A different prespective to Life

An old Chinese proverb:   摸着石头过河   "Cross the River by Feeling the Stones" - Confucius  China is still a developing country, and until very recently, China was still receiving world aid from other countries. Hence, it has to be more pragmatic in how it gives aid. So, technically the support that China does not provide aid as such, but in a way that other countries would term as zero return loans or grants. Surprisingly, it reflects how other countries, especially Japan, helped China earlier in its most recent development. Japanese aid to China was linked to a natural resource that Japan needed, like Crude Oil, unprocessed minerals, etc. This relationship was inevitable as Japan needed resources desperately for its population. Knowing China's history with Japan, China's failed invasion of the Japanese islands, subsequent Japanese isolation, then the Japanese invasion of China after the Sino-Japanese wars, Japan's invasion of Korea and occupation of Manchuria, Chi...

Just finished watching a documentary on Netflix but now on YouTube , on how a software developing company in the UK was able to put together a team that that was able to build a software program sponsored by Google that could beat the world's best Go player. On February 10, 1996, Deep Blue by IBM was able to beat Garry Kasparov who was at that time the world's best chess player in the first game of a six-game match—the first time a computer had ever beat a human in a formal chess game. Now, computers beat world champions regularly, that it just formality and they are winning every game if it properly tuned. Go is regarded as a more complex game than chess,  the number of legal board positions in Go has been calculated to be approximately 2 × 10 170 , which is said to be far greater than the total number of atoms in the universe. Go is the oldest continuous board game and described as the most complex game ever designed by man. Chess is reported to have a mere 5 × ...

As in all things in philosophy it took long time and me reading 2 books to even understand what was going on. These are wonderful books that gives a summary of philosophical thinking in the West. One should at least should read or listen to one of them, they try to give a brief history from the Greeks to the present day. Philip Stokes's " Philosophy 100 essential thinkers - the ideas that have shaped our world ",  from ancient times to present, and Nigel Warburton's, " A little history of philosophy ". It took me longer than usual to summarize this, as it is philosophy, and after listening to something on someone I had to read it, and later listen to it numerous times. I also read other books and wrote on them and later came back to this, because it required deeper thinking. I noticed was that a lot of the philosophers did not write things especially the Presocratics, Eleatics and Academics. But because of the fact that their contemporaries made refere...

This book gives a contrary narrative to the general belief that man moved gradually but progressively from hunter-gather to a more regular, nourished and having a constant food supply of farming and animal husbandry. The author deliberately intended to be as provocative and outrageous as possible, to stimulate thought and discussions. One of his suggestions that man has become weaker and stupider as we herded ourselves in towns and cities. This book says also states that the move from hunter-gather was not as straight forward, that there instances that man moved back to hunter-gathering from farming, and that in some cases that hunter-gathering was more nutritious and used fewer calories than farming and produced better returns and people who were hunter-gathers were more healthy than individuals who were living a sedentary lifestyle. He also noted surprisingly only three grains wheat, rice, and maize produce more than half of our daily calorie intake and these take a lot of our en...

This book is about geopolitics and it says you have to understand geography and history, to understand international politics. The author believes that countries play a deterministic game and protect their own long term strategic interests. And by understanding their geography and history you could understand and be able to predict to some extent each country's actions. Tim Marshall  the author, is a British journalist, he initially reported for the BBC and later Sky News. He is well known for his analysis of developments in foreign news and international diplomacy. He is an author of 6 books and has been a guest presenter on numerous programs. His knowledge is extensive and detailed. He has been in the front line in the world hot spots, especially during the war, covering Kosovo, Iraq, Gaza, Afghanistan, etc. He also won awards and certificates for his work. He is the founder and editor of thewhatandthewhy.com . Launched in February 2015, the site analyses world ...

This is a very interesting book and reading it, proved very enjoyable and enlightening experience, it put things in perspective and gave a clearer understanding of anthropology from one angle. This book tries to explain why the West diverged to become the hegemonic power of the world. As the whole human race seems to have started at the same place some time ago. It is written that humanity for most of its existence were hunter-gathers, until about 10,000 years ago after the last ice age.  He believes it is nothing to do with the race being linked to intelligence or any other racial superiority theory as he knows that some Papa New Guineans who of the recent past lived in what could be described as the stone age , but who are very inventive, inquisitive, intelligent and quick to learn as required of modern age thinking.  This book is also very controversial as some see Prof Jared Diamond work as being too simple and superficial, calling it pseudohistory, and relies he...

Introduction Having only boys and as a concerned parent, there is a book out there that anyone who has a male child in their circle should read be it nephew, child, son, grandson, cousin, or even friend. The title of the book is " boys adrift - the five factors driving the growing epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving young men" by Dr. Leonard Sax who is a family physician and psychologist . He has noticed that it seems the boys are not being motivated or encourage in our educational system. It seems that the educational system has become feminized and the only strong male figures in most schools are the gardener, janitor, and maybe the gym teacher. Then, there is also a rush to quickly diagnose boys with psychiatric illness for just being boys, ADHD i.e.  Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and subsequently start them on medication. There is an epidemic of demotivation of boys across the board not related to social class, race, religion, or economic stat...