Monday, May 01, 2006

Part 4 - A collection of Quotes, One-Liners, Dialogs, Thoughts, Proverbs, Sayings....

Part 4 - A collection of Quotes, One-Liners, Dialogs, Thoughts, Proverbs, Sayings....

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From 'To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee'

If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it
~ Atticus Finch

I remember when my daddy gave me that gun. He told me that I should never point it at anything in the house; and that he'd rather I'd shoot at tin cans in the backyard. But he said that sooner or later he supposed the temptation to go after birds would be too much, and that I could shoot all the blue jays I wanted - if I could hit 'em; but to remember it was a sin to kill a mockingbird. Well, I reckon because mockingbirds don't do anything but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat people's gardens, don't nest in the corncrib, they don't do one thing but just sing their hearts out for us.
~ Atticus Finch

"They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions," said Atticus, "but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."
~ Atticus

“Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I’ve tried to live so I can look squarely back at him”
~ Atticus

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Memorable Quotes from
As Good as It Gets

Melvin Udall : I've got a really great compliment for you, and its true.
Carol Connelly : I'm so afraid you're about to say something awful.
Melvin Udall : Don't be pessimistic, it's not your style. Anyway, here goes: I've got this, what, ailment. Now, my doctor, this shrink I used to go to all the time, says that in fifty to sixty percent of cases, a pill really helps. I HATE pills, hate them. I'm using the word "hate" about pills. Anyway, my compliment to you is the night after you came over and said that you would never... well, you were there, you know what you said. Anyway, the very next morning, I started taking the pills.
Carol Connelly : I don't quite get how that's a compliment for me.
Melvin Udall : You make me want to be a better man.


Melvin Udall : I might be the only person on the face of the earth that knows you're the greatest woman on earth. I might be the only one who appreciates how amazing you are in every single thing that you do, and how you are with Spencer, "Spence," and in every single thought that you have, and how you say what you mean, and how you almost always mean something that's all about being straight and good. I think most people miss that about you, and I watch them, wondering how they can watch you bring their food, and clear their tables and never get that they just met the greatest woman alive. And the fact that I get it makes me feel good, about me.

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Comfort and pleasure are closely related. Pleasure is the reward we receive for scratching a biological itch. Whereas comfort is simply the feeling of not having any itches in need of a damn good scratching.

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As the ancient chinese proverb states:

To be happy for a day, get drunk.

To be happy for a week get a pig (i.e. become wealthy)

To be happy for a year, get married.

But to be happy for life, become a gardener.

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The Unabomber Manifesto:

"In modern industrial society only minimal effort is necessary to satisfy one's physical needs. It is enough to go through a training program to acquire some petty technical skill, then come to work on time and exert very modest effort needed to hold a job. The only requirements are a moderate amount of intelligence, and most of all, simple OBEDIENCE. If one has those, society takes care of one from cradle to grave"

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Like William Blake said, all things in moderation, including moderation.

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Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
- The Bible

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The Speed-of-Light Limit
Neither matter nor energy can travel through space faster
than the speed of light.

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The more people are reached by mass communication, the less they communicate with each other. -Marya Mannes, writer (1904-1990)

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"Quite often, people who mean well, will inquire of me whether I ask myself, in the face of my disease, `Why me?' I never do. If I ask `Why me?', as I am assaulted by heart disease and AIDS, I must ask `Why me?' about my blessings and my right to enjoy them. ... If I don't ask `Why me?' after my victories, I cannot ask `Why me?' after my setbacks and disasters."

- Arthur Ashe (Tennis champion on being diagnosed with AIDS)

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Fate determines who comes into our lives.... heart determines who stays.

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Gambling is the worst form of addiction, because there is a limit to how much coke or heroin you can put into yourself but there is no limit to how much money you can piss away in a casino. The same place that takes your money on average ten cents a hand at the $5 table will happily arrange to take it $100 a hand at a private, ten thousand dollar minimum table opened just for you.

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Casinos "work" (in the sense that they are effective tools for separating customers from their money) by exploiting two universal human misperceptions. The first of these is a tendency to perceive patterns in randomness. As Knuth wrote with regard to random number generators, if your RNG can't pump out a string of 20 zeroes then it really isn't random. That is a perfectly valid result which must happen just as often as any other arbitrary string of 20 results. But when it happens, we don't think "hmmm, that is a perfectly valid if unusual result." We think the game is fixed or biased, and if we're gambling we might smirk and place a bet.

The second misperception has to do with the house edge. It seems so reasonable, just a few percent tax to pay the dealer and build the casino. But most of us think of that percentage with regard to the drop rather than action. The typical 25-cent slot or $5 blackjack player thinks of the $100 he's bought in for, not of the thousands upon thousands of dollars in individual bets he can make before losing that stake. The exponential nature of the math turns that tiny percentage into an all-devouring black hole, which can eat the world a nibble at a time.

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“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”. Thomas Jefferson

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Do more than try...STRIVE , Do more than believe...TRUST.

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Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. -Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist
(1883-1931)

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And none will hear the postman's knock / Without a quickening of the heart.
/ For who can bear to feel himself forgotten? -W.H. Auden, poet (1907-1973)

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There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience. -French proverb

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When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us. -Alexander Graham Bell, inventor (1847-1922)

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I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body.
Then I realized who was telling me this. -Emo Phillips, comedian, actor
(1956- )

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Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.
-H. Jackson Brown, Jr., writer

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There are three truths: my truth, your truth, and the truth. -Chinese proverb

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The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
Saint Augustine

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When you row another person across the river, you get there yourself.

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MAVEN:

The word Maven comes from the Yiddish and it means one who accumulates knowledge.

Generally, an early adopter or individual who is particularly "invested in understanding, knowing about and seeking out new knowledge about a particular field, product or discipline. Mavens are valuable in the replication strategy of a meme since they generally become known as the trusted token in an environment.

Mavens tend to exhibit outlier behavior. On a bar of Ivory Soap, the phone number listed that is to be called in the event of questions is a Maven trap designed to isolate Mavens for Soap.

Gladwell M. (January 2002): The Tipping Point, (Back Bay Books).

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Investing ( n-vsting)

The act of committing money or capital to an endeavor with the expectation of obtaining an additional income or profit.

It's actually pretty simple: investing means putting your money to work for you--actually, it's a different way to think about how to make money. Growing up, most of us were taught that you can earn an income only by getting a job and working. And so that's what most of us do. There's one big problem with this: if you want more money, you have to work more hours. But there is a limit to how many hours a day we can work--not to mention the fact that having a bunch of money is no fun if we don't have the leisure time to enjoy it.

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Peter Lynch, one of the greatest investors of all time, has said that the "key organ for investing is the stomach, not the brain." In other words, you need to know how much volatility you can stand to see in your investments. Figuring this out for yourself is far from an exact science; but there is some truth to an old investing maxim: you've taken on too much risk when you can't sleep at night because you are worrying about your investments.

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"Knowledge is the only resource on earth that multiplies when shared."

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"If you don't know jewelry, know the jeweler." - Warren E. Buffett

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"I think it's much easier to predict the relative strength that Coke will have in the soft drink world than Microsoft will in the software world," Buffett said. "That's not to knock Microsoft. If I had to bet on anyone, I'd bet on Microsoft. But I don't have to bet."

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"In the short term the market is a popularity contest; in the long term it is a weighing machine."


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"Go for a business that any idiot can run - because sooner or later, any idiot probably is going to run it." Peter Lynch

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"If you have trouble imagining a 20% loss in the stock market, you shouldn't be in stocks." John (Jack) Bogle

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"[O]ur mandate is to find the 200 best companies in the world and invest in them, and find the 200 worst companies in the world and go short on them. If the 200 best don't do better than the 200 worst, you probably should get in another business."
Julian Robertson

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"In the 1950s and 1960s, the heroes were the long-term investors; today the heroes are the wise guys."
"our fund's risk factor can, at least in theory, vary from plus 200% to minus 200%."
Michael Steinhardt

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"It's not whether you're right or wrong that's important, but how much money you make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong."
George Soros

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"The time of maximum pessimism is the best time to buy and the time of maximum optimism is the best time to sell."
"the only investors who shouldn't diversify are those who are right 100% of the time."
John Templeton

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Compound interest is "the greatest mathematical discovery of all time.
Albert Einstein

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old stock market saying:

Bulls make money, bears make money, but pigs just get slaughtered!

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Economics may appear to be the study of complicated tables and charts, statistics
and numbers, but, more specifically, it is the study of what constitutes rational
human behavior in the endeavor to fulfill needs and wants.

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A management team distracted by a series of short term targets is as pointless as a dieter stepping on a scale every half hour.

We encourage our employees, in addition to their regular projects, to spend 20% of their time working on what they think will most benefit Google. This empowers them to be more creative and innovative. Many of our significant advances have happened in this manner. For example, AdSense for content and Google News were both prototyped in “20% time.” Most risky projects fizzle, often teaching us something. Others succeed and become attractive businesses.

LETTER FROM THE FOUNDERS

“AN OWNER’S MANUAL” FOR GOOGLE’S SHAREHOLDERS1

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"The market is there only as a reference point to see if anybody is offering to do anything foolish. When we invest in stocks, we invest in businesses."
- Warren Buffet

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"Price is what you pay. Value is what you get."
- Warren Buffet

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According to the writer Jorge Luis Borges, the idea of the Zahir comes from the Islamic tradition and probably arose in the eighteenth century. In Arabic "zahir" means "visible", "present", "incapable of going unnoticed". It can refer to an object or a person, and that object or person gradually takes over our every thought, until we are unable to think of anything else. This could be considered a state of holiness or a state of madness.

- Paulo Coehlo in 'Zahir'

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“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”

~ Mahatma Gandhi

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“We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate.
The wind is blowing; those vessels whose sails are unfurled
catch it, and go forward on their way, but those which have
their sails furled do not catch the wind. Is that the fault of
the wind?....... We make our own destiny.”
Swami Vivekananda

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“Heart has its reasons, that reasons don’t understand” – Pascal.

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Tuesday, April 18, 2006

My Portfolio Analysis - as on 18th Apr 2006

Below is my portfolio analysis for stock investment. I have started investing in stocks since 1st october 2005. Most of the stocks I have invested in just recently. I shall be periodically updating this and posting it. Also I will start posting the reasoning behind picking these particular stocks.




Here is the list of companies I have invested in till date:

Mahindra and Mahindra - M & M
ICICI Bank
Yes Bank
Hindustan Construction Corporation - HCC
Larsen and Turbo - L&T
ITC
Royal Orchid
Aftek Infosys
Infosys
Paradyne Infotech
Satyam
Visesh Infotechnics
Wipro
Hindalco
Bartronics
Patel Engineering
Piramyd Retail
Rajesh Exports
Western Hatcheries - Venkys
Bharti Tele Ventures
Reliance Communication Ventures
Celebrity Fashions
Kewal Ketan Clothings
Provogue
ABG Shipyard

Friday, April 14, 2006

Investment and Finance - Introduction

Ok here is some information about my interest in the field of Investment and Fianance... In my future posts I'll be writing more about this. To start with here is some background...

Summary of basic knowledge in Investment and Finance field till date:

1. Interested in the working of Global economy
2. Investment – Stocks, Real Estate, Commodity
3. Enjoyed reading few books on Investment
a. Rich Dad Poor Dad
b. Warren Buffet Way
c. One up on Wall street – Peter Lynch
d. The Intelligent Investor – Benjamin Graham
e. Read a lot of articles on Investment on web (all articles on Investopedia, ICICI Direct, Economic Times, etc)
4. Very impressed by Buffet ideology of Value and Long Term Investing which in turn is based on Benjamin Grahams’
5. Understand basics of Oil Prices, Interest Rates, Inflation and the impact on global economy and markets
6. Interested in studying and exploring Indian market and companies
7. Regularly track Indian Stock Market, News on NDTV Profit, CNBC, Economic Times news paper, Investment magazines
8. Understand the functioning of business and the parameters involved like Revenues, Expenses, P&L, EBIDTA, Debt, Net Profits etc
9. Understand the factors affecting business like Demand / Supply, Competition, Value addition, Management principles, Mission and Values, Employee Satisfaction, Productivity, Economic conditions, GDP etc
10. Understand software industry and software products in depth
11. Overall interested in keeping track of world news and reading on various topics

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

The Second Law of Thermodynamics

The Second Law of Thermodynamics

“Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes, and the second law of thermodynamics.”



‘The Second Law of Thermodynamics’ also known as ‘Entropy’ or ‘Arrow of Time’ is perhaps the biggest, most powerful, most general idea in all of science. Why paper, trees, coal, gas and all things like them burn (and why people "should" spontaneously catch fire in air), why sand and dry ice even in pure oxygen can't ever burn, why the sun will eventually cool down, why iron rusts (but not why it rusts faster nearer the ocean), why there are hurricanes or any weather at all on earth, what makes things break, why houses get torn apart in tornadoes or explosions, and perhaps the most important thing for us - why everything living tends to die.

Who cares about the second law of thermodynamics?
Well, anyone who wonders how the material world, our world of energy and matter, works.

Look at the direction that energy flows in any happening or process or event. That is the first step to understanding what the second law of thermodynamics is and what it applies to. “Energy spontaneously tends to flow only from being concentrated in one place to becoming diffused or dispersed and spread out.”

The second law is a straightforward law of physics with the consequence that, in a closed system, you can't finish any real physical process with as much useful energy as you had to start with — some is always wasted. This means that a perpetual motion machine is impossible. The second law was formulated after nineteenth century engineers noticed that heat couldn’t pass from a colder body to a warmer body by itself.

The perfect illustration is: A hot frying pan cools down when it is taken off the kitchen stove. Its thermal energy ("heat") flows out to the cooler room air. The opposite never happens.
A glass falls down from the top of a table and breaks into pieces. The opposite never happens.
Air in a high-pressure tyre shoots out from even a small hole in its side to the lower pressure atmosphere. The opposite never happens.

The big deal is that all types of energy spread out like the energy in that hot pan does (unless somehow they're hindered from doing so) They don't tend to stay concentrated in a small space; they flow toward becoming dispersed if they can -- like electricity in a battery or a power line or lightning, wind from a high pressure weather system or air compressed in a tire, all heated objects, loud sounds, water or boulders that are high up on a mountain, your car's kinetic energy when you take your foot off the gas. All these different kinds of energy spread out if there's a way they can do.

Run that Titanic movie as the ship hits the iceberg. See those steel plates ripped open and the ship begin to sink. Realistic, right? Can you imagine a real happening in which the reverse occurs? A sinking ship whose steel side heals up as it comes up out of the water and floats? Ridiculous! Too stupid to think about. But why is it stupid? Because it is so improbable from our experience. Only a movie run backward would show that kind of unrealistic fantasy. The second law isn't some weird scientific idea. It fits with everything common happening that we know.

A swimmer doesn't come shooting up out of the water to the diving board, rocks in a valley don't suddenly roll up a mountain, outside air doesn't rush into a flat tire, batteries don't get charged by sitting around. Those events all would have energy spontaneously become more concentrated, the opposite of energy spreading out.

The second law points the direction of how we feel time goes.

Our psychological sense of time is based on the second law.
It summarizes what we have seen, what we have experienced, what we think will happen.


Hence, it’s also known as the Arrow of Time.



Entropy just measures the spontaneous dispersal of energy: how much energy is spread out in a process, or how widely spread out it becomes – as a function of temperature.
The second law always predicts increase in dispersed energy or entropy in the universe. We humans tend to think of concentrated energy as ‘order’ and dispersed energy as ‘disorder’. Inflated tyre – order, Punctured tyre – disorder; A glass sitting on top of table – order, broken glass on ground – disorder. Thus, we can state that there is always an tendency towards increase of disorder in the universe.

If I hold a small rock in my fingers so it is ready to fall, it has potential energy concentrated in it because it is up above the ground. If the second law is so great and powerful, why doesn't the energy that has been concentrated in the rock spread out? Obviously, it can't do that because my fingers are "bonding" to it, keeping it from falling. The second law isn't violated. That rock tends to fall and diffuse its energy to the air and to the ground as it hits -- and it will do so spontaneously by itself, without any help -- the second I open my fingers and "unbond" the rock.

Important: It is a tendency rather than a prediction of what will happen right away.

Energies can be blocked in systems over a time spanning from few microseconds to few hours to few years to millions of years or even more. However, the energies will spread out sometime or the later for sure.

Blockage of the second law is absolutely necessary for us to be alive and happy. Not one of the complex chemical substances in our body and few in the things we enjoy would exist for a microsecond if the second law wasn't obstructed. Its tendency is never eliminated but fortunately for us, there are a huge number of compounds in which it is blocked for our lifetimes and even far longer.

The second law is the Greatest Good and the Biggest Bad to us:

The GOOD: Because of the second law -- the direction of energy flow -- life is possible.

We can take in concentrated energy in the form of oxygen plus food and use some of that energy unconsciously to synthesize "uphill" complex biochemicals and to run our bodies, consciously for mental and physical labor, excreting diffused energy as body heat and less concentrated energy substances.
We can use concentrated energy fuels (e.g., gasoline/coal, plus oxygen) to gather all kinds of materials from all parts of the world and, regardless of how much energy it takes, arrange them in ways that please us. Similarly, we can effect millions of non-spontaneous reactions -- getting pure metals from ores, synthesizing curative drugs from simple compounds, altering DNA.
We can make machines that make other machines, machines that mow lawns, move mountains, and go to the moon. We can make the most complex and intricate and beautiful objects imaginable to help or delight or entertain us.
The BAD: Because of the second law -- the direction of energy flow -- life is always threatened.

Every organic chemical of the 30,000 or more different kinds in our bodies that are synthesized by nonspontaneous reactions within us is metastable. All are only kept from instant oxidation in air by activation energies. (The loss or even the radical decrease of just a few essential chemicals could mean death for us.)
Living creatures are essentially energy processing systems that cannot function unless a multitude of "molecular machines", biochemical cycles, operate synchronically in using energy to oppose second law predictions. All of the thousands of biochemical systems that run our bodies are maintained and regulated by feedback subsystems, many composed of complex substances. Most of the compounds in the feedback systems are also synthesized internally by thermodynamically nonspontaneous reactions, effected by utilizing energy ultimately transferred from the metabolism (slow oxidation) of food. When these feedback subsystems fail -- due to inadequate energy inflow, malfunction from critical errors in synthesis, the presence of toxins or competing agents such as bacteria or viruses -- dysfunction, illness, or death results: energy can no longer be processed to carry out the many reactions we need for life that are contrary to the direction predicted by the second law.
You can't get any better for good -- that living is possible due to the second law. And you can't get much worse for bad -- that death is always possible too, due to the second law.

It is really the mother of all serious Murphy's Laws that apply to things.

Still more important to one's philosophy about life, these chemical ideas can startle us into seeing how fortunate we all are: that things don't go wrong more often!

Shouldn't "Why me?" be our near-constant question of wonder and delight at being alive and being able to move and think and create -- in a second-law world that favors dispersed energy and inert sand? Knowledge of the second law makes unrealistic the human cry of "Why me?" that is so frequent at times of tragedy.

At such times, the only rational response is "Why not me?” even though then it is emotionally quite unacceptable.

Life is hard. But it's harder if you don't know how the material world works!


Quotes including the second law

"If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations, then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. And if your theory contradicts the facts, well, sometimes these experimentalists make mistakes. But if your theory is found to be against the Second Law of Thermodynamics, I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation"--- Sir Arthur Eddington

"Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes and the second law of thermodynamics. All three are processes in which useful or accessible forms of some quantity, such as energy or money, are transformed into useless, inaccessible forms of the same quantity. That is not to say that these three processes don't have fringe benefits: taxes pay for roads and schools; the second law of thermodynamics drives cars, computers and metabolism; and death, at the very least, opens up tenured faculty positions"---Seth Lloyd, writing in Nature 430, 971 (26 August 2004); doi: 10.1038/430971a

"A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative."---C.P. Snow Rede Lecture in 1959 entitled "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution".

Reference Links and Credentials:

Second Law
entropysimple
shakespeare2ndlaw
entropysite

Frank L. Lambert, Ph. D.
Professor Emeritus (Chemistry)
Occidental College
Los Angeles, CA 90041

Six degrees of separation

Six degrees of separation:



Ok. So you have a crush on Tom Cruise or Penelope Cruz but feel sad that they are inaccessible. Well, think again, the good news is you are only at the most six handshakes away from them. Don’t believe! Read on.

You may have heard that everyone on Earth is separated from anyone else by no more than six degrees of separation, or six friends of friends of friends.

Six degrees of separation is the theory that anyone on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries. The theory was first proposed in 1929 by the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in a short story called "Chains."



In the 1950's, Ithiel de Sola Pool (MIT) and Manfred Kochen (IBM) set out to prove the theory mathematically. Although they were able to phrase the question (given a set N of people, what is the probability that each member of N is connected to another member via k_1, k_2, k_3...k_n links?), after twenty years they were still unable to solve the problem to their own satisfaction.

In 1967, American sociologist Stanley Milgram devised a new way to test the theory, which he called "the small-world problem." He randomly selected people in the mid-West to send packages to a stranger located in Massachusetts. The senders knew the recipient's name, occupation, and general location. They were instructed to send the package to a person they knew on a first-name basis who they thought was most likely, out of all their friends, to know the target personally. That person would do the same, and so on, until the package was personally delivered to its target recipient.

Although the participants expected the chain to include at least a hundred intermediaries, it only took (on average) between five and seven intermediaries to get each package delivered. Milgram's findings were published in Psychology Today and inspired the phrase "six degrees of separation." Playwright John Guare popularized the phrase when he chose it as the title for his 1990 play of the same name.

Although Milgram's findings were discounted after it was discovered that he based his conclusion on a very small number of packages, six degrees of separation became an accepted notion in pop culture after Brett C. Tjaden published a computer game on the University of Virginia's Web site based on the small-world problem. Tjaden used the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) to document connections between different actors. Time Magazine called his site, The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia, one of the "Ten Best Web Sites of 1996."

In 2001, Duncan Watts, a professor at Columbia University, continued his own earlier research into the phenomenon and recreated Milgram's experiment on the Internet. Watts used an e-mail message as the "package" that needed to be delivered, and surprisingly, after reviewing the data collected by 48,000 senders and 19 targets (in 157 countries), Watts found that the average number of intermediaries was indeed, six. Watts says this shows that email has not fundamentally changed the way social ties are created.

"Why is the small-world phenomenon surprising?” "Why shouldn't it be obvious that we're only 6 degrees of separation apart, or some other small number?" Mathematically minded people, often approach the question with a simple calculation: suppose I have 100 friends, each of whom also has 100 friends. A hundred times 100 makes 10,000 friends of my friends. If each of those 10,000 people has 100 friends, there will be 1 million people 3 degrees away from me. Five steps away, there are 10 billion. So a lot of people would say it's not surprising that the degree of separation is small, because within 5 steps you've done the whole planet.

But there's a big assumption in that calculation. It presumes that each 100 friends are 100 new people. If everyone chose their friends at random from the entire world, the assumption would be valid, but we clearly don't. "The world that we live in is not at all random," as Watts points out. "We are very much constrained by our socioeconomic status, our geographical location, our background, our education and our profession, our interests and hobbies. All these things make our circle of acquaintances highly nonrandom."

To understand then how this works exactly we have to know how hybrid networks function. This is explained in a nice and detailed article at this link.

Watts' research, and the advent of the computer age, has opened up new areas of inquiry related to six degrees of separation in diverse areas of network theory such as power grid analysis, disease transmission, graph theory, corporate communication, and computer circuitry.

The Broken Window Theory

An Epidemic Theory of Crime -
The Broken Window Theory:




The epidemic theory of crime says that crime is contagious – just as fashion trend is contagious – that it can start with a broken window and spread to an entire community.
The ‘Broken Window’ theory tries to explain why certain areas / cities / places have a higher crime rate than others.

Broken widows was a brainchild of criminologists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. Wilson and Kelling argued that crime is the inevitable result of disorder. If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street on which it faces, sending a signal that anything goes. In a city, relatively minor problems like graffiti, public disorder, and aggressive panhandling, they write are all equivalent of broken windows, invitation to more serious crimes.

This thesis suggests that the following sequence of events can be expected in deteriorating neighborhoods. Evidence of decay (accumulated trash, broken windows, deteriorated building exteriors) remains in the neighborhood for a reasonably long period of time. People who live and work in the area feel more vulnerable and begin to withdraw. They become less willing to intervene to maintain public order (for example, to attempt to break up groups of rowdy teens loitering on street corners) or to address physical signs of deterioration.

Sensing this, teens and other possible offenders become bolder and intensify their harassment and vandalism. Residents become yet more fearful and withdraw further from community involvement and upkeep. This atmosphere then attracts offenders from outside the area, who sense that it has become a vulnerable and less risky site for crime.



The "broken window" theory suggests that neighborhood order strategies such as those listed below, help to deter and reduce crime.

• Quick replacement of broken windows
• Prompt removal of abandoned vehicles
• Fast clean up of illegally dumped items, litter and spilled garbage
• Quick paint out of graffiti
• Finding (or building) better places for teens to gather than street corners
• Fresh paint on buildings
• Clean sidewalks and street gutters

As mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani put the theory to work by strictly enforcing laws against small crimes - subway fare evasion, for example. As a result the crime rate (including serious crimes) in New York reduced by a considerable amount in past decade.

This theory has been widely put into practice by Police Departments through out the world. The ‘Broken Window Theory’ has inspired police departments in New York and other major cities to crack down on the small stuff in order to keep out the big stuff. It works: keeping on top of broken windows, graffiti, and other small infractions has reduced the serious crime level.

Does this theory apply to scenarios outside crime? Sure, it does. For example, building software projects...

Don't leave ‘broken windows’ (bad designs, wrong decisions, or poor code) unrepaired. Fix each one as soon as it is discovered. If there is insufficient time to fix it properly, then board it up. Perhaps you can comment out the offending code, or display a "Not Implemented" message, or substitute dummy data instead. Take some action to prevent further damage and to show that you're on top of the situation.

Functional systems deteriorate pretty quickly once windows start breaking. There are other factors that can contribute to software rot, but neglect accelerates the rot faster than any other factor.

Chaos Theory

Here is a brief account of one of the most widely acclaimed theories of 20th century, the ‘Chaos Theory’; its origin, implications and myths.




Have you ever wondered, why it is difficult or rather impossible to predict,
• Weather few days/weeks/months down the line,
• The stock market future and trends,
• Human behavior or actions,
• Evolutionary patterns of various species,
• Future of our universe

Well, you may tend to think, given the advancement that has taken place in science and technology, especially physics, psychology and computers; it shouldn’t be really an impossible task to model the above-mentioned systems. However, the truth is, the scientists have come to a conclusion that we as humans will never be able to comprehend or model such systems.
The common underlying factors in the above systems are that they all are complex, dynamic systems, which are sensitive to their initial conditions.

Chaos theory attempts to explain the fact that complex and unpredictable results can and will occur in systems that are sensitive to their initial conditions.

History:

The first true experimenter in chaos was a meteorologist, named Edward Lorenz. In 1960, he was working on the problem of weather prediction. He had a computer set up, with a set of twelve equations to model the weather. It didn't predict the weather itself. However this computer program did theoretically predict what the weather might be.

One day in 1961, he wanted to see a particular sequence again. To save time, he started in the middle of the sequence, instead of the beginning. He entered the number off his printout and left to let it run. When he came back an hour later, the sequence had evolved differently. Instead of the same pattern as before, it diverged from the pattern, ending up wildly different from the original. Eventually he figured out what happened. The computer stored the numbers to six decimal places in its memory. To save paper, he only had it print out three decimal places. In the original sequence, the number was .506127, and he had only typed the first three digits, .506.

By all conventional ideas of the time, it should have worked. He should have gotten a sequence very close to the original sequence. A scientist considers himself lucky if he can get measurements with accuracy to three decimal places. Surely the fourth and fifth, impossible to measure using reasonable methods, can't have a huge effect on the outcome of the experiment. Lorenz proved this idea wrong. This effect came to be known as the butterfly effect. The amount of difference in the starting points of the two curves is so small that it is comparable to a butterfly flapping its wings.

"Butterfly Effect," states that the flapping of a butterfly's wings in China could cause tiny atmospheric changes which over a period of time could effect weather patterns in New York


Limitations:

This phenomenon, common to chaos theory, is also known as sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Just a small change in the initial conditions can drastically change the long-term behavior of a system. Such a small amount of difference in a measurement might be considered experimental noise, background noise, or an inaccuracy of the equipment. Such things are impossible to avoid in even the most isolated lab.

Complex systems usually have many variables involved that define the behavior of the system. Also, these variables are interconnected in ‘n’ number of ways. The human limitations come in firstly understanding and listing all the variables and their dependencies, and secondly in measuring the values of the variables accurately.

There are many variables associated with the weather: temperature, air pressure, wind speed, wind direction, humidity and many more. The equations, which control the weather, involve all of these variables.

Another system in which sensitive dependence on initial conditions is evident is the flip of a coin. There are two variables in a flipping coin: how soon it hits the ground, and how fast it is flipping. Theoretically, it should be possible to control these variables entirely and control how the coin will end up. In practice, it is impossible to control exactly how fast the coin flips and how high it flips. It is possible to put the variables into a certain range, but it is impossible to control it enough to know the final results of the coin toss.

Theories abound as to real-life examples of this phenomenon:

1. The weather: small changes in weather effect larger patterns.
2. The stock market: slight fluctuations in one market can affect many others.
3. Biology: A small change in a virus in monkeys in Africa creates a "thunderstorm" of an effect on the human population around the world with the appearance of the AIDS virus.
4. Evolution: small changes in the chemistry of the early Earth gives rise to life.
5. Psychology: Thought patterns and consciousness altered by small changes in brain chemistry or small changes in physical environmental stimuli.

Although chaos is often thought to refer to randomness and lack of order, it is more accurate to think of it as an apparent randomness that results from complex systems and interactions among systems. According to James Gleick, author of Chaos: Making a New Science, chaos theory is "a revolution not of technology, like the laser revolution or the computer revolution, but a revolution of ideas.”

Myths:

Over the years people have turned the chaos theory in some kind of philosophy and started applying it to anything and everything, including human life.

For e.g. some of the conclusions are:
• A butterfly flapping its wings in china results in producing a tornado in NewYork over a period of time.
• A person leaving from home 5 minutes late than usual, on reaching the bus stop may get hit by the bus and die.

It is important to note that the chaos theory does not predict anything but simply attempts to explain the fact that complex and unpredictable results can and will occur in systems that are sensitive to their initial conditions. In these systems, the cause and effects of many variables may well nullify each other such that they have no effect on the net result.

So if a person leaves from home 5 minutes late, he might on the way gain those 5 min owing to lesser traffic. Or a bus might in fact hit him if he actually leaves on time.

So the point is such kind of assumptions based on chaos theory is futile and improper.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Part 3 - A collection of Quotes, One-Liners, Dialogs, Thoughts, Proverbs, Sayings....

Part 3 - A collection of Quotes, One-Liners, Dialogs, Thoughts, Proverbs, Sayings....

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Jack Welch - CEO - GE - Quotes:

The world of the 1990s and beyond will not belong to 'managers' or those who can make the numbers dance. The world will belong to passionate, driven leaders - people who not only have enormous amounts of energy but who can energize those whom they lead.

If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.

Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.

Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.

Don’t manage - lead change before you have to.

Control your own destiny or someone else will.

Be candid with everyone.

"An overburdened, overstretched executive is the best executive, because he or she doesn't have the time to meddle, to deal in trivia, to bother people."

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If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
--Isaac Newton

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Everything you can imagine is real.
--Picasso

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That which is static and repetitive is boring.
That which is dynamic and random is confusing.
In between lies art.
--John A. Locke

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Never give advice...
A wise man won't need it
A fool won't heed it.
--Unknown

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Chaos theory - The butterfly effect

The flapping of a single butterfly's wing today produces a tiny change in the state of the atmosphere. Over a period of time, what the atmosphere actually does diverges from what it would have done. So, in a month's time, a tornado that would have devastated the Indonesian coast doesn't happen. Or maybe one that wasn't going to happen, does. (Ian Stewart, Does God Play Dice? The Mathematics of Chaos, pg. 141)

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"Who the hell is General Failure and why is he reading my drive ?"

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If it does'nt kill you, it makes you strong.

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Theory is when you know something, but it doesn't work.
Practice is when something works, but you don't know why.
Programmers combine theory and practice: nothing works and they don't know why.

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A famous linguist once said:
"There is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative."
YEAH, RIGHT

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"The opposite of love is not hate - it is indifference"

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"Leonardo da Vinci was like a man who awoke too early in the darkness, while the others were all still asleep"
Sigmund Freud

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"We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly."

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Life is a tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy to those who think

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We live in a world of scarcity and limits. There are limited natural resources, limited amounts labour, a limited amount of time. Our desires always exceed these limitations and we are forced to make choices.
People act purposefully and rationally to maximise their pleasure given limited time, resources, information and budgets.

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Blessed is the person who is too busy to worry in the daytime and too sleepy to worry at night.
--Unknown

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True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.
And in knowing that you know nothing, that makes you the smartest of all.
--Socrates

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Good judgment comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgment.
--Rita Mae Brown

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To err is human, to forgive divine.
--Alexander Pope

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Watch your thoughts ; they become words.
Watch your words ; they become actions.
Watch your actions ; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character .
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny .

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weak minds think about people,
average minds think about events,
and great minds think about ideas.

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Having kids is hereditary. If your parents didn't have children, chances are that you won't either.

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Never be tempted to see the other person's point of view,
Because they have different desires,
Different certainties,
And different targets of blame.
Consideration of another's perspective,
Even for a moment,
Can lead to thought.

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The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.--Terry Pratchett

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The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous.
-- Margot Fonteyn

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My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being,
with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life,
with productive achievement as his noblest activity,
and reason his only absolute. - Ayn Rand (A Summary of the Objectivist Philosophy )

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"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought."
- Albert von Szent-Györgyi (1893-1986), 1937 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine

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"Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can."
- Owen Meredith Earl of Lytton

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If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?

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Yossarian says, "You're talking about winning the war, and I am talking about winning the war and keeping alive."
"Exactly," Clevinger snapped smugly. "And which do you think is more important?"
"To whom?" Yossarian shot back. "It doesn't make a damn bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead."
"I can't think of another attitude that could be depended upon to give greater comfort to the enemy."
"The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on."

~ Catch 22

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You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it
~ Atticus Finch From 'To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee'

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Men who have pierced ears are better prepared for marriage. They've experienced pain and bought jewelry.

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I drink to make other people interesting

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I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think. —Socrates

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Monday, April 10, 2006

Part 2 - A collection of Quotes, One-Liners, Dialogs, Thoughts, Proverbs, Sayings....

Part 2 - A collection of Quotes, One-Liners, Dialogs, Thoughts, Proverbs, Sayings....

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"The beauty of the web, everyone learns from the view code button"
- Flash 5 seminar, August - 2001, Boston MA

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"I sense much NT in you, NT leads to Blue Screen. Blue Screen leads to
downtime, downtime leads to suffering. NT is the path to the darkside."
- Unknown Unix Jedi

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The greatest achievement of the human spirit is to live up to one's opportunities, and make the most of one's resources.
- Vauvenargues

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Happiness is like a Butterfly, the more u chase it the more it dudes u...but when u leave it and concentrate on other things it come and sits on ur shoulder

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"Doing what you like is freedom, liking what you do is happiness!"

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"It's not a bug, it's a random feature."

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"If A equals success, then the formula is: A=X+Y+Z. X is work. Y is play. Z
is keep your mouth shut."
--Albert Einstein

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"Alcohol and calculus don't mix.
Don't drink and derive."
--Unknown

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Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

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"I would like to live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were ever supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever."
- Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss Universe contest

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"Gravitation Cannot be held responsible for People falling in Love"
-Einstien

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"Have you ever noticed? Anybody going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac."

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"One of the differences between an average engineer and a good one is the ability to think at a high enough level to choose the important problems to spend programming time on"
- Jay Stelly in "Game design, Secrets of the sages"

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"I quit school in the sixth grade because of pneumonia. Not because I had it, but because I couldn't spell it."
---Boxer Rocky Graziano.

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Goddamn writers -- all they do is use up trees and ruin people's eyes.
-- Gus, from Basic Instinct, by Joe Esterhaus

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"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better
than a 'C', the idea must be feasible."
-- A Yale University management professor in response to student Fred
Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service (Smith went on
to found Federal Express Corp.)

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Animation is the creation of life, Interaction is to live that life...

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KNOWING MANYTHINGS BUT DOING NOTHING IS KNOWING NOTHING

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"The worst bankrupt in the world is the person who has lost his enthusiasm"

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"Nothing is Real"

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"In Theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In Practice there is"
- Yogi Berra - As quoted by Bruce Schneier in "Secrets and Lies"

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"Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen."

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There is something to learn everyday!

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Terrorism is the symptom, not the disease. Terrorism has no country. It's transnational, as global an enterprise as Coke or Pepsi or Nike. At the first sign of trouble, terrorists can pull up stakes and move their "factories" from country to country in search of a better deal. Just like the multi-nationals.
- Arundhati Roy

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Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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If you follow your own personal destiny then the entire universe conspires to make you succeed.
- Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist

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Airplane, which has been defined as "a collection of parts having an inherent tendency to fall to earth, and requiring constant effort and supervision to stave off that outcome". Only the collaborative efforts of all the component objects of an airplane enable it to fly.

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Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia.
-- Charles Schultz

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"I don't ask for the meaning of the song of a bird or the rising of the sun on a misty morning. There they are, and they are beautiful."
- Pete Hamill

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"I hear and I forget
I see and I remember
I do and I understand"
- Ancient Chinese Proverb.

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- "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
-- Mark Twain.

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Never argue with an idiot, they only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

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"Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They should both be changed regularly and for the same reason."

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"People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing that's why we recommend it daily."
- Zig Ziglar

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I think everyone has a photographic memory; it's just that some of us don't have film.

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A few is only a couple less than several

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I will not tiptoe through life only to arrive safely at death.

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Humans are at least as numerous as pigeons, their brains are not significantly costlier than pigeon brains, and for many tasks they are actually superior.
--Richard Dawkins

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All doctors do is support weak genes. Might as well be communists.
-- sigwinch

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Quoted from Einstein himself: "Sit on a hot stove for a minute and it feels like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it feels like a minute. That's relativity."

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No, no, you're not thinking, you're just being logical.
-Niels Bohr, physicist (1885-1962)

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If it has to be, its up to me !!!!
So...Go for it !!!!!

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"The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.”
- Samuel Johnson QotD

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Remember, GROWING OLDER IS MANDATORY, GROWING UP IS OPTIONAL.

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If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings."

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There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."

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You should not confuse your career with your life.

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You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.

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The most powerful force in the universe is gossip.

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You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.

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The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above average drivers.

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Your friends love you anyway.

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I want to know the mind of God. Everything else is detail.
—Albert Einstein

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The road to wisdom? Well, it's plain and simple to express:
Err
and err
and err again
but less
and less and less.
—Piet Hein, Danish inventor and poet.

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Worrying is like sitting in a rocking chair. It gives you something to do but gets you nowhere.

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People who can smile when things go wrong has thought of someone else to blame it on.

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Sometimes I wish I were you, just so I could be friends with me.

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Smile... it's the second best thing to do with your lips."

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Alcohol doesn't solve any problems, but then again, neither does milk.

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Part 1 - A collection of Quotes, One-Liners, Dialogs, Thoughts, Proverbs, Sayings....

Part 1 - A collection of Quotes, One-Liners, Dialogs, Thoughts, Proverbs, Sayings....
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"Depend upon it, there comes a time when, for every addition of knowledge, you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones."
-Sherlock Holmes in 'A Study in Scarlet'

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Creativity is just an extension of yourself; Push the limits of the Cosmos; Find yourself!

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"Pray as if everything depended upon God and work as if everything depended upon man."

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James Rainey
Design Intervention
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots.
So far, the Universe is winning."
- Rich Cook

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Smoking helps you lose weight -- one lung at a time!

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"Work like you don't need the money,
love like you've never been hurt and
dance like you do when nobody's watching."

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A rich person is not the one has the most, but is one who needs the least.

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"Enough bunkers! Enough of the perfection of differences! We ought to be building bridges."
-- Todd Gitlin, The Twilight of Common Dreams, 1995.

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An obstacle is something you see when you take your eyes off the goal.

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"solving a problem is not a case of finding a solution, it is a case of finding a set of easier problems that you already know how to solve."

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"Do not worry about whether or not the sun will rise. Be prepared to enjoy it."
Author Unknown

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"This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more they give, the more they possess."
Rainer Maria Rilke
German Poet, 1875-1926

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The only dumb question is one that you don't ask

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Just like programming, it takes loads of syntax to ask a question!

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When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves.
-- William Arthur Ward

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Don't focus on the days when you failed. Focus on all of the days when you won. Keep a chart, monitor your successes, and don't give up!
-- Robert Butterworth

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I have found in work that you only get back what you put into it, but it does come back gift-wrapped.
-- Dr. Joyce Brothers

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Success isn't something you chase. It's something you have to put forth the effort for constantly. Then maybe it'll come when you least expect it. Most people don't understand that.
-- Michael Jordan

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A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
-- Winston Churchill

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"all the talk talk about about keeps you from the work work"
- mike tyler

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If you need to pound a nail, use a hammer.
If you need to make a hole, use a drill.
If you need to tighten a nut, use a wrench.

A hammer isn't "better" than a wrench. How you frame a question has as much to do with the answer as "the answer". Don't let your detractors define the argument for you.

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People are often overconfident concerning the usefulness and accuracy of their own knowledge and information, and those people often communicate more extreme opinions.
-- Anat Admati

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Computers do what they are told, not what you want.

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"If you play a wrong note, play it again twice as loud and everyone will think you did it on purpose the first time."
-Thelonious Monk

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"As long as you're green, you're growing. When you get ripe, you start to rot."

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It only took Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin 3 days to get to the moon. But they spent 5 years preparing.
-Kerry Thompson advising to a newbie in Lingo forums.

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Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival

- W. Edwards Deming

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I wrote on my heart
"NO THROUGH FARE"
Love knocked and said
I enter everywhere.

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Thought for the day: Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic.

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Anything less than extraordinary is not acceptable to me.
- Dlg from the movie - "Dream of an insomniac"

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"Why is the moon more important than the sun?"
"Because we need the light more at night!"
-- Nasredin

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Trust that still, small voice that says, "This might work and I'll try it."

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Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't listen

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I disapprove of what you say but I'll defend you till death

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You may not like my personality, but at least I got one

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Why tourture yourself, when life does it for you

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"The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return" - Moulin Rouge.

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In Life U Love The One Whom U Can Never Have

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A kiss is just a kiss til you find the one you love, a hug is just a hug til it’s the one you are thinking of, a dream is just a dream til you make it come true, love is just a word til it’s proven to you

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When you think the World has turned it's back on you, turn around, you most likely turned your back on the World

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Introduction

Welcome all,

This is my own space in the universe of internet. What you should expect from my blog:

Well info on any topic that interests me. To start with here are some of them:
- Science (especially Physics)
- Management
- Philosophy
- Spirituality
- Finance
- Investment
- Movies and Music

and many more....

Hope you enjoy going through them.



Cheers,
Sandy