Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Do Humans Responsible For Climatic Change? Part I

Today I was extensively analyzing my plan to follow "Raw Veganism". I was analyzing the various nutritional data for food items which can be consumed raw. I will give this report shortly. But in this process something else strike me. The very reason why I should become "Raw Veganism", "Do humans contribute to climatic change?".

Before explaining this I will explain what is "Raw Veganism". This is about consuming vegan diet without cooking. Vegan diet is nothing but eliminating all the animal products from the diet, including milk, egg etc. Check this Wikipedia link to know more about vegan diet.

Doing something without proper reasoning is like driving with your eyes closed. You'll go fine up to the road is straight (unless you turn the wheels in the middle assuming something). But for driving fast we may have to limit some of the reasoning (assuming no one will cross the road without checking both sides of the road, the probability of the brake to malfunction is negligible, etc., etc.). We make a lot of such assumptions in all part of our lives. Waiting for facts without making any assumptions will paralyze us. But after going some distance with an assumption, we must stop and ask ourselves whether the assumption we've made was right or wrong. We can correlate our failures to that assumption and conclude if it is OK or NOT.

Humans have come a long way, multiplying rapidly growing faster than our environment. But the burning question is, "Do humans responsible for climatic change?". This question has importance because this is something big enough to grab our attention. I want to split it into to two hypothesis, "Human growth is responsible for sensing the climatic change" and "Human growth itself has caused climatic change". You may comment on whether formation of this hypothesis itself is right or wrong.

"Human growth is responsible for sensing the climatic change ?":

Without distracting the topic we'll analyze if the human growth contributed for detecting the climatic change. So who else can detect a climatic change? There is a long going debate between researchers on whether animals can detect natural disasters (mostly earthquake) prior to humans. But whether animals can detect disasters or not, they certainly can not detect a climatic change. They may detect it by genetic intelligence. Here I mention the term "Genetic Intelligence" in the sense that intelligence of the gene system. In other words the intelligence of the evolution process originated in earth (no information is available so far to check if the origination of the evolution process in earth is the first or very late - this can be verified if we find any living form outside our world with better intelligence and their planet is older than ours). Gene is a peculiar vehicle which takes the living organisms in earth to a better level through evolution process.

So how the animals detect climatic change through genetic intelligence? They change themselves into something else through the evolution process to adopt to their environment. Environment changes when the climate changes. Desserts change to rain forests. Sea deeps change into mountain peaks. So the living things are forced to evolve to exists. I've a big theory behind what is considered a living thing (apart from things that consume food and breath) and why they try to exist and the link between the two. We'll discuss it later. Now coming to the point, the living things try to adapt to the changing environment by evolution. If the evolution is slower than the change in the environment (something like asteroid attack), the living things go extinct. I've already discussed this in my previous post http://vibgy.com/2009/10/shellfishes-make-a-difference-for-atleast-one/.

Living things include humans also. So humans also have the evolution process and we are already undergoing a change. But can we detect the climatic change exclusively? Yes, we've found lot of ways to detect the climatic change. We measure the changing size of the ice cap, we measure the ozone layer density changes, we measure sea water temperature blah blah blah... etc etc.  (to be continued... sorry people I've already spent 4 hours reading and thinking for this post, will provide more valuable information in my next post)

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Shellfishes - Make a Difference for atleast ONE

I read a post in my friend Balan's blog today. You can read it here... http://poothabalan.blogspot.com/2008/12/something-to-think.html. What I understand from his post is that we should not get satisfied that we don't have the problems of our neighbors. We should prepare ourselves to avoid or handle the misfortune, if we have to face it tomorrow, and WE SHOULD HELP THEM if possible.

Every species in this world has a mechanism of adapting to a challenging environment by mutation. But this mutation happens very slowly (takes millions of years). When the challenge develops faster than the mutation process, that particular species becomes extinct. This is the point where humans differ from all other species in the world. We have the intelligence to change our challenging environment to our convenience. Without fire we couldn't have survived the carnivorous predators. Without farming we couldn't have supported the exploding population. Without clothing we couldn't have survived heavy weather conditions.

Apart from all these things how we differ from other species is that we create cultures. We can organize things in a higher intellectual order (ants are also organized but it is in their gene, not in their brain). Simply saying, we help each other. Our parents help and support us even after we become parents. I don't think any other species do that.

I'll come to the core of what Balan says: There is a story, one person walks along a sea shore. He picks up and throws the shellfishes lying in the beach dying, into the sea. One man asks him, "There are thousand of shellfishes out there dying. You can't save them all.". Then this man replies, "I can't save them all. It's not going to make any difference in the whole population of these shellfishes. But for the one's I've thrown inside, it makes a difference". We can not help all the poor people, but if we help some, their life is not going to be the same again.

Everybody should include this into their life's goals. Happy helping...

My First Game - Plan Ready

I've always loved playing games. I can live without seeing anyone and doing nothing but just play games for hours (even days). I've read a lot of debates about whether playing games is good for mind or not. One argument against playing games is that they don't improve any mental abilities, but people with good mental abilities play games. I would partially agree to this. The thing I don't agree about this argument is about not improving mental abilities. Actually games serve as a training ground to sharpen our strategic skills (I like Age Of Empires much, so this point came out. But other games sharpen other skills). It's more like an expensive simulation researchers do before actually building something. We must agree that simulation is coming into almost all the industries. So what if I can simulate a 10 years of war in an hour? what if I can stimulate a life time of business development in a tycoon game? Well games give us ground to make mistakes quickly and safely to learn from them and apply them in reality.

But many people stop with just simulation. They never move to build anything in reality. Today morning I was going through a term called "Analysis Paralysis". That is doing too much of analysis and doing nothing. Or spending more on analysis itself without making any real profit (I remember my college days when I spend hours to prepare the study plan before the exam and not studying anything). So I started thinking about implementing these strategies learned to real life (well imagine about a general who has triumphant in 100s of battles and has 1000s of years' experience in war and managing cities). This is the point when I decided that I should do business and create empires. So what is the first step?

Well apart from the too much of involvement in playing games, I like computer programming also. Programming is not something I do for living. It is my passion, fun, life... etc. I remember the numerous C programs I've written to simulate the fancy curves I've studied in engineering studies. So I thought of combining these two passions together to create a new passion, game development. Game development is not new to me. I've created games from my school days. Some in C, some in VB some in Java, but I've not completed any. To get an idea of what I mean by not completing, I'll give an example. In 12th standard (12th grade or High school), I've started creating a car race. In that game the car will not move, the background only will move. When I started the game the background moved, but it seemed like a plane flying. At that point that game was dropped. So like these I've created half baked games.

But I'm not a small boy anymore, I must create real games which others can enjoy and get trained in some skills (blah blah blah....etc... etc...). After a long day's thinking and lot of scratching in the notepad with my ball point pen, I've arrived at a perfect plan to create a game. I don't want to break the suspense by explaining about the game now itself. Most importantly, when its fully baked, it may be totally different from the whatsoever explanation I would have given now.

So keep up the suspense... I will release it soon...

Thursday, October 22, 2009

New York goes Hybrid - Where are we?

New York hybrid turbine driven bus under testing
I was going through a couple of articles in digg.com. One is about the introduction of significant amount of hybrid buses to the New York city fleet : http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/automobiles/autospecial2/22BUS.html. Another one is about test run of bus with turbine engine, to be introduced to New York fleet shortly : http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/mta-tests-sleeker-bus-with-turbine-engine/

Hybrid vehicle is the buzz word in the eco friendly community. They have both a fossil fuel engine and an electrical motor to run the vehicle. Authorities claim that in New York the hybrid bus goes 4 miles per gallon (1.7 km per litre), whereas a conventional diesel bus goes 2.75 miles per gallon (1.2 km per litre : significantly lower than Indian buses running 3-4 km per litre, almost 9 miles per gallon, 3 times better, ofcourse they have air conditioning needs). Apart from this what New Yorkers concentrating is the drop in SOOT (diesel particulate emission) of 97% and nitrogen oxides emission by 58%. They care about the lungs of their children. And these hybrid buses cost $1 million. But due to the high demand the cost dropped to half. In Indian rupee value it is almost 2.3 crore. Can you imagine a middle class family people riding a bus like this? Of course they are going to blame the government for the ticket cost rise. I have a point here to mention about our society. Before that I'll tell about the next plan the New Yorkers are having.

The turbine engine is a revolutionary method to propel a vehicle. A turbine engine is used to propel a electrical generator which in turn runs the electrical motors. The authorities say, "It has no starter, no transmission, no water pump and no engine radiator, which should help us significantly reduce our maintenance costs. When you have an inspection every 3,000 miles, you do not have to drain the oil or drain the transmission." They further said that this bus was the only bus in the authority’s fleet that met the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2010 emissions standards without the need for exhaust after-treatment.

So what are we going to do? Are we still going to complain about the 1 rupee raise in the bus tickets? You may ask a question. What will poor people do? My answer would be to visit the MTC website http://www.mtcbus.org/ and check the link "Concession Fares". A school student can travel for just 15 rupees for the whole academic year any distance (home to school). And lot more. So what's the point? you may ask. The point is, Are we working hard enough to improve our children's future? How are we improving our life styles? Improving life style doesn't mean that we prefer luxurious life. Its about eco-friendly. It costs more to be eco-friendly (initially but it will pay back). Let's work hard to go eco-friendly (for our future and our children's future).

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Bike Ride To MEPZ Office - A Lesson Learned

Few months back my work location was changed to office inside MEPZ (Madras Export Processing Zone). This is one of the Special Economic Zones in Tamilnadu. It houses big exporting companies. My company exports software. So we are also inside this. This post is about the things I thought while riding my bike while coming back from office today.

I was turning that right turn immediately next to my company as usual, after leaving the office. It's a 4 road junction. So while turning I used to focus more on the right side of the turn. After completing almost 80% of the turn I saw a glimpse of a person requesting for a ride. At the time I saw him, I'd gone about 5 feet away from him. I didn't stop for him for no reason. Usually I will stop for people asking for a ride. Actually this MEPZ area has only one gate, only through which we can enter this area. I must travel about 1.5 Km to my company from this gate. There are many companies in this area and people have variety of transport options to reach their respective companies from the MEPZ gate. Some use their own transport and some use the shuttles arranged by their respective companies. People who don't have the above 2 options must walk the distance. Even though this walk can turn out to be a pleasant one, due to the tight schedules people mostly can't enjoy the walk. Walking would seem like a highly time consuming process (10 to 20 minutes), during peak office hours. In order to reduce this time (and effort), instead of walking, people used to ask for a ride to many of the vehicles crossing this area. The poor fellow who didn't get a ride from me also, must be one them.

When I first moved to MEPZ office, I never gave a single ride to any person. I usually like to walk a lot. So I never saw a reason why people avoid walking and ask for a ride. But after some time I started thinking about how it would feel to walk every time coming to office. Though it would be a very healthy activity, when I'm rushing to office this activity would turn out to be very straining and frustrating. So I started helping the people who ask for a ride. So today's event was very strange. After crossing the guy and reaching 40 Kmph, I tried to realize why I left him. I thought that he should have come little bit more into the road to grab my attention quickly. But this is highly risky for the safety of that person. And then I thought that his gesture was not bold enough to convince me to hit the brakes. I realized that this could be a valuable reason. Because after crossing that person, to give a ride, my subconscious mind expected that person to run to the bike and mount. But that person was very tired. His gesture to ask for a ride was so weak that my subconscious mind thought that he wouldn't be able to run to the bike and mount. My subconscious mind expected an active person and encountered a weak person. But the controversy here is that a person who is too weak to mount a bike definitely won't be able to walk that distance.

The thing I learned from this event is that I needed to train my subconscious mind to give priority to people who were weak when offering some help. I remembered the words of Jesus. A doctor is needed for a sick person not a healthy one. That poor fellow I ignored might have waited another 5 or 15 minutes to get a ride. But only if I had waited few seconds for him to walk to my bike and mount slowly, I would have helped a weak and tired man.

You may think that I'm putting the blame to my subconscious mind like it was completely a different person. This could turn out to be a completely different article. Subconscious mind is something which is not in our control. It's like reflexes. We realize what we have done during reflex action after a long time only. It's like 2 people inside one person. It's not physical, its psychological (may be spiritual for some). Even though we can not control the reflex action taken by the subconscious mind at that very moment, we are responsible for it. Because we only train the subconscious mind. Things we feed the conscious mind trains the subconscious mind. Is it anyway possible? I'll explain in my next post.