I have begun elaborate plans to unleash the biggest weapon on your lazy asses. I call it the “Send ‘START 0′ as a text message to 1909 from ANY mobile number to stop ALL spam calls” weapon. Sorry, what? You were expecting it to have smarter name? How about ‘Your Death’? How does that sound? Good? Bad? Ugly? Honestly, does it look like I give a fuck?

Good-bye and good riddance. Fuck you.

************

To all other kindred spirits being similarly harassed by telemarketers, the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Portal of the TRAI is the answer all of you have been looking for. CLICK THAT LINK, NAO!

It is full of delight-inducing, endorphin-releasing statements such as the following:

For complaint through SMS, customer has to send SMS “COMP TEL NO XXXXXXXXXX;dd/mm/yy;Time in hh:mm; short description of Unsolicited Commercial Communication” to 1909. Where XXXXXXXXXX – is the telephone number or header of the SMS, from which the UCC has originated.

Service Provider will take action on complaint and inform the complainant within 7 days of lodging of complaint. Customers may check registration status of his complaint through the link “UCC Complaint Registration Status”.

Sweet music to my ears, aaah!!

However, a few (hundred?) years from now, assuming that most etymologies have disappeared from casual general knowledge (and judging by the current state of affairs, it seems a highly likely event) the line at the beginning of this post is likely to throw at least one person off. Were the person to be in a gullible state of mind, they would be most likely to accept the explanation without reading further or cross-referencing the little nugget for veracity.

And that, frankly, is my problem.

The world of Wikipedia has made our lives easy, no doubt. However, things are now approaching the point where Wikipedia is looked at as a source rather than a reference. You can’t tell me it doesn’t bother you? Not even the tiniest bit? Really?

Don’t get me wrong, I love me my Wikipedia! However, that doesn’t mean I take its word as holy writ, does it now? Crowd-sourced or stenographed, we all know it doesn’t take long for blind faith to turn into dogma.

No, this article isn’t about Wikipedia at all. It is, as a matter of fact, about the diminishing attitude of curiosity. Wikipedia just happened to be the simplest example I could think of. I guess what I am really trying to say is that the abundance of information has made us somewhat lethargic in our pursuit for knowledge. If link #1 satisfies what we are looking for, we won’t bother looking at links #2 to, well, whatever number your favorite search engine has decided to throw at you for the day. The days of referencing multiple sources of information for accuracy and consistency of information seem to have become as redundant as the very same sources of information in question. Research seems to now refer to merely searching again rather than investing time, effort and energy into looking for answers to questions raised by our ancients & peers.

Rather than devouring the abundant knowledge available and accessible to us these days,  we have begun to prefer it in a bits and piece-meal bytes. “Short attention spans! Blame them for all this nonsense!” will be the call that will be heard from most of those who read up to this point.

Then again, I suspect most of you who reach this point,  either:

a. skipped chunks of text in the middle.
b. skimmed through most of the ‘long-ass nonsense’.

How do I know it? Because, if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be looking for the explanation to those lyrics to “I believe” by Agnee, Parikrama & Shilpa Rao that I wrote in the middle of the blog-post and promised to explain it here, at the end.

Scroll up to check?

Really?

Don’t see it?

That’s because I never wrote anything like that in the first place. But hey, thanks for playing! :-P

Over the last few years,  I have had this happen to me on a number of occasions. Just when I think I should call it a day,  the brain starts buzzing with possibilities in haven’t considered and probabilities that merit considerable attention. What is truly irritating is the fact that these ‘flashes of brilliance’ disappear into oblivion byvthe time you are ready and fresh to start a new day.

The ideal thing to do would be to collect this information and make a note of it – write a diary,  record a memo/note-to-self,  post a blight, you get the general idea. However, the ensuing back-and-forth of opinions between the brain and a very tired body often leads to the latter being declared victorious more often and most of these ideas end up being lost for eternity or until a strange set of coincidences causes them to be invoked at some random point in time.

One reason, I suspect, is that we have genetically evolved to take an account of the day when we lay our tired bodies to rest. (The idea merits more attention when you consider the ‘life-flashing-before-your-eyes’ metaphor.) I suspect our brains have been programmed to analyze all the information collected during the day and draw conclusions relevant to our existence – either by way of opinions or ideas.

Not unlike a personal assistant would do at the end of a day at the office.

Taking the metaphor a step further, the personal assistant would probably expect you to have acted on the information provided and will not bother reminding you until you explicitly state it.

Yeah, that must be it, I guess.

(A few moments later)

Thomas: You, sir, are a buffoon.
Hartford: You, sir, are an ape.

(More insults)

Thomas: You are a cunt!
Hartford: You are a dick!

Richard: No, that would be me.

(The names in this conversation have been changed to protect the identities of the idiots involved. Sigh.)

(Image found here. Copyright Unknown)

“Did you know that our staple food is also our currency?” Andy said as he took a big bite of his Big Mac.

I knew, by now, not to say anything for, or against the matter–he’d propound one of his bizarre theories no matter what I thought. Resigning myself mentally for what was to to come, I silently sighed and took a bite out of my Big Mac myself.

“In the Early Times, the currencies of the world were valued on the amount of gold possessed by each country,” he began his ‘impromptu’ lecture.

“Country?”

“Geographical divisions, each with an independent political system,” he explained.

“Sssh! Not so loud!” I hissed. “You can’t use the i-word that freely, dude! You know that!” I whisper-yelled at him, my eyes darting around the canteen to see if anyone had heard his stupid gaffe. Thankfully, most heads were buried in their own, personal Macs – the edible kinds. Assured that we were safe, I closed my eyes in a silent prayer of thanks. Andy, meanwhile, continued his chomping like nothing was wrong.

I swear I feel like strangling him sometimes–but then, I’d be alone for lunch.

“The gold standard was quite effective until one of the countries–”
“Count-tries?”
“Plural of country, an in–”
“Sssh! I get it!” I hissed again, interrupting him before he could carelessly spit the i-word like an offending piece of lettuce stuck between his yellow teeth.

“–one of the countries raked up a debt that was twice its annual income,” he continued, oblivious to my nervous twitches. I was following him more closely–not because I was interested but because I was worried that he might say something stupid.

Then again, what he was saying was beginning to make sense, but I’d rather die than admit it to him. He already had a head that was two sizes too big for his shoulders.

“This country, they just kept adding to their debt until the day came when there was no more debt to be accrued–simply because there was no more money! They couldn’t sell their gold either because they had borrowed all the money there was, leaving not just themselves but the whole world in debt!”

“That doesn’t sound logical at all. If one of them was in debt, someone was owed, right? They could simply foreclose on them, right?”

“True, but the debt also accrued interest over time and this went above and beyond the capital holdings. In a world of money, it doesn’t take too many digits for things to go wrong,” he picked up a fried potato stick and stared at it. “Did you know, these were called French fries?”

“French?” I asked, demonstrating my ignorance again. “French, as in, of or belonging to France, a country from the Early Days,” he lectured tonelessly. Mt ears perked up at the mention of the word ‘country’. Fortunately, the side-discussion-slash-footnote had ended there. The main discussion, however, continued.

“What they realized was, the value of their money was based on the value they attributed to their gold. Gold, back then, was a very precious commodity,” he said slurping his Liquid Happiness.

I found it somewhat ironic that he was expounding the preciousness of gold while drinking through a straw, out of a cup–both of which were made of the very same metal. He must have caught the irony in my look because he hurriedly added, “Of course, this was Early Days – way before the Martian deposits were found.”

“Gold was valued differently by different countries – some flaunted kilos of it on their person and others stored huge blocks in underground safes.”

“So? What difference does that make?”

“A world of difference, apparently. Since gold was valued so differently, the costs were also quite different.”

“You’re not making any sense, you know that, right? Also, what does this discussion have to do with this?” I said pointing at my Big Mac – the object that started the discussion in the first place.

“To answer your questions: a. Let me explain and b. I’m coming to that,” he said coolly, eliciting another silent sigh from yours truly. I nodded and the ‘lecture’ continued.

“Look at this glass,” he said, lifting up his glass of Liquid Happiness. “How much do you think it costs?”
“I dunno. They probably buy it wholesale–a whole bunch of them for a Beem, I’d say.”
“True. Yet, if this glass were to be the glass that your partner had her Liquid Happiness in, during your first courtship period, how much would you pay for it?”
“Ah, in that case, it’d probably be worth a lot more!” I nodded in agreement.
“Similarly, the cost of gold was always offset with the value attributed to the gold. Countries where gold wasn’t available but had a higher value – sentimental or otherwise – usually sold gold at a marginally higher price, the marginal difference being that of the offset, of course.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“Yet, that is how it was in the Early Days.”
“I can see why the whole thing fell apart. It was fundamentally flawed from the very beginning!”
“Exactly! Somewhere, during the end of the Early Days, a young tyke of a newspaper reporter wrote about how the same food item was priced differently in different countries.”
“There were more than two countries?”
“More than two hundred, if my memory serves me correctly.”
“Whoosh!”
“Anyway, it was only supposed to be a humorous piece describing the disparity in the valuation of currencies–the disparity occurring because they used gold as a standard baseline.”

He slurped the last remnants of his Liquid Happiness and threw the cup and straw into the Recyclable Disposal Unit. I did the same with mine.

“One of the countries seized on the opportunity to stage a revolt against the gold standard baseline. They dissociated themselves with the rest of the world, privately abolished the gold standard and adopted the food item mentioned in the news-piece as their currency standard. It was initially meant as a joke but the idea took off and soon it became a norm. They even nationalized the chain that was responsible for producing the food item. Come to think of it, they did that–the nationalizing, I mean–with a lot of things during that time.”
“Lemme guess, the food item in question was the Big Mac?”
“Hence the name Beem; its just a shortened version of the name – Big Mac.”
“Funny story.”
“Yup. What started as a joke became the foundation for the unification of the world. Countries all over the world were anyway frustrated with the gold standard. They saw the Beem as a release from the financial clutches of the debt-ridden ‘super-powers’ and almost immediately followed suit. The Beem spread like a wyld-fire.”

I could see he was on fire himself. Figuratively speaking, of course. Then again, I was too engrossed in his story, by now, to care.

“Not long after that, one of the space missions revealed that huge deposits of gold-per were found underneath Mt. Olympus on Mars. Some believed that it was a last-ditch effort by the gold-standard consortium to bring back the old standard. They even came up with a smart punchline to sell the idea: ‘Old is Gold’ or something like that.”
“I like that.”
“Yeah, it was good but not as good as the retaliation by the Federation of Beem-standard Countries. They simply reversed the phrase.”
“Gold is Old?”
“Yup.”
“Heh. Smart AND funny. I like it better!”
“Exactly what the rest of the world thought. Moreover, the discovery of the gold-deposits eventually worked against the gold-standard.”
“What? How?”
“More gold meant less demand, hence–’
“–less value. I see it. Simple demand and supply theory.”
“Economics 101,” he said and lifted his gold tray to discard it to the Reusables counter, thus making an emphatic point – if there ever was one.

#

I wrote this after I read a piece about how the price of a Big Mac was different in different countries. I wondered whether the Big Mac would make a good currency standard and started writing. Feels incomplete, doesn’t it? Well, that’s because most of it is hogwash anyway and I didn’t really want to put my entire ignorance on display – at least some of it should remain hidden, right? ;)

In other news, I am doing the NaNoWriMo again this year but the discipline from last year is missing – my current word count is a measly 2678 words. I hope to do a word-sprint (word-marathon-run?) this Sunday and cover about 9 times that number. I’ll hopefully be up to 25000+ words next week.

Wish me luck. :)

WTF?!

Oh yeah, why would I need you then, PayPal? For a service that is entirely in the cloud, how can anyone claim jurisdiction/authority/taxes/etc?

The argument I am about to hear is that I am producing this content in (and from) a specific geographical region and sending it out to the world to consume. I am not selling anything to YOU. You are not buying anything from ME. When I write on my blog, my content is out there, in the cloud, available for anyone who wishes to see it.

In the age of the internet, especially the age of The Cloud, can anyone really say that a blog is from a specific geographical location, let alone a country? Why, then, should the laws of a country apply to it?

Furthermore, there’s the problem of ForEx charges. PayPal deducts a service fee on all International transactions – understandably so, I might add. So, my revenues are already down to ~95% And now, I am subject to the vagaries of the ever fluctuating ForEx market PLUS a standard ForEx transaction fee from my local bank (example: BoingBoing) which means my net revenue is further reduced!

In short, the only option left is to submit my bank account details for direct remittance which basically geographical-lizes (I know that ain’t even a word!) the earned revenue!

Why I opened a PayPal account

Short Answer: Because there was nothing else.

Long Answer: I started blogging in the early 2000s. Eventually, fascinated by web 2.0, I began blogging seriously @Corporate Spices. On a lark, I decided to sell a few ads and make some money off, half-hoping it would pay towards my hosting expenses. I chose PayPal because it was the easiest (and the only) method of accepting online payments from ad revenues, donations, etc.

Sure, their fees were a little high, but then when you are a monopoly you leave people with little choice, do you?

Why I WILL close my PayPal account

Short Answer: Because they are a bunch of spineless, penny-pinching cowards who couldn’t stand up for me and others like me.

Long Answer: I have no idea what beef PayPal has with the RBI and/or vice-versa. I have no academic knowledge of the FEMA and/or any other laws of the country that would apply in this context. I do understand and realize that there is no smoke without a fire; there has to be a cause for this effect to have happened. All I am relying on is something I was recently told by someone: “It is the spirit of the law, and not merely the letter, that we need to follow.”

The spirit of the law, as I believe, has (probably) to do with the money-laundering aspect of transactions. However, for netizens like us who use their talent online to earn and spend their revenues online, in the Cloud, does geographical location and territorial jurisdiction really apply?

How can we call ourselves a united global family if we continue to divide ourselves over various jurisdictions like these?

Honestly, I feel Julian Assange, Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij are doing a much better job of it. Can someone please hire them and do a little bit of organizational restructuring at PayPal, please?

It is an annual, month-long, writing frenzy where writers from all parts of the world come together in a month long race to write 50000 words in 30 days. Any and every writer who crosses the magic figure – 50000 – is declared a winner.

Why am I telling you this? Well, it’s because…

I WON! HELL YEAH! :D

This morning at 6:45 AM I crossed the 50000-word milestone when I finished writing the pre-climax of my novel. It’s titled “Dream 101” and, as far as I know, it is still a long way from finished. I am just happy that I have a zero-draft in my hands!

In fact, that is what NaNoWriMo is all about – getting your zero-draft.

I have come to believe that ideas are fickle creatures who flit from one person to another seeking to form a symbiotic relation with us. They thrive on our creative juices and must be treated with the kind of respect you would accord a charming woman. Neglect them and they will leave you to fend for yourselves, no offence meant.

The problem with ideas is that we may have plenty of them but we rarely put them on paper. Either we are lazy, busy, stressed, or unsure – it’s always something or the other. We procrastinate and procrastinate until we can’t anymore. Suddenly, before we know it, someone else comes up with an something that vaguely reminds us of our idea.

NaNoWriMo is all about putting those ideas on paper and staking your claim on them. It is about letting the world know that you are going to do something with that idea that has been buzzing inside your head.

I did and I am super kicked about it!

I haven’t read half of what I should have read and half of what I have read I shouldn’t have read in the first place

I know he didn’t quite say that but I hope you get the picture. Now, without further ado, here’s my list of fifteen authors who have influenced me in some way or the other.

FULL DISCLAIMER: All author names & book names are Amazon Affiliate links. :)

1. Douglas Adams & P. G. Wodehouse

No, I am not cheating. They both occupy the top slot on my list. Even to this day, I find myself instinctively reaching for a book by one of them whenever I feel the need for inspiration and a laugh. Both turned every nuance of standard novel writing – plot, characterization, narrative – everything on its head. The protagonist was supposed to be brave & courageous, not timid and cowardly. Obstacles were supposed to be overcome by effort, not by sheer chance. Villians were supposed to be defeated not loophole-d – if that’s even a word. Humor was supposed to be planted, not derived.

And yet, we read their classics and wonder – well, we wonder whatever it is that we wonder about. :)

3. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle & Enid Blyton

Again, both of them rank high on my list for getting me hooked on to the mystery genre. The first ‘novel’ I read as a kid was a Famous Five story – as, I assume, is the case with most of you born before the nineties. That’s when J. K. Rowling took over. But, more about her later. I still refer to “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” or “The Famous Five Series,” “The Secret Seven Series” whenever I feel the need for inspiration while writing a mystery story. ;)

5. J. K. Rowling & J. R. R. Tolkien

I seem to be working in pairs – maybe that’s my Gemini nature in action. Anyway, over the last few tags I’ve realized that although most of us curse J. K. Rowling for writing mainstream fiction for YA, we also respect her for various other ‘accomplishments’ such as getting children back into the habit of reading, blah, blah, blah. I’d like to pitch in my 2 cents worth – she’s a brilliant writer who knows her shit. Harry Potter is one of the most tightly constructed series in terms of plot, characterization and narrative. I dare you to find me an inconsistency in any of the books. She knows her Chekhov’s Guns from her Red herrings.

As for J.R.R. Tolkien, the introduction to this post should say it all. And boy, does the man have an imagination or what?! Not only did he construct an entire civilization out of nothing, but he also spawned off an entire fantasy genre of mystical creatures – not to mention the Elvish language he “built” now even has a Linguistic Fellowhip offering!

7. Isaac Asimov

When it comes to serious Science Fiction narratives – this man has no parallels. Considering the sheer amount of work he has done in the Sci-fi genre, it would be a surprise if the sci-fi fan in you hasn’t come across any of his work. Look at this list of short stories by Isaac Asimov Heck, if I could write one-tenth of the number of stories he has written in his lifetime, I would consider myself successful. I haven’t even taken into account the number of books written by him. Take a look at this: A Catalogue of Isaac Asimov’s Books

8. Jeffrey Archer / Robert Ludlum / Sidney Sheldon / Frederick Forsyth / Dan Brown

No, I did not jump from twos to fives. You could pick anyone from the pentad and I’d say the same thing: They opened my eyes to the fact that imagination, when applied to the right points of space-time can yield a plot that is easier to identify with. They taught me that good mainstream fiction does not have to be science fiction, history or fantasy – it can also be contemporary. It is because of them and their stories that I found it easier to outline characters for my stories.

9. Lewis Carroll

This list keeps getting curiouser and curiouser, doesn’t it? Well, the first time I read “Alice in Wonderland,” I felt that I was not myself for I could not understand why a raven was like a writing desk. I knew that everything had a moral and that I just had to find it but try as I might I couldn’t. I tried to begin at the beginning and go on till I came to the end – where I could stop. I thought I should understand it better if I had it written in a book: but I couldn’t quite follow as he said it.

Finally I relented and proclaimed all of it as uncommon nonsense. :)

PS: I believe this page will help you, in case you didn’t understand the “uncommon nonsense” written above. Wouldn’t it be nice if something made sense for a change? :)

10. William “The Bard of Avon” Shakespeare

I will punch you in the nose if you tell me you haven’t read of / don’t know about any of Shakespeare’s works – once you come out from the rock you have been living under, that is. I once bought a very old copy of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare at the library clearance sale for a throwaway price? I gave it to one of my friends during college and forgot to take it back! Woe is me! :(

And now comes the moment where I shamefully admit to the rest of the world that I have never yet read any of Agatha Christie‘s books – I don’t know Miss Marple‘s quirks and I can’t speak in a Hercule Poirot accent. Nor can I quote from L. Frank Baum‘s “The Wonderful Wizard or Oz” The mysteries of Franz Kafka remain kafkaesquely unexplored and the subtleties of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Andre Chekhov are often lost on me. I cannot question the philosophies of Jean-Paul Sartre or his wonderfully intelligent companion, the polyamorous Simone De Beauvoir. Somerset Maugham, Winston Churchill and George Bernard Shaw may be men of many words but I remain oblivious to them. I want to have the Dickens scared out me some day and I strongly believe that some day I and Mark – the ‘Twain shall meet!

Like I said, I haven’t read half as much as I shold have and half of what I have read I shouldn’t have read at all!

Your turn. If you’re reading this consider yourself tagged. Here’re the instructions:

• Don’t take too long to think about it.
• Fifteen authors (poets included) who have influenced you and will always stick with you.
• List the first 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes, and they don’t have to be listed in order of relevance to you.
• It would be lovely if you could tag at least 15 friends, including me, because I’m interested in seeing what authors my friends chose.

(If you are reading this on Facebook, go to your Notes tab on your profile page, paste the rules in a new note, list your 15 picks, and tag your friends.)

Yes. I DELETED it.

Last night, I was cleaning out my various test installs on my cPanel – you know, phpBB, BuddyPress, bbPress & a few of my own pathetic attempts at LAMP coding. While trying to delete one of those DBs, I accidentally deleted the MySQL DB that handles THIS blog. The worst part is I didn’t realize what I’d done until this morning when the blog showed a “500 Internal Server Error”.

My heart sank.

And then I remembered that I had installed the WP-DB-Backup plugin. I was taking daily backups & emailing it to myself! FTW! The rest of the process was pretty simple:

1. Create a new database with the same name as in your wp-config.php file.
2. Download the latest backup file from your email inbox.
3. Go to phpMyAdmin & import the latest backup file that you just downloaded.

That’s it. The blog is now ‘back up’ online! :)

In hindsight, it probably doesn’t seem like a big deal – but it would have been a HUGE deal had I not activated the WP-DB-Backup plugin in the first place. What would have happened if I hadn’t activated the plugin & didn’t have daily backups?

*shudder*

Both excellent, must-see videos, IMHO.

Derek’s final statement in the post was:

When you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in.

Believing in something is not enough; you also need to have someone who believes in you – the first follower. In fact, I would so far as to say that while a person becomes a leader-by-idea, the first follower is a leader-by-example.

The 1-9-90 Principle

Years back, I had a theory. It went something like this:

“Any statistical population can be divided in three groups. One percent of the entire population is the Radical Thinkers, people who dare to challenge existing belief systems. Ninety percent of the population usually ends up either following or denouncing the one percent – amusingly referred to as the Sheeple. The nine percent watches from a safe distance and forms their opinion. They are the Influencers, for their opinion determines which way the ninety percent swings.”

Although the term radical thinker is largely from a socio-historical perspective, equivalent terms are widely seen other areas, too. In geek-ology, the one percent are often referred to as the “early adopters“. They are also called the game-changers, the geniuses, the explorers, the dare-devils, the alphas, the outliers on the tails of a normal distribution curve and yet, in many ways, they are they are the leaders.

We find ourselves in each of these three groups at various stages in our lives. Sometimes we lead, sometimes we follow. In fact, you can be one of the one percent AND the ninety percent in different aspects of life – at the same point in time.

Coming back to Derek’s post, the first decile, that is the one percent “radical thinker” population plus the nine percent “influencer” population (a total of ten percent) is the “tipping point” that Derek mentions in his post – something that is quite important to viral marketing strategies.

Think about it for a minute.

When did you buy your first computer? When did you start surfing the internet? When did you get your first email address? When did you join a social network? Did you switch from one network to another?

And now, answer the question: Why?

What it means

The 1-9-90 Principle does not exalt the one percent radical thinkers, nor does it look down upon the ninety percent. Without the ninety percent, the ten percent would go nowhere. Similarly, without the one percent the ninety-nine percent would have nowhere to go. Without the one-and-ninety percent, the nine percent would be twiddling their thumbs.

Maybe the tipping point may not always be at 10 percent – it doesn’t really matter.

What does matter is, if and when you are in the nine percent, will you stand by your beliefs? When you are in the ninety percent, will you be gracious to let someone else lead you? Finally, when you find yourself in the one percent, how will you treat the other ninety-nine percent?

It doesn’t matter how passionate we can be as leaders. What matters is how passionate we can be as followers.

[PS: I just realized, the 1-9-90 principle could be a benchmark of sorts for Viral Marketers? I claim dibs! :D]