Live Writer – A great blog writer

Just testing the Windows Live Writer which is promising to be cool……..

Yeah it definitely is , looks like Microsoft is into mainstream league at last. One real cool feature that i love about Live writer is that it can detect the annoying spelling mistakes, which I don't tend to correct while typing into the rich text box  of the blogger (because it doesn't show ;-)

Self Help Industry - Master Con against the human mind

Generally i am not a great fan of Self Improvement books but based on recommendation from a collegue i bought a book called "PersonalImpact", though i wouldnt say it was a bad book, it was not very impressive either. But this gave rise to very interesting questions about the selfhelp books.

There are multitudes of selfhelp books. There are the kind of books that take (auto)biography format and tell you how successful a particular individual was and how you can emulate the same and other popular kind is those which directly tell you what to do, Like 'How to do negotiations effectively', 'how to successfully run your business', 'how to influence everybody' etc.

While there is a certain amount of authenticity in the former category the latter is a complete joke especially those written by obsure 'thought leaders' and other intellects.

The common theme among all of these books is to have a catchy title which exploits our want and current state of affairs, for e.g how to influence your boss?, how to close every deal; If you closely observe the titles are generic enough to catch your attention span very very fast. Once you fall prey to this then you develop an urge to buy (especially when you are buying books from railway stations W.H Smiths like me) in a hurry.

The main problem with the Self Help books/authors is the fact that they all think that the rest of the world is completely dumb and need their help to have basic sanity. This is very close to the moral high ground that religious leaders take by proclaiming that the world is full of sinners and they have the message of the God to relive us from the clutches of sin. Like the preachers exploiting those poor mortals by promising a berth in the heaven, these neo conmen(some times women too) promise higher salary, likeable personality, faster career growth, becoming thin, quitting smoking etc.

The Self Help industry thrives in the chaotic times and now is their best time to make most out of the current confusions in the world(rumours say, 10 downing street has placed huge orders for 'economy for dummies). Though i dont argue that all selfhelp is rotten, i feel the basket is more full of rotten eggs than good ones. If in doubt, please check out 'I moved your cheese' by Darrel Baristow Bovey. Awesome read and hilarious.

Grand Depression

I just noticed that the current depression/recession has not been named yet. The pundits who name each and every thing , especially the natural calamities (katrina, elf etc) must have been busy saving their jobs. Probably would "Grand Depression" suit ?

Relevance of Charles Darwin now

Coming february 12th, world would witness a remarkable completion of 200 years of darwin's day of birth and last november we witnessed 150th year of publication of origin of species, his magna cum laude. Very few books have been able to cast their impression upon human mind as strong as charles darwin's work. The atheist community has heralded his concept to a greater heights and creationists have tried and would be trying to keep it under the lid for ages to come adding fuel to his fame.

While everything about darwin and the 'origin of species' have been written in all the languages that accept science , my thought was along the applicability of his concepts in the recent times. Nobody could argue against the darwin's law that only fittest have the highest possibility of survival and there is a (unseen) natural selection which favours stronger candidates over the weak. But is it true still?

If we closely watch, the misfits who(ich) are no longer useful, in the context of bigger definition of society gets eliminated gradually but does this happen nowadays? It looks like the answer is very debatable. The context at which darwin spoke didnt include the advances in technological advances that we are witnessing these times. Technology has been a great leveller and has helped the weak and poor to a great extent that they are working around their weaknesses. Like the democratic systems, where the vote driven and majority based politics could promote weaker individuals to the top places.

In the 1.8 million years of human evolution, the timeframe that we are talking about doesnt even merit a paragraph, but still we could be on top of something which could change the way we perceive the laws of darwin. The human race has reached a pinnacle where it doesnt depend upon the principles of evolution anymore and has started manipulating it rather , through alterations in genetics and technological sophistications that makes a weak strong.

Evolutionary principles have been applied to everything from philosophy, psychology, economy, and several possible walks of life and even there are games like spore built around it. Out of 5% everything spoken and written in the world may be related to it (thanks to the theits and atheists), it is the basis for the study of genetics which john gregor mendel pioneered, it is the root cause for so many exciting journeys into the science, it is the core fundemental of several social networking sites which exploit our inner thirst to be a social animal (which the materialistic society has denied us) and so many other phenomenon around the world. But may be it is time that we revalidate it with the emergence of newer facts. Btw, i need to check that the scrambled egg that i left in the stove is evolving into a good omlette. You?

Acidic Information Rain

We live in the age of information abundance and it keeps pouring throught the day and night. We all face an acidic rain of information through out our life now a days.  Many of us get drowned in the ocean of information , be it good or bad.

Most of start our day with seeing mails from blackberry and those mails alter the mood significantly. Then TV occupies sometime feeding us with what we really dont need. On our way to office the freebie newspapers start telling about whats is recent in the gangwars, which company has gone burst along with the stories of amy winehouse who is crawling for some drinks in carribean island and some obscure island where people are fighting agaisnt the closure of the post office.

On the way to office, after saying no (sometimes yes) to those who sell the BIG ISSUE, fleeing the suggesting advertisements to invest in central london property(too late guys!) and by the time we start our work , we have tons of information in our head that we grapple with. Ths  can be repeated for afternoon, evening and nights dosage of it in various forms and devices.

Do we really need this much of communication and information in the life? Wont the world be a better place with limited access to the information? However absurd this may sound given the current lifestyle context, if we tread backwards in the time, it reveals quite interesting facts.

In the last 250,000 years of noteworthy human history , human race started living in established settlements for the last 10000 years and notable civilizations have shown traces in the last 5000 years. During all these years human communicated effectively and efficiently. But in the last 20 odd years we are faced by severe information explosion, especially with television and in the last 10 years internet and other communication devices have bombarded us with the amount of information beyond measure. Our brain by evolution is not really equipped to handle this amount of information and could very well be confused to react to the amount of information it receives , processes and takes action upon.

While it is good to have vast amount of information, when it lands into to the minds of those who cannot process it in an effective way , it breeds anxiety confusing people and has a profound effect on the whole society towards chaos (like the current times). May be we are going through some big transformation and i am sure those who are fittest would develop strong acumen to withstand this acidic information rain. Till this happens for all , people like stephen covey would be writing books like "9 effective habits of processing information" and we would be buying to improve ourselves.