What matters now

(Image courtesy: neuronarrative.wordpress.com)

I'm on page 51 of Seth Godin's free e-book titled 'What matters now'. It's a collection of micro-essays by Godin and his friends. Jason Fried from 37s, Gina Trapani of Lifehacker, Guy Kawasaki and many others.

A good read, every page talks about one specific topic, hardly 200 words per page. It's free e-book and it's a available here

I, DROID

I got Eclipse installed in my machine at work. Eclipse Europa 3.3x, I wanted to work on Android for long, been lazying around for a long time. Yesterday, it turns out that I could download the SDK (22 MB download). I didn't waste much time, downloaded the SDK and installed the Eclipse ADT plugin for Android. It was kind of a gamble, because the Android Developer site recommends Eclipse 3.4 Ganymede and 3.5 Galileo for ADT. I just gave it a try with the help of this awesome online tutorial here.

Now... I, DROID :)

(image courtesy: Android Development with Eclipse - Tutorial)

Speed breakers... Sleep breakers

It's a very innovative way to prevent you from over speeding and injuring 'others'. If you don't respect to these man made creations on almost every Indian road, it's bound to kill you. And this is the unique service that it provides. It just kills you, nobody else other than you gets hurt. No! you might not know where and when there is a speed breaker, because most of the time, there won't be a road sign or a properly marked speed bump on the road. So always be alert, pay your respects to the speed breakers. Slow down and pass, you might have to break hard that the road should feel that you are sort of bowing down to it.

There is another variant of the same that's found on highways. They come in pairs, there should be atleast two. Now these are what I would like to call 'Sleep Breakers'. It's a highway, you have to 'have to' drive at night, we are human, to sleep is human, to sleep while driving is 'crazy' human. So sleep breakers shake the sleep off you. It's like somebody holding you and shaking you left and right, left and right and snap... you're awake. These usually with some luck, does come with big road signs which say, bump ahead and all. Most of em read as 'Speed bump ahead', which you should normal read as 'Speed bump... RIGHT Heeeee eEeeeeeReeeeeE!!!!'

Yesterday night I had an episode where I nearly took off from the seat off a Bullet for not paying respects to a Speed Breaker. Don't worry, nobody got hurt, I guess we just got a warning. That's all for now, drive safe.

Who do we blame it on?

We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.

- Barack Obama (more here)

This sentence caught my attention. 'We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes' a small yet simple truth right. So now it's not in our hands, war and violence will be part and parcel of being human. Now who do we blame this state of mankind on. Whom do we blame it on.

1. Free Will- Blame it on 'free will', the greatest gift given to man. That which makes us human is what makes us stupid and violent.

2. God, Religion - Blame it on mankind's belief in some force or power that's beyond his reach. The one thing that he says is the answer to that question about everything. Blame it on his need to have given it a name. Blame it on teaching his children his experiences with this 'answer' of his.

3. Caste and Creed - Blame it on our differences in skin color, language, ethnicity.

I guess we did mess up big time. The whole idea of being threatened by another human being is what makes us animals. God threw in a good helping of free will and logic what messed it up all i guess. Now that would not be true right, other animals have the same gift, except for opposable thumbs.We have intelligent dogs, yesterday I saw killer whales hunting on a grey whale and there's logic in them. There is free will and there's logic in all animals alike, maybe a tad greater in humans I guess. Animals also fight, they are territorial, they still don't have Gods and religion, when they fight, hunt, kill... it's all tagged 'survival of the fittest' or 'Being on top of the Food Chain'. Maybe the reason to all this violence, war and all is still this same thing 'Survival of the fittest', it just is in a bigger scale, a scale which God even wouldn't have fathomed.

Rephrasing Obama: We'll never eradicate violent conflict in 'any' of our lifetimes.

We never can, it's part and parcel of being human, being the animal we all are within. This how it's meant to be. But there is hope, we'll only be able to fight for all this, till we have this beautiful planet to fight for. Since we are doing a good job at destroying our planet too, we might see the end of 'war' and 'violence' in 'this planet' in just a few more centuries. Earth would be considered FUBAR one day. Humans would stop fighting for earth one day, move to a newer planet and continue from where we left on earth.

(Image Courtesy: bluray.ign.com)