Monday 11 November 2013

Harvard Study: What Men (and Women) Need To Live A Happy Life?


Some of the highlights from the 75 years long study conducted by Harvard:
  1. alcohol is by far the greatest disruptor of health and happiness, In fact, alcoholism is the single strongest cause of divorce
  2. the people who do well in old age did not necessarily do so well in midlife, and vice versa
  3. memories of a happy childhood are a lifelong source of strength. 
  4. Marriages bring much more contentment after age 70, 
  5. physical aging after 80 is determined less by heredity than by habits formed prior to age 50. 
  6. there was no noticeable difference in maximum income earned by men with IQs in the 110-115 range vs. men with IQs above 150.
  7. the powerful correlation between the warmth of your relationships and your health and happiness in your later years. And also people having warm relationship on an average earns more than those with not so warm relationships
  8. The quality of relationship a child has with mother and father impacts whole of his life.

Above points are excerpts from the article below:
http://www.feelguide.com/2013/04/29/75-years-in-th-making-harvard-just-released-its-epic-study-on-what-men-require-to-live-a-happy-life/

Sunday 24 March 2013

Insurance buying in India

Based on the life-insurance buying habits of individuals, we can categorize most Indians in two categories: those who buy insurance and those who don't, barring a very few who do not fall in any categories, more on them later.
Those who buy insurance buy all types of insurance products like ULIPs, moneyback, or endowment except the term insurance. And none of these products are really meant to insure the buyer but designed to help the agent who sells the product earn huge commission or designed to accumulate lot of cash for the insurance companies. None of these products insures anyone sufficiently still they sell because the poor buyer knows nothing about insurance.
Those who don't buy any insurance are anyway uninsured so nothing to talk about here.
Then there is a very tiny number of people, whom we can call enlightened, who buy term insurance which really should be bought for the real purpose. But among them also many buys insufficient amount, many don't give correct info to insurance company about themself so claims are rejected when done be family.
Such is the frightening state of insurance in India.

Saturday 23 March 2013

Democracy: A new modern definintion

As languages develop the meaning of words change over time, that's a well known fact. Normally it's a good sign and shows how the language is evolving. Word "nice" used to mean stupid in 13th century but now it means good. But this could be very very dangerous as well. As you would see in case of word "democracy". Real meaning of this word as per language can be expressed well by Lincoln's words as  "government of the people, by the people, for the people." This was very well until few years but not any more.
Now the definition of the word democracy has become "government of the politicians, by the media, for the politicians and lobbyists." The word people which appeared thrice in original definition has now completely disappeared from the modern definition. The reason being that the government is no more for people now.
Today govts world over are run by politicians with a view to not to help citizens to solve their issue or make their life better but to win next election. Entire media is now in few influential hands who cut deals with politicians to present only that news which is favourable to ruling class and suppress or hide anything else. everywhere media has become very biased towards political class these past few years that it never present a true picture to the general public.
Similarly the main aim of the elected ruling class is to work for them self and for their funding friends who provide funds during elections. Most of the laws are now written by lobbying firms who who work behind the scene and write rules which favours industries and not the people. Politicians hesitate taking those decisions which are obviously favourable as such rules will be against the industry.
So we should wait until Oxford release  new version of their dictionary with new definition of word "dictionary". Welcome to information age.



Remembering Einstein during current recession

Insanity: doing same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That's how insanity was defined by Einstein around a century ago.
All the politicians and central bank's bosses all around the developed world should then be labelled as "INSANE" as per the above definition as they have been trying same remedy (quantitative easing, saving banks and supporting artificially housing market from crashing ) for over last 5 years in order to revive the economies but have been unsuccessful. In spite of continuous failure so long they are not ready to try new remedy (which is just the opposite).
I wonder what is going to happen to our future if insanes are ruling us?

Tuesday 19 March 2013

Cyprus: A nerve wrecking tool in hands of fools oops...politicians

For over past 5 years, democratically elected popular(?) governments in the western world are devising ways in which they can rob the citizens of their countries in broad daylights. and luckily for them (govt.), they have been successful so far as the citizens are too busy in making both ends meet and in daily drudgery of life   that they have not yet noticed all that is being done to them and their future.
But the day light robbery went all the way to shocking level when Cypriot politicians agreed to simply steal simply 10% of saving of pensioners, poor earners who saves little by little for their and their kids' future, to do what? not to build some infrastructure in Cyprus, or to help poor or to fund some future science project. But simply to save their masters/partners-in-(white) crime, the bankers who had been receiving their bonus until the last quarter. 
Such nakedness is so common now across the west and  it's becoming standard that politicians in rest of world may be tempted to follow them. 
when are we going to see justice when actual guilty is blamed but not saved by 1000 covers?

Monday 28 January 2013

Healthy Mind: Importance of Reading

Most of the adults almost always say that, since they left college they have not read any book other than what their job requires them to read. On  a daily basis they do read something though, thanks to the Internet. But that is general news, like political, sports, entertainment or crime. Hardly anyone even checks economic news section.
I wonder how their minds are going to remain healthy enough in the long run of life. One main advantage of basic education what we have is that it forces children to read at least during their student life and that trains the mind muscles and so the mind grows healthy. Growth of mind would stops as soon as you stop feeding information into it.
Reading is as important to health as physical exercise to the body. But as soon as we complete the education and get into job we stop reading and that is the end of the growth of mind. To be able to solve life's problem and take decision regarding life's complex issues, our mind needs to be healthy and it needs to have huge information base for it to be able to take correct decisions at various stages in life. So one needs to read a wide variety of subjects. 

Sunday 13 January 2013

Goal Of my Life

Goal for my life is not a milestone to achieve, but a journey to live and enjoy. 

Any day two years from now or 10 years from now, if my wife is still saying that she can not live without me and she still feels the same love for me as two love struck youngsters feel for each other, then that’s achievement of goal for my life. 

I have two sons, and when they are teenagers or adult and if they still treat me like one of their closest friend and we have mutual respect coming deeply from heart, they are fine human beings and ready to take the challenge of their life with ease than I would say I am successful and achieved goal of my life. 

Because to achieve all this, you have to have self-respect, great health, good enough bank balance, a few great friends, else balance in life would not be there. With all this only goals of life could be achieved. That means you would have had a successful career also, because achieving all that is not possible if your job is now going well. 

So ultimately what I want in life is a balanced life where there is balance in every aspect of my life, be it career, my family, parenting, my personal finances, friends and family, community, how well I provide education to my sons etc. I want to be able to enjoy the journey better than desire to be happy after having arrived at my destination. It's journey that's important not the destination.