Capitalism. Must buy!

The current credit crisis have got me thinking about how crazy our current financial systems are:

Here are a lay man's observations about how it works.

Why do we have to work? So that we can buy things

Why do we buy things? So that we feel happier

Why don't we stop buying things when we are happy? Because we are never happy / satisfied with what we have got and always strive to get the new "better" thing.

As a result we have to work more and more so that we have the money to buy the things we want.

This is the premise on which our economy is based.

So what happens if we can't buy things? First we will not be happy because we cannot buy things. Secondly people who make things that we normally buy won't be able to sell so they will be out of a job.

If people lose their jobs they will have less disposable income so they will not be able to buy things... and so the cycle continues.

So the whole economy will collapse if people stop buying. scary don't you think?

American National Debt Clock - A sign of the times

I was just reading a story on the the bbc website about how the US national debt clock couldn't cope with the size of the US's national debt. The electronic board had to be modified with the dollar sign ($) replaced with a (1).

The Debt Clock problem has a few similarities with the Credit Crunch problem...

1. People could see that the debt clock was reaching it's limit but they didn't do anything about it. Similarly a lot of people could see the problems leading up to the credit crunch but no one did anything about it.

2. Once the Debt clock ran out of digits the fix was a short term fix of replacing the $ with a 1.
Similarly the initial fix for problems of the credit crunch was to throw money at the problem rather than looking at the root of the problem.

Sikhi To the Max - Tips - Easy searching

I am not fluent at reading Gurmukhi so I have always found it difficult to use the Sikhi To The Max software.

Last weekend I was given an invaluable tip to make finding Shabads much easier. (Sorry if this an obvious tip but it has helped me so I hough I should pass it on)

In the search section of SikhiToTheMax click on the option 'First Letter (from start)'. This will let you type in the first letter of each word of a line.

For example: If you are looking for the Shabad with the following line in it

jis kae sir oopar thoo(n) suaamee so dhukh kaisaa paavai ||
When You stand over our heads, O Lord and Master, how can we suffer in pain?

Then all you need to do is type in the first letter of each word in the line like so

jksaqs

Press search and the above line will appear as the only search results.

This is so much easier and quicker than typing each word every time.

This tip will work for the online line and the standalone version of sikhitothemax.

The Sikh Course

The Sikh Course has been developed to tell people about the fundamentals of the Sikh religion.

Here is a quote from the website.

Discover the fundamentals of the Sikh faith in a FREE one day course. The Sikh faith is an unknown to many people and yet it is full of gems which can dramatically improve your life and the lives of those around you. To register and find out more, simply visit: sikhcourse.com

The next course is at the Chapeltown Gurdwara, Leeds, UK on 13th September 2008. It is well worth going.

Jonah Takalua

Jonah Takalua is a 13-year-old school boy in year 8 at Summer Heights High. He is of Tongan descent and lives with his father. Jonah, however acts up at school, treating his teachers with disrespect and bullying younger students. He is at serious risk of being expelled. Summer Heights High is Jonah’s third school after being expelled from two others in eighteen months for setting fire to a student’s locker and defacing a staff member’s car respectively. Jonah attends “Gumnut Cottage”, a remedial class for students at Summer Heights High who have reading difficulties and he is stated to have a reading level of an eight year old.

quote from http://www.jonahtakalua.com/

I felt compelled to write something about Jonah after watching Summer Heights High on BBC Three and Youtube.

On the face of it Summer Hieghts High is a normal, albeit a very funny, send up of various fly-on-the-wall documentaries. However throughout the series, it tackles many issues that affect urban schools and society.

Some of the issues that are covered through the Jonah Takalua character:

How Polinesian children are treated in Australian schools. (Generally how minorities are treated in schools)
How teachers are intentially or unintentially racist.
How school inititives for disruptive kids are shallow and not supervised properly.

There are probably more which I haven't picked up on.

I think the Jonah character struck a cord with me because I could see many friends and other kids from school in the character. These were kids who were very bright but did some stupid things and fell into a spiral in which they got into more and more trouble.

This is such a sad situation because the kids failed to live up to their potential and in some cases it could affect them for the rest of their lives. In alot of cases they were very talented like Jonah with his breake dancing and rapping.

On a lighter note the series has some great one liners in it and is very funny.

Thanks to Chris Lilley for this series and I hope to see more of Jonah in the future.

"Puk you, Sir"

New SikhiToTheMax

The new version of SikhiToTheMax has arrived. You can download it free from here.

For anybody who doesn't know, SikhiToTheMax is software that includes a fully searchable version of Shri Guru Granth Sahib Ji. Along with Gurmukhi, there is also English translations and Romanised script.

I was surprised to read that the original version of SikhiToTheMax was never officially released. It seems that everyone had a version of the software and every Gurdwara has it on the projector in the Darbar Hall.

Give it a go and see what you think.

ਜਉ ਤਉ ਪੇ੍ਮ ਖੇਲਣ ਕਾ ਚੇਊ (jo tho praem khaelan kaa chaao ) - Presentation

We have started to create presentations for the Gurdwara.

The first one we have created is about what you have to do to be a Sikh.

Right-click on the title of the post and choose 'save link as...' to download the presentation.