Population trading

Most of you will be familiar with ‘carbon trading’ and attempt of various countries and organizations to become ‘carbon neutral’ by certain time in future. By fixing quota of permitted pollution, attempt is made to reduce/prevent/stop Global Warming. Those that cannot control pollution to the permitted extent are allowed to buy additional quota from those that can control more than required. Idea of ‘population trading’ and ‘population neutral’ emanates from this and this post can be understood as an intellectual fantasy if this were followed…

Rapidly expanding population of Earth is increasing danger to rapidly vanishing Earth’s resources, and has direct impact on human welfare and lifestyle. It is also the most important contributor to Global Warming. Naturally, it helps if attempt is made to reduce world’s population. However, no such attempt is in offing and most efforts, if any, are at country level. At one hand poor countries of Asia and Africa, India included, are trying to reduce population growth, on the other hand, few highly developed countries (viz. Japan, Australia) are incentivizing their reluctant population to grow faster. Unfortunately, both are failing to some extent.

If future population quota is fixed based on country’s habitable area, then countries growing faster can buy ‘population credits’ from those growing slower. Unpalatable part of this scheme will be that mostly poor countries will be required to pay to mostly rich countries, and that is unlikely to happen. If such quotas were permitted at couple level then parents trying to produce more than allocated children will have to buy quota from those who are producing less or not marrying. Again, poor families will have to cough up money to pay to rich families, as usually educated (and mostly rich) couples desire fewer children than usually uneducated (and mostly poor) couples. Involvement of government authorities in licensing quotas can open floodgates of misallocation and corruption.

At personal level, a couple can try to be ‘population neutral’ by limiting their progeny to two. If neutrality is carried over generations than compensating actions is permitted where fewer or no children in one generation can allow additional in next or so generation. Such practice can be followed at community or social level and will require careful auditing and population enumeration.

In extreme case, wholesale population migration can be attempted, where select couples from populous countries can be moved to countries with negative population growth. This, of course, has to be tried by later country and will have significant effect on its social, cultural and political environment. Some indirect efforts are already underway in this realm where some countries are luring students to study, work and settle in it, though these are primarily aimed at economic growth at not at population decline.

Lot of it may not make any sense and may be poorly thought of but it was merely an idea, I thought novel, carried to a limited extent.

Point of contention

I realized something today. It will be bone of contention in my life.

With regret I have come to realize that my mother’s culinary skills are unparalleled, incomparable, beyond par so much so that this is going to be cause domestic feud between me and my potential wife when I am going to say to her that her cooking is nothing like my mom’s.

I’ve been told that this (missing mum's food) happens largely to men and not to women. Is it true?

I had never thought of this before. I must learn to keep my mouth shut. Sigh.

Independence Day: Then and Now

Once upon a time today used to bring smile, happiness and pride. Now a new emotion has dwarfed the feelings. The day starts with apprehension and uneasiness and finds relief only at the end (if) when celebrations would have had finished without any terrorist incident. That's what they have done to us. I try to be happy again. Wish you the same. Happy Independence Day.

An Indian joint family

A lesson in Arrogance

He was my project advisor. He is also the best faculty in his area in the department. He is, more uncommonly, a very spiritual person who had, it seemed, found peace away from rat race of this world. He was also my idol, my role model, my sounding board, my debate partner and my guide. His philosophies irked some, who found him preachy and snobbish, but then, he wasn’t bothered because he was contended. Following excerpts are from a conversation that I had with him over six years ago when I was IIT Madras. Dialogues are constructed from memory but essence is maintained.

He: There is increasing perception in Industry and outside world that IIT students are very arrogant.
Me: I can see that. Having cleared JEE, students here believe themselves extra smart. My experience working with graduates of other colleges has shown me that neither their learning nor their applications are any lesser than those of an IITian.
He: Then why does this arrogance arise?
Me: Perhaps euphoria of passing tough JEE has intoxicated them. I, personally, hate arrogance in all form. I don’t think I am any special in being here.
He: So you think you are not arrogant?
Me: I don’t think so. A person accomplishes anything because of many factors including family upbringing, financial resources, genetic qualities and environmental factors and not alone by personal feat. I think I just have been lucky to be be where I am, to do what I did. (See: Proud of What?)
He: You think you are just luckier than those who couldn’t make it to IIT?
Me: Yes, Sir.
He: Isn’t that arrogance too?

And I haven’t forgotten the lesson to this day. I don’t really understand it completely, even now, but I do know there is something important here. And therein lies ultimate humbleness.

Free food

When I was student of undergraduate studies at Madras, I was unaware of the phenomenon which was soon to take an important part of my life, and will continue to bring smile on my face forever in life.

I was introduced to ‘free food’ in MIT. MIT, probably like other US universities, had uncountable number of student groups, seemingly unlimited funds — to my eyes accustomed to IIT situation — for student activities, and almost daily events, seminars, lectures, conferences and bouquets in any of its myriads departments and organizations which constantly provided free food to students. In fact, many students attended those precisely for that reason. This trend continued in Ahmedabad as well, though in very reduced form, and I found that despite there being no dearth of funds to spend on food for me, magic of free food was irresistible. And that’s just not for me but for almost every student I’ve met. It appears that any eatable, when made available free of charge, even of non-descript nature, never fails to tempt palate of any person who is or ever has been an student of graduate studies or higher in any institution across the world, irrespective of how much money the said person makes or whether he has already satiated his hunger extensively. At MIT, we even had a mailing list (freefood@mit.edu) where any student can post message about availability of free food anywhere on campus and subscribers of the same will hasten to devour it. And because MIT is a large university, free food was an almost daily occurrence so much so that person with eye on above mailing list and speed in his feet can almost survive on leftovers for full term.

Even at work in Los Angeles, in my company, free food had people rushing to cafeteria. I’ve moved out of college now and mostly will not enter one again but I cannot understand why it holds such a strong grip on people? Corollary to free food is freebies, however trifle, which students would fight to get hold of. I suspect, but am not sure, that this phenomenon is bachelor specific. Does free food holds special place in your heart? What was your experience?

(It seems that attraction towards freebies is well known to marketers. A large lump sum price and free products/services tend to have more customers than individual price for each product/service. It has something to do with how our brain treats sunk cost.)

The Big Bang Theory

There is this sitcom running on CBS in USA these days which is quickly taking up second spot (see first) in my list of favourite sitcoms: The Big Bang Theory. It doesn’t appear to be all that popular in States, if Wiki ratings are to go by, but geek in me seem to see parts of me in legendary Sheldon Cooper whose rational and logic driven world leaves robots into shame. His company of experimental physicist, astrophysicist and engineers is charmed by (how should I say it politely?) a bimboo named Penny and the hilarity ensues. I am hereby proposing a Penny-Sheldon Scale^© of character analysis. If Penny scores 0 and Sheldon scores 100 on this scale, where do you see yourself? Sometime, if I have got really nothing to do in life, which means never, I might watch reruns and prepare a questionnaire. Preliminary investigation and research (also known as a single Google^® search) tells me that I am first to propose this scale. Here are few snippets for you to enjoy.

And today is exactly an year hence and as many posts later as is sum of cubes of first five natural integers.

I am out of internet

I ain't dead...yet (obviously, or else, I wouldn't have written that) but I have run out of internet. This is likely to continue till July but don't dispair, I shall come back. Blogosphere isn't barren without me anyway.

Meanwhile, I am killing my time before joining my company by teaching school kids. Well, I don't think them as "kids" but they think me as "uncle" so there; can't help any more about growing up, I guess.

Pakistan

It must have been deep rooted disdain, disgust and hatred — surely and obviously mixed with dry sarcastic humour — for a nation which has unfortunately inextricably linked itself with major share of wounds in India's social, religious and political milieu and has been constant pain in the rear of mother India that the following place has been derisively christened with the sobriquet same as the epithet of aforementioned country. With time though our neighbour has proven itself worthy of her namesake.

(This usage can be occasionally heard in Hindi heartland of our nation and is largely understood, so I understand. I was reminded of this in recent trip to a relative's place and it did bring a smile on my face.)

How do I organize my blogroll

When I started using feed reader in 2005, I used to place all my feeds into folders by subjects. Sometime in late 2007, I re-organized them by my preference to read, after reading about this practice at another blogger’s. When I moved to GReader in 2008, I continued my organization into four categories of Must Read, Should Read, Could Read and Might Read in decreasing order of importance. Soon after, I introduced a new folder Under Evaluation which hoarded all newly added feeds which I will move into one of the four aforementioned categories in due course of time as I developed preference for them. Promotion or demotion of a feed depended on its ability to continually be relevant to me. One thing in Google Reader which was different from Bloglines, my first feed reader, was that I could tag a feed with multiple labels (just like GMail) and thus put them in multiple folders simultaneously.

As recently as last month, I again reorganized my feeds where each feed is placed into (1) one of five preference categories, named A to E based on how much I’d like to read them, and (2) one of many subject categories based on content. I created category F to hold all heavy volume feeds (Digg, Overhead in…) which publish several dozens posts a day and category Z to hold newly added feeds which will be deleted or promoted to A…E in due course. I also created Private A category for preferred personal feeds (such as my own blog posts and comments, my Google searches, my Facebook feeds) and Private B category for the rest (currently holding feed from LinkedIn updates which is a high volume feed).

Now, I start my day with Private A and then go down from A to E as long as I’ve time. I always read anything in A before anything in B and so on. A post once read is marked read in both categories. I regularly read Z, sometimes before other feeds, to make up my mind about them and reshelf them when I see a pattern. Thereafter, a feed moves up or down categories all the time. If I have really all the time in the world, then I read F but mostly it’s there just because GReader doesn’t have option to switch off a feed and not because I read them. Lastly, feeds in subject category News are not placed in any preference category A…F since I don’t want to mix news with other feeds and because I hardly read news these days. Sometimes, when I am in particular mood, I select feeds by subject categories. For example, on a busy day, I might just look at subject category ‘Friends’ to check new blog posts from my friends which might not be higher on preference of content but are still important because they are from my friends. Or sometime, I just want to read Comics or Jokes only. Use of ‘#’ and ‘$’ is just to quickly distinguish one type of categorization from the other.

If that’s not really clear, I am an organization freak. I sometimes even customize font type and font size of Excel files which I plant to delete in 10 minutes. It must be some kind of mental sickness, I guess.