Morality

“It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.”

~Thomas Paine

How so many of us think that whatever we are doing is wrong but it needs to be done, to survive and flourish. Or feel bad, sometimes guilty about our conduct and yet continue. Till some time back, I used to think that people who might not act in a noble way are better than people who might have sold their conscious altogether and don't even realise it. But as Hitchcock puts it,"such is worse". Because the former is a man with full cognizance of his actions and yet he justifies them and continues to act in a ignoble manner. And that can only imply his preference for it.

I haven't yet been in a situation which tests my morality simply because my profession doesn't demand me to tread such a path. But what if one day, I was put in some such situation...would I cave in?

Bitten!

You are biting my foot baby.

You think?

 No baby, I am just imagining this pain...

Yuck...your foot tastes horrible. I need some food. And in the meantime,get a pedicure!

And this is my cat's (who actually isn't mine at all) daughter from her second litter. All the kittens of the first litter got eaten, presumably by stray dogs.
Why the snap...well, simply because she has started biting me a lot these days. Everytime she wants something she bites my feet. But what is the amusing part (since getting bitten is obviously not amusing) ???
She cleans the area before biting it...I mean she licks my feet well before she bites it.

Choices

“I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.”

~ Anais Nin 

Interesting Rajinikanth quotes

• Rajinikanth doesn’t wear a watch. He decides what time it is.
• Rajinikanth has already been to Mars, that’s why there are no signs of life there.
• Rajinikanth killed the dead sea.

• If you spell ‘Rajanikant’ wrong on Google it doesn’t say, “Did you mean Rajinikanth?” It simply replies, “Run while you still have the chance.”
• Rajinikanth can play the violin with a piano
• Rajnikanth once wrote a cheque, the bank bounced!
• Micheal Jordan to Rajini: I can spin a ball on my finger for over two hours. Can you?
  Rajni: Rascala; how do you think the earth spins!?
• Rajinikanth once ordered a plate of idli in McDonald’s, and got it.
• If Rajnikant was born 100 years earlier, British would have fought to get independence from India.
• When Rajnikant logs on to facebook.com, facebook updates its status message!
• Rajni once killed 20 men just by saying “BANG”
• Rajinikanth knows Victoria’s secret.
• Rajinikanth can divide by zero.
• Rajinikanth has counted to infinity, twice.
• When Rajinikanth gives you the finger, he’s telling you how many seconds you have left to live.

Making Money the Easy Way !!!

This is the case of a bank called Chase (no, no…its just a name :-D ) and its mum and Dad being the Treasury and The FED.

Chase, as any other kid on the block wants to make money and so it goes to daddy (the FED) and asks for money. Now, in times such as these the Fed would do anything to make the market moving and so gives the money at near zero interest rate. Now, Chase wants to invest his money in a place where he is going to make money and be sure of it. So what does our smart chap do? He goes to the Treasury and buys bonds worth millions (almost risk free) at an interest rate which is definitely higher than what the FED charged. Consequently, Treasury returns the money with interest rate and the former is returned to the Fed leaving Chase with a bagful of money.

Now suppose that Chase represents the entire banking community…

So what is the irony? The money that The FED lends to Chase was meant for increasing capital, lending to the public but then he (the bank/banks) didn’t want to take any risk whatsoever. So basically, it didn't help the economy in any substantial way.
And what does treasury do with that money…well, sometimes it just pays The FED!!!

So where does that leave us, "the common man"? Not in a very good place I suppose…