Happy Misjudgement day!

http://www.kqed.org/a/perspectives/R201203300735
This is a good one:

Happy Misjudgment Day. I'm OK. You're OK, and we're all demonstrably less smart than we would like to think.

Until April 2. Then the confidence games begin again, and we can all unsafely assume we know what we are talking about. 

When life makes sense, your stress levels go down

I heard this gem from a podcast of the author of:

http://www.amazon.com/Venus-Fire-Mars-Ice-Hormonal/dp/0978279735

The explanation was in the context of "Relationships" more towards the relationships between men and women. But I think it is very relavent to any "Relationship", ex: employee-manager, vendor-customer, employer-employee, etc. especially in a conflict situation.

"When life makes sense, your stress levels go down. When life doesn't make sense, your stress levels go up".

Self-driving cars get closer every day, but won't hit you – USATODAY.com

Self-driving cars get closer every day, but won't hit you – USATODAY.com

Almost every week, a Google self driving Prius car drives next to me in the freeway during my commute. It prominently displays that it is a Google Self Driving car with some geeky looking contraptions on the roof.

If often peek into that car as I drive and usually I am relieved that there is a driver and usually the driver is holding the steering wheel. So Im not yet confident about the "wont hit you" part.

I think that the self-driving option should be added to the cars like the "Cruise Control" option.
It should be adopted for a more autonomous operation only after multiple years of wide usage.

I think this technology will pan out to be a viable technology in the next 5-10 years. It could turn out to be very useful in countering the effects of distracted driving, driving under fatigue, reckless driving and of course drunken driving.

Hugo - A wonderful movie

Watched Hugo over the weekend. What a wonderful movie to watch with the family!
Very good direction and screenplay. Excellent Music!
The book  is even more delightful. It is more than a book, it is part graphic novel.
The plot combines real life story, real life events like a train crash into the fiction.
It also covers things like automaton which are from a different era!

Maillardet's Automaton-Home Page-Franklin Institute Science Museum
Maillardet's Automaton-Home Page-Franklin Institute Science Museum

The automaton brought me fond memories of the Finite state automata, Turing machines
and the dragon book from the undergraduate days:
http://www.amazon.com/Compilers-Principles-Techniques-Alfred-Aho/dp/0201100886

Finally, Fake Chicken Worth Eating - NYTimes.com

Finally, Fake Chicken Worth Eating - NYTimes.com
Being a vegetarian, all I can say is Yuck!

If you want to avoid meat, why have "fake meat" when the plant world
has so much to offer without faking anything else?

A Democratic Majority, Maybe, but Not a Permanent One - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com

A Democratic Majority, Maybe, but Not a Permanent One - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com

Quote>>

This partisan cockiness typically assumes — wrongly — that the two political parties are wedded to a fixed set of political principles. That's not what the two parties are. They're far more akin to products: specifically, brands.

When a political party begins to fail competitively, as the G.O.P. is clearly doing now, it, too, simply rebrands itself.

>>

Good Article. Very good insight and at the same time it is also stating the obvious!

Is the modern GOP really the party of the Lincoln?

Similarly the Democratic party had it's origins in "Anti-Fedaralism, States rights, Strict Constructionist approaches

all of which are against the political views of the modern Democrats.

Russian Drill Nears 14-Million-Year-Old Antarctic Lake | Wired Science | Wired.com

Russian Drill Nears 14-Million-Year-Old Antarctic Lake | Wired Science | Wired.com

Some more links about this story:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/scientists-close-to-entering-vostok-antarcticas-biggest-subglacial-lake/2012/01/27/gIQAbGX0fQ_story.html

and a blog by a scientist working on the project:

http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~mstuding/vostok.html

Chinese New year - Year of the Dragon

Heard fireworks and rockets in my neighborhood from the houses in my block last night, even though it was a bit rainy.

Apparently this is the Year of the Dragon.

Asia welcomes the Year of the Dragon - Business - NZ Herald News

My Chinese New Year Resolution: Fireworks during 2012 Diwali celebration!

Piete Hein Grooks

I heard from my friend Paul Rohrdanz this poem by Piet  Heien which rang very true: “Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back.”

Found some more here

I think he and his SuperEllipse are worthy of a google doodle.

(SuperEllipse Dining Table)

Why Google is ditching search | Digital Media - CNET News

Why Google is ditching search | Digital Media - CNET News

Really?! So does he really think that the Social search will replace PageRank Search?

I think google is facing the case of Innovator's Dilemma. They need to sustain PageRank/LinkBased Search and at the same time

they have to hold off Social Search and AnswerBased search upstarts. Similar to how Oracle incorporated OLAP, Object Databases, Java etc. into Oracle, fended off the upstarts and kept and grew the market share. I think Social Search will evolve to be another Search feature.

Personally, I use PageRank search when researching topics. I used to use Google News before but that site has grown less relevant. Especially if it shows a lot of nytimes links and if they need subscription to view them, then what is the point? I use Twitter's Social Search for finding news.

I do not use Facebook as I think it it is a bit creepy, I hate it's privacy policies and the feel of a peep-show that it brings. I signed up for google plus but I am finding it not very useful at all, so far. I am somewhat old-fashioned and hence I use blogger.

I would like to stay with google's tools mostly because I am stuck in its walled garden and it is too much hassle to walk out. But I also do not resent them. LinkedIn has not offered anything more than a professional address book. I like twitter's simplicity but it's website interface is too simple and not too productive (try retweeting with a quote for an instance).

Despite all the hype, the social space is very much in a primordial state. Dont believe the status quo. The internet space

changes at light speed. User's can and do walk out from the established players super rapidly (AOL, Yahoo, Myspace, etc.).

I think that social search along with the other searches will fragment the search market and will not replace PageRank/Search links.

And I think that would be an enormously good thing for the users!

Why Best Buy is Going out of Business...Gradually

Good Article at - Forbes http://onforb.es/t22cfc

It has been years since I bought anything at Best Buy. There is no reason to go to that store anymore. It is pushed out of business from the top end (speciality stores,  online, costco, etc.) and the bottom end (walmart, target, online stores whose prices are unbeatable)

Interesting interview from Scott Cook

Very good interview from the founder of Intuit.  Some of the things they are doing at Intuit:
o Teach people around the company by not talking about things but by having them observe how it is done. Kind of like: dont tell them how to do it, but show them how it is done.
o Keeping the team size of the innovators very small - say to 4 in some instances.
o Learning the customer needs and requirements by not listening to what they say but by observing their behavior. Dont listen to their attitude about something but to their behavior. This sort of resembles steve jobs's philosophy of  not asking customers what to do because they wouldn't know. But you discover customer's intentions by observing and understanding their behavior.

http://blog.finette.com/post/15268730784/amazing-interview-with-scott-cook-the-founder-of

Happy New Year Everyone!

Let 2012 bring peace and prosperity to everyone!

Here is a message from Bhagavat Gita. This sloka exhorts everyone to lift themselves by their bootstraps, be self-reliant and to love themselves. This secular message of freedom, personal responsibility and self-affirmation is one of my favorite slokas:

Uddharet Atmana Atmanam Natmanam Avasadayet
Atmaiva Hyatmano Bandhuratmaiva Ripuratmanah.

"Let a man raise himself by himself, let him not lower himself; for he alone is the friend of himself, he alone is the enemy of himself."