Adults can be taught to think pretty much like a dog can be taught to walk upright on its hind legs. It is a nice amusing trick but does not get the dog very far. DeBono’s books are the equivalent of a dog-trainer’s handbook.

[Source: How to Think, to Fast, and to Wait.]

I have started categorizing the posts on this blog a bit at a time. I just added a category My Favorite Bits. One such is something which I call The Triple Point of the World at Zero Degrees Humanity. What I like about it is it rambles along and makes detours and finally reaches a conclusion that I found surprising.
As time permits I will add more to this category from the archives.

I have been reading and writing on the usenet for donkey’s years. It is a wonderful mine of information and an amazing sink of time. You could waste time like there is no tomorrow (or should that be the other way around?). Anyway, here is one gem from someone who writes under the pseudonym of Uncle Al.

Newly educated and semi-educated classes – social or intellectual – seek positions in government bureaucracies or social advocacy rather than in industry and commerce where competence is inarguably measured …

The beautiful things we shall write if we have talent are inside us, indistinct, like the memory of a melody which delights us though we are unable to recapture its outline. Those who are obsessed by this blurred memory of truths they have never known are the men who are gifted… Talent is like a sort of memory which will enable them finally to bring this indistinct music closer to them, to hear it clearly, to note it down…
Marcel Proust in Against Sainte-Beuve

Via Saheli:

Vipassana is a 2500-year old Buddhist meditation practice that claims its lineage to the Buddha himself. Various institutions carry on the tradition of teaching Vipassana and one such is led by Shri S.N.Goenka. Goenkaji, as he is known by his students, has his headquarters in Igatpuri, a small town near Nashik in Maharashtra, India. I came across Vipassana about 15 years ago in California through some American friends who are his students.

At times I despaired but I don’t think I ever fully gave up hope that one day I will get internet connectivity from home. After a month and more calls than I would like to remember to VSNL, I did get connected today. So to celebrate my new-found freedom to post from home, I am offering you a story. It is called Other Worlds to Sing in. A short little story that is sweet. But I cannot read it without a lump in my throat. Here is the story …

Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple Computer and Pixar Animation Studios, epitomizes what I believe about life. It is a random draw. Recently I came across a commencement speech he gave at Stanford University. There is a connection between Steve — you would not believe this one — and Hare Krishna!
I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to …

Haldiram’s is perhaps the only brand known around the world which comes from Nagpur (my home town). They make a great variety of wonderful namkeens (traditional Indian salty snacks), sweets, and other stuff which can be lumped as Indian junk food. It may be my cultural chauvinism which is speaking but I think that Indian junk food (like Indian food in general) beats any other variety of junk food hands down.

My friend Reuben over at ZooStation wants to spread the word about a $10,000 fellowship fellowship set up by SAJA for anyone wanting to do aTsunami aftermath story. The details are here.
This has been a Public Service Announcement brought to you by the kind folks at Zoo Station and its affiliates. Support also provided in part by Deeshaa Network which is made possible by a grant from an anonymous foundation.

I have started on Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography. Absolutely fascinating. No doubt that he was a remarkable man. I find the book un-putdown-able. The reason I started on it is rather pedestrian: I am out of reading material and went to the Crosswords bookstore around the corner and found it to be the cheapest among the lot that I wanted to read. It was only Rs 30 (about $0.70.) Amazing window into the mind of a man who casts such a long shadow onto India. More about this man later.

{via Sonal Vidya.} From the New Scientist: 11 Steps to a Better Brain.
One of which is:
Sleep on it
Never underestimate the power of a good night’s rest
So I am doing that a lot. I will have to work on the other 10 bits.

Stanislav Andreski in Social Sciences as Sorcery (1972)

So long as authority inspires awe, confusion and absurdity enhance conservative tendencies in society. Firstly, because clear and logical thinking leads to a cumulation of knowledge (of which the progress of the natural sciences provides the best example) and the advance of knowledge sooner or later undermines the traditional order. Confused thinking, on the other hand, leads nowhere in particular and can be indulged indefinitely without producing any impact upon the world.

“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.”
– Samuel Johnson quoted in Boswell’s “Life of Johnson.”

If you come to think about it for a moment, what we really want is knowledge, not information. (Recall what the business school guru said: what people want is not a quarter-inch drill but rather a quarter-inch hole.) The good news is that there is a lot of information out there. The better news is that the cost of accessing that …

They beat him up. According to the MidDay report of June 1, “after a thorough beating,” they handed him over to the police in Mumbai.

My Dear Abhishek:
You, like everything else, are a little bundle of energy, aren’t you!
Let me tell you a story. It was a very long time ago, by some estimates about 15 to 18 billion years ago, this universe we inhabit was born. Why it came into existence nobody knows. Where did it come from? From Absolute Nothingness. You may ask: how can Something arise from Absolute Nothingness? Here is my conjecture. You start with Absolute Nothingness and represent it with a 0 (zero). Some call it “Shunyata” (Emptiness). Then you …