** The existence of Intelligent Extraterrestrial life is a common topic for Science fiction - stories, movies or even discussions. There are various visions of an alien proposed - doomsday / apocalypse themed movies portray them as reptiles with high frequency reproduction capabilities. However, few other more benevolent themes like the E.T.  or Avatar show them as humanoid. Which of these two versions are more likely to be true? Let us look at it from another perspective, what are some of the characteristics of an intelligent animal? Some which come to mind are [ Source ]: The use of tools The ability to learn and remember (obtain knowledge) through experience, study, or instruction The ability to communicate (the ability to give and receive information) The ability to solve complex problems Humans have fingers which gives them a lot of flexibility to handle complex tasks such as writing or drawing art. We can't be exactly sure whether our fingers evolved by usag

My daughter was watching one of those Kindergarten videos on shapes [ YouTube ] and at this scene where a car is waiting for the 'Shape Train' to cross the level crossing; I ruminated a conversation between the vehicles where ... The car wonders to itself  - "I wish I could go as fast as the train!" The train itself responds "I wish I could roam anywhere like the car does!" [ and not be forced to run only where the track goes ] I realized my rumination had a lot of similarity to the differences, perceptions and expectations of 'Corporate' vs. 'Entrepreneur' career paths. Corporate career is like the Railway - you have a defined career path to progress up, if you perform well, play your moves properly (including living with or harnessing office politics and networking), you can reach the top echelons very fast and without much financial risk on yourself. Entrepreneurship is like driving a car on the road - you have a lot of freedom w

The irony of our times ... Those who oppose crimes against themselves, inflict crimes on their own people  Those who want peace within, advocate bombing the 'criminal' states  Those who oppose 'repressive' regimes, side with them when the 'rebels' start bombing their countries  Those who work for off-shoring IT businesses, condemn governments for allowing cheap Chinese imports  'Export' cloth manufacturers encourage laws restricting of foreign manufactured vehicles Families who built houses with repatriation money castigate illegal immigrants from neighboring countries  Those who worship most feverishly are also those who preach hatred People conduct 'culture' festivals at the Bank of rivers damaging fragile ecosystems on the riverbed  Those who find affirmation action 'unfair' to the majority cringe when the government taxes their savings  Minorities always cite the law; majorities make the law!  My opportunity is fair -

davewinerabttwtr As  @DaveWiner , tweeted about twitter's innovation stalling because it closed its API than open it, another friend of mine emailed me asking about which Social Bookmarking service I use. To put it in context, in 2008-9, I too had started to build a social bookmarking application Bloozle , which was aimed at sharing links (bookmarks) by users, tagging them (to create 'folksonomies), enable sharing and finally presenting a technology curated 'magazine' for end users to browse. What we envisaged as bloozle, is today available as a combination of Twitter / Facebook based link sharing (with #hashtags acting as tags) and Flipboard based 'curation' of those links for you to read. Long story short - this friend of mine was a part of the team for Bloozle and hence, we share the love to hate Twitter-Flipboard combo for 'stealing' away our success! :-) My friend commented (sic)- "i am just back on delicious and find it way b

The IT geek world is unequivocally undivided since more than a decade on the superiority of the Command Line Interface over the GUI! For the uninitiated, Command Line is the black screen, that comes up when you go to 'Start Menu' > 'Run' and Type 'cmd', which you often use to do a 'ping' or 'ipconfig'. GUI expands to Graphical User Interface, a technical name to the point-and-click interface we all use in computers today.  The geekdom has had debates  on why we haven't evolved from a purely textual entry mode into something better, a debate which always concludes accepting that Command line is a superior form of human-computer interaction . With introduction of Siri, Google Now and Cortana - while we have added voice commands also to the debate; its uses are currently limited to searching, giving pre-ordained commands like calling someone in your contacts list. For performing complex tasks such as say formatting your hard disk, ch

I was at a workshop last week conducted by Prof Ashish Nanda [ 1 ] and Prof Biju Varkkey [ 2 ] - and it was an enlightening experience. There was one thought which came from them towards the end of the session which has been reverberating in my mind ever since. This was about the future of the workplace. In response to a question about handling the 'new generation' Prof Nanda mentioned that most of the theories and media talk about the Millennials or Next Generation being different and changing the workplace is bunkum; but what he said next was insightful - the workplace of the future will not be influenced so much by the entry or the new generation but by 3 factors: Women in the workforce - for the first time in the history of mankind we are going to have a large number of women who would have spent more than 30 years at Corporate and Academic careers. Many of them have reached or are reaching leadership positions and the workplace is going to be far different with so

Flickr image by  sayan51 I was listening to my grandma and my uncle talk about the nonsense they show on TV nowadays, about how Children in TV are shown to be arrogant or uttering things which do not suit their age, and then the topic turned to how there is too much 'freedom' given to today's youth, the fact that they are not bound by cultural ethos is making them directionless achievers; and as the discussion got accented, there was a hint that the world needs a dictatorial order - how youth need to be disciplined and made to act within the 'bounds' of our culture, how this will result in a more fruitful generation. This, I am sure, is a common debate in many households in India and even elsewhere; the conclusion of course is very typical of the rightist philosophy bordering on, though not absolutely, vigilante approach. I agree and disagree. Yes, freedom is a double edged sword, but absolute freedom does not have an alternative irrespective of its blemish

2013 has possibly been the busiest year of my life till date; it was busy as hell and the hangover still persists. The year started with a Baby Shower in mid January, after which Divya went to her parent's place - beginning a persistent nomadic life for me for more than 6 months. I would dash through the week, managing groceries, maids and bills and run off to either Indore or Pune over weekends to spend alternate weekends with Divya or my parents. If there were weekends when I would be in Mumbai, there would be enough office work piled over to catch up. I spent several train and bus journeys working on my laptop sitting in awkward positions, and being the source of the dim (and for my co-passengers - irritating -) light emanating from my laptop screen. I have been on con-calls at all kinds of odd places - the hospital, highway Dhabas, on way to Mumbai-Pune expressway and Food Plaza on the expressway near Lonavla. Also spent several Monday's coming back from work and goi

Arbit Choudhury For the uninitiated, Arbit Choudhury is a web-comic run by 4 friends (including me) focusing on Management jargon related humour and features 'Arpit Choudhury' - a B-school student in India who is famous for his wisecracks among his friends. We release regular comics - you can subscribe to them on Facebook , Twitter or email . Way back in 2004 when we started Arbit , we had initially chosen a different name for it - it was part parody of a then famous Management Guru, part a play on words (something which Arbit is famous for!).  We for some reason did not like the name and asked our friends to suggest other names - of the several names which were proposed, "Arbit" was one. While I and Shubham were convinced of the name 'Arbit', Hemant wasn't quite so. So we ended up going back to our friends, conducted a poll on the NITIE LAN, and "Arbit" won! But it was not until recently that the spiritual relevance of this name we g

About 8 years ago, I blogged about how our generation has disappointed the science fiction writers by not making much progress in the area of Space Travel - something considered achievable by them by the 21st century. Space however is an area where we may not have matched fictional expectations in any form. We have an international space station in place but that I believe is a far cry from a space city and the days of Star Trek do not seem close enough. Time has come, when we will redeem our honour soon.  Space hasn't progressed much in the past few decades because it has remained, until now, a high expense, high government (funded and) controlled industry; much like Telecom sector in India until 2000s and Banking until 90s. Also, entry barriers in terms of cost and regulation made experimentation difficult, which in turn made risk taking difficult. Less risk taking meant less chance of disproportionate reward, lesser private sector involvement resulting ultimately into les

Image Credits by Flickr user  urbaneapts I recently went to the showroom of ' Sleek ' - a modular kitchen furnishing company. I and my wife were discussing the various options for fitments to be bought when we came to the point of discussing the Chimney. Both me and my wife were sold out on buying a Chimney, but the salesperson asked us if we were non-vegetarian and whether our apartment had a window in front of the stove - the answer to the former being no and the latter being yes. To my surprise, the salesperson suggested we do not buy the Chimney because we will have little use for it. The salesperson knew she was reducing the ticket size of her sale by almost 10% and this was not a discount to make the sale, the discount was to come after this. The experience reminded me of how we work in consulting - there are times when we tell our clients that they are not ready for a particular initiative or a new software implementation, even though these initiatives would fetch

Image Credits flickr user chippenziedeutch "A Director of Human Resources for a federal agency told me I was looking at the (Best Places to Work for) lists all wrong. 'I think they're great!' he said. Just not for employees. I was looking at the wrong consumers." Traditional companies (like the government), offer solid benefits like a great retirement plan - ReadWrite.com That quote above is so true. The last 2 decades of rapid economic growth across the globe, the coming and going of recessions and rallies has created a lopsided environment about the importance of 'work' (and its derivatives 'job satisfaction', 'learning', 'growth' etc.) in an employment relationship. Prior to the 90s, when the old economy jobs ruled, trade unions (and even officer unions) controlled what went into employment contracts - the important things were job security, retirement benefits, fixed work hours etc. Today, most workplace surveys and i

Edison's Menlo Park Lab; flickr photo by roger4336 In the whole din of work-life balance which surrounds the corporate world today, professionals - especially young professionals - often loose the sense of real achievement. We often get confused about what exactly does success and achievement mean - is rising faster in the corporate ladder success, or is it doing meaningful work, or even more fundamentally is it about doing work enough to earn you a good "life"? The MBAish answer would be - it depends - depends on the kind of person you are, the kind of goals that satisfy your internal compass, the kind of success that matters to you most, your value system etc. But this answer is as good as the fact that ' the total universe is still finite '! A professional's moral compass or measure of success depends on the very system in which they live - if your company's leaders spend their night thinking about business and treat anyone who does not as &#

Flickr Image courtesy Mr. Conguito How many of you know that the close buttons don’t close the elevator doors in most elevators built in the United States or that buttons below the signal at crosswalks "meant" for people to trigger the signal change are mostly all disabled! [ Source ] Well - I just realized that there are several actions we do which are also such "placebo" actions. One example is pressing a "Ctrl + Home" or "Ctrl+End" on a browser. Pressing the Control key makes sense only in either a Word Processing software like MS word or when you are typing inside a textarea (like composing a mail etc.) wherein pressing a "Home" key will take you to the beginning of the line you are typing in while pressing a "Ctrl+ Home" will take you to the beginning of the document / text. However, when we are browsing a webpage on a browser - there is absolutely no reason to press the Control key because either ways pressing &qu

Photo by Flickr user lrargerich  I am sure all of us are taught the virtues of practice in Childhood - most often "Practice Makes a man perfect" or familiar Kabir's doha: करत करत अभ्यास के, जड़मति होत सुजान   रसरी आवत जात ते, सिल पर पड़त निसान We are taught to rote the mathematical multiplication tables or to mug up nursery rhymes ... the list is endless. And we all HATE IT! Even as we grow up we start disdaining and condemning the method of rote which is perpetuated across the educational system. However, secretly we all know that we benefit somewhere from some of the rote we did. When you secretly calculate the percentage of your increment or the approximate EMI required to fund the next investment we remember our math tables. Yesterday, as I was watching Mtv Unplugged , I realized one more advantage of practicing any activity or art. As I watched the guitarist or the tabla player play their instrument so effortlessly and then experiment with it during the eve

In the scène de finale of Die Hard 4 - John Mclaine (Bruce Willis) shoots himself through his shoulder to kill the villain in the movie Thomas Gabriel. Later when his daughter tells him - "Daddy, you’re out of your mind. You shot yourself!" he responds -"It seemed like a good idea at the time. Don't tell those guys [meaning the FBI] that I did this". The parting dialogue illustrates one of the most fundamental truths of life - any heroic or courageous action is usually also an act of foolishness when it is actually committed. Often if you too do things at work or personal life which are acts of personal sacrifice or risk - you try to conceal the fact that you did them. Few of us usually find pleasure in publicizing such acts. Think of any acts that we today honour and think of how these were perceived in their times - Copernicus or the fictional Phileas Fogg or even Bhagat Singh - all were considered courageous fools - if not by the whole world but definitel

I have previously mentioned Prof Prasad on my blog - last time he had thrown open a question on Entrepreneurship education - this time he referred to the famous Stanford Commencement address by Steve Jobs [ text link ] [ video link ]- and asked questions regarding whether students need to follow Steve and drop out of their courses - here are my answers to his questions: 1. How many students despite agreeing to Steve Jobs follow him and drop out of the colleges? Is it a full proof method ? If it is, why not at least hundreds of Steve admirers not toeing to this? Is Steve approach is BEST for everybody and anybody? It's a question of Eco-system; we have to recognize that a successful entrepreneur is one out of several failed entrepreneurs. The probability of an aspiring entrepreneur succeeding depends on the ecosystem in which s/he comes out of. The Stanford of Steve Jobs years was built to generate professionals and academics - it was never designed to generate entrepreneurs -

Black money is ubiquitous in the Indian economy - and the real estate sector is probably the hot bed of black money deals. But I had never imagined that people will be so brazen to quote a black money deal openly on a website - check out the screenshot below: For the uninitiated, 'cash' refers to money paid in cash but not accounted for as a part of the deal in a written contract - in effect this is black money. However, I should applaud the seller here for his/her open mindedness - s/he is giving a clear option for you NOT to pay him any cash, in which case the property will cost you 61 lakhs (INR 6 million 1 hundred thousands). S/he is also giving a clear conversion factor - each lakh (hundred thousand)  of black money gives you a reduction of 25k in the package. The quote price 57 lakhs should as per the above be 41 lakhs agreement value and 16 lakhs in cash.

One of the best documentaries I have ever seen which analyses the Enron debacle from the the inception of Enron to its rise, eminent fall and ultimate crash. It outlines the role played by different characters such as Jeff Skilling, Andy Fastow and Ken Lay but more importantly it brings to light how common employees were led into doing the most unethical actions while making them believe that their actions were completely legitimate. The documentary highlights how the actions of traders in Enron illustrates the inferences of Milgram Experiments , the only other live case study of them being the war crimes conducted by Nazi / German army officers during the WWII on Hitler's orders. The documentary raised a lot of questions in my mind ... Many times our actions look quite legitimate at the time when several contextual pieces of information are in our mind. For example, under a deregulated power rate policy in California, the actions of traders would have looked legitimate. As

On June 7th, 2010 Arijit Ghosal - a close friend wrote this email commemorating 1 year of moving into his new apartment. It covers me as well, so I had planned to post it on my blog. Got time today to format and publish. Yesterday was June 7th. So what you ask. Looks like a pretty mundane ‘at least once a year’ date. More often than not, in the rigmarole of sustaining livelihood and keeping the EMIs on, we generally forget to keep track and celebrate that very thing which we all are chasing in some way or the other…happiness. It suddenly struck me and couldn’t resist myself sharing with those who were together in those moments and those who will appreciate it. It’s been a year now - June 7th 2009 and the few days prior to that are very special to me, and to Nikhil & Anoop as well, I would assume. June 7, 2009: I kicked my landlord and broker and moved in as the final addition to the list of the tenants at the legendary E 703, Bluefields, Powai. It was a Sunday evening. I re