"Change is not a destination ... just as 'hope' is not a strategy."- Rudy Giuliani's campaign against Barack Obama

"War does not determine who is right - only who is left." - Bertrand Russell

"You miss 100% of the shots you never take." - Wayne Gretzky, a Canadian ice-hockey player

3/10 is much better than 0/0.

Full article here.

It costs a lot more to hire full-time employees than take on temporary workers, so big corporations in India only add them when they're really flush, economists say.

As a result, much of India is now embracing the underground economy. That includes Ahmedabad, where informal jobs have played a crucial role in keeping the economy afloat in recent years.

For decades, this city of roughly five million people, where camels still amble down city streets, was known as the "Manchester of India," after the city in England famous for textiles. In the early 1980s, it had more than 60 giant mills employing 150,000 people or more, most of them with generous pension packages and other benefits. The industry trade union, started by Mahatma Gandhi himself (he kept an ashram by the city), was one of the most powerful institutions around and even ran a bank and hospital.

Then the mills entered a long and disastrous decline. More efficient operations were opening in other places, including China, and most of Ahmedabad's factory owners refused to make investments to become more efficient.

The mills became uncompetitive and shut down, dumping their workers and leaving scores of rotting mills and smokestacks that still loom ominously over the city. Today there are only about 10 mills left in operation. Membership in the trade union has fallen to about 9,000 people, and its bank and hospital have closed.

In many American or European cities where major industries died, like Buffalo, N.Y., urban centers fell into decay because there was nothing left to replace them. But Ahmedabad remains a thriving city. Most of the laid-off employees were able to find work in street vending, rickshaw driving, day-wage construction or other informal jobs, and as a result, the percentage of people employed in the underground economy increased. Today, Ahmedabad has some 55,000 rickshaw drivers, 70,000 street vendors, 70,000 construction workers and 45,000 roving trash collectors and recyclers.

Please take a few moments now to let your mind relax a little.

Just as we can be aware of the feelings and movements in our body we can also step back from our thoughts and simply watch them. We are not normally aware of our thoughts - one thought arises which then leads to another and then another, until we become lost in our own world. But right here, right now, step back in your mind and simply be aware of your thoughts as they come and go.

Just watch them for a few moments, nothing more. Simply sit still and wait for a thought to arise and then just be aware of that thought without following it or attaching any meaning to it. Feels good doesn't it? And just watch that thought come and go too.

Now, as we are doing this, simply be aware of who is doing the watching, the feeling of your own Presence. Who we think we are, our self concept, is in the realm of thought - those things that we are stepping back from right now and are able to watch. But who we really Are is who it is that's doing the watching.

You can see now that they are two distinctly separate entities. Who you really Are is the observer. As you are aware of your Self watching your thoughts, recognize now that who you really Are cannot be known or deducted from thought. Who you really Are can only be known through this awareness, through direct experience. This is a simple yet profound understanding that is easy to forget but will stand us in good stead later on. So what was the point of this little exercise?

It may have seemed silly but it has an important purpose, - to help us see that who we think we are cannot be true. Who we think we are is bound up in thought - those things our real Self has just been watching. As we start to step back from our everyday thinking mind and allow ourselves to relax deeper into the experience of who we really Are we come to recognize that this true Self is far more intelligent, alive, creative, loving, resourceful and unlimited than anything our thoughts could even conceive of.

As we have just experienced, there is no effort or journey required to access the awareness of our true Self - just a letting go of our attachment to our thoughts and the changing world they picture so we can can step back in our mind and relax - letting our attention rest in the experience of what always Is. This is so simple and easy it is almost universally overlooked.

The little book of Flow by Nick Smith

“The human brain is a delusion generator. The delusions are fueled by arrogance—the arrogance that humans are the center of the world, that we alone are endowed with the magical properties of souls and morality and free will and love. We presume that an omnipotent God has a unique interest in our progress and activities while providing all the rest of creation for our playground. We believe that God—because he thinks the same way we do—must be more interested in our lives than in the rocks and trees and plants and animals.”

“You think that way because you are unable to see the storm of activity at the rock’s molecular level or the level beneath that, and so on. And you are limited by your perception of time. If you watched a rock your entire life it would never look different. But if you were God and could observe the rock over fifteen billion years as though only a second had passed, the rock would be frantic with activity. It would be shrinking and growing and trading matter with its environment. Its molecules would travel the universe and become a partner to amazing things that we could never imagine. By contrast, the odd collection of molecules that make a human being will stay in that arrangement for less time than it takes the universe to blink. Our arrogance causes us to imagine special value in this temporary collection of molecules. Why do we perceive more spiritual value in the sum of our body parts than on any individual cell in our body? Why don’t we hold funerals when skin cells die?”

“Practicality rules our perceptions. To survive, our tiny brains need to tame the blizzard of information that threatens to overwhelm us. Our perceptions are wondrously flexible, transforming our worldview automatically and continuously until we find safe harbor in a comfortable delusion.

The concept of ‘importance’ is a human one born out of our need to make choices for survival. An omnipotent being has no need to rank things. To God, nothing in the universe would be more interesting, more worthy, more useful, more threatening, or more important than anything else.”

God’s Debris : A Thought Experiment by Scott Adams

If you win you need not explain... but if you lose you should not be there to explain - Adolph Hitler

Don't compare yourself with anyone in this world. If you do so, you are inslting yourself - Alen Strike

You must stand for something, or you'll fall for everything - Unknown

The most important impact of technology is not the capabilities themselves, but that they require you to organize your processes, information and business more logically - Peter Drucker

Original Article

With information systems for factory floor data collection, the analysis of the factory floor processes and the flow of parts, sometimes referred to as a “current state map”, can be made visible. If your company is going take action to improve the process then why not make the process flow visible and available all day, everyday. If improvement is truly continuous, then why make the evaluation of the flow episodic.

Original Post

HR management needs to wake up. If you pay people based on the depth and breadth of their skills, you get multi-skilled workers. If you pay people based on seniority you get an ‘aging workforce’. If you pay people based on production volumes, you get lots of inventory and marginal quality. If you pay people based on the improvements they make to the cash flow of the value stream in which they work, you get greater profits.

Original Post

A journalist asked me, Most people have a better standard of living today than Louis XIV did in his day. So why are so many people unhappy?

What you have doesn't make you unhappy. What you want does.

And want is created by us, the marketers.

Marketers trying to grow market share will always work to make their non-customers unhappy.

It's interesting to note that marketers trying to maintain market share have a lot of work to do in reminding us that we're happy.

From Carl..

Following poem composed by William Ernest Henley. It appeared first on the taut canvas of his anguished mind when he lay in hospital after having his leg amputated...at a time when anesthesia was not yet invented. Had many painful complications in the aftermath of that operation also. This historical background enhances the mood of the poem.

INVICTUS (Latin for "invincible")

"Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

"In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeoning of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

"Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

"It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul." [End]


antavanta imE deha
nityasyOktaH shareeriNaH
anashinO 'pramEyasya
tasmAd yudhyasva bhArata


"Only the material body of the indestructible, immeasurable and eternal living entity is subject to destruction; therefore, fight, O descendant of Bharata. "


nainam chindanti shastrANi
nainam dahati pAvakah
na cainam kledayanty ApO
na shoshayati mArutaH

" The soul can never be cut into pieces by any weapon, nor can he be burned by fire, nor moistened by water, nor withered by the wind. "

-- Bhagavad Gita Ch 2, verses 18, 23.
http://www.asitis.com/2/18.html
http://www.asitis.com/2/23.html

The new economy has brought us face to face with so much of advanced technology, often ahead of the rest of the world, leapfrogging several stages because we are lucky to be latecomers on the scene - and one unintended consequence of this, utterly ignored or paid insufficient attention, is the need to bring the rest of society up to speed. All systems and devices ( from the internet to the motor car to the mobile phone) can work only as well as the knowledge level of the people who install and run or maintain them.

At any rate, the usage condition and knowledge level of the users too are far from ideal. In this combination of half-baked service and semi skilled users, the ignorance economy is floundering.

Original Article

I must say that, beyond occasionally exposing me to laughter, my constitutional shyness has been no disadvantage whatever. In fact I can see that, on the contrary, it has been all to my advantage. My hesitancy in speech, which was once an annoyance, is now a pleasure. Its greatest benefit has been that it has taught me the economy of words.I have naturally formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. And I can now give myself the certificate that a thoughtless word hardly ever escapes my tongue or pen. I do not recollect ever having had to regret anything in my speech or writing. I have thus been spared many a mishap and waste of time. Experience has thaught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. Proneness to exaggerate, to supress or modify the truth, wittingly or unwittingly, is a natural weakness of man, and silence is necessary in order to surmount it. A man of few words will rarely be thoughtless in his speech; he will measure every word. My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow.

- M.K. Gandhi : An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth