You always reach where you started from...

At age 4 success is not peeing in your pants.
At age 12 success is having friends.
At age 16 success is having a drivers license.
At age 20 success is having sex.
At age 35 success is having money.
At age 50 success is having money.
At age 60 success is having sex.
At age 70 success is having a drivers license.
At age 75 success is having friends.
At age 80 success is not peeing in your pants.

America's Foreign Policy: Self-Interest vs. Self-Sacrifice

The United States, inspite of being the world’s preeminent military power, has been having its foreign-policy efforts so regularly frustrated. From Vietnam to Lebanon to Somalia to the current morass in Iraq, why has America been so incapable of decisively defeating its enemies—enemies that are militarily far inferior.
Peter Schwartz of the Ayn Rand Institute maintains that success in foreign policy, including success in waging war, depends ultimately on the strength not of a nation’s weapons, but of its moral philosophy. And in that area, US has been tragically deficient. According to him, the fundamental reason America has been failing in defending its own interests is that its intellectual and political leaders embrace the altruist premise that the pursuit of self-interest is morally wrong. And, Mr. Schwartz argues, unless US upholds the opposite philosophy—the view that self-interest is morally good— it will not be able to protect its freedom against foreign threats.

(courtesy: Peter Schwartz, Ayn Rand Institute)

Could you believe that moral philosophy, and not military might, could govern the destiny of a country? Leonard Peikoff, the intellectual heir to Ayn Rand, feels US is drifting towards what Germany was during the Nazi-era. His book “The Ominous Parallels” is all about this could-happen scenario.

Objective Stimulation

One of my teachers always kept telling "Ignorance is bliss." Unfortunately, we have all taken a bite or two off the "K"nowledge apple. And the taste of kapple is as addictive as any other evil. Wish our minds were like hard disks, so we could format it anytime. Now we can appreciate why most of our grandmas were the happiest souls on the face of earth. They knew nothing else but to love their kids and the kid's kids.

Okay!! Now that the prologue has set us as human beings with half-baked dough in place of brains, its time to go on and read the article by Larry Salzman, a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, California.

Objectivism in daily life

At times objectivism sounds as if it tends more towards Capitalism. That, it is not so is illustrated by the following excerpt from an essay on Objectivism, that I came across in the Ayn Rand Institute website.

"One does not benefit from the poverty or incompetence of others. It is in your interest that other men—in every country—be smart, ambitious, and productive, not stupid, lazy, or incompetent. Would you be better off if Thomas Edison had been dim-witted? Nothing is changed if we substitute a Japanese inventor for Edison".

The point being driven home is that individual competencies of men is what betters our lives, and not collective branding of such great endeavors.

Objectivism rejects

1) any belief in the supernatural.
2) mysticism/skepticism.
3) determinism.
4) altruism. (?? I cannot come to terms with it ??)
5) collectvism.

How about you ?

Two things I love to do after a days work;

1) Have a beer ( from a can, and not bottle ).
2) Watch some Hollywood rollout.

Be honest.

Poem # 5

Here's another poem written during one of my childood summer hols. No doubt, I used to love my vacations with 10 cousins around in my granny's home at Magaral, a village near Kanchipuram,India. Still the fact that "grass is always greener on the other side" took over me for while, when I wrote this poem.

Tiring Vacations

With a spirit for exams, I start.
Holiday in mind apart.
With all enthusiasm,
I study geotropism and all the other -ism.

Soon they are finished,
Of which which I was really bored.
Then I go looking for a way
To have some great play.

With hope
I grope
Only to find a rope
Tied around my hope.

I was bound in my house
Just like a hand in a pair of gloves.
Oh! I am tired of these.
Let me schooling please.

Poem # 4

I wasn't all that comfy with math till around my 6th grade. But my dad's couple of hard knocks on my head seemed to have jolted my brain out of static-state, and brewed some decent passion for the subject which luckily lasted till I finished my undergrad. That's what prompted me to wrtie this poem while in 8th grade.

Maths Out the World

Two plus two is four
Is not really to bore.
From this lore
There's to learn more.

Math- it reels the head of some,
As they struggle for hours with a sum.
You do that with a hum,
And it goes in as rum.

The more you understand,
The more you learn to withstand.
Hard ones, though, they break your mind,
You would learn not to wind.

Nothing's too hard a task.
It's probably got a mask.
Look beyond the mask.
Then, for others help you won't ask.

That's world.
With effort, you get much.

Being John Malkovich

A couple of days back, I was watching "Being John Malkovich." Its all about a portal that allows you "to be somebody for sometime" and going a step further being able to manipulate that individual's actions. Borrowing the words in the movie, its "getting beneath the skin of another person."

While I can't remember right off, Hollywood has churned out movies of similar hue, many a times. The movie was off-beat and interesting. What struck me was the parallel that I started seeing with one of the tenets of Objectivism , a modern philosophy started by Ayn Rand....which goes like "Man-everyman- is an end in himself; not a means to the end of others." How true that majority of the people live a second-hand life by enchroaching upon other's souls or vice-versa....renting their souls.

Okay! that's enough of philosophy for the day. Lemme start planning my next ski-trip !! Looks like its gonna be at Mountain Creek, NY.

Bard Springs Pics

View my pics shot during my camping trip at Bard Springs, Arkansas.

My b'day gift

Yeah yeah ! Thats me. I know, holding a lovely bunch of red roses, I unmistakably look like a bunch of idiots rolled into one. Nevertheless I wanted this pic posted because it’s the first time ever in my life that I have been given a bouquet. Thanks S! By the way this post should have been dated Jan 3rd.

Happy New Year !!!

Wishing everyone a very very happy 2006 !!! Had a fun-filled new year eve at Sterling banquet hall, Long Island. A typical new year party like the ones I have been to ,5 years back, in India.