Time Perception

I think "time-perception" and consciousness are mutually related phenomenon. From scientific perspective, if consciousness is an emergent property of physical processes, is there a theoretical limit on minimum time-resolution of perception?

System level Conscience

Consider the possibility that consciousness is an emergent property of certain neural activity, and at a much basic level, of certain electro-chemical pattern. Under this hypothesis, we can postulate that interactions amongst individual conscious entities may give rise to a society level consciousness. It is, in principle, not required for the individual entities to be "aware" of this social consciousness or vice-versa. When I think back about this, I think there are many people in the past who had very similar thoughts, but hopefully, as science progresses, we will have a much better grasp at this phenomenon.

Positive compartmentalization

I was watching the Colbert report where Steven Colbert was interviewing the artist M.I.A. What was astonishing to me that was how much her mannerism has changed from the time when she was being interviewed to the time she was performing. What looked like a little girl trying to hold herself together turned into a vibrant, self-confident and impressive performer. Then I realized that we all exhibit such behavior. We are all somewhat awkward and lacking in confidence when it comes to many things in our life, but there is most often one activity which we can take charge of. I have seen many professors who are very awkward socially, but when they get onto the dias to give a lecture, they suddenly become one of this impressive, larger than life and charming people. I have seen some of this in most of my friends.

This takes be back to the discussion we were having about compartmentalization, about how we all hold some superstitions by the means of ignoring our cognitive dissonance. In this aspect, could the above phenomenon be called positive compartmentalization? Could it be that we restrict our source of confidence to a very narrow aspect of our life? Either way, I think we owe most of our civilization to this aspect of our psyche.

The rising gap of upper and middle class in US, the important and often ignored reason

One important reason for the growing gap is actually quite ubiquitously mentioned, Outsourcing. But the real way how outsourcing affects is often ignored. Is is commonly known that outsourcing causes job loses in US by shifting those to countries with cheap labor. That is true. The counter argument for this, again, quite often heard, is that it reduces the prices of goods and thereby increases the value of money Americans have. Also, by reducing the operating costs, it increases the competitiveness of American companies and increases their revenue. All true. But the point which is conveniently ignored in the media and very well known among businessmen is something called the smiley curve of production. Most products undergo three phases in the process of their introduction into the market. The planning and design phase, the manufacturing phase and the sales and marketing phase. The planning and the sales phases are represented as the two upper ends of the smiley curve because most of the money is here. The bottom phase, manufacturing, does add most of the value, involve huge manual labor and number of people, but does not bring a lot of money, especially in countries like china where there are very few or no labor laws (yeah, we are back to the beginning stages of communist movement). As a result, most of the money made by American production goes to a very small number of people and hence the gap. Further, the vast machinization of American industries act in a similar way against the highly unionized and well protected American Labor.

Wonderful Knowledge

Only when we obtain knowledge and really appreciate "something", do we lose our awe and wonder about that something. At this moment, the awe and wonder shifts from the "something" to the knowledge itself.

Nature is wonderful in its enigma, elegant in its simplicity and yet, chaotic microscopically.

The 5k race

Ok, so I was just googling my name and I came across an interesting page. It contains the results of a 5k race organized by verizon wireless. I participated in the race as a member of the Alcaltel-Lucent team while doing my internship over there. I took 36 minutes and 41 seconds to run 5k and my overall place was 2145. The number of people who finished the race seems to be around 3250.

The Soldier and the Terrorist

Why is that when people kill for their God or their religion they are called religious fundamentalists/terrorists and when people kill for their country, they are called Soldiers? Is nationality really that different from religion?