Misc

Cities have been central to the human civilization. Their dense population provides a platform for the serendipitous interactions and cross-pollination of ideas from different domains, their abandoned portions provide cost-effective real estate to struggling artists and entrepreneurs, their riches provides jobs, sometimes, side-jobs for the innovators to experiment. No wonder innovation in a city grows super-linearly (~(size)4/3) with its size. But the Internet was supposed to destroy all advantages a city has over the rural areas....

The way the human brain learns is different from how it remembers. Good practitioners know how to remember. Good teachers know how to make others learn.

You cannot read a book kept too far or too close to your eyes. You cannot comfortably watch a movie from the first row of the multiplex and you can’t watch it from the other end of a football field either. When you are too far, details are lost. And when details are lost, everything looks similar and boring. When you are too close, the perspective is lost. And when perspective is lost, one gets overwhelmed by the details....

They don’t fly on dates 2PM and 8PM on Friday are the same dates but the former flight requires taking a leave from office, latter does not. 11PM on Friday and 1AM on the following Saturday are different dates for the airlines but it’s same for passengers. Discovery of the latter is especially poor on most booking websites. Destinations matter more than the airport The concept of the nearby airport based on the distance is archaic....

I am not a swimming trainer. I am neither a professional swimmer either. But I have felt that at least for casual swimming, there is a huge gap in teaching swimming. The traditional method focuses more on peddling than making a person comfortable with the water. Here is a better way to learn swimming. When in water, always inhale from the mouth and exhale through the nose It does not matter whether you are swimming or not....

If you are driving at a speed of 60 mph (or kmph, it won’t matter) from one city to another and return at 40 mph, then what would be your average speed?

You are standing in a queue waiting to buy food, order drinks, or buy tickets. The queue is long and is moving slowly. You are grumbling about the people standing in the front, why are they asking so many questions, why can’t they make choices beforehand. And then your turn comes. You are prepared. You know what you want. But it took so long to reach here. why not confirm your choices?...

What’s not cruel Burning bee hives (homes) of billions of bees for extracting the honey they spent their life gathering Raising hens, in millions, solely for their eggs & meat Slitting throats of millions of animals and let them bleed to death ( halal) Skinning millions of cows for their leather Impregnating millions of cows repeatedly for milk Selective breeding of millions of Turkeys, so that, they provide more meat but are too heavy to survive Neutering thousands of dogs and cats, so that, they can be used as pets Boiling shrimps alive for food Killing deer and bears in the name of population control during the hunting season What’s cruel Whatever happened at the Tiger Temple

Day 1 Great leaders are great because they handle challenges and setbacks well - John Chambers, CEO, Cisco Real education is like building a house - you set a good foundation first and then you build the house, floor by floor. Traditional education forces everyone to move at the same uniform speed and does not do justice to learning - Sal Khan, Khan Academy It is important to have a growth mindset (anything can be learned) as opposed to a fixed mindset (eg....

Ownership is an innate human desire, except, we make the mistake of confusing it with control. In the name of ownership, we end controlling things, and then we end up wasting disproportionate time reasserting our control. How to differentiate between ownership and control? A simple rule of thumb is that control can be taken away (or lost) much more easily than ownership. As an example, since books can easily be lost or stolen, possessing books is a matter of control, while possessing knowledge is a matter of ownership....