Lie is becoming an integral part of our life, my friend use to say that, in their religion there is a belief that for every lie you tell a mark will be made on your left arm and for every truth the same is done on your right, if that is true, then can we count the marks on our left arm? During olden days, people use to fear God/Parents, but that is not the case now, we fear neither.

Psychologists say that people lie for pleasure, if we contemplate, it will sound true, some believe that people get immense pleasure when their lie is believed undoubtedly. Most of us lie without even realizing that we are actually lying, one such is exaggeration.

Exaggeration is one form of lie,

• We exaggerate day to day events,  just to make it sound more interesting and spicy
• While teasing people  we exaggerate a lot.
• Sarcasm often comes bundled with exaggeration. Buy one get one.

Lie is one of the bad outcome of human evolution, it takes us away from nature. Nature never lies, but we do.  Lie can  be categorized into many types and for every type we have our own justification.  We never realize how much we are bonded to lies, in fact we have tuned our ears to lies than to truth. We cannot stop it all of a sudden, but we should keep a count and a simple way would be,

For every lie you utter, drop one rupee in a box and at the end of the month open it in front of your friends and then donate it to a charity.

Two months since I blogged and its one of the longest period of hibernation.  I thought, it would be nice if it drizzles a bit after a long drought.

Life hasnt changed much in the past two months, but yeah, it did in the past one week, I never knew that I would blogging from SFO some 10 days back.  New country, New place, New people, hope that feeds me with lot of items to fill here.

‘United States of America’ – people here are very sweet, kind and gentle, but nothing is like being at home.  It feels like watching a movie, everything around is very new.  And yes, I am no exception to feel the cultural shock, just getting myself tuned.

San Francisco(SFO) is a very busy city, people are always running and it is a great experience to be here and one thing is that there are many Indians around esp in the bay area.  So lets see howz life at SFO and I believe it makes my blogging more active.

Thousands of articles and news coverages are on after India’s loss against England in a crucial Super 8 match, which knocked India out of the T20 world cup. People/Media are coming up with FMEAs for the loss, No use crying over spilt oil. Lets have a commercial break.

Sources say that they would have featured this add in the English’s  Strategy building meeting to KP and PC . Guess what, KP ordered a big box of Maha Choco from India and that is it.

Maha choco ki Diwaane nahi, MAHA DIWAANE hote hein,kyunki ye sirf chocolatee nahi, maha chocolatee hein.

P.S : Purely fictional!. Not intended to hurt anyone. Appologies, if it. Being a die hard fan, I was totally against doing this, but some one gave me Maha choco and I did this. ‘you will do anything to get the candy with the irresistible taste‘.

Color Blindness:

Color - Plus?

John Dalton, if alive can be proven wrong for his theory of Color blindness. I would say “Hey, John! you are wrong, people are still looking at colors”. For those who understood, yes I am talking about the skin color discrimination, people are yet to over come that and people are no longer color blind, they do see colors and they live with it. Dark skinned people are still considered to be treated second. Well this is not the case with everyone, but the theory of First impression is the best impression holds very true for Dark skinned people, they are not considered THE BEST unless people recognize the talent in them. Before getting further into the post, I would like to pre-state and make clear that “THIS IS NOT A GENERALIZATION, BUT THIS IS COMMONLY FOUND EVERYWHERE.”

One brilliant move:
I aint a great fan of Aishwarya Rai, but I got impressed when I read that Ash denied a fairness cream ad, stating that it would keep the discrimination fed. That was a very sensible statement and hats off.

The Affected:
Girls are the major victims of this color discrimination, be it be in movies, career or marriage, they are the first affected. Take any fairness cream ad, they definitely revolve around one of these concepts. Any ad will fit into this frame.

A fair girl(with dark look make up) would have missed a chance fetching a career or would have lost a marriage proposal or would have been teased for her color, returns home disappointed and the goody goody friends/parents will suggest a fairness cream and after that all the lost chances will fall under feet.

It reinforces a false belief in people, right from 3 yr old to 80 yr old, no one can claim that they are 100% free from this false belief, somewhere a small fraction of this still exists in each and everyone of our minds.
And I still feel that we are not so far from the day Gandhiji was thrown out of the train compartment.

Where is the Root?
There is no point in analyzing the source or where  it came from, there are so many factors that contribute to skin color racism – skin color stereotypes and prejudice. And all fingers point to THE SOCIETY which is no one else but US, we cant keep blaming our fore-fathers for setting up this trend, I agree they did it, they did it without knowing that it was a sin and we are doing it even after knowing it. So who is better? It is being popularized by many social outlets from the media to magazines.

How it branches?
White Skinned people are always given a first preference, this starts right from the school. Only a fair girl is preferred, be it giving a bouquet to the chief guest or receiving them from the dais.  Beauty when it comes to Girls and Brain when it comes to boys, only fair boys are considered to brilliant (‘padipps’) on first sight.

From root to branches

I would like to include something which I read in ABCnews

Colorism is especially prevalent in music videos. Kids we talked to on the street noticed that. And said they liked it.
“They all light skinned and they all look good,” one boy said.

“There’s a lot of dark-skinned girls that are pretty, with long hair, bad, but they’re not in the videos though, it’s just the light-skinned ones that’s in the videos,” another added.

“The darker the woman takes on what I refer to as a “Ho” complex. She is the prostitute,” said Karen a University of Maryland student. “The lighter a woman is, well, she’s the goddess. She’s the untouchable. She is the woman that all the men in the video aspire to have,” she said.

Very true isn’t? Take our cinema heroines for that matter, how many are dark skinned? leave heroines, even the dark skinned hero who claim that their color is their plus, are not ready to appear before cameras without color touch-ups. (Rajnikanth, Vijaykanth looks as lighter as their heroines in duets).

The myth then travels to college and then to workplace. Let me not get into the controversy, Survey results will stand for my point. I don’t want to discuss that here. Then comes marriage, most of the ads posted contains this word “Fair Looking or light skinned”. It holds good for both guys and girls, for girls it is a mandatory requirement, for guys at least if they are well settled, color takes the back seat. And it goes on, one simple example which we can see in day-to-day life, which even I faced being a dark-skinned vegetarian

Discrimination 2.0

Discrimination 2.0:
Of course now-a-days people don’t resist dark skinned people sitting next to them in bus, but discrimination is little aesthetic in this internet era, thou black is not discriminated, White is still kept above. Thou they don’t discriminate black obviously, they appreciate White. Even in a matured/educated crowd, it has just come down to teasing level, but no one can claim that it is completely eradicated. We cannot blame because we are soaked in it and it will take a very long time to get away, unless we take conscious effort it is not gonna die.

Obama’s Victory and American History:
Obama has won the election, that is just a news. A black has re-created history in America, it is a sensational news and who is creating this? MEDIA.  What made them emphasize more on Obama’s color than his caliber? Isn’t time to shed those old theories and start working on new things? Should we still pursue the black dream?

Color Vs Caliber:
Color vs Caliber debate is still one and to my knowledge I feel that color is taking the driver seat and if at all caliber does, even that is proclaimed as a milestone. Obama’s victory as an eligible candidate is not as much celebrated as Obama’s victory as a black eligible candidate.

Lighter skin “began to be associated with privilege and it became associated with beauty,” said Marita Golden, author of “Don’t Play in the Sun: One Woman’s Journey Through the  Color Complex”

This section would be incomplete if I don’t mention Micael Jackson, one question remains unanswered, if MJ wasn’t under knife, will he be MJ now? Be it a super-developed country like America or developing country like India or under-developed country like Nigeria one thing is common – it is the Colorism. No matter how much people grow, the venom of discrimination still runs in their blood and it keeps affecting others.

Color-plus?

Is being light colored a real plus? The society thinks so, we are still living with the white Supremacy. It is still imperative, it is not even high time, it is already late, if we don’t realize now then it is never gonna happen.

No one knows, the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice!  Sue the White Supremacy.

“Venilla Kabadi kulu” – I saw this movie over a period of two days, first half on Friday and second half on Saturday and now when I recollect, it looks as if i watched two different movies with same cast. Till interval the movie revolves around hero-heroine-kabadi and after that it revolves around hero-friends-kabadi. These days tamil movies have started following the trend of blunt/makeover  endings, AFAIK it started from Chennai – 600028, then Auto(Oram po) etc, the movie will be on its pace and suddenly a turn around will happen and that ends the show, audience are notified the end of show with a thank note or with the director signature. Initially it was quite different, but now it has become very usual phenomenon. You might have noticed one of the following things in climax

1. Hero will die – the director would have ended hero’s life just for the sake of publicity
2. Everyone will die in the movie – all lead characters and that too for no logical reason
3. The movie will end without any conclusion – they claim that it is left to interpretations
4. The movie will end abruptly before even going to a pre-final state.

We can keep growing this list, well venilla kabadi kulu definitely falls under one of these.

One thing which I loved about this movie is the romance, it was portrayed beautifully and we can feel the real village culture, how a girl approaches a guy and how a guy approaches a girl, no over-exaggeration as in movies which portrays city love and its 100% real – Seetha baat, no Bhakwas. Take for example Minnale, the so called all time favourite romance movie, which is a total non-sense.

Vennila kabadi kulu – Be it the first meet of hero and heroine or their last meet, its very plain, neat, elegant and simply amazing which makes it everygreen and as they say truth doesnt need any makeover.

Just realized that I cant Live tweet Facebook Garage Event coz my twitter account is not public timelined. So I will be blogging it live.
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Met Thomas Jestin, interesting guy – Pro facebook developer.
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Thomas Jestin(French Entrepreneur) is gona present his Facebook App which won the best app award in an event @ France
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Intro session is on – I just completed mine people are on the go – Its always nice to know about people around you.  People are having brilliant ideas for Facebook apps,  lets wait for them to come up with their ideas.Intro round is done. Waiting for the first session to begin.
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Quick Poll by Kiruba: How many of you think Poke me, poll me, movie contest kind of apps as Spam?
Guess What: Everyone was in for it. Gosh!
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“Enterprises are looking on leveraging Social Media’s power”  – Everyone’s quote
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Thomas Jestin – Live:
Developed his Social Business app for a French Company, Social business goes like this Invest – Profit – Invest. An app to make people invest on a Social Business(Grameen Danone)
They planned to use Facebook as Viral Marketting host and they created a presentation followed by a questionable and at the end they had a competition for Users about Captilaism and the winner was made to visit Md. Younis . And that how it works – They got 50,000 Users and Thomas feels its just aimed to target  small audience. He says Orkut will overcome in Facebook in India soon.
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Kiruba raised a question about Monetizing Apps on Facebook, thats a thing which i was wondering for a long term(ofcourse outside Ads).
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Will advertisements yield enuf? wont users get clever in future and ignore them just as email spams, may be a ad-filter like the current spam one in my inbox.  Start a facebook app instead o f Website, its already rich in user base – Thomas
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Facebook is for Intellects and Orkut is for the Mass – In India
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Twitter will over take Facebook, even i feel the same – but kiruba denies, lets see. Facebook has a very big flaw which will affect Viral Marketing – “I can connect only to my friends” , its not the case with Twitter.
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How does Facebook privacy policy affects bringing in certain Apps? Say for example Life science projects – Mukund talks
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Myspace was started for Musicians whereas FB was started for College group. Varun is giving a quick talk on Facebook + Mobile trend
Facebook has released API for iphone based development yesterday and it is expected to hit other phone’s market share badly.
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Phillip from Swis, he is with UN as an intern – He is live now.
He has developed an app which calls Students for a Nuclear weapon free world.  The app revolves around a competition which involves student participation and this app levarages FB’s momentum.

Mani and Vasanth just completed their DEMO on Facebook connect and i bet its really great to see FB in your site/app. Grab the power now FacebookConnect.
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Mukund is  Live: on Photon’s Facebook Applications
About Trackle.com FB app , Facebook has a new event(Web) model similar to Desktop based/Web based app. Ram adding his two cents on Facebook API call interval(3 sec).
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“Throwing sheep into the boardroom” – book find of the day.
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The chennai chapter closes. Had a very great one!

Facebook Developer Garage Chennai Chapter is round the corner with just a day to go, first FB Garage meet in Chennai.

For those who are using FB only as a social networking suite, this will serve as a gateway to look FB in a new dimension and for developers this would be a good feast. There is not agenda set yet, my two cents

1. Facebook Platform: Enuf guys there are already zillion apps that are developed for Facebook – Games, apps, IMs, groups etc etc etc, isnt it time for us to dive into the platform and do something about it. Facebook Open Platform, Thrift, Scribe, Cassandra, phpsh are few things that are closely associated with FB and are not as explored as FB app Development. Why dont we take a look at them and use it for developing loosely coupled Apps which should serve outside FB.
2. Facebook Business model: Facebook has a wonderful business model, but why should only Facebook make money out of it, app developers are making money but we should take it beyond and here again thinking out of Facebook.
3. Facebook Ads: FB Ads are slowly gaining momentum, it is the right time for us to ride on the wave – Use the platform – make the money.
4. Facebook journaling
5. Using the Social network face of FB for building Corporate Applications

Feel free to add-on. Lets meet @ the Garage – geared up!!!

Facebook developer garage is happening in Chennai at Photon Infotech Pvt. Ltd this Sunday.

For more details

http://vasanthgv.blogspot.com/2009/03/facebook-developer-garage-chennai.html

http://www.paidpipers.com/index.php/facebook-developers-garage-at-photon/

http://varunkrish.com/facebook-developer-garage-chennai-edition.html

Date: 15th March 09- Sunday
Venue: Photon Infotech Pvt Ltd, Karapakkam, OMR – Chennai
Time : 2pm top 5 pm

Expecting you Guys there! Come up with ideas and let make this event a grand one.

People who know me personally would be very sure on the point that I can never follow these lessons which my life keeps teaching me. Here is a list of lessons which life and people in my life taught me in a very hard way and which I would never follow,

1. Dont share everything about you – even t0 your closest/dearest friend(spouse as well). I feel that there should be at least one person in your life with whom you should share anything under this sky. I respect personal space very much, but I don’t need the space when it comes to that person. Life is instructing me not to do so, but I aint gonna change my dogma. Even Chanakya says, always be a mystery to people around you.
2. Know where you stand in a relationship and then deliver. Life says people are selfish and they will take you for granted, its like 50 first dates movie – people are capable of forgetting who you are to them over a night. So know where you stand and then contribute to the relationship , but my mom has taught me a different lesson, you have to be what you are and give what you want to the relationship independent of what they are and what they give, whether they reciprocate  or not that doesn’t matter. I was following my mom’s lesson all these days, but I think I should change thou I don’t want to.
3. Be an opportunist – Whether you use people or not, people around you will use for their convenience and they will ditch you for sure. This lesson is THE hardest lesson which life tries to teach me, but I will never fall a victim for it, I am losing a lot without learning this lesson, I dont bother.

I am not going to change myself for anything, I am going to be DEAF to these lessons. What is your opinion? Have you encountered such lessons ?

The idea of  Special Ecological Zones aroused in my mind when I was reading Nandan Nilekani’s post on ‘the environment we are in‘. The world is badly suffering from economic recession, experts say it might last for another two years and people have started saving, no one is ready to invest in this down-turn.  Governments across the world are introducing new schemes, plans, ordinances to attract investors and for a country like India this is the right time to develop infrastructure both social and ecological. Well here arises the question what is meant be ecological infrastructure?

Ecological Infrastructure(EI):
What is do I mean by Ecological infrastructure? Of course we cannot build mountains, create rivers or even trees as and when we want. Ecological infrastructure is an infrastructure which will aid ecology and preserves it from pollution of any form/kind. The 3-R ecology mantra: Re-cycle, reduce, reuse should be the key ingredient in this infrastructure. The EI needn’t be a Government’s effort, every individual/household/industry can contribute to this infrastructure in their own ways.  Similar to per-capita carbon emission, per-capita EI contribution should be calculated in the EI System, EI should be a system which can even yield tax allowance.

There are so many young brains which keeps inventing devices for power generation, Government should bring a plan to encourage these activities, may be a new small scale industry can be created.

What should Government do?
Government should create Special Ecological Zones, where the economic incentives will be much higher than SEZ(Special economic zone) s  and the economic laws will be more liberal. Special Tax allowances, electric power credits, discounted sales/excise duties etc should be provided to the industries which opt for these zones. These credits should be of course greater than what that is given to current SEZs.

What should industries do?
Nothing comes for free, industries must contribute from their end to keep this EI active. Few rules which I could think of is,

1. Special Ecological Zones should be Automobile pollution free: We cannot restrict automobiles completely inside these zones, but we can control the number. Apart from Goods transport(Raw-materials, products, by-products etc) there shouldn’t be any auto-mobile transport, parking zones would be present cross the periphery from which all the employees should commute either by walk or by cycles.
2. Trees/per square km should be fixed for various industries depending upon their carbon foot print, of course Special Ecological Zones cannot be forests, but by this we can try to increase the green content.
3. Plastic free: These zones must be made plastic free, this doesn’t restrict industrial usage, this time the ban is for human usage. If  inevitable, it should be bio-degradable or at least a recyclable one.
4. The industries should own a Wind mill and their power bill would be adjusted with the power generated by the wind mill(we already have this practice, but it is not mandatory). If an industry cannot afford a wind-mill, then either industries should buy them in joint-venture or else government will come into play for the JV.
5. Renewable power resource devices usage must be made mandatory like Solar lamps, heaters etc.

What should we do?
I don’t really know whether these kind of Special Ecological Zones will come up, it is just an imagination, feel free to come up with your ideas and suggestion on this and as well as on what can we do to build out Ecological Infrastructure. There are thousand ways out there to reduce our carbon print, lets follow a few of them, simple ones to start with.

1. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle:  I know there is a very old mantra and my suggestion/request is : Reduce where y ou can Reuse (Thing which we often reuse is plastic, so try to reduce that), Reuse where you can Recycle(Some plastics are used only once before they recycled, thou it can be used 2-3 time, so try to reuse as many times possible before recycling),
2. Use plastics only when it is essential or inevitable and not for luxury or laziness.
3. Lets start thinking for the society and not for just ourselves.

Lets make a greener and better environment. Its ours and we should take care of it.