates. Based on my experience with my Christian friends, they start the fasting and they feel very down at the time of Good Friday and coming back with a smile face on Easter. I don’t know I’m the only one noticing it or my neighborhood is very conservative Christians.

The story of Jesus Christ’s crucifiction is the most important event in Christian tradition, even though Jesus is God and big, he is vulnerable to many things. The message of crucifiction is, even though we are high and mighty, we have to go through the pain and suffer of common people, we shouldn’t show our power in front of some weak people. The equality and humble are the main points from crucifiction of Jesus.

The Resurrection is excellent one for motivational point of view, the message is very simple, even though died, god is a god, god can use the power any time and come back again. It is not only god, any body can come back after they buried below. Rather than wasting time on Resurrection is a myth and never happened, just think of message given from our ancestors. The phoenix bird rose from ash, even though that was a myth, we used it to motivate people, the Crucifiction and Resurrection also can be used to motivate believers.

Indian Election 2009

Again it is time for massive Indian election. We love elections because this is the time when money comes out from politicians. Poor and poorest people get good food and some money and some new cloths at this election time. Indian election is a largest democracy process in this world. There are 700 million eligible voters with 800K polling stations. Consistently 60% of people cast their ballets to select a majority party to form next government.From 1950 to 1990, Congress was the monopoly to rule India but now we have 150 plus major and regional parties to contesting in election and a team of political parties form the government. One of advantage is, we have a representation of all regional and state in Indian central government but a major drawback is building consensus among diversified political parties is huge and time consuming process.

During this election, i found that Indian politicians are at trouble because of inflammatory talks. Election Commission and local authorities are too harsh to punish this behavior. Actually i know some of my Indian friends, they feel offended if i offer a beer when they visited my home, so the point is, we are very sensitive on many matters hence if we start harassing people for sensitive talks at political meeting, we will not reach the destiny. The duty of Election Commission is to contact the election NOT imposing rules.

Actually political meeting at India is big deal, because politicians should change the context quickly. In the state of Kerala one should not speak about capitalism because most of them are communists, in state of Tamil Nadu one should not speak about Hinduism because most of them are non-believers, in state of Bihar one should speak about AK-47 because most of them are gun lovers. But some naïve politicians may not have the experience of, what to talk and how to polish the talk, which creates some issues, but election commission and media should not take that serious, may be a hefty fine, open apology and strict warning is enough for first time. The meeting is the connecting point between politicians and their followers hence too many restrictions creates some negatives at long run, let them talk freely. The restriction creates fear, fear creates controlled behavior, and controlled behavior hides original personality, hence we might end up selecting a wrong person to represent us.

Resources:

1. Excellent source for Indian Election 2009 from Google :

http://www.google.co.in/intl/en/landing/loksabha2009/

2. Another excellent one from Yahoo :

http://in.elections.yahoo.com/

3. BBC Indian Election home page :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/south_asia/2009/india_election/default.stm

4. Indian Election Commission home page :

http://eci.nic.in/

5. Extensive India election coverage :

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/

Gun Control

Last summer, I just touched about Gun Control because of Chicago’s heighten violence, since then I did some research on Gun Control. One of the strong points against gun control is U.S constitution amendment 2, which says “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Last year Supreme Court’s decision to struck down the famous D.C gun ban as unconstitutional. The Supreme court’s decision virtually shut down all gun control activists voice, because there is no way to fight for gun control in Federal level. But there is some other ways to continue the fight against guns.

Actually court should not intervene private establishment’s rules and regulations. For example, as per amendment 1, all U.S citizens enjoy free speech, but not really, can we speak anything in work place? We can’t speak everything at all places, in other words we use common sense. But for amendment 2 we are not using same common sense. A ranch owner in Texas might need gun for protection, but why a New Yorker living in Manhattan pent house need a gun, he/she was already protected by private and police security force. So we should encourage private establishments to make strict rules against gun owners like they have to submit a psychological evaluation certification once a year.

After further reading and analysis, the gun ownership should be case by case basis. There are some rural area citizens of U.S may required guns for self protection against human as well as animals. They are not yet protected completely. As per records, the rural area homicide is very low and they are really utilizing gun for self protection. But urban area it is misused widely and it is going out of control sometimes. The law applicable to all citizen of country whether they live in urban or rural or occupied territory. It is in hands of private organization to control guns within their territory for better living condition for all.

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller
http://www.nraila.org/
http://www.guncite.com/