Blissful Life

Year: 2013

  • What I Learned From Deactivating Facebook for 83 days

    That it is not about the social network, it is about me.

    I had just one thing in my mind when I took a break – “focus on studying”.
    I thought facebook was the reason why I could not focus on textbooks, that I would automatically start doing better when I stop using facebook.

    And boy, was I not wrong?

    I started getting distracted by gmail!

    I started to read more of the email subscriptions I have, I started visiting more and more online magazines, reading through them, article after article.

    It only felt counterproductive.

    What was missing?
    Having eliminated what seemed to be the greatest distraction, I was still distracted, and I started wondering why. I decided to observe myself. And the results? Not surprising at all.

    I simply could not read more than a paragraph of my textbook without getting distracted. Either I would start thinking about something in the textbook. Or I would start thinking about my college. Or I would get a great new idea which will change the way world works. Or I desperately want to visit some random website on the internet.

    I simply could not read.

    But why?
    I don’t know.

    I know only one thing. That there is something wrong with my will. I have an obsessive disorder. I am addicted to distractions.

    If all goes right, I will come out of this. I will curb that incessant urge to be in the know about everything. I will learn how to ignore some of the unread notifications. I will learn how to archive some emails without going through them. I will learn how to even check email only in two slots every day.

    But I will still be spending hours to fix tiny errors on my blog template.

    I know. I am crazy.

  • How Journalism Can and Needs to Change and Adapt to the Web

    Internet has made traditional journalism obsolete. But we have not realized it yet.

    Newspapers in print were limited by space and functionality, which restricted the stories they covered to only those very few important ones and some fresh stories. Today’s first page news would be buried inside the daily tomorrow, and will be forgotten the day after. There might be a follow up story, but it is published only if it is of enough importance to warrant another covering.

    For the public, this means that there is no continuity. Stories stop abruptly. Promises are forgotten. Impressions fade. They are constantly distracted by newer, more exciting events. And they conveniently forget the older, more important ones.

    • What is up with the investigation of that infamous crime?
    • Where is that famous person now? What is she doing?
    • Which film is that controversial director working on now?
    • What happened to that sincere police officer who was receiving death threats from various points? Is he even alive today?
    • Where is that ground breaking cure for the terminal illness? Why can’t I buy it from the drug store already?

    That is where the internet comes in.

    Blogging sites, and micro-blogging sites have up to an extent relieved the pressure on newspapers to publish all the stories they receive. What is not fit for the print edition, goes to the web edition. Permanent columnists are given blogs which they can update at their own will. And individuals can publish on their own, and link to their stories via micro-blogging sites which then take care of content delivery.

    But it does not have to stop there.

    Newspaper websites can change their form. They can switch to a publish-subscribe pattern. And it needs minimal change to the way they are already working. Here’s how it goes.

    Every news item will have a “subscribe to this story” button on it. A user (identified by emails, or by creating an account on the site) who “subscribes” to a story will get all the follow up items from that story. Those follow-ups which are not worthy for prime attention, will not go on the front page of the website, but they will nevertheless go to the feed/email/equivalent of everyone who has “subscribed” to the story.

    Furthermore, there could even be an encyclopedic division of stories, which a new user can browse and subscribe. That is, on clicking “browse stories” the user would reach a page with many categories listed, like “movies”, “celebrities”, “politics”, “crimes”, “disasters”, “accidents”, etc. Under each category there could be sub categories, like for “crimes”, there could be “rapes”, “theft”, “murder”, “bribery”, etc. and so on.

    Essentially, this website will look like twitter accounts maintained by journalists. Instead of following “people”, the user can follow “stories”.

    But isn’t that what content aggregators do?
    Yes, and no.
    No, websites like reddit and stumbleupon cover only wide topics, not individual stories.
    Yes, Google news has “See realtime coverage” button under each story, but this is “determined automatically by a computer” and doesn’t connect non-contiguous coverage. For the time being, the function I’m proposing is best served by Wikipedia. Each notable event gets its own wiki article, and volunteers update the wiki with latest coverage of the story. This is unreliable, and not enough.

    We need paradigm shift in how journalists cover stories.

    If you are a journalist, and you covered a story once, you should make it a point to follow that story up till its end. You should make sure that promises are kept, that justice is served, that people are not forgotten. You should keep the timelines alive. And do not worry about having no audience, because if something is worth covering once, it is worth covering till its completion. If it is not, then you should not have covered it at first.

    And media will rise as the relentless pursuer of truth.

  • Men May Now Wear Veils

    The law is clear.

    IPC 354A
    1) A man … iv) making sexually coloured remarks, shall be guilty of the offence of sexual harassment.
    …
    3) Any man who commits the offence shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to one year, or with fine, or with both.

    But it is not complete. What is a “sexually coloured remark”?

    • “You are looking gorgeous today” ?
    • “You look stunning in this dress” ?
    • “I would kill to be your husband” ?

    If you follow this definition (which you’re bound to by law), you cannot seduce a woman without sexually harassing her. If you can’t seduce a woman, how can you ever dream of having sex with her? If you can’t have sex with any woman, how can you satisfy your biological urges?

    For resolving this Gordian knot, we shall take a cue from the Holy Quran.

    • 33:59 [edited for men] “Tell thy husbands and thy sons and the men of the law-fearing to draw their cloaks close round them.”
    • 24:31 [edited for men] “And say to the law-fearing men that they cast down their looks and close their eyes to not look at women, and let them wear their head-coverings over their eyes, and not see anyone except their wives or their mothers, or the mothers of their wives, or their daughters, or the daughters of their wives, or their sisters, or their sisters’ daughters, or their brothers’ daughters, or their men, or those whom their right hands possess, or the female servants not having need (of men), or the children who have not attained knowledge of what should be hidden from men; and let them not strike their feet so that what they hide of their manliness may be known”
    • 33:55 [edited for men] “It shall be no crime in them as to their mothers, or their daughters, or their sisters, or their brothers’ daughters, or their sisters’ daughters, or their men, or the slaves which their right hands possess, if they speak to them unveiled”

    We shall walk around wearing veils. Not looking at any woman, not giving our natural tendencies a chance to arouse our masculinity. We shall refrain from talking to women, from thinking of them as potential mates for courting, from having romantic pleasure. We shall abstain from sexuality.

    And we shall castrate ourselves.

  • 6 Things To Do When You Are Stuck In The Elevator With A Girl

    For the introverts

    1. Check your smartphone. See if someone has left you a message. If not, play “Temple Run 5” or “Angry Birds Lift”. Act, the same way you would when you are confronted with someone you hate, like there is something really interesting happening on your 4 inch display and keep stroking it with your fingers.

    2. Stare at the floor count. See if there’s any change in the speed at which the numbers change. Think of what you will do if the elevator fails and shoots to the ground.

    3. Think hard, or act like you are doing so. Assign yourself the task of saving the world from alien invasion or climate change. And rake your brains for a solution. If you are a dumb medical student, scratch your head and twirl your beard, as if you are answering an essay question.

    For the extroverts

    4. Talk to the girl stuck with you. If you don’t know her, ask her what she is or where she is going. See if you can make her smile. If you do know her, just shut the fuck up and start talking to her already.

    5. Flirt with the girl. There is nothing as boring as a casual conversation.

    “Hi” “Hey!” “What do you do?” “I work in the grocery store, what about you?” “Oh, I work in the other department” Weird silence. Trnim… (Announcement) “Ground floor”

    If you are good at it, flirt with the girl and make her eyes twinkle.

    For the drunk horny extroverts who are single, or who don’t mind getting their marriage broken

    6. Hit on the girl. Compliment her and make her aroused. Make sure she is single and is up for a game. Exchange phone numbers. Make her feel comfortable and while parting maybe gently touch her on the shoulders and say “see you soon”. Then follow that up with as much romantic foreplay as you can, and try to get laid soon.

    But never ever go faster than how fast the girl wants you to go. This is what Tarun Tejpal and all other idiots get wrong. If she doesn’t want to talk with you, stop talking. If she doesn’t respond to your flirting, shut up. If she feels uncomfortable, stop the lift at the next floor and get out of it. Do not ever fuck things up by making any unexpected advance, because even if you do not end up in trouble you will ruin the chances of your entire gender on being comfortable around a lady.

  • On Facebook

    Facebook is an excellent social networking tool. It has features that makes reconnecting with old friends nostalgic, sharing photos beautiful and staying connected seamless.

    And that’s where it ends. Facebook is not the best content discovery tool. It can show you news from only those people you know or follow. Technically it can show news from world over, but it doesn’t by default. That immediately restricts the sample size of links you chance upon.

    You can actually change the defaults and use Facebook like a feed reader, by liking pages of a good content creator or a good content curator. And then going through a myriad of settings to make all of their posts visible to you.

    But Facebook defaults to “suckery”. In an effort to make page owners pay for advertisements, Facebook buries page posts deep inside news feed.

    And then, Facebook, by default, gives the microphones to all your crappy friends and turns the volume up on all of them, simultaneously!

    Even if you quit reading twilight after the first few chapters, you can relate yourself on Facebook to Edward Cullen in classroom. You get to read everyone’s mind, without even listening. Unlike Cullen here, you have to turn off each single person who litters.

    And in such a system, diversity dies off. You post about what your friends post about which is what their friends post about which is what their friends post about which is what you post about. It’s like inbreeding depression. And this leads to the same stories recurring on your wall day after day walling (pardon the pun) you from all the different, never–thought–about things that actually happen on the internet. You will be stuck with Modi’s comment on Rahul and Rahul’s comment on Modi and Modi’s comment on Rahul’s comment on Modi and Sachin Tendulkar’s comment on Bharath Ratna, and Bharath Ratna’s comment on Sachin Tendulkar, and your neighbour’s comment on Sachin Tendulkar and your friend’s comment on your neighbour’s comment on Sachin Tendulkar and then Modi’s comment on that. And to vie for your attention, each news source will add more masala, more drama to each story they post. While the internet goes forward with splendid things.

    Click here to deactivate your Facebook account now.

    And then, decide on one standard news site, one standard niche site and one standard content discovery tool, and live a beautiful life.

  • Assorted List of Things 20-Something Should Know

    This post on Making254movies:
    26 Things Every 20-something Should Wish to Know

    It needs a little restructuring so that we can actually remember it and apply to our lives. First, go read the post. Then, revise it below.

    To begin with:
    2. Invest in yourself.
    23. Habits now, will stick till the end.
    25. Don’t worry about things that aren’t good about you, spend time on the good ones.

    Knowledge:
    7. Get educated formally.
    22. College won’t take you everywhere. Educate yourself.
    10. Keep a personal library.
    26. Learn the art of rhetoric.

    Health:
    9. Take care of your body before it’s too late.

    Finance:
    12. Have a budget.
    24. Save money.

    Relationships:
    1. Don’t feel urged to go behind a girl.
    4. Don’t cohabit outside marriage.

    General social life:
    6. People let you down. Expect it and learn from it.
    20. Be charming, help others.
    8. Put people together. 
    19. Stop trying to save everybody.
    13. Don’t compare yourself with others, say on social media.

    General life:
    5. Don’t necessarily go with hype.
    11. College -> Confusion -> Real life. That’s the order it comes in.

    Innovate:
    3. Take jobs that need travel.
    15. Take values out of crappy jobs. 
    17. Be passionate, be willing to fail.
    16. Accept failures, move on.
    14. Keep changing your plans, as needed.
    21. But don’t listen to unimportant people.
    18. Explore.

  • On Disposing Garbage From My Reading List

    Up until two months ago, I would have been heading to facebook.com if I ended up in a long queue for chappati at the mess. No, I wouldn't waste a lot of time reading worthless status updates. I'd only click on external links and read articles (which feigned importance).

    And then, I deactivated my facebook account (as I've described here on quora).

    I started reading more of thehindu.com, and my textbooks.

    And that's when I realized that there's a difference between articles that you land up on after surfing social media, and articles from high quality news sources like The Hindu.

    For example, till a friend told me about how sad it is that naive criticism is floating over the web and social media about Sachin receiving Bharath Ratna, I didn't know that people could even think of blaming Sachin for being conferred a prize.

    But did I miss anything by not reading such hate-posts? No. There will be thousands of opinions about every event that occurs. Not all matters. A vast majority of opinions are fit for not even the trash can. Unfortunately, we meddle ourselves in all that rubbish, all day.

    If I go to Google News, it's again those articles which are "hot" that is displayed more prominently. And those are most often not the ones that are comprehensive accounts of reality. People tend to click on eye-grabbing headlines. And sites like NDTV capitalize on that by publishing "news" that sounds more like gossip.

    A comparison

    Hindu article:
    Heading: C.N.R. Rao bemoans lack of funding for science
    Relevant section:

    For a brief moment, Professor Rao lost his cool and criticised politicians for having given “so little.” “But for the money that science receives, India, I suppose, is doing well,” he said.

     

    NDTV article:

    Heading: Bharat Ratna CNR Rao calls politicians 'idiots'

    The same section:

    Venting out the dissatisfaction in the scientific community over "inadequate" funding, Bharat Ratna awardee and eminent scientist Professor CNR Rao today had an angry outburst as he called politicians "idiots" for giving them "so little".
    …
    "….why the hell these idiots, these politicians have given so little for us. Inspite of that, we scientists have done something," Prof. Rao said, losing his cool.

    This, as I come to know from wikipedia is called sensationalism.

    Which of the two articles above are people more likely to share on facebook or google or twitter? We don't have to speculate. The answers are on those links for everyone to see. At the time of writing, there's 155 fb shares, 5 tweets and 3 google+ shares for one. And 1.3k fb shares, 200 tweets and 137 +1s for the other. Which's which is anybody's guess.

    It's natural for any business to try and maximize their revenue. And we can't actually blame them for trying to entice us into reading their articles. We should blame ourselves for continuing to promote such valueless journalism. We should stop reading them.
    I'm not here to blame media barracks for sensationalism. I'm here to help you out of it. Human beings are naturally curious. But we don't want anyone to exploit our curiosity for their ulterior motives. Let's preserve our curiosity and apply them to find solutions for problems that genuinely need our attention.

    To Do
    There's only one thing to do. Mercilessly prune your reading list. Whenever you find a sensational article, remember how the author of that article must have been forced to write insensible incredulities to vie for your attention. Then, simply ignore it. Ignore your urge to open and criticize and comment and share. Ignore it and keep your mind fresh; to read a beautifully written, thought provoking, inspiring, educating article. Like, this.

  • Why Bother Writing?

    Thoughts are vague. No matter how clear a thought is to you, it would not be fully formed. That is, till you decide to write it down.
    When you write down anything, you assign an (imaginary) audience to it. And you start explaining your idea. Any explanation has to go down logically. Every digression will have to be thought through to its completion. But this is lacking in “just thinking” about it. Your brain deceives you into believing that everything is logical and that branches of thoughts are self explanatory or irrelevant, or somehow not any which require that it be pursued.

    Thinking gives a false impression of completeness. Writing makes a thought concrete.

    It is like a construction. You can plan everything down to its last detail. But it is only when you start building it that you realize which structures are vulnerable and what modifications are necessary in order to make the building stronger.

    And that makes writing difficult.

    So difficult that when people actually sit down and try to write, they give up, and worse, they think of writing as a futile exercise because they have “already thought everything about it”.

    You get my point. If you are thinking that you have thought everything about something, you should be able to write about it without any difficulty. If you find writing about it even slightly difficult, it means that you have missed out some critical piece of thought in your mind tree. It’s only when you’re forced to write, that it becomes complete.

    So, write.

    …

    PS: Writing this made me consider another related process – “talking”. Wouldn’t talking also force us to solidify thoughts? I think the answer is “Yes, but…”.
    Pros of writing:

    • A written document can be read by anyone, any time.

    Cons of talking:

    • Conversation gets very messy if you try to go back and delete a wrong word from one of your previous statements, and come back and continue the sentence and then change another word in the previous statement, and so on. There is absolutely no way to delete a paragraph.

    Okay, from the above point onwards, I’m considering only digital writing. And I seriously don’t think anyone will be writing with pen on paper any more.

    Perceived pros of talking that is levelled by internet:

    • In a conversation with an interested soul, you might get help from the conversational partner to finish your thought. Blogs with commenting system set up lets anyone else forge a new direction from your idea.

  • Happy Teacher's Day

    Disclaimer: This post is entirely based on the author’s experiences in life, learning. It is not intended at any single person, neither is it intended to insult or hurt anyone.

    I abhor the lectures delivered in my medical college.

    No, I love medicine. I don’t have any problem listening. And I don’t have ADHD.

    But I simply don’t gain anything from hours spent listening to lectures. I think I know why.

    When I was in my school, my teachers used to tell stories. They used to ask questions. They used to ensure that my mind stayed involved in the subject.

    In college, I’m lost.
    There are no stories, there is no logic, there’s no participation of students in the class.

    In the beginning I thought it was my problem, it was students’ disinterest, them not asking questions to teachers, them not interacting. But today is teacher’s day, and so, I’m attributing the failure of lectures to teachers.

    Here is how a typical lecture goes:
    A teacher comes in to the class. He writes down the title of the topic he is discussing on that day. And then he goes on – definition, classification, importance, prevalence, usage, mechanism, details, examples…
    Somewhere in between there might be two questions asked “what are the examples of…?”

    Just the way textbooks are written.
    A perfect validation of the title “Reader”.

    But, who wants the details? Who remembers them?
    And, more importantly, if they are just going to narrate the textbook, why do we need them, teachers?

    Here’s how my dream lecture is:
    A teacher comes in to the class. He asks the class a question that is at the core of the topic he is gonna teach. He narrates an incident that is totally related to the question and the topic. And then he asks us to think about the possible causes, or treatment, or mechanism.
    He listens to our responses and classify them. He tells us the various things that scientists have come up with in answering the same questions. He lets us relate with the solutions. He analyzes our response and tells us where it fits and where it doesn’t with actual science. He drops in important details in between. He makes us explore, and think, and absorb in that process. He shares insights and not details.

    No. Too much to ask for. Actually, I don’t have any right to ask for anything, because I’m neither an expert in medicine, nor one in teaching.

    But I can say what I can see. I see PGs who sit with students late till night to answer fundamental questions. I see one or two professors who set the mind of everyone in the classroom thinking hard about the problem and the solutions.

    But then, I have to regard the advice of that senior on the first night at my hostel: “See the fingers of your hand? Teachers are like that. Each one is different. Do not compare.” He followed that up with a warning, about how my life can be ruined if I do.

    But then, I’m not comparing. There’s nothing to compare against. It’s all bad, worse and ugly.

    You learn yourself in a professional college, they say. Yes, I’m better of teaching myself. And thus the title of the post.

    –written during a lecture

  • Save the Patient, not the Doctor

    Recently a nation wide campaign has been launched tagged “save the doctor”.

    The cause: making life easier for medical students.

    The appeal:
    1) Increase PG seats
    2) Include rural service within UG and PG course.

    The arguments:
    That there are 45600 UG seats and that there are only 12000 PG seats in clinical subjects. That this will make the UG doctor to work hard for years for a PG seat, based on the premise (one which I want to talk about in this post) that a clinical PG is absolutely necessary for serving as a doctor.
    That one year of rural service will increase the time taken to start earning and start living.

    The rural reality:
    People die because there are no doctors to treat them.

    The problem as statistics see it:
    From Rural Health Statistics 2012, it can be slowly understood that around 25000 PHCs in India work with just one doctor where at least 3 are recommended.

    About 5000 CHCs, with at least 4 specialists required, need around 20000 specialists, but only around 7000 are working as such.

    The problem as Dr Deo, et al. sees it:
    There are enough UG doctors, there aren’t enough PG doctors.

    Their solution:
    Increase PG seats. Easy!

    The way I see it:
    Nobody likes to go to a village. There is no bus, no electricity, no roads, more mosquitoes, no broadband, no mobile coverage.
    Naturally doctors do not want to go there either.

    Everybody likes to enjoy life. Doctors too. And more the money, easier it is to enjoy.

    When there are many UG seats, thanks to the competition in cities many MBBS doctors move to rural areas and work there.
    When they get PG, they have better opportunities in the cities, more facilities, better way to work. They don’t go to villages.

    So, the ‘fact’ that PG is necessary for working as a doctor seems counter intuitive for me.

    Of course you need a PG if you’re interested in the academic curiosities and the such. But to work as just a doctor, all you need is a basic knowledge of treating cholera and pneumonia and a will to have a small life.

    Save the doctor campaign seems misguided.

    Ask me whether I won’t enjoy life:
    I just need broadband connection to enjoy life.