Arnav's Angle

I saw a brilliant quote today which I thought I should store/share: Of true knowledge at any time, a good part is merely convenient, necessary indeed to the worker, but not to an understanding of his subject: One can judge a building without knowing where to buy the bricks; one can understand a violin sonata without knowing how to score for the instrument. The work may in fact be better understood without a knowledge of the details of its manufacture, of attention to these tends to distract from meaning and effect. -- Jacques Barzun In fact, I often also believe that the opposite is true. And that to enjoy the work truly, you need to know the background and the effort taken to really come up with it. Both these concepts work in their own ways.

Now that we have moved so far ahead with technology we still don't have the option in our phones to sort messages by name, star mark them and sort it using that or any other way of organizing. Because messages can now be stored for years till being deleted manually, things get really cluttered! For instance, I have had my iPhone for 2.5 years now and I have messages that are almost 1.5yrs old. I would really want to be able to organize this better. Google (Android), Apple and BB, are you listening? Also, Google should allow us to tag emails with notes. Such as how you want to respond to an email, or something that you need to remember in regards with a specific email then it would be convenient to be able to tag your emails with a note and refer to them later. It could be made as a lab feature which people who really want it can activate it and others don't. Google, you really need to one up FB here. What if they come out with this feature and you have to go and copy them la...

I was just watching a Steve Jobs speech (video) at a university's commencement and he mentioned something from his life that really touched me. For 33 years Steve Jobs woke up every morning and asked himself: "If today was the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" If the answer to that question was 'No' for too many days in a row, he knew he had to change something. Life is truly quite transient and we should not stutter and lose a moment to do something that we like and enjoy. We should not falter in trying to achieve what we believe in and what our heart wants as we face a situation where not having done something wont matter and having done it will have made the bigger impact. The world would be a much happier place to live in where we find the answers to things we are searching for much faster than we currently can.

Canada is planning to go plastic with their bank currency notes! I have been waiting for some country to start this trend for so long. It makes much sense to have plastic money which is basically indestructible as well as much more difficult to counterfeit. Also, in India after the pan wallas and parking wallas have gotten a hold of that paper money it goes through a lot to remain in shape and stinks up your wallet if you receive it. Plastic would definitely solve all these issues and make money last much longer in a better condition. Though we'll loose the crispiness of freshly printed cash from the bank!

Isn't it a paradox that the police/government charges a person if they disobey the law. This amount effectively acts as a revenue for them. Though it is in the best interest of the nation for a person to follow all laws, it is also in the interest of the police department if people commit any unlawful activities, since they get revenue from these actions. Its like a suppliers market: the government provides for the rules that "shouldn't" be broken and the police makes an income when these rules are broken. By driving past a red light and paying a fine, I effectively purchased the action of driving past that red light. There is however a better way of dealing with this situation. Since, the government has a network of various different businesses they conduct, they can allocate all "fine" revenues to a separate purpose such as educational fund, or improving health and sanitation in the city and keep rotating this every year and fix a permanent budget for th...

will nations manage moon property as well as they manage earth? http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/water-moon-north-pole/ Higher funding into space research, space crafts and research on the science of how to sustain life on the moon. It is now only a matter of years!

I love the fact that Gmail has an undo button. I type a long detailed email, send it and within a few seconds change my mind and undo the sending. Voila! I get my mail back. I re-read it, obviously make multiple changes and resend it. And in my case I always remember important points that should be included a few seconds after I've pressed the send button.

Amazing talk about how India will be the superpower in terms of swaying and inspiring people in years to come through its cultural diversity and complexity. Power will not be defined by the size of the army or by the arsenal of nuclear weapons but by their cultural, social and lifestyle philosophies, ideologies and practicality.  You can watch the video at TED talks:  Soft Power Talk is by India's Minister of State for External Affairs, Shashi Tharoor.

Does the language we read/write in have anything to do with how early we get bad vision?  There is obviously a difference within countries, as some countries have a higher percentage of people with bad vision than others. Is the difference due to language, due to climatic and weather conditions and how much sun shines in the area? Can societal eye health be a predictor for something larger, more meaningful, such as how happy the country is, or whether is it more developed?

I've just discovered new information about household lizards. They aren't animals. They aren't from the reptile family. They aren't insects. Household lizards, the kind sitting on your wall right now, are actually highly sophisticated Chinese machinery that the British East India company had traded opium for. By the 1680s the Chinese already had a very sophisticated logic and thinking process, far superior to any other nation (consider "The Art of War", written much earlier). They had discovered everything that was needed to be discovered about the intellectual aspects of the human race and had answered the unanswerable question of life. Powerful knowledge at such a nascent stage of the universe had left them wanting for more than was possible. The British, by then, had discovered everything that was needed to be discovered about the material aspects of life. They had become fearsome seafarers and explorers, krafty tradesmen and businessmen and practical t...