Video Killed the Radio Star

In case you dont know... the title of the post is also the title of a very popular song by a band called... (oddly enough) "The Buggles"...

But thats not what this post is going to be talking about... heck I didnt know that "The Buggles" even existed until I googled the song... which I have heard a number of times in a number of places... argh! I digress again...

I wanted to talk about the death of Indipop and the role of Bollywood... but theres other more qualified people to do that... and frankly... I am not in the mood to start a rant which will probably include several death threats and wild accusations of "ALLEGED" plagiarism... Then there will be my usual lamentation about remixes and how the music videos that they make these days take the concept of 'Sex Sells' a little too seriously... I mean... have some god damned pride in your own music for f***s sake... (Please excuse the profanity)...

But... to celebrate the short lived golden era of Indipop (read: The 90's)... heres a few numbers you might enjoy....

K.K. - Aap Ki Dua

Bombay Vikings - Kya Soorat Hai

Agosh - Paisa

Silk Route - Dooba Dooba

Lucky Ali - Oh Sanam

Euphoria - Mantra

Despite my defeatist outlook in this matter... artists like Kailash Kher and Atif are giving me hope... even their music videos dont have too many (or any) half naked woman cavorting in a vulgar manner...

The Death Of Trust

Is it just me? Or does anyone else see that people are no longer as trusting as they used to be?

I know I am someone who does not trust people easily. Perhaps that makes me hard to trust as well, but thats something I will have to sort out myself...

The thing is, society has hammered a default setting of mis/dis trust into us. We worry about what that stranger who smiled at us in the street might have been thinking. We always try to find a motive behind the actions of pretty much everyone we come into contact with.

But rather than the examples of mistrust between people, I want to talk about why the mistrust is born; about how and why that default setting of mis/dis trust gets hard wired into us, and about how current trends in society will only perpetuate this trend.

That hard wired mistrust can come from various sources:

Childhood traumas? Betrayal by a relative friend or business associate? Unfaithful or gold-digging husband/wife/lover? Things of that nature...

These examples are outside our control and can hit us hard. People often are unable to ever fully recover from these sorts of things, and thats only natural.

But the common thread of those betrayals is that even con-men and gold-diggers are working for personal gain AND the personal gain (to them) is a direct result of the betrayal that they are perpetrating. This fact at some level makes their actions understandable or logical or justifiable (or some weird amalgam of those three words).

But get this! Here is a new and scary assault on the concept of trust between the common man.

They call it stealth marketing...

According to Wikipedia: Undercover marketing (also known as buzz marketing, stealth marketing, or by its detractors roach baiting) is a subset of guerrilla marketing where consumers do not realize they are being marketed to. For example, a marketing company might pay an actor or socially adept person to use a certain product visibly and convincingly in locations where target consumers congregate. While there, the actor will also talk up their product to people they befriend in that location, even handing out samples if it is economically feasible. The actor will often be able to sell consumers on their product without those consumers even realizing that they are being marketed to.

So... Yeah... The most recent example of Stealth marketing that was uncovered in the USA involved the Blackberry cellphone. The mobile makers hired an undercover marketing agency which hired pretty young women to hang out in bars and such like to flirt with men. These women would then invite these men to enter their phone numbers in their cellphones (which would all be the Blackberry Perl). The objective was to get the 'marks' to hold the cellphone and try to use it. They would promise to call back, make small talk and then leave. Never to be heard from again.

This is one example of the betrayal of trust, and while it is for personal gain, the gain does not come from the act of betrayal. The gain comes from somewhere else. The act of betrayal is being turned into a job... a real... legal... job... Perhaps 'betrayal' might be too strong a word, but you get my meaning. It is an example of a breach of trust.

I think that it is a worrying precedent. Ethics of this kind of marketing aside, it presents us with a troubling moral dilemma. What kind of world will we leave our children when people can hold jobs where they are paid to lie to others? Where the act of lying becomes akin to someone assembling a machine on an assembly line, a programmer writing a line of code?

I wonder... What are those men who gave their phone numbers to those women be feeling right now? How will they feel the next time a woman flirts with them? What will any guy who has read that story feel when they flirt with a girl and she whips out a Blackberry Perl?

Will they feel pleased? Or will they feel that twinge of suspicion, mistrust... fear or disgust even?

I for one would perhaps feel less distrustful if that girl had been flirting with me just for her amusement who may think of me as a nerd.

But the thought of being 'worked over' by a professional who is not even getting something directly form the act of betrayal, for whom it is merely a job; that appalls me, disgusts me, worries me. I know that I will feel that twinge of suspicion... of mistrust... whenever I see a pretty girl holding a Blackberry Perl. (Hey that rhymes!)

The End of the World

Many people have predicted the end of the world in as many different ways.

Some thought that the world would end in the year 2000, others have predicted the year 2012 and some thought it would happen when they activated the Large Hadron Collider... the means of the world ending range from the wrath of nature, the effects of the irreversible degradation of the environment (e.g. Global Warming), collisions with large celestial bodies, and from being sucked into a man made black hole...

But... by some miracle... we as a species seem to have escaped at least some of those predicted ends... although the others do appear to be ticking time bombs...

You want to know what I think will cause the end of the world?

I think our end is not going to be because of anything external... at the rate we are going... we will likely wipe our race off the face of this earth with our own hands...

In case you have not understood... I am talking about the specter of war...

Do you know that there are more than a dozen active war-zones in the world today? (This is not even including many of the conflicts in Africa)... Here are some I know from off the top of my head... and the affected regions...

1] Arab-Israeli Conflict: Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestinian Territories and Syria

2] Somali Civil War: Somalia

3] Afghan War: Afghanistan, Pakistan

4] War in Darfur: Sudan

5] Iraq War: Iraq

6] Mexican Drug War: Mexico

7] Colombian Armed Conflict: Colombia

8] Communist and Islamic Insurgency in the Philippines: Philippines

9] Insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir: India

10] Naxalite-Maoist Insurgency: India

11] Balochistan Conflict: Pakistan

12] Conflict in the Niger Delta: Nigeria

13] Fourth Civil War in Chad: Chad

Some of these conflicts involve nuclear armed foes. When you add the specter of terrorism to this volatile mix... the threat of terrorists obtaining even one of the massive stockpile of nuclear weapons being hoarded by the world powers... the grim picture emerges...

A single nuclear weapon in the wrong hands.... a single error of judgement by a commander of the armed forces of the nuclear armed countries could mean the difference between life and death for practically all of mankind... This is not mere Cold War hysteria... This is a cold hard fact...

They say that the Arms Race had ended... when they should be saying it has only just begun... Whether for self defense or for aggressive purposes... the ranks of nuclear armed countries have only grown over the last half century.... not shrunk.... the potency of these weapons has not been reduced... but increased... Currently... it is said that Iran and N. Korea may be on the verge of obtaining these weapons... (well... apparently N. Korea already has them...)...

Given the expansionist tendencies of most of the nuclear armed powers (India included)... things only look more grim... the race for obtaining nuclear weapons has also spawned an even more frenetic race to build better conventional weapons systems... It is estimated that as a whole... mankind had upwards of 1400 BILLION dollars on 'defense' related expenditures in the year 2008... that figure has only risen... and it likely does not fully account for the untold billions spent on research and development... but most importantly... that number does not account for the man hours spent by the worlds most brilliant minds searching for new ways for men to kill each other... rather than saving each other... or trying to solve issues of world hunger, global warming and the like...

The New START initiatives by the American and Russian governments give me hope... but only a glimmer... the fact is that even after the reductions... they will both retain enough nuclear weapons to destroy the entire world many times over... not to mention all of the production facilities and materials to make many thousands more....

Closing Note

I have no real message to send here... this is just my view on the question of how the world could someday end...

Unless some steps are taken by the people in the position to do so... I think that we wont be around long enough to have to worry about Global Warming and environmental degradation...

Given my small audience... I don't think this will have much more effect than alleviating that urge I get to yell this out loud in public when people start to talk about how some hypothetical scenario will cause the end of the world...

This is not to say that Global Warming is less of a threat to the survival of the world as we know it... its just not as immediate... nor will it be as quick to kill...

Do not Judge a Book by its Cover.

What do you think of when someone says the word "Cactus"?

I bet the image in your mind is that of the saguaro cactus or perhaps some smaller 'cuter' version. Most of you probably believe that all cacti only produce spines. Spines that can cause VERY painful injuries if you dont respect them (I speak from experience).

But I wonder how many of you know that cacti also have some of the most beautiful blooms seen in plant life anywhere... in other (simpler) words... they produce some of the most beautiful flowers you will ever see...

Google will help you out with some results here... but I also wanted to share some pictures I have taken myself...

Just thought I would try to share this with more people... what happened was that during the course of a conversation a friend was confused when I told him I wanted to go see cactus blooms... he didn't know that cacti could produce flowers... especially such awesome ones...

The Journey towards Happiness

I was thinking about these questions today... and these are question's I think about often... What is happiness? Am I really happy?

I have a strangely morose face... people often tell me I should look happier.... smile more etc...

I sometimes wonder... am I really unhappy? Do I look that dejected in life?

Lately I had been feeling depressed... I will admit... job scene bleak... my choice of major now seeming like a mistake made due to my whims... perhaps just a choice made to protect my pride? I was hearing about people getting jobs and moving on while I was still in School and struggling with my thesis... I was unhappy... yes... or to be precise... I FELT unhappy...

There are many things which I would like to be different about my life... I would like to have a job, I would like to have a car, I would like to have more opportunities to spend time with my friends and family, I would like my family to be happy... because these are some things which I feel are integral to my happiness which either I currently don't have enough of... or just dont have... I often find myself feeling envious of people who have such things...

But still... am I really unhappy? I would like to think not... no worries about health so far... the wealth aspect has taken a little beating though... LoL... I dont have many friends... but the ones I do have are the kind I can rely on in a pinch... I am doing what I love... studying about aircraft... something I have dreamed about ever since I can remember... so... I have every reason to be happy... why did I still feel doubt?

Then I realized something... I was rating my happiness on the scale of other people... I was letting other people tell me whether I was happy or not... this is not to say that I still dont want those things... or that they would not contribute to my happiness... just that I should be using a different yardstick to measure them... that is.... my own...

I realized that people were looking at me and evaluating my happiness by using their own measure or concept of what happiness means... this is a fundamentally flawed approach... because... while happiness as an emotion is the same for everyone, the actions that make a person happy... are different for everyone... not only that... but different people express happiness differently...

So I can confidently say I am happy... even though I might not always look like it...

Let me propose something here.... something I have come to believe strongly... even though it is a recent revelation...

I propose that every single course of action we take in our life... even something as mundane as brushing our teeth in the morning... are all geared towards attaining some goal... and the achievement of this goal is something which (in some shape or form) will somehow contribute to our happiness...

The thing which I have realized while struggling with these questions is that often times... the things that give me the most happiness are not even the goals I am working towards... its the journey... the collection of all the little actions that I have taken in order to attain a goal... which give me most happiness... or satisfaction...

The thing is... as we grow older... our thinking starts to change... our mindsets are constantly being programmed with all the cares and worries of the world and all the pressures of being an adult. We start to believe that if we fail to achieve the goal... the entire time spent on trying to achieve that goal was meaningless... a waste of time... something to feel bad about... a cause for unhappiness...

A crude example: Kids playing a soccer game... they all want to win of course... but at the end of the game... you will find that mostly all of them have a smile on their faces... win or lose... they mostly all had a blast.... just playing the game was so much fun... it didnt matter that they won or lost... they all walked away knowing they did their bloody best...

Now lets look at adolescents/adults... lets say they are on a bus going on a trip... all are expecting to enjoy the trip a lot of course... but the bus breaks down on the way... and they had to walk like XYZ km on foot... all of them will crib about it right? Oh our trip is ruined... we will be too tired to do anything once we get there etc etc... they will be so focused on cribbing about how tired the walk to the hotel or wherever is going to make them... that they take no enjoyment in the journey... they will forget the fun moments they had shared when the bus was still rolling along... they often consider all of that to be a waste...

The point of that mess above was this... I have realized that the process of getting to a goal often provided me with more enjoyment than the achievement of the goal... and many times overrides the disappointment of failure... because somewhere along the way... I stopped caring about what would happen once I got to my goal... and just concentrated on doing my best to getting there...

I think I have my answer now... I will always be happy... it is actually impossible for me... or any other person to be unhappy.... unless we decide to fall into the trap of a negative outcome focused mindset... because happiness is something which we naturally tend towards...

People will say that I am being idealistic here... that the real world does not work that way... that I cant simply stop worrying about outcomes and stop setting targets... to them I say.... I am not against the concept of making plans and setting targets for things you want... what I am saying is that we should try to make up a goal... and then devote all our power and energy towards attaining it... we should consider the journey to be something of value in and of itself... and not just think of the goal as the only thing of value... if we do that... if we are able to avoid falling into the trap of caring too much about the outcome and not enough about the journey... I think we will all do just fine... we will all be happy...

"A traveler who values the journey will always have a more fruitful trip than one who values only the destination."

55 Fiction Rush...

So.... as I said before... I saw the 55 fictions on some blogs.... (Namely Samandrita chan and Omkar kuns blogs)... and I thought it might be cool to write one.... and I did.... you might have read it... Anyway... it was hard... but fun... and I thought... why not do another?

4 hours later I had 10 of them... the format is compelling.... trying to squeeze in a story in 55 words is so hard! But the end result was surprisingly good (at least IMO).... I will admit that my 2nd attempt was not spectacular... but the others I feel pretty good about... I will be putting them out weekly....

So... heres the schedule.... I put up the titles so you can try to imagine what theyre about... LoL... and so that you know I didnt cheat! (They are all ready to go right now...)... Also... I guess I could convert those titles to links to the posts as I make em...

#001: Peer Pressure

#002: The Mujahid

#003: The Best Friend

#004: The Jumper

#005: Revenge is Sweet

#006: The Showdown

#007: Love Letter

#008: The Ubermensch

#009: Voyeur

#010: A Jester in Love

Watching a Rainbow

It was a Saturday... the 20th I think... and it was cold and raining... I was feeling thoroughly miserable... lots of homework, a midterm and a lab due the following week apart from the work I needed to be doing for my professor...

But things were not all bad... I had a date planned that night... However.... given the way that things were going... I was going to end up too tired to enjoy it... I thought about calling her and telling her to postpone our date....

But then I decided to wait a little longer before I made the call... I kept on working... fortunately I was not alone... I had a few underclassmen for company... good sports all of em... I helped them out with their work for a few minutes to take my mind off off my own problems...

It was evening when we decided to open the door to the lab to get some fresh air... I stepped out with one of the underclassmen... we were both ranting about how our instructors were all slave drivers... and then we stopped short... awestruck by the scene that greeted us outside...

It was a gigantic rainbow... bright and vivid.... the kind you see in picture books... we hurried over to the parking lot to get a better view... and were even more amazed.... the rainbow formed a fully complete arch... and vivid as a drawing the whole way through... we could see the aircraft on approach to the airport passing through the arc...

We yelled for the others to come outside and join us... and fortunately one of them had a camera... they took a few pictures... which they promised to send me (haven't done so yet.... must call them...)

In that brief moment... all my fatigue vanished... and I forgot about the cold and the rain... most of life's problems would seem insignificant in the face of such beauty.... But... even as we admired the magnificence of the colors and the size of the arch.... the rainbow began to fade... the sun had started to set....

Of all of natures displays of artistry... the rainbow is one of the most beautiful... and perhaps the most ephemeral... it was a reminder that even though all good things must come to an end... we must remember that every cloud has a silver lining... so to speak...

Just then... my cellphone buzzed in my pocket... it was her...

"What are you doing?"

If she had called five minutes ago... I would have probably given her an earful about my terrible workload... but... all of that seemed so insignificant now....

"I was watching a Rainbow"

END

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You know how they say that people should take the time to smell the roses? I think we all need to do that more often...

Nowadays... people are so caught up in some or the other kind of "race"... which is more generally termed as "the-rat-race"... but everyone has his or her own version of it... The thing is... I dont see too many people ever looking at the sky or admiring flora and fauna like I do (from time to time)...

Perhaps I am just odd that way... but I find that it makes me happy to look at nature... watching squirrels /chipmunks playing on that rusty old sculpture outside the ISTB, going out of my way to look at the cactus flowers when they bloom... etc etc... there is another incident where I was feeding birds... but thats another story...

Anyway... I digress...

The point I wanted to make is that we all need to get out of our own way and try to find some time to enjoy nature... the smallest things can often serve as great stress busters.... and simply make you smile... so... go out there and pretend you're a kid... chase a butterfly or play with a cat or puppy... admire the flowers... lie in the grass... something...