Liven up airports ...

Just got back from Houston - I had been there for a two day business trip. Although there is a direct Continental Airlines flight from Houston to Raleigh, I flew via Dallas because I am a Platinum member at American Airlines. I flew a lot last year and had 14 round trips between North Carolina and California.

On the way back to Raleigh, I spent almost two hours at Dallas waiting for my connection. And this got me thinking about all of the time I have spent waiting for my connection at airports - There is usually nothing to do other than sit in a restaurant/bar ...

Why dont we have cinema theaters in the larger airports ? Think about it ... You arrive at the airport, your connecting flight doesnt take off for another three hours - Perfect time for a movie ! And if you could make sure that there is a show starting every ten minutes or so, nothing like it.

I wonder what the average wait time is for connections ?
And of course, people who have flight delays are a large potential market - Maybe airlines could distribute free movie vouchers to passengers whose flights have been delayed ....

Expanding Universe ...

I am sure I am not the first person to have had this thought - In fact, most of you have probably thought about this before ...

This is the definition of universe from wikipedia - It means the whole spacetime continuum in which we exist, together with all the energy and matter within it.

So, if the universe is the sum-total of everything, and includes all the space we have, how can the universe expand ? Where is it expanding into ?! How is there room for expansion and if there is room, shouldnt that have already been considered part of the universe ?

Maybe it is just that I am trying to marry my limited view of what space is with the big bang theory, but I just dont get it ... Can anybody explain this ?

Forget Brain Drain

For the last so many years, we have had countless news articles and reports bemoaning the "brain drain" from India to the developed world. These articles talked about how India was losing all of these well-educated people that it had invested a lot of money in. Of course, lately things have been a lot more positive in India and we are starting to see some "reverse brain drain" ...

However, I was never concerned about brain drain ... India has an immense depth of resources that it can draw from and in any case, the forex inflows and the image-building efforts of NRI's contribute significantly to India's growth. In any case, I never thought that IIT/Pilani educated engineers were Indian's biggest assets ...

What has always concerned me is "beauty drain" - For some time it seemed like every girl's parents wanted to get their daughter married off to an NRI - And all the pretty girls seemed to be moving abroad - Every pretty friend of mine moved abroad - And that shook me, that scared me ... Would India be able to survive the loss of all of these good beauty genes ?!

Thankfully now, Indian parents seem to have come to their senses and now India is doing a good job of keeping our best assets in India - Beautiful women :-)

Aliens don't need water .....

Whenever I read articles about different planets/stars/galaxies and their suitability for extra-terresterial life, I am always surpised by why they always refer to the presence/absence of water or oxygen. They make it seem like a foregone conclusion that the lack of water and oxygen on the surface of Mars precludes the possibility of alien life on that planet. Why do we assume that aliens will have the same physiological needs as human beings ?

Maybe, aliens breathe Carbon Dioxide, maybe they eat rocks and thrive on temperatures like 4000F ... After all, there are organisms on earth that survive under those conditions. These aliens probably wont look very much like human beings, but then what is the probability that in our vast universe, two species of two-legged, upright mammals will look alike or have the same level of technological advance ?

United States of India

This post is really focused on Indians, though it might be interesting to people from other countries in a similar situation as well ...

We all know that India is a land of immense diversity .. In fact, it's the land of extremes, temperature wise, from the snowy Himalayas to the Thar Desert, culturally, from the most conservative villages in Tamil Nadu to the "happening" pubs in Mumbai and in so may other ways ...

There are so many different religions, so many different languages, so many castes, sub-castes and all, that often I wonder if there is any common strain among all of the one billion people ?

I cant think of any - Other than the fact that both of them are Indian, what ties together a Bhil tribal from Madhya Pradesh and an Iyer from Tamil Nadu ?

However, this brings us to a critical question - Should India remain united ? Should we continue to be nation of 29 (I have lost count) states or should we give each state its own independence ...

Hailing from one of the relatively well-off states in India, Tamil Nadu, I sometimes think (rather uncharitably) that the more prosperous states are being held back by the laggards (such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and the North East) ... Would it be better off for some select groups of states to break away and form a seperate country ?

For example, lets consider three state-groups:

• Southern States (Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Pondy, Karnataka, Andhra & Goa abbreviated as SS)
• National Capital Region states (Delhi, Punjab & Haryana - Abbreviated NCR)
• The pair of Maharastra & Gujarat (MG)
• Backward States (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh & Uttar Pradesh - BS)

Lets look at some statistics .....

GDP (2002)

• SS contributes 27.8% of India's GDP with 22.8% of the population
• NCR contributes 11.2% of India's GDP with 5.7% of the population
• MG contributes 21.9% of India's GDP with 14.1% of the population
• On the other hand, BS contributes 17.9% of India's GDP with 34.8% of the population

Population Growth (1994-97)

• The Annualized Population Growth Rate for India was 2.48%
• SS - 1.88%
• NCR - 2.87%
• MG - 2.1 %
• BS - 2.3%

GDP Per Capita (Indian Rupees - 1997)

• All-India - 16,639
• SS - 20,223
• NCR - 32,718
• MG - 25,754
• BS - 8,540

Literacy % (1991)

• All-India - 51.04%
• SS - 58.88%
• NCR - 61.42%
• MG - 63.66%
• BS - 41.31%

As the statistics prove, some state-groups are doing much better than the National Averages ... And there seem to be advantages in each state group going its own way ... For the ones that are doing well atleast.

But you know what, I dont think we should do that, thats not what our forefathers fought the British for ... They fought for a dream, an amazingly dream - Unity in Diversity. John Kenneth Galbraith once remarked that a nation such as India is improbable on paper, but it still does exist and continues to grow ! India is an amazing experiment, the like of which has never been seen before, and its too valuable to throw away on purely economic reasons. The fortunate ones have to work harder to pull our less fortunate brothers and sisters up ...

And then, obviously, there are advantages in staying together - Defence, Logistics, Collective Power in the UN and other organizations, Resource Sharing etc ...

However, it would be cool to have Chennai as the capital of a country ;-)

Re-use of Cinema Sets

I saw a beautiful Italian movie today - Malena. I am constantly amazed by the range of emotions that European cinema has vis-a-vis Hollywood .. I think that Indian cinema is much closer to European cinema than American cinema ....

Anyway, the movie was about a boy becoming a man, during World War II Italy ... And I was struck by the beauty of the sets that were used. This led me to think about all of the sets that are constructed for every movie .. I know that most of them only have a front piece, but I started thinking about whether it would be possible for the film industry to tie up with real estate developers ... And then create a set comprising real houses and buildings, which could be sold at the end of the movie - Or even be used to house the poor ?

What do you guys think ?

Integrating Excel with the Internet

I absolutely love Microsoft Excel ... I think its one of the best pieces of software that has ever been designed.

I thought of a feature that could be added onto Excel that would be really cool .. What if you could link a cell in Excel to a value that could be loaded from the internet ?

For example, lets say that I am using MS Excel to track the value of my portfolio - What if I could link the worksheet to a financial website so that the stock prices would automatically be updated on Excel as it would load the new value from the internet website ... We could eliminate middleman software like QuickBooks / Quicken etc ...

Exchange rates, weather information, flight timings, directions - All of these are part of information we exchange daily through Microsoft Office documents - What if the content could be dynamic in all of them !!

Do you see what I see ?

How do you describe a color to a person who has been blind since his/her birth ? Its difficult isn’t it. You can’t tell them that blue is the color of the sky or that green is the color of lettuce because they have never seen either of those things. That’s the thing about our senses. All of them are based on relative definitions – They do not make sense in absolute terms ...

How do I know that I see the same color as you when we both look at the sky ? The simple answer is that I can never really know. We have both been taught since we were born that the color we see when we look at the sky is to be called blue. However, the color each of us sees when we look at the sky might be completely different, though we all call it by the same name.

Extending this theory, I would also venture to explain the idiosyncratic dress-color choices of otherwise-sober individuals .. Maybe they don’t see the same colors as the rest of us do. Maybe to them, a fluorescent green shirt and yellow pants seem the height of sobriety ! Maybe, their different perception of colors forces them into becoming unconventional, when all they are doing is wearing colors that they like !

This theory could be extended to smell – We cannot define the smell of a baking cake or blooming roses except by associating them with their origin.

What about hot and cold ? Do some people call cold water hot ?

Tilting Headlights

Ever took a sharp turn while driving and had the feeling of driving into nothingness ? What if headlights could be designed such that they turn in tune with the steering wheel ?

Wouldnt that make things a lot easier ? When you make a left turn, the left headlight should tilt with the right headlight remaining stationary and vice versa for a right turn - This would give you a much broader field of vision.

People Exchange

Ok, now for the first idea (drum rolls please !)

What if we could have a stock exchange that deals in people/intellectual capital ? All of us grow up, go to school, go through college, get a job and so on ... And we end up with student loans, credit card loans and all sorts of loans.

What if we could have people (strangers, the general public) invest in us ? So as soon as we get a kid, we could have an IPO and allow the public to buy some shares in the kid's future. They would give invest some money in the perceived future of the kid .. So if they make an investment, then they would be entitled to a certain fraction of the kid's earnings after he/she reaches the age of 25 .... Sort of like a long term bond.

And if the kid gets into a good school, his/her share price would increase and would generate more money - If he/she gets into a good university (like BITS, Pilani !), that would have a positive effect as well .... And they would have to report their test scores/extra curricular activities every quarter - Like a regular company !

And of course, once in a while, you might strike a bonanza - Like a kid born in a ghetto that becomes CEO of a major corporation or a great athlete !

Its like companies - They can either choose the equity or credit routes to raise capital
This is the equity option for life !

Intro

Dear Visitor
Hi and thanks for dropping by !
This blog is for me to publish my ideas to the rest of the world - Some of them are pretty cool and some of them are "out there". I plan to publish an idea everyday .....

Maybe one of these ideas will spark something in your mind !

I wanted to get the hyperlink address http://ideamani.blogspot.com/ for my blog, but that wasnt available for some reason. Ideamani is the name of a comic character in a famous tamil movie. The role was played by Goundamani. He keeps coming up with solutions to problems, that are infeasible, funny and sometimes downright absurd ....

Well, I must confess that I only have about 10 ideas that I have thought of ... Its going to be quite difficult to have a new idea everyday, but then what the hell, aim for the stars right ?!

Feel free to use these ideas in commercial ventures, if you want :-) - Provided you contribute 50% of the profits to charity.