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Let this be the space for all comments. Other posts will not allow comments as per the new policy.

Comment Policy

I agree with Dave Winer

that "comments interfere with the natural expression of the unedited voice of an individual" and that "If it was one voice, unedited, not determined by group-think -- then it was a blog, no matter what form it took. If it was the result of group-think, with lots of ass-covering and offense avoiding, then it's not."

Therefore I would be disabling comments in future and have removed the past comments as well. There would be one comment post, where everyone would be free to post all the comments.

5 year old mercilessly crushed to death by a speeding truck

The newspapers are abound with headings like these. The culprit in each case is undoubtedly the truck driver, who was speeding and killed someone. The driver is promptly arrested.

Has anyone cared to calculate how much time does a fully loaded truck moving at 60 Kmph take to stop when the driver jams the brakes. And what magic is the driver supposed to produce when a kid decides to run right in front of it into the highway without looking left or right to see if a vehicle is coming. This behavior is not limited to children.

The knee jerk reaction of the locals is to make an illegal speed breaker at the location, and vehicles with broken axles and other damage would be a common site at the location in future.

Why is a scapegoat necessary. Why can't we hold the person responsible so that other people are more careful while crossing the roads in future.

The media is equally guilty. They choose to go with the impressive eye catching headline rather than saying that the person died out of its own mistake of running into a highway without looking.

Let there be shoes

My reasons why shoes should be allowed inside temples:

1. God is in everything, every particle. So god is in dust and dirt also. Then whats the point of keep god in that form out of temples.

2. If cleanliness is the reason, just go an take a look at the churches, they are cleaner than many of the temples. Even though shoes are allowed there.

3. Many people have a habit of washing their feet at the entry of temples. Psychologically this may sound all sacred and all, actually they are making the temples dirtier, wet feet make the floor wet and then dirt sticks more to the wet areas.

Now my reasons against the custom of removing shoes before entering homes:

1. It is particularly risky for diabetic people. Diabetics are particularly susceptible to foot infections and other foot related problems. Walking bare feet can create lots of problems for diabetics and in some extreme cases of infection even requite amputation.

http://www.blu-birdmedical.com/html/diabetes.html
http://www.diabetes.org/type-2-diabetes/foot-care.jsp
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/13/world/asia/13diabetes.html?pagewanted=3&ei=5070&en=73ba2f09942a794f&ex=1182312000

2. The practice might help keeping the homes cleaner, but it also helps keeping the feet of most people really dirty. Thats because its not really possible to keep the floor completely dust free, all that deposits on to the feet of people. Then they climb the beds with the same feet and god help the bedsheets :P.

3. Walking on hard floor is bad for the feet. A hard floor gives no cushion to the sole. Since we mostly have concrete or marble floors in India, which is not going to change in the near future, wearing shoes or slippers inside homes can provide the support needed to walk on bare floor.

http://www.stagestep.com/Aeson_needtoknow.html

4. This has resulted in most of the people wearing floaters because they can be removed easily. These days you hardly see people wearing shoes around Bangalore. Whatever happened to fashion. To me, floaters look plain ugly, more-so if the person wearing floaters has really dirty, scaled, dry feet, with cracks on the heels. These ugly feet are again the result of walking bare feet and not wearing shoes (not to discount lack of care). People who regularly wear shoes have neater feet, as they remain protected, clean and moist.

Word Verification

Nowadays there is word verification for almost anything and everything on the net. Spams, abuse of automated scripts and other problems have made it necessary, but its become like a cat and mouse chase. While OCR softwares (those that recognize alphabets and numbers from pictures) are getting smarter, the word verification engines are using more and more cryptic ways of writing them.

People themselves have some trouble identifying it correctly sometimes, which often happens when commenting on blogspot blogs. I don't see the method viable after 10 years.

Going forward

Sorry to disappoint some of you, but I am sticking to my guns. This blog does not work on democracy. It is based on my thoughts and will stay like that.

If you don't like it, don't read. Period.

It is quite easy to criticize under a veil of anonymity. I tried to keep anonymous posts open for some time, but going forward, I need to disallow anonymous comments. Thats because most of the flames were coming from anonymous commenters rather than regular bloggers. The worst of those have been deleted, in case you are thinking that you don't see any offensive ones.

Please resist Flaming. You are free to criticize as long as you criticize the posts rather than the author.

About progressiveness

Here are some of my mini theories about progress and the future:

1. People: In every group or culture, there are some people who exert a pull towards the past. They like everything as it happened a decade or more ago. They dislike every change as if it is a rot or impurity. They see every invention as a danger to humanity or morality. I'm not arguing about the correctness of their belief. They may/may-not be correct and there are dangerous inventions also. Similarly there are people who pull towards the future. Usually there are some people who create the future (musicians, scientists, writers, even politicians etc), and others who like it and follow. These followers might be impulsive or have whatever reasons. I'm not talking about the reasons here.
The net direction of this tussle is always forwards (with a low magnitude), probably because the younger generation is more accepting of the new ideas. If there is a new country or continent (as the North America was settled once), there are less past pullers so such places have much faster progress.

2. Oscillations of progress: Lets say there is a quality Q which has an index 10 today. Ideally Q should be 50 for the world to be more prosperous. Gradually Q increases 20, 30, 40, finally 50. Now this Q does not stop at 50. It would overshoot, to 60, 70, 80. Now the reversal starts, 70, 60, 50, 40, 30. And more occilations until it stabilizes gradually at 50. The reverse oscillation can appear to be a retrograde step when its going lower than 50, but it comes back again.

I believe many of the parameters of progress happen in this fashion. We had a joint family which had its pitfalls of less independence. Now we are moving towards nuclear, and off shooting more towards maybe no-family at all. After a while, we would again come back, and probably it will settle in the end somewhere in the middle.

Though another of my hypothesis says the final structure might resemble the internet. A net like structure where each individual has one or more spouse and those spouse can again have one or more spouse, thereby making the whole world related in a net like structure - similar to orkut.

3. Rules: Societies which have more rules progress slower than societies which have less rules. Simply because rules hinder creativity. Rules hinder change. Rules make the past-pullers in (1) stronger. Again I don't mean rules are bad. Maybe a necessary evil, but they do hinder progress.

4. Religion: Societies which have a strong religion, or more interference of religion in everyday life progresses slower than societies with less religion. I believe religious people have more trouble accepting change.

5. Induction: Progress by one society infects the other to go in that direction. Unless there is a strong pull by 4.

6. Violence: Overall violence in the world is steadily declining. Modern wars are more about machines than people. Aircrafts destroy tanks, bridges, powerhouses. Once all that is done, the war is over. Though it might be more disastrous if it comes to nuclear war, I hope it wouldn't.

7. Immigrants: Immigrants are usually more progressive than the ethnic population of any place. Reasons: The severed tie from their native place reduces the backward (towards the past, towards the known) pull. They were adaptable in the first place thats why they migrated. Rigid people stay where they are, they don't move to other places. The immigrants get to learn from two societies, their own and the new one. Also, they have to make a reputation for themselves again, from scratch, which makes them work hard.
(P.S. I'm not counting refugees as immigrants)

Negativity

Looks like I have built quite a reputation here about being negative. Its not like I don't see the positives, but I like to write about the negatives.

Pondering why:
Maybe because all the good love stories are tragedies.
Maybe because negativity is romantic.
Maybe because of the human psyche of wanting more and more.

Writing positive is way too easy. No thinking required at all. No challenge in it. BTW, I have been challenged to write something positive. So expect a positive post from me very soon. I hope it wouldn't be boring.