Ideas & Views

there has been only war, war and war around the world. there seems to be no peace outside and inside for any citizen of any country. why make it mandatory to issue the Nobel Peace Prize to anyone? especially, the list of nominees mentioned here were hardly known to most of the people. none of them or for that matter any ONE single person has not risen up to the level of Mahatma Gandhi or Nelson Mandela, though its not necessary. these great men in the past had really set a yardstick for what Nobel Peace means. some genuinely good deed is expected out of the awarded candidate that should have had widespread influence over a considerable mass of population. so, let the prize be not given to anybody this year. if someone really stopped a war (which is not so at least in 2005), or fought for the humanitarian rights of under-represented community of people anywhere in the world, let they be awarded. let the 'Doctors with no borders' receive the prize. let some NGO or NPO be recogni...

review of "God's Debris" authored by Scott Adams a brilliant thought experiment, brilliant because this thought experiment occurred in an American. this is Vedanta blossoming from its early inquisitive stage, the notable change being its from a westerner and not restricted to western audience alone. i was tempted to read the freely distributed PDF available in the Internet, mainly because it is free and was suggested by a close friend. i could not resist taking notes while reading the PDF then and there. so i took a printout of the complete set and started scribbling all over the empty space on the top, bottom and on the sides of the pages. a friend of mine suspected that i am reading research papers for my work related project in the bus as she saw me reading this material with a pencil in hand. let me see if i can make sense out of what i scribbled on those pages. i have tried to copy them here and add some sensible explanations (for my own reference and record). .......

a review of " iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business " i was about 50 pages into the book. i could not take anymore of praise for Steve Jobs. it also made me feel so small that i stopped reading the book and worked 14 hours everyday for 3 weeks at my office. it took me a while for me to come out of the "you are nothing" feeling. soon, i started reading the book with fresh enthusiasm, just for the pleasure of reading. within the next few pages, the tone of the book changed dramatically. in history, if there was one biography that points out all the mistakes of the person being biographed and the flaws in his very personality, this is it. its a blasphemy of biographies!!!! may be that's all there is to it. but wait. the biographers covered the length and breadth of Steve's temper and how it reflected in every action of his. as a biography, it neatly portrays his ups and downs in both professional and personal life. how did the a...

a review of " Bookless in Baghdad" authored by Shashi Tharoor i am an admirer of this United Nations' Under-Secretary General and a regular reader of his columns in various magazines and newspapers. (he writes a column for Sunday Magazine of The Hindu). i am also a regular visitor to his website , crazily reading every word he has to say there. but, here is a book from him that would have made a rather good blog. a book on books and authors !!!!! (and here is a review for that too!!!!) tharoor probably has a compulsive desire to publish every piece of paper he writes!!! may be there are publishers out there in NYC who will do anything for his name and fame. you still didn't buy one ardent fan of yours, Mr. UN. i am yet to read his other (more meaningful and accolades winning) works like 'the riot', ' the great indian novel', 'show business'. i am sure they will buy me. i have read about them and are in my must-read list of books. i am boun...

a review of "Surely you are joking, Mr.Feynman !" authored by Richard Feynman you are surely joking at us, Mr.Feynman, by writing this book. this book is almost a child's diary of day-to-day events. it was a mistake on my part indeed since i expected an account of his technological insights into atomic science. its a narration of what he did in his childhood - a boastful " i didnot play like a normal kid. i am special. i made ham radios" - what jobs he did as a teenager, how he dated gals, how he visited pubs to find someone to lay down that night, and finally a mention of how he built labs in los alamos. an outright teenage read. i just missed it when i was one. NOTE: Richard Feynman is a Nobel laureate in Physics in recognition for his brilliant and dedicated work in building America's first atom bomb at Los Alamos facility during WW2 times. he is a brilliant physicist, more remarkable because he is just another guy next door sorts. this book need not be...

a review of 'The Devil and Miss Prym ' authored by Paulo Coelho this is a second book of Paulo Coelho that i read after the hit book-of-the-century 'The Alchemist'. i have read 'The Alchemist' long back. though i forgot the details of the plot, i remember the essence of it - a man meticulously and determinedly following his dreams against all oddities. while reading 'the devil and miss prym ', i realized that Coelho's novels are based on certain themes. mostly the theme is one of human value and not any fancy cinematic imbecility. the fine print below the title 'the devil and miss prym ' reads 'a novel of temptation' on the frontispiece of the book. Coelho holds the readers till the last page to decide if the main character(s) resists or yields to the temptation. i prefer to look at this novel as both resisting and yielding to temptation. there are two main protagonists in this novel - the stranger to the village who brings the t...

a review of 'Only the Paranoid Survive' authored by Andrew Grove the book is all about dramatic changes all industries undergo and how each player in that industry adapts to survive and succeed. these dramatic changes that revolutionize the way business is conducted are aptly called "Strategic Inflection Points" , shortly SIPs. SIP would have been an appropriate title for the book but since the stress is on why companies should survive the SIPs, "only the paranoid survive" is more appropriate. usually, technology books get outdated fast since technology changes leaps and bounds in the blink of an eye. this book written by a co-founder of Intel makes an interesting read even 10 years after it was written. though the then market trends he has written about has become the industry norm today, only someone extraordinarily smart could make such observations and come up with a strong understanding of basic principles. change is not always easy, more so when it is...

Would he have known - That he will die rather than just being hurt, That his dearest brother would die with him, That his wife would never forgive him, That his sisters could not cry, That his children would not make it on that day, That he left us a debt of guilt and shame, That we loved him and would love him again if he comes back, That I would wish he be my dad one more time.