The Real Value of Money

The real value of money is not in what you can buy using it, but what good have you done using it.

Have you created a school for the underprivileged or a world class hospital for them, did you donate to that charity you really believed in (such as Jaipur Foot) or did you really do something worthwhile & something that one can never repay you for, without expecting any repayment?

That is the real value of money.
It gives you the means to make a meaningful difference to the world. But you need to make that difference. Money by itself us utterly worthless.

Still more to be written here. Thinking.

Related Post : http://sambhav.jewelove.in/2014/05/contentment-is-key-to-happiness.html

Contentment is the Key to Happiness

Wise saying by Buddha.

This is another point that I have been thinking about for some time now. We all search for happiness, no matter how wealthy or poor we are, what we are all looking for, ultimately is happiness. Sometimes we think, the new iPhone or the galaxy tab will give us happiness, sometimes it is that huge bungalow or that apartment in that super-luxurious building, getting laid with that hot guy/girl or simply marrying the love of your life or sometimes maybe just a roof on our head or the next meal.

But over time & through some experience, I have realized, the key to happiness lies within us, at least for those of us who do not have to worry about our next meal or having a roof on our head or wearing clothes (not saying branded here, but just clothes. & if you think such conditions do not exist anymore, visit India or Africa & you will see that they do.) i.e. we have at least physiological & safety needs fulfilled from the Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

That key to happiness is, Contentment.

What is contentment?

EBay under attack! Change your password now!

Ebay

Importance of Inexpensive Education

Importance of Inexpensive Education (https://medium.com/teaching-learning/45fbfadcf9c6) first post live on Medium.

I am normally against price control regulations & in favor of free markets. But I believe that college fees for higher education have crossed into the realm of craziness. To understand the problem, we have to understand what the true purpose of education is.

True Education is meant to free the mind & the spirit.

Whereas modern higher education is doing exactly the opposite. It is binding people in financial loans which leads them to think of just one thing, MONEY. True Education must empower human beings, it must set us free. It must give us the confidence, the knowledge & the ability to learn to achieve what we want to do, no matter how herculean the task, it must teach us to accomplish one step at a time, learning all the way.

Intelligence + Character, that is the true goal of education. — Martin Luther King.

If you have a student loan of $100,000 when you graduate, it is that much more difficult to refuse a job offer & follow your heart & do what you really want to do. You might want to teach the underprivileged, work on climate change or just take a year off & explore your interests. But it is not an easy decision to make for anyone, & it becomes that much harder when you have a $100,000 loan.

For the creativity of our generations to flourish, for educated people to follow their heart, it is imperative that they not be bound in loan at their peak, right after they graduate.

DDoS attack on major websites!

MOZ, MailChimp, 2 of the biggest service providers on the internet are down due to a DDoS attack! (DDoS = Distributed Denial of Service) which basically is the equivalent of a drone attack on a website. Moz recently faced a DDoS attack last month too!

What is safe these days?

DDoS is basically targeting a host server so aggressively that it becomes extremely slow & cannot serve its legitimate users.

Update 18 May 2014 : It took a few hours, but Thankfully, the attacks have been mitigated.

Importance of inexpensive quality education

I am normally against price control regulations & in favor of free capital markets. But looking at what has happened to the US higher education system & hence the educated youth of USA, I think it is very important, especially for a country like India, to sustain high quality education at inexpensive prices.

& this I say, not just for higher education, but primary schooling & K-12 too.

The commercialisation of education is bad, it binds the students, it restricts creativity & gradually suffocates quality out of the system.

Continued at http://medium.com/teaching-learning/45fbfadcf9c6

Kejriwal gets slapped because people can.

Just yesterday I & Dad were discussing, why is Arvind Kejriwal getting slapped & not the corrupt politicians? & today I read this on Yahoo! News.

It's part of who we are. Think of it like this: You won't hesitate to bargain with the poor vegetable vendor over a kilo of tomatoes, but will meekly pay up in the fancy store where the sign over the counter says 'fixed price'. You will abuse the hell out of the rickshawallah who cuts in front of your car, but will suck it up in silence if the offender is driving a high-end vehicle. Kejriwal is the Aam Aadmi - the vegetable vendor, the rickshawallah; he is us. And we are never so mean as when we deal with our peers.

We are like this only. And maybe we will never change.

And who knows - maybe the next government will be just as bad as the previous one. But at the least, don't forget to vote - it is the one time you get to make your voice count, for whatever it is worth.