Blue Peepal

My blogging journey Source: iStock Stories need to be told. Especially the ones that go around in your head, long after you have read, experienced or moved on from the subject. They cling to you and wait for that moment of calm, of purposeful reflection, or when you are searching for purpose. I started BluePeepal in November of 2011 as a lens to see the world around me, to verbalise things I understood or, at least took an interest to explore. The name combined the beautiful clarity of blue skies and Peepal, the tree that is associated with search for meaning. How it all began? Around mid-2011, the financial press was screaming of debt crisis in Europe with Greece in particular. The world was still in the grip of post 2008 crisis anxiety attacks, the Euro block in a crisis of confidence. Rebalancing Euro was my debut article that reasoned why not put Greece in some quarantine, work with a stability plan than bloat the situation and wreck nerves all around the world. Austerity was a co...

  Image courtesy - Reddit In case you thought the title appears from some sci-fi movie or, series, it indeed is! This famous line marked the end of an episode for most of the legendary Star Trek – The Original Series (TOS). The warp factor indicated the target speed the famous starship ‘ Enterprise’ would attain; warp factor one stood for light-speed. My fascination for the series got ignited after I watched a documentary “For the Love of Spock” about Leonard Nimoy who played the epic character Spock; what followed was 60 episodes of Star Trek absorbed over 35 days. Broadcast in 1966-69, the series put the voyages of the Enterprise in an inter galactic space 300 years into the future. The last episode preceded man’s landing on the moon by six weeks, with several episodes referencing moon landing as a retrospective event. Why re-discover Star Trek – TOS? Prototyping a future To imagine a future in certain scientific details that’s not 10, 20 but 300 years away is more than just...

Source: Pixels.com Everybody loves a good formula. In times of pandemic, governments and pharma companies would give an arm and an eye, if you will, to get that vaccine formula, or the composition. A central bank can manage inflation without surprises, or an investment advisor can guarantee a return with a basket of assets. It is like getting a key to a stubborn lock. The fading effect of Formulas Back in my school, a much touted line “Put the formula, get the answer” almost became an aphorism. It was used by certain teachers, fellow classmates, seniors and of course intrusive relatives. Later, when you prepare for competitive exams where time is a bigger punishing force than complexity of questions, formulas act as the magic pill. They shorten response time to answer. Once you have seen the effectiveness of memorizing formulas, the enchantment begins. The mind starts looking for formulas that can navigate a problem’s complexity. The problem-solving function is partly rep...