The Stars of FIFA 2010

Question: What are the top two takeaways from this year's world cup?
Answer:
1: Paul - the psychic Octopus
2: Vuvuzela - the celebrated trumpet of Africa

Now what else is common between the two other than being the Stars of FIFA?

I would have to say "Both of them are as annoying as they could get".

The Vuvuzelas -
I don't really need to explain why they are annoying. The deafening ultra-high decibel noise coming out of the blaring trumpets (actually sounds more like a huge swarm (maybe zillions) of bees) is enough to make the healthiest of people tone deaf. The first time I heard this noise in the background during a match, I thought something was faulty with my cable connection and actually had a long argument with the poor cable guy on the bad quality of audio! I felt quite embarrassed when the truth came to light.

The Psychic Octopus and the Psycho followers -
Everyone, everywhere is talking of Paul, the psychic Octopus these days, and about how accurately 'he' predicted the outcomes of all eight matches - the ones that Germany played and the Finals in FIFA 2010, correctly. Paul is in fact front page news on most leading newspapers, if you notice. Spanish businessmen have offered 30 grand Euros for the Octopus, whereas Italians have claimed that the Octopus is in fact an Italian catch, named Paolo! So much fuss over a silly sea creature. And the Germans, who presently are the legal owners of Paul, had put absolute faith in his predictions during the World Cup (and they say that we Indians are superstitious).
But it is surely strange, that the creature turned out right 13 out of 14 times that it has been used for such purposes, although observations do reveal certain patterns:
1: The Octopus usually tends to go for the country whose flag has more designs or is brighter. Think of it - Spain and Serbia, both have flags with three rectangles, with a prominent design in-between. On the other hand England, Argentina, Uruguay and Ghana have flags that are quite dull when compared to the German one. The outlier here is Australia whose flag is far more attractive than Germany's, and yet Paul picked Deutschland. Note: Wikipedia's article on 'Octopus' supports this theory. Apparently, Octopuses have a keen eyesight and can distinguish between different colors.
2: The second theory is that, Paul usually picks up the box kept on the right side. Again, this has been true for all the FIFA predictions, with the exception of England, whose box was on the right side, while Paul picked Germany again.
Whatever be the truth, Paul's predictions work. And that's what has made him a celebrity, and that's what has even brought him several death threats (I fully support this). Talk about two sides of a coin! Now, I personally found Paul much more annoying than the Vuvuzelas purely because the damn mollusk bet against my fav Die Mannschaft.

So that's the end of the story of the Octopus and the Vuvuzela.

Oh yeah, there is one more Star that I almost forgot to mention here. Ms. Larissa Riquelme - the kind lady who volunteered to run naked through the streets if her home country Paraguay won the world cup. Unfortunately, they got eliminated in the quarters itself. But wait, there is more to this story. The lovely damsel was extremely disappointed at the defeat, even more than the Paraguayan team themselves. It is a different matter that it wasn't exactly because her home country lost, but because she lost an opportunity to run naked!! In a bid to make up for the colossal loss, she still declared that she would keep up her promise as 'a present to all the players, and for all the people in Paraguay to enjoy". Whoa! Dramas galore in FIFA 2010. But I am sure glad Argentina lost; after all who in their right mind would want to watch Diego Maradona do what Ms. Larissa proposed to do (Oh well, that's a different story).

FIFA -
Actually, this is the first time ever I have watched any Football match from the beginning to end. I never understood why FIFA was such a rage among the denizens of the Earth. I still remember the time in 2006, when me and my roommates decided to try and watch a soccer match, just to understand what the big fuss is all about Football. If I remember right, it was Germany playing Italy. All of us were rooting for the German team all through the match, and cheered with much enthusiasm whenever there was a shot on the goal...It was only in the end when the commentator announced that Germany lost the match, that we realized that we were supporting the wrong team all along!!! Of course, unlike Cricket, the players' jerseys do not tell you the name of team they are playing for, so we hadn't a clue as to which colored shirt represented which country. So much for our knowledge of Soccer.

Anyway, a lot has changed since then, coming into the 2010 World Cup and much to my own surprise, I actually enjoyed the football matches to the core. It was quite a refreshing change from the useless, controversial, fixed matches of Cricket that we Indian audiences are mostly subject to.


So to conclude - Heil FIFA! Heil Deutschland! Und Koche die Krake fur mittagessen. Waka Waka.

1411.....or the era of the Cockroach?

1411- By now every one of us would be aware of this number; in case you didn't know, that is the exact number of tigers left in India. The 'Save our Tigers' initiative, launched by Aircel and NDTV, has roped in stars such as Suriya, MS Dhoni, Baichung Bhutia to campaign for saving the tigers, which is incidentally the national animal of India (I had almost forgotten till I was reminded of this fact by these ads). The audience is asked to spread awareness through e-mails, social websites, blogs (this post is not one such), word-of-mouth and anything else that comes to mind.
Now the question I would ask is - Why ?
Is it because:
1: The tiger is our national animal.
2: It is cruel to kill animals for human pleasure.
3: As a policy, no species on earth should ever get extinct.

Let us begin with Point 2:
There is already a whole lot of jazz around us on the issue of cruelty towards animals, it is in fact a worldwide phenomenon. We have the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) with two million supporters worldwide (Source: Wikipedia) or 3% of the world human population; and back home we have our very own Maneka Gandhi with her "People for Animals" and active involvement in various other animal rights related initiatives. I am assuming these organizations would certainly focus on 'Saving the tiger' as well along with various other animals, that may include mosquitoes, flies, and bees as well. So I really don't think we need more people to spread the awareness, we especially don't want Mr. Dhoni joining Maneka Gandhi's camp, lest it affects his Cricketing performance adversely!

Point 3 - This completely contradicts the basic theory of evolution by Charles Darwin.
Darwin says that the mechanism of evolution of life essentially follows 'natural selection' and 'survival of the fittest'. It just means that any living organism 'naturally' selects the most desirable traits required to adapt itself to its surroundings, and over a period of time the species that are the 'fittest' survive, whereas the others get extinct. Simple enough?
History has it that over 97% of species that ever lived are now extinct; and someone else says that 25% of all species known to mankind will become extinct in our lifetime. There have been a total of five "mass-extinction" periods in the history of the earth's existence, the most notable of them being the extinction of Dinosaurs, that paved the path for the arrival of mammals and birds into the world (For details please refer - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_extinction), and finally us Homo Sapiens. Had there been any resistance to the natural process of evolution, humans would not have been humans, we would have still remained apes. Or worse still, we would all have been single cellular amoebic organisms, or maybe even not that.

All I am trying to say is, this is exactly why one day even the tigers will get extinct; Rather, they need to get extinct, in order make way for something better, and fitter. Just like one day even the human race will become extinct and give way for a far superior species, right? Now this is what will be the "Sixth mass extinction" in the history of evolution. If this is how nature has intended life to be, then why tinker with it, right?

Finally, coming to Point No. 1 - Do we need to save the tiger just because it is our national animal? Now, how did the Tiger come to become our national animal in the first place? And why was the Tiger alone chosen as the national animal? Why not something else that had far lesser chances of becoming extinct within the era of the Homo Sapiens?
Just to give a different perspective - take the case of sport; Hockey was made our national sport at some point in history and it still remains so. But instead, it is cricket that the entire nation worships ah so religiously! This would perhaps be followed by Tennis, or F1 where India is nowhere in the world map; and yet Hockey is almost dying a natural death, just like the tigers of India.

So if the sole reason for 'Saving our tigers' is that it is our 'national animal', then it is surely not worth the efforts. I say - lets not bother about the Tiger being our national animal. Let us all just embrace Darwin's theory, let the tigers reach a natural extinction, and let us create a new national animal. Something that is found in abundance. How about the Cockroach? Or the housefly perhaps; some of the most ubiquitous creatures you would find around. I am sure these animals would not get extinct for generations to come. Some scientists say that even in the event of a nuclear holocaust or aliens capturing the earth, the one species among all living beings that will truly survive is the Cockroach. So let us all join hands and spread awareness through e-mails, blogs, social websites, word-of-mouth and anything else - to make the Cockroach our National Animal!

Books and Me...

My newest resolution is to develop the habit of reading. Regular reading that is. 6 books a year, one in two months - quite a reasonable target to begin with, I think. Especially, given that I took one FULL year- last year, to finish a single book that went by the name - "When Genius Failed". Of course, it was more like a textbook on exotic derivative products and stuff, rather than a readable story; so not entirely my fault for being so slow. This made me ponder over how my reading habits have gone through a sea-change over the years.

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The first time I would have started reading something other than my school textbooks would have been at the age of 6-7. Tinkle, Amar Chitra Katha, Champak etc were some of my favorite reads back then. I still remember how used to eagerly wait for my subscriber's copy of Tinkle every two weeks, go straight on to the Puzzles page, solve them and send them across to the magazine's office. But all I ever got in return for my 'correct entries' were some 'Coupons', which if I collect in certain numbers would entitle me to a 'bigger gift'! Which I never ultimately claimed anyway.

Over a period of time, I started cultivating the habit of reading novels. This was when i was in standard 7th or 8th, those were the days of Enid Blyton, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys; of course Tinkle never did lose its charm even then! Ah! The Teenage years - A time when a lot of my friends used to go absolutely ga ga over the 'romantic' Mills & Boons books. Somehow I never really had the courage to pick up one of those books and peruse the contents. The sheer number of those books lying around in my neighborhood library and the ridiculously mushy content thoroughly repelled me. Anyway, romantic novels never really were my cup of tea. Thrillers, Action, Murder Mysteries were more of my type. Surprisingly, my choice is the exact opposite when it comes to movies. While I quite enjoy watching romantic movies with the occasional mush, I do not really fancy action movies.
After some years, the Nancy Drews and Hardy Boys were replaced by the likes of Agatha Christie, Erle Stanley Gardner, James Hadlee Chase. Tinkle was almost out and in came Archie Comics. Those were the days when I used to easily finish off one novel a day.

I used to particularly love the Hercule Poirot mysteries of Agatha Christie. Poirot was absolutely unique in the way he solves crimes, purely by talking his way through the various characters, playing with their psychologies and getting them to reveal more information than they desired to.

In a complete contrast to Poirot was Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason whose first step after a crime has taken place invariable is to collect 'physical' evidence - fingerprints, footprints, cigarette butts, ash trays, anything and everything that one can lay hands upon at the crime site. Of course, the character Perry Mason was a lawyer by profession, rather than a detective, as was the author himself, and therefore more than 50% of his novels involve courtroom dramas. I simply loved those courtroom dramas of Perry Mason, and the way he defends his client in a seemingly impossible case.

I have come across very few people who have read a James Hadley Chase, and rarely anyone who actually liked his books! What I really enjoyed about his books was that they are always full of action, extremely fast paced, and would always keep one guessing what's going to happen next. Although crime is always central to his novels, they are not exactly murder mysteries; each novel will have a unique adventure to tell.

Coming away from thrillers and murder mysteries, an author who remains my all-time favorite is PG Wodehouse - a legend in his own right. The classic Jeeves - ah! Who wouldn't have heard of him? The quintessential butler, who always has an answer to every conceivable problem in the life of his employer Bertie Wooster, who has a knack for landing up in all kinds of awkward social situations.

Well, that was almost the end of my reading habits, as I entered college. I may have perhaps read 8-10 books in all four years of my engineering,which was when I got introduced to Sidney Sheldon for the first time. "Tell me your dreams" of his is one of my favorites. I must make a mention here that I have somehow not read a John Grisham or a Jeffrey Archer till date, which I presume is a must read for any avid reader. Nor have I read any 'Classic' novel. After college, I've read books intermittently, of various genres, with no specific preferences. "The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Night Time", "The picture of Dorian Gray", "Freakonomics", "Fooled by Randomness", "The Monk who sold his Ferrari" - are some of the ones I liked.

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So coming back to the present - So far my count for 2010 is three - 'The Interpretation of Murder', 'Superfreakonomics' and '2 States'. More on the individuals in another blogpost.

The Cosmos and everything else in it.......(contd. from previous post)

THE GENESIS............


Do you know how the universe came into existence in its present form?


Some 14 billion years ago there used to be an unbelievably hot and dense object called the Black Hole. One fine day the object burst out like a bomb and threw infinite splinters all around. These splinters formed themselves into the stars, planets, satellites, asteroids, comets, meteors and other celestial objects that we see in the sky.
Ain't that simple enough?


But this doesnt tell me how Human beings came into existence?


Presto....We have another easy explanation for this - the Darwin theory of evolution.
This theory claims that life started off on earth with microscopic single cellular organisms such as the Amoeba ( there is no theory that tells us how the Amoeba came up in the first place, guess that was just a miracle or perhaps a mishap). Through the processes of natural selection, survival of the fittest and mutation, the Amoeba gradually developed into multi-cellular organisms and finally to the Human Being!!!!! Gosh!!!! I never knew that my oldest ancesotors were actually the Amoeba!!!Isn't it amazing!!!


Do you believe any of that?? No?? Read on for another explanation...


Long long ago, there was absolutely nothing on earth. No humans, no animals, no plants nor trees, not even land. In fact the earth itself didnt exist but for a lump of mass covered entirely by the blue ocean surrounded by darkness everywhere. One fine day God, sitting in his heavenly abode decided to change the appearance of the Universe and the earth. Starting off first with light and darkness, God went on to create the earth and the sky, plants and trees, birds and animals, and finally Adam and Eve, the first human beings ever. Six days in all it took and then God decided to take rest on the Seventh day, which is why we still take Sunday off for Sabbath/for offering our prayers to God.

Do you think this was it?? Wait, wait..there is some more to come...


The Hindu Vedas believe that the cosmos was created by Lord Brahma,is maintained by Lord Vishnu and finally is destroyed by Lord Shiva, thus forming the 'Trinity'. Essentially all living beings, and the Cosmos itself goes through an infinite number of births, lives, deaths and rebirths. According to the Vedas the age of the Universe is about 155,522 billion years, whereas if you note, the Big Bang is able to only visualize a time 14 billions years ago...
I found this really interesting link that shows how to calculate the age of the Universe:

http://www.hitxp.com/ved/01052007.htm


Do you subscribe to this theory? Maybe, may not be.


After all who really knows the truth right????


Actually, the second and third explanations are more or less similar in nature, the basic idea being God, the omnipotent force created everything. Well, it certainly does seem to be a much more simplistic and plausible reasoning. And in many ways more believable than the so called scientific theories. For one thing, I do not have to accept an Amoeba for an ancestor!!!! Atleast God gave me human ancestors in Adam and Eve!!


Scientific theories are always proved wrong, God has never been so.


The other major issue with the scientific theory is that it cannot read time as it existed 'prior' to the time as we know it. And it cannot see space 'beyond' the finite space as we know it. Meaning? Can you visualize the 'beginning' of time? Can you imagine the 'end' of space? NO. The human brain is limited in its capacities to do that.


The existence of an omnipotent God resolves all our problems.


Science is measurable. God is immeasurable.
Science is finite. God is infinite.
Science is understood. God is never understood.
Science is inconsistent. And God, is just one, so there is no question of consistency/inconsistency.


Q: So what's the conclusion of all this exercise?
A: I dont know the truth about life.............



Amen.

Who knows the truth??

THE WORLD IS FLAT.....

Long long ago in some century BC, most homo sapiens believed that the earth was a flat disk. Some other shapes were also attributed according to convenience, such as a seven-layered ziggurat or a cosmic mountain.
These notions were disproved by some of the early Greek philosophers and thinkers, notable Mr. Pythagoras who said that not only the earth, but also all the other planets were spherical in nature. And this remains the current belief.

Is it over yet? Or could the Earth assume a newer shape, perhaps 10 more centuries down the line?
I don't really know. After all if the notion of a flat earth can be disproved and converted to a notion of a spherical earth, then why not something else sometime later?? Perhaps Oval, or a cube, a shapeless amoebic solid object.

Then out of nowhere, this dude Mr. Thomas Friedman starts re-claiming that the world is flat again!!!!(Of course not in the traditional sense in any way ;))
So what is next, I wonder? Well, if you ask me I think scientists will soon realize that the earth is neither flat,nor spherical but in fact is a Hollow Cone, and we living beings are all residing inside the cone in fact....
How does that sound? Could be true....

After all who really knows the truth????

A SMALL STEP FOR A MAN, BUT........

...........a giant leap for Mankind!!

Everybody knows that Niel Armstrong and Edward Collins were the first men who landed on the moon in 1969. Or did they? Some people claim it was a make believe story propagated by NASA?
For reference: http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk/cosmicapollo.html

I did not have the patience to go through the entire article (Its really HUGE!), but the link essentially bases its claims on supposedly 'authentic' photographs taken by the NASA and points out various discrepancies among those photographs. The link also points out numerous scientific facts about the Apollo trip and how those facts could not reconcile with what actually happened.

I have one question though:
If Man landed on Moon in 1969, then why is it that there have been no moon landings for the last 35 odd years?( As I understand the last landing was in 1972 – the 12th such person, all of which may be fake if you believe the link :))
So having read the link, what do you think of it? Did man really land on the moon? Maybe, may not be.

After all who really knows the truth????

Lessons learnt as a gambler.....

Core Theories:
1: The biggest casinos in the world are the Stock Markets
2: Luck plays THE major role in profits, luck can be controlled to an extent with acumen.

Lesson 1:

Decide first why you are gambling. Is it:
a) To make money
b) Just for the kick (good alternative for a teetotaller)
c) Bored with life and nothing else to do

Suggestions: If you chose -
a) Do a thorough research, read all kinds of reports/news/articles any damn thing you can come across, build a solid repository of knowledge and then start investing - as simple as that!!!

b) Try experimenting with different things, anything you feel like. Buy/Hold/Sell, Short sell, Intra-day, Margin trading, Futures, Options, Other derivatives, Commodities whatever comes to your mind. Use a random number generator do decide your next course of action. Trust me, you WILL feel the kick! Beware of a hangover though, in case you run into colossal losses.

c) Well, playing with money is not really a great way to pass time. Get a life! Also remember, to get a life, you cant afford to fool around with money!

If you have chosen option 'a' in Lesson 1, go ahead with Lesson 2.

Lesson 2:

Gambling Rules:

1: Patience is the key to profits. Hold the stock until you get returns you desire and ignore daily fluctuations.

2: Let go of useless stocks - under-performing ones, even if at a considerable loss.

3: Always look at your portfolio from a net-worth perspective, not from a profit-profit one.

4: Understand that there is no concept called 'averaging out'. You either INVEST in a stock or EXIT a stock. or in other words you either BUY and HOLD or SELL a stock. 'Averaging out' is nothing but 'investing' in a stock that is already loss making in your portfolio. It just means you are buying into the same stock once again at a lower price. In which case, the returns you get on the 'original' purchase is anyway a loss. It's just that you are expecting your returns on the second purchase to compensate more than the loss on the original. So the idea is not to try and 'average out' holdings, the idea is to buy the same stock once again if and only if the fundamentals are good and you think that the price decline is just a momentum and not reflective of a deteriorating business. Therefore:
Unless fundamentally sound but undervalued, SELL and EXIT and not BUY and HOLD again and again into it.

More lessons to come soon...

Happy Feet - the movie

Yet another animation film, this time the subject being penguins....And yet another brilliantly crafted and beautifully executed piece of work by George Miller in the genre of animated films....A real break from the ‘tear-jerking’ and ridiculously mushy movies of the likes of “Babul’ and ‘Vivaah’...

‘Happy Feet’ is actually a movie that captures every element of human emotion in its entirety.....Joy and celebrations, Sadness and longing, Romance and Flirting, Thrill and Suspense, Comedy and Action...you have it all......It even includes its share of spine chilling moments when you see little penguins getting trapped in the mouth of huge sharp-toothed whales....

The main character of the movie, ‘Mumble’ is turned an outcast by the rest of its community because of its inability to sing the way normal penguins are supposed to as also because of its weird tapping of feet that looks like a dance. Fortunately for Mumble, it finds good friends in a different community of penguins with the help of whom he gets to the bottom of a mystery surrounding the disappearance of all the fish in the sea (humans). The movie continues into how Mumble tries to stop the humans from fishing and in the process gets caught and is put in a zoo cage. The way the director has captured Mumble’s pain and agony while in the cage is bound to make you shed a tear or two for the hapless creature! Luckily, ‘Happy Feet’ is a happy movie and everything turns out perfect in the end. In the process, the movie also sends out a strong message to us humans...Not to mess up with the natural food chain existing on this earth.

The film is also a real treat to the eye.. The white icy mountains with the deep blue sea below look absolutely majestic. Sea creatures such as whales and the seals look so real and intimidating. Scenes where the penguins sing songs to woo the opposite sex during mating season and run around collecting pebbles to build their nests are hilariously cute.

All in all, a movie definitely worth watching if not for anything but for the mere visuals of cute little penguins running around caves of ice and tapping their feet to melodious tunes.