Apple products are truly artworks in design and simplicity. That must be why people pay $600 for an Apple product  while competitors struggle to sell the same sort of product for $300 and sometimes fail. It is difficult understand how the world would be without Macintosh, iMac, iPod, MacBook Air, iPhone or iPad. One way to understand that is to go back and watch the Steve Jobs’ presentations introducing those products to the world for the first time. Then you will have a feeling of how it was then.

In 1984 when Steve Jobs pulled the Macintosh out of the bag and turned it on to show the world for the first time, people were amazed at even the first scrolling word MACINTOSH in beautiful fonts because it was then a first. Before that there was Xerox Alto with a graphical user interface which had a small device with buttons which when pushed around on the desk in turn moved a pointer on the screen. That never succeeded. But it was the Macintosh which made the mouse-driven GUI a common thing. Now we take it for granted. While Apple was doing all of these the competitors were following in their footsteps. Microsoft created Windows.

Apple introduced the iMac with bright colors and translucent curvy casings and redefined how the computers should look like. Their design evolves in each release. Apple shows how the computers will look like in the future. Unfortunately PCs are still using the same old clunky boxes.

In 1995 Steve’s Pixar created the Toy Story and that changed the movie industry. In 2001 Apple introduced the iPod and changed the way we listen to music.  Now everybody is making iPod lookalikes. Microsoft came up with the Zune. In 2007 iPhone came. It shaped how a phone should look and function. Now everybody from Nokia to Samsung is imitating the iPhone’s keyboard less slab design with touchscreen. Windows came up with the Windows Phone OS. In 2008 Steve Jobs introduced the thinnest notebook MacBook Air by taking it out of an envelope. In 2010 Apple introduced the iPad. Now everyone is imitating the tablet from Samsung to now discontinued HP. Even Microsoft is coming up with tablet friendly Windows 8.

So if not for Steve Jobs the world would have been a much dull and mundane world. Think about the text-based interfaces before Macintosh,  computers before iMac, portable music players before iPod, smart phones before iPhone, tablet PCs before iPad. Steve Jobs thought different and changed the world.

Fact #1: Laos is the most bombed country per capita in the history of the world. During the vietnam war, we [USA] dropped 2.1 BILLION TONS of bombs on laos, even though we weren’t even at war with them.  That’s a ridiculously large number of bombs… it works out to a plane full of bombs dropped every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for 8 years.

Fact #2: There are about 200 “accidents” every year in Laos involving unexploded ordnance.  Basically, when you drop 4 trillion pounds of bombs, they don’t necessarily all blow up when the hit the ground.  Some sit around and rust, and never go off.  Others sit around until somebody wanders by and bumps them, and then they decide to go off and blow off a limb or two (actually, with the state of medicine in Laos, you’d be lucky if that’s all you lost).  Sorry about that, I know the war’s been over for over thirty years (and that we were never actually even at war with you, for that matter), but yeah, your leg just got blown off by an american bomb.  I guess it’s just one of those fun little things about war that no one ever really talks about….

The following video is from the film The Great Dictator by Charlie Chaplin. Great speech.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Read the story at The Globe and Mail here

Breakthrough conversion of sunlight and waste carbon dioxide (CO2) directly into liquid hydrocarbons that are fungible with conventional diesel fuel.

This landmark achievement in industrial bioprocessing clears the path for large-scale renewable fuel production, addressing the cost, resource constraints and energy-intensive steps associated with biomass growth, harvesting, extraction and refining to reach an end product. The entire process produces more net energy than it consumes and yields sulfur-free, ultra-clean diesel.

The integrated platform will enable productivities above any other closed-system approach, with a commercial target of 15,000 gallons of diesel per acre annually. Joule’s pilot operations are currently underway, with commercial production targeted for 2012.

[From the articles in http://www.jouleunlimited.com/]

This will change the world as we know it.

As I watched the proceedings, my attention was immediately diverted by the outstretched hand of a Customs officer at the counter, who casually took a one hundred rupee note from a clearing agent, before attending to his Customs Declaration. My eyes lit up. I was not too sure whether my eyes were playing tricks on me. As I coolly watched the proceedings at the counter, every single clearing agent was oiling the palm of the Customs officer with a hundred rupee note, which was carefully put away in the officer’s drawer before he paid any attention to the job at hand. I found it hard to believe that such practices were the norm at the Customs. The clearing agents in the queue had fistfuls of 100 rupee notes.

I happened to overhear a telephone conversation in where a high ranking Customs official was making arrangements with a friend to hire a van to transport a Chinese vase, which he had taken as a sample. He went on to explain to his friend, that usually he managed to put all these samples in his car, but the vase was unfortunately too large. Clearing agents told me that a sample, once given to the Customs can never be retrieved, unless an importer demands that it be given back, which then means that the clearing agent has to once again allow money to do the talking.

At the final point of departure, each container is halted for approximately eight minutes, at which point Customs verify the delivery document for the umpteenth time, as to whether the container is carrying the correct consignment. Given the impracticality and the absurdity of the endless questioning, the clearing agent has to bribe the officer, and the eight minutes is spent on negotiating the amount the officer should receive.

A rough estimate done by an industrialist states that Sri Lanka Customs earns Rs.900,000 in total overtime, and “speed money” amounts to another Rs 1,100,000 a day alone, which roughly amounts to five billion rupees a year. Sri Lanka is a nation that is heavily dependent on imports, be it food and clothing or industrial raw materials. This means that every single citizen in this country is paying a price for corruption!

[http://sundaytimes.lk/021222/ft/srilanka.html]

At the gates of hell there is a red channel specially for Sri Lanka Customs officers to walk in straight to eternal damnation.

Now we are prone to having blind attachments, aren’t we? For example, say you’re locked up in a foul, stinking prison cell and the Buddha comes and says, ‘Here’s the key. All you have to do is take it and put it in the hole there underneath the door handle, turn it to the right, turn the handle, open the door, walk out, and you’re free.’… But you might be so used to being locked up in prison that you didn’t quite understand the directions and you say, ‘Oh, the Lord has given me this key’ – and you hang it on the wall and pray to it every day. It might make your stay in prison a little more happy; you might be able to endure all the hardships and the stench of your foul-smelling cell a little better, but you’re still in the cell because you haven’t understood that it wasn’t the key in itself that was going to save you. Due to lack of intelligence and understanding, you just grasped the key blindly. That’s what happens in all religion: we just grasp the key, to worship it, pray to it … but we don’t actually learn to use it.

So then the next time the Buddha comes and says, ‘Here’s the key’, you might be disillusioned and say, ‘I don’t believe any of this. I’ve been praying for years to that key and not a thing has happened! That Buddha is a liar!’ And you take the key and throw it out of the window. That’s the other extreme, isn’t it? But you’re still in the prison cell – so that hasn’t solved the problem either.

Anyway, a few years later the Buddha comes again and says, ‘Here’s the key,’ and this time you’re a little more wise and you recognise the possibility of using it effectively, so you listen a little more closely, do the right thing and get out.

– Cittaviveka, Teachings from the Silent Mind, Ajahn Sumedho

I have read this book some time back. You can read the book in here. You can find other publications in here.