Is there a better way to stop drunk driving?

About 1.2m people die of accidents related to drunk driving each year around the world. This means 1.2m families and an average of 4 per family would mean about 5m people every year face the stress related to drunk driving.

Stringent rules. Incessant checks. Extra policemen. Increased weekend patrol. Stupid adverts, done merely for agency award books. All of it only increases the cost without reducing the incidences of such tragic happenings.

Recently came across a tweet by a footballer which I thought was very interesting. Generally footballers have nothing interesting to say despite their herds of followers but this one was an exception. A very interesting thought for all car manufacturers to think about.

A car refusing to move when it senses alcohol inside the vehicle.

Stay curious!

Writers code of quality. Absolutely awesome.

In the interest of writing, I have sat through various sessions of advice / lessons in how to write. Most of them are long. Boring. And very contradicting. Curiosity and appetite for good content takes you places and it got me to this video about Mark Twain’s essence of writing.

Simple, very relevant and applies to the present day world where there is quite a lot of content and democracy in expression.

Stay curious!

Renewing memories of Martin Luther King & Robert Kennedy

You would go through customs after collecting your baggage, in vast majority of airports. What turns out to be a routine check, invariably its for the naturally tanned skinned ones. I am one of them and I can see this of experience. As recently, last night in the JFK Airport. Over the last 10 years, I have travelled enough. So, what happened to me wasn’t an isolation or an exception.

It’s an incident that I am getting quite used to. Not that I want to but I am beginning to expect at almost all airports around the world. Changi (Singapore), De Gaulle (Paris), HKIA (HK) to name a few. And I see people like me standing in queue to be checked while people of other hues walk by. So I asked the inspector if their instincts just point to one kind of people. He started defending his position which I fully expected to.

I am not sure if they act under instructions or its an instinct. Either way, it is the worst form of marginalization I have come across.

I was on a taxi making my way to the hotel and thinking they named the airport after someone who was instrumental in Civil Rights Movement and here I am, almost 45 years after that, still feeling the brunt of idiocy and ignorance of a few people controlling stuff.

I remembered to check in on a few videos and tapes post Martin Luther King’s death and I found this incredible speech by Robert ‘Bobby’ Kennedy in Indianapolis right  after MLK’s death. A speech that should transcend Colours. Creed. Communities. Here’s a reminder again.

Share this in your own space if you share my view.

Stay curious!

BREVITY. More important than ever.

In a ever-so-liberated-and-democratic media world where everyone can become a thought leader or a thought contributor, it is important to be succinct.

To quote Winston Churchill,  ’All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope’

Francis Ford Coppola made some memorable films summed up his films in a word. In “The Godfather,” it was succession. In “The Conversation,” it was privacy. In “Apocalypse,” it was morality.

It is important to keep it simple, if possible, in one word to make a strong point.

Perhaps one word tweets.

END.

Stay curious!

More the artillery, less the fight

In my opinion, Stanley Kubrick is the best film director there’s ever to have made movies. I am a huge fan of all of his work except may be his last film. I do have this insane streak in collecting everything about someone I like very much. I was curious to see Stanley’s interviews as I have read about his eccentric nature and cynicism with which he answers. The thing about amazing thinkers are that their point of view about anything is thought provoking and they rarely say stupid things or things that makes any sense.

Stanley’s point of view about nuclear disarmament is quite fascinating.

…. there may be no sound way to eliminate the threat of self-extinction without changing human nature; even if you managed to get every country disarmed down to the bow and arrow, you would still be unable to lobotomize either the knowledge of how to build nuclear warheads or the perversity that allows us to rationalize their use.

Given these two categorical imperatives in a disarmed world, the first country to amass even a few weapons would have a great incentive to use them quickly.

So an argument might be able to made that there is a greater chance for some use of nuclear weapons in a totally disarmed world with less chance of global extinction; while in a world armed to the teeth you have less chance for some use but a great chance of extinction if they are used……

A fascinating thought that holds true to quiet a few things: Knowledge. Ability. Power. Money.

Stay curious!