rattled mind

In a volunteer mailing group, a small ripple will create a big wave of mails and an ultimate splash. One definite rocker is 'switch off lights' and 'save tissue papers'. What creative suggestions come out of these simple topics .. people get very unconventional and emotional about their ideas.

Recently such mail thread started with simple suggestions like:

Put some posters about power saving.

Encourage taking stairs as opposed to elevators.

Turn off lights in huddle rooms/conference rooms.

An engineer's response:

We are the engineers, we need to think of some innovative power saving
measures !

/What if there is sensing device at the entry of pantry as in one enters,
lights ON... and /

/as soon as one exists, lights OFF !! ( depending on the total number of
heads entered MINUS/

/total number of heads exited ) = 0 Implementation of this would cost intial
investment but would/

/save lots of power & power bills later.../

Someone started cribbing :

I do not see this poster idea is working, there are
posters just near the tissue paper in the toilets but people still use the
tissue paper. To my surprise even people stand and read this poster and use the
tissue paper as if the content is in French.

If we dont want people to use tissue, dont keep there! simple.

Followup ideas ...

On a related note, the quality of the tissue paper can be
improved.

Can someone tell this environmentalist that quality paper => cutting more trees

There were other suggestions like volunteers calling employees and advising them on tissue usage. People were going further to trace the origin of tissue, wondered if great grandfather and beyond used tissues etc.

What idle brain can do!

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Remember reading this book during college days. Couldn't recollect much of the story thou. Yesterday I had to travel alone in a taxi for 2 hours. While looking around for a book, got this one. Suitable to spend 2 hrs or so.

The first part of the book talks about how general trend in people and what kind of inertia hold them back from moving out of the flock. Also the kind of struggle and hardship of successful people. Particularly the kind of changes they have to make and willing to go through tough time due to different life style.

Second section is quite heavy with meta-physics and after life stuff. The highest thing that to be worked out is - love. Guess westerners have the notion of seeing love as the ultimate thing to go for.

Last part was too much .. purposefully painting a messiah image to the hero. It was able to cure a bird whose wings were immobile. Lots of followers and enemy camp and so and so.

A nice inspirational book.

fluid containers

Ever wondered about the shape of the fluid containers? Most of them are cylindrical. The petrol, milk tank containers, milk can, over-head water tank, water heater, most of the kitchen utensils, pen, water pipe, ...

Any idea about the reason?

Helping tendency

Someone sent a technical query to our office internal mailing list. The query was kind of simple. In no time there were so many replies and suggestions. Some of the answers were repetitive. Even two people replied after two days .. which is rare considering that most mails in that forum dies out in couple of hours.
The reason behind the mails is .. the questioner is a girl, that too with an attractive name. Guess the guys didnt know her age or other details, if so they might not have bother to provide such help.

perception

Morning I was looking at small spiders, ants and lizards. The first instinct is to drive them off. I was also trying to see their perception about human. They might have an image of 'annoying monsters'. Always the monsters chase them away. At time spray chemicals or set hazardous mechanical, electrical devices on them. Doesn't allow them to lead a peaceful life, the nest they construct is destroyed in fraction of seconds.

If only we could listen to their conversation, it would be really interesting.

Voyage haiku

Planning travel across our galaxy
may be far beyond Andromeda or Triangulum
Packing two condoms for safety

passing the bug

I was observing the neighbouring construction work through the window. A worker found a small snake. He hit it with a stick still it fell unconscious or dead. Now he had to throw it out. He used the same stick to pry the snake across but it fell inside the construction area itself. This time he aimed for our garden! The snake fell on our car path inside the compound wall.

He was about to get back to his work. That is when I had to come out of the house and shout at him. Probably he thought the house was unoccupied as no one was living for a long time. Then he realized the situation and immediately came into my house to clear up the mess.

How human behave! We are ready to take any short-cut to cut short our work.

Space allocation

While traveling, my wife and myself were enjoying the landscape and the scenic beauty. She asked about the dimension of an acre of land. It is 66 feet by 660 feet. Quite odd shape to divide the farm land. A lengthy rectangular partition. She asked if there is any reason behind such division. It seems like an ancient practice. May be from the time man started cultivation as a part time apart from his full time hunting job.

While reflecting, suddenly a similarity appeared between this land dimension and a totally different system. It is agraharam.

The Brahmins had an upper hand over the society. Their contribution is reflected in many areas of Indian life in the past. They were also biased towards their own kith & kins, (like any other human being). So, if they were doing town planning, we could expect them to occupy prime locality. The center of the town had the temple. Brahmins lived close to the temple. The central land ratio should had been minuscule compared to town's total land size. Low availability and high demand plus compulsory allocations to Brahmins would have a driven towards optimal, compressed allocation algorithm.

Probably with the above constraints, they got houses with odd dimension. In a typical agraharam house, a corridor will start from the front door and run towards the end. Rooms will be placed one after another along with the corridor. A small garden or open space will be available at the end of the house. It is a lengthy house with narrow width; the width of the house is always 1 room wide and the length could be 5 rooms or more.

The reason for the odd dimension is the resource crunch. Here the sacred street is the resource, which ought to be shared by as many as possible.

Going back to the farm land, similar resource crunch and optimal allocation might have lead to such rectangular division. The resource could be the water body like river, or the resource can be the approach or reachable to the road.

Would like to see if these rectangular partitions are adapted at international level.