Category Archives: Life

Nithyananda.org

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Nithyanada Swamy is making news again! He has suddenly surfaced after disappearing since June 7th 2012. The latest in this bizarre “Godman-capture” episode is that Nithyanada Swamy has, in fact, sued the Chief Minister of Karnataka, D.V. Sadananda Gowda, and other top police officers for seizing his large ashram property in Bidadi (Karnataka, India).

This Bidadi property of the Swamy, also known as Bliss Foundation, is the headquarters of Nithyananda’s religious and spiritual practices. Unfortunately, the ashram’s cosmic energies have not been very favorable for the Godman in the recent past. After all, the Bidadi ashram has been the scene of alleged rapes, unethical alcohol consumption in the name of “holy water”, use of tiger skins and elephant tusks, and much more.

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It is therefore not surprising that Nithyanada Swamy is contemplating on shifting his base from Bidadi to Madurai. What is also not surprising is that every media channel is covering and chasing Nithyanada Swamy relentlessly. At such times, we just could not help paying a quick visit to his website (not ashram) and were actually surprised about the wealth and health of information on the site:

  • The organization that is headquartered in Bidadi, Karnataka, has 22 related sites. Among these sites, are sites for Nithyananda Vedic Temple of Ohio, Nithyananda Vedic temple of Seattle, Nithyananda Vedic temple Bay Area, Life Bliss Foundation Singapore, and many more. It is no wonder that Nithyananda Swamiji conducts extensive courses on wealth creation!!
  • The Bliss Foundation uses several tech-savvy media channels such as live TV, Radio, Podcast, e-Magazine, and Video Magazine channels to communicate with devotees.
  • http://www.nithyananda.org/founder page declares Nithyanada Swamy as a Scientist and Researcher. That perhaps explains why the website advertises themes such as “Boost your energy levels by 1300%”, “Change the way your Cell Thinks”, “Grow 20 years Younger in 21 Days”, and much more. Don’t believe us, go check out http://www.nithyananda.org/health.
  • Last but not the least, the footer of the home page features an advertisement which declares that Nithyanada Swamy can rid you of diabetes in just 21 days. For more, visit: http://www.nithyananda.org/

Have you visited the Bliss Foundation or attended Nithyananda Swamiji’s discourse? Do share your thoughts and experiences about the same. Who knows what other surprises await!

Points, Games, and Life Lessons!

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There is good news and bad news. The good news is I am playing tennis regularly (as regular as one can expect from an unstructured person like me). The bad news is I get whipped by my coach every day – I practice and during warm up it looks like I win one of three points while he wins two points. But, then when we play a set, and I lose 6-1 or 6-0 most of the time.

After an energetic 6-0 drubbing again today, the exercise had its desired effects. I was sweating, my heart muscles were stronger, and my mind was whirring like a Rolls Royce engine. I then started wondering about why I lose 6-0 or 6-1 fairly regularly. No, there are no nerves or lack of mental toughness – if anything, being the underdog, I consistently play as well as I play in practice and would hazard to say I am still winning one of three points! My first uninformed reaction was I should be winning one of three games so I should have a score of 6-3 more often than not.

After thinking about this for some more time and then doing some math in my head for ten odd minutes, it was clear that my odds of winning a game were less than 1/5 (closer to 1/7 based on exact calculations). So let me explain why this is the case.

I am going to simplify the game of tennis for the purposes of this probability calculation. Let us pretend that a game of tennis is won when a player has two more points than the opponent – in other words let us pretend that we have some how reached deuce and find out the probability that I win a game from deuce. Recall that Advantage to me, means I am one point ahead, and Game is when I am two points ahead. If my opponent wins the point when it is advantage to me we go back to deuce. The following video shows Andy Murray (who has promised a lot but is still nowhere near the all time great Roger Federer) winning over Michael Llodra after reaching deuce:

As an aside, I wonder the origin of the strange game scoring convention in tennis: 15, 30, 40 (was it 45 at some point and shortened to 40?). Many people colloquially shorten 14 to 5. I found some references to the history behind this strange scoring at http://www.quora.com/Tennis/…

Let us get back to our analysis and pretend we start off from deuce and then analyze the odds of my winning the game. So, I can win the game in two points after deuce (with probability 1/3 *1/3 which is equal to 1/9) or I can win the game in four points after a deuce by going back to deuce in between and then winning two points in a row. The probability that we will get to a deuce starting from a deuce in two points is:

4/9 = 1/3X2/3 (i win the first point and opponent wins the next point) + 2/3X1/3 (opponent wins the first point and I win the next point).

In theory there can be one deuce, two deuces, three deuces, or as many deuces as players can play and the probability of each successive deuce is 4/9 times the probability of the previous deuce. And as we calculated before, the probability of a win for me, starting from a deuce in just two points is 1/9.Therefore, the probability of an eventual win for me starting from a deuce is the probability I win in two points, or in four points (after one more deuce), or in six points, (after two more deuces) and so on.

This is nothing but the infinite geometric series 1/9(1 + 4/9 + (4/9)^2 + (4/9)^3 + …) which is 1/9(1/ (1-4/9)). You may recollect that the sum of an infinite geometric series 1+r + r^2+.. with a constant ratio r (r < 1) is 1/1-r. Simplifying the above sum we get 1/5 as the probability of me winning a game once we have reached deuce. It is clear that 1/5 is an upper bound on the chances that I can win a real tennis game (given that I am the inferior player) which is quite different from the 1/3 we started off for a single point. In any case, it is apparent that small differences get amplified over the long term and the gap widens.

I will not do the math, here in this post, for the real game according to normal rules, but it turns out that the probability of me winning the game turns out to be closer to 1/7 or so.

But hidden in my tennis analysis is a great life lesson. There is great value in making small incremental changes, and improving things little by little, and repeating this over a long time. The gap between people/companies who do this consistently over a long time widens. So, the key to building a great company or living a great life is to figure out a way for surviving the next day and improving on the things that matter (such as, one tennis point, one pixel on the user interface, one customer interaction or one sale, at a time)!!