Why disaster means different things to different economic segments

When fire strikes a premium residential apartment there are embedded fire fighting system in place, disaster management plan in place, near real time fire fighting response, insurance in place for compensation, legal framework to identify concerned accountable, Committee established to improvise future statutory regulations, life-savings to help get back households to second lease of life at the earliest.

When fire engulfs a squatter settlement or slum there is no insurance company to pay compensation, no architect to hold accountable, no firefighting bylaws to look for discrepancy, first fire fighting response is rarely able to navigate to fire incident spot, no post incident assessment wrt to fire regulations as who cares for statutory needs of squatter settlements, there is no handy financial reserve with households to get back on their feet sooner.

Though loss of any kind due to any disaster is unfortunate irrespective of economic strata, and there are layers of institutional, financial and community support available in such situations for both of them, still those at the lowest economic strata of society are clearly in much disadvantageous situation.

Citing illegality of squatter settlements and slums across the world the statutory and life saving needs of such habitats are completely ignored since decades; how ironical it is that while in one part of city the building plans are not approved by competent agency if they are not compliant to fire code and building bylaws and in other part of same city i.e. in squatter settlements and slums there is no policy in place or regulatory thinking neither any mechanism or physical measures to safeguard lives from fire for instance. Will they let inhabitants of squatter settlements and slums stay vulnerable to threats and disasters of all kind just as it seems overwhelming to deal with or whether something can be done, until everyone is rehabilitated, until there are no more squatters and slums in a city.

Author: Anoop Jha

 Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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www.linkedin.com/in/anoopjha

#urbanplanning #city #townplanning #squattersettlement #poor #propoor #fire #disaster #disastermanagement #firefighting #policy #governance #economy #slum #architecture #bylaws

Life-cycle gap in architectural services being offered!

A typical house requires to go through not just periodic renovation but also series of remodeling across it's life cycle as a function of household's life events, lifestyle changes and life adjustment requirements. Home remodeling prompted by changes including but not limited to arrival of kids in life, children going to school, children getting married, parents getting old, realisation of yourself getting old and so on. These changes though obvious and imperative but neither being acknowledged nor getting addressed by architects and one time architectural services being offered, while home owners are left on their own to do the required readjustments to house, think of space planning and redefining space usage.

It's worthwhile that architecture fraternity give a serious thought to this challenge and gap that exists in rendering architectural services. Whether one time architectural service being offered can factor in all above requirements or whether architects can handhold their clients for lifetime or something else.

Author: Anoop Jha

 Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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www.linkedin.com/in/anoopjha

#Architect #architecture #design #building #realestate #urbandesign #urbanplanning #townplanning #city #smartcity #future #profession #corporate #business

 

Skewed and limited perception of project essentials, budget, timeline and professional fees in developing countries!

The notion of urban development and architecture in a developing country is more or less, civic amenities, public facilities, parks, road, paving, brick and mortar etc. and 3D simulation to either publicise welfare achievements or to lure investors. We see in both public and private domain one such project after another lined up, debated, recognised, argued, praised, awarded or dropped and trashed.

While most of such projects get executed anyways even in developing countries and cities, but most of these projects certainly, sometimes purposefully miss one or several or most of following fundamental elements of urban planning and architectural practice which are part and parcel to developed country's usual planning and design practice, including Heat island effect analysis, Shadow analysis, Wind tunnel test, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation, shading analysis, traffic noise simulation, sustainable city/ neighborhood development practice, Low Impact Development (LID) planning, waste heat recovery, building heat load simulation, green building design, solar passive design, and many more.

It's difficult to understand the root cause of same, whether it is lack of knowledge and awareness at city administration and client level or lack of capital or unavailability of technology or lack of technology know how or inertia of decades of mediocre planning or simply ignorance or reluctance to growth. Whatever be the reason it's high time that city administrations, planning professionals and architects increasingly adopt to good essential planning and design practices, advise clients to consider these and projects must allocate additional budget to integrate these while consultants, consulting firms and advisory firms must be paid judiciously to integrate and adopt to above mentioned necessary measures. Accordingly project timelines should also be increased to make room for adopting such good practices.

Author: Anoop Jha

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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www.linkedin.com/in/anoopjha

#urbanplanning #architecture #sustainability #simulation #smartcity #design #townplanning #development #projects #technology #consulting #municipal

Historic shift in city planning approach!

When cities first started getting planned, it was more of a mechanical, analog and hardware approach, i.e. provision of basic minimum urban palpable elements driven by understanding of functional, social and cultural requirements of specific time period in history, configured in either abstract to subtle to articulate manner. City planning outward appeal, urban fabric and urban growth pattern kept getting readjusted as per need of changing time including industrialization, high speed mobility, migration, environmental awareness etc. but the approach of urban planning more or less remained same as always in spite of all the buzz, talk and interpretation by intelligentsia labeling same as new age of urban planning.

Historically only two major, distinct and realistic but mostly invisible shift in planning approach were felt in true sense; one when country administration changed from monarchy to democracy in multiple parts of world and the other when city planning approach shifted from analog to digital - where former shift in approach prompted a whole new set of governance redefining context, perception and necessity of urban planning while impact of later approach is yet to realise it's full potential.

Author: Anoop Jha

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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www.linkedin.com/in/anoopjha

#urbanplanning #townplanning #smartcity #urbandesign #iot #ict #digitaltwin #digital #urban #cityplanning #publictransport

Solving the Age-old Dilemma!

World has to come to terms with the fact that the panacea to collective misery of missed car pool, missed bus, missed train, missed flight, missed attendance, missed opportunity, missed deadlines and lingering sense of alienation on a remote ground is to always stay connected (on demand) to your collective personal, professional and support ecosystem made of family, friends, peers, financial/medical/ legal/ spiritual advisor, mentor, payment gateway, connected home and so on, through plethora of choices and virtual communication modes like text, audio, video, augmented reality, holographic twin and soon through immersive metaverse.

While there is no substitute to being somewhere in person, still its quite an archaic mindset and primitive notion in this unparalleled technological age, realm and time of history, that if someone is unable be at a designated place in any part of world at a scheduled time for any reason all their opportunities should be systematically ceased and declare them offenders. Instead if world moves to an always connected mode in times to come it opens up a world of unimaginable possibilities!

Author: Anoop Jha

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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www.linkedin.com/in/anoopjha

#iot #tech #technology #urbanplanning #city #town #smartcity #connectedhomes #ar #vr #metaverse #transport #transportplanning #mobility #history #future #alterego #hologram

Democratizing the process of urban planning - crowdsourcing of ideas!

"Too many Cooks spoil the Soup" May not be the right connotation when it comes to urban planning, we require as many minds and diversified experiences as possible to do the justice to a city which is either yet to be planned or being redeveloped. Community participation and early brainstorming is the key to a successful city planning, like secret ingredient of an exceptional recipe!

In terms of community participation the focus should be scale, hetroginity and intensity of citizen engagement in planning process. In terms of early brainstorming, all concerned citizens - "considering every citizens is a stakeholder and a client" - can be given opportunity to participate in urban planning process, that too very early when the plan is still in nebulous state, not only after draft masterplan is ready. Also, urban planning process should either come out of planning studio amidst community or planning studio should open it's door to welcome community and individual user level ideas.

For example, thinking of people who could not contribute or has limited say in urban planning process till date except some advanced countries, but they do have specific expectations from their city like all the workforce who are involved in navigation (drivers), delivery (courier and food delivery guys) they can contribute in re-strategising ease of navigation and legibility of city; those in healthcare (doctors, first responders) they can help define/ redefine emergency response routes and ease of healthcare access in terms of landuse structuring and PSP facility locations; those in safety and security (police, traffic police) can help in vulnerability and black spot mapping of city and forming corresponding spatial security and surveillance requirements; those in F&B industry (mall owners, retail, restaurant owner, cook, food vendors) can help redefine new age of intensive urban cultivation, shortening farm-to-plate food supply chain, and propose innovative ways of urban organic agriculture for self-reliance and food security; those in science (mathematicians) can help streamline city traffic by running complex mathematical models and deep algorithms; those in creative fields ( artists, designers) can help reboot, reactivate and conserve cultural and artistic heritage of a brownfield city or can lay the foundation of a new vibrant culture for a greenfield city, and so on; all above inputs to be curtated by urban planning professionals.

Additionally, there is need to make use of unfathomable descrete or curated data that already historically exists around specific city and embodiment of empirical data that exists around the world wrt city planning affair in general.

Author: Anoop Jha

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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www.linkedin.com/in/anoopjha

#urban #urbanplanning #city #townplanning #syatemthinking #utopia #smartcity #governance #idea #crowdsourcing #architecture #streets #publictransport #bicycle #transportplanning #sustainability #foodsecurity

 

A-B-C of Design Project Management!

[Keywords - Urban Planning, Architecture, Engineering Design, Infrastructure Planning]

[A] - Aspiration gives the purpose to a project, do not let it diminish over time.
[B] - Budget is the governing factor, do not consider it as limitation; you have to innovate to incorporate many things, still fitting it into budget
[C] - Clients speak volumes, but they can be good listener as well. Clients show flexibility if advised for betterment of project.
[D] - Design is the core success factor. Spend more time to design it right in first go, allocate substantial brainstorming time into workplan of design project.
[E] - Estimation of all kinds helps avoid surprises
[F] - Follow up on crucial matters
[G] - Gather the best team who are animated with same spirit
[H] - Highlight exclusions and dependencies early
[ I ] - Identify project risk and mitigation measures
[J] - Judgement has a key role to play. Analysis gives you insight but tough and final decisions are based on judgement.
[K] - knowledge has no substitute, but no amount of knowledge is enough, every design project is a learning experience
[L] - Leverage organisational experience, possibly your firm was hired for the job due to it's experience only
[M] - Monitoring is essential for project, monitor and record every aspect
[N] - Negotiations are the integral part of process
[O] - Organised effort is required to run a design project with multidisciplinary team, budget and time constraints
[P] - Performance of work and resources must be measured throughout project life cycle
[Q] - Quality is paramount in terms of design, communication and output
[R] - Resources has to be optimised and is often the most crucial, challenging and thrilling part of the project management
[S] - Stakeholder's need to be met and know that there can be more stakeholders than the obvious
[T] - Technology contributes to success; best is class tech, software and tools are empowering
[U] - Uncertainties has to be factored in, know that you can't foresee everything on day one, exceptional circumstances arises and need to be dealt with
[V] - Vision and credo is the guiding force, stick to same
[W] - Work Plan is to be honoured, it's not as easy as it sounds but there are ways to adhere to same like creating a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), innovation, resourcefulness, project tracking etc.
[X] - X-REF all design work, adopt a system of
cross-referencing, benchmarking and standardization
[Y] - Yearning for excellence is what differentiates you from others
[Z] - Zero Waste Design to be encouraged. It's no more a luxury but necessity in today's world.

Author: Anoop Jha

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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www.linkedin.com/in/anoopjha

#projectmanagement #workplan #Consultancy #designprojectmanagement #design #infrastructure #engineering #consultingengineering #construction #qualitymap #p6 #budget #urbanplanning #projectmanager #multidisciplinary #teamwork

  

Predicting future Art Style based on analysis of historic shift and trend in art world!.

[World and India]

WORLD FINE ART -
Dominant Theme:-[Expression]
Driving Force:-(Urge to create and capture, inner fulfilment, fame)
Dimension:-(All thing visual and perceptual, any workable media, any expressive mode, any style)
Influenced:-(Reflected contemporary thoughts, mimicking social situation, inner battle, contagious)
Past:-{Revolutionary in a specific sphere, predictable, glorified, threatened twice firstly by photography and secondly by digital media, Plagiarized}
Future:-<Digital, NFT, immersive>

WORLD ART STYLE SHIFT -
Dominant Theme:-[Communicate Message]
Driving Force:-(Drawing Inspiration from contemporary subjects, Banality of existing styles, thrill of presenting something new, search of unknown, advancement in art media tech)
Dimension:-(Cross continental, achieving Immortalisation through digitization)
Influenced:-(Messages continued to be of relevance in spite of changing times, giving historic insight of time)
Past:-{Expression became more important that medium, art style boundaries merged}
Future:-<New tech mediums and dimensions will provide unparalleled way of expressions and radical shift in style>

INDIAN FINE ART-
Dominant Theme:-[Building unified art expression considering rich history and in spite of cultural diversity]
Driving Force:-(Projecting Image of India)
Dimention:-(Digging deeper into traditional roots, ruling kingdoms, mythology, ritual, spirituality and looking inward to explore new creative freedom still in oriental conservatism)
Influenced:-(Inseparable from history, shaped culture, represented range of contradiction from glorious history to oppression to taste of freedom to hopeful future)
Past:-{Essentially oriental and in continued search of identity while absorbing parallel world art influences}
Future:-<Found its niche, selected individuals tasted commercial success, new world of opportunity on horizon, yet to find stable ground in world art and require correct valuation>

INDIAN ART STYLE SHIFT -
Dominant Theme:-[Characterized by constant battle of tradition and freedom]
Driving Force:-(confidence of tradition, Taste of commercial success, tribe of youth with new age values)
Dimension:-(Permeated to all possible spatial dimensions, virtual world)
Influenced:-(Rebooted art and craft tradition, brought art into mainstream)
Past:-{Taste of commercial success validated contemporary take on oriental, tribe of experimentative youth artists reinforced rich vernacular expression, ease and real time access to world art, literature and events constantly shaped the art style to match with world's stylistic expectations}
Future:-<Poised to achieve a unified and mature signature expression representative of Indian cultural tradition, values, and motifs, future technology is bound to reshape yet to mature Indian art style, expression & Market>

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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Author: Anoop Jha

www.linkedin.com/in/anoopjha   

#art #Architecture #Urbanplanning

Missing piece of energy puzzle!

Declaring a city or region as power surplus without meeting the actual thermal comfort needs of inhabitants may not be a correct estimate especially if the city or territory is experiencing distinct cycle of seasonal variations from severe cold to extreme heat and specially if per capita income in the region is low and especially if any country spans over multiple temperature zones from tropical to temperate. May be part of country's subregion needs ventilated homes and other part needs completely insulated homes, or may be the case that for part of the season residential homes require natural ventilation while in summer and winter central heating or cooling is required with completely insulated homes.

Just because through decades 24X7 residential thermal comfort was never considered a necessity in specific region, just because residents can't afford the luxury of centralised heating/ cooling infrastructure system of their home and associated energy bills, just because part of population do not have access to hot water for bath and kitchen in chilling winter and many not having access to cold drinking water in summer, just because majority of architects are not used to or trained for designing completely insulated residential housing or individual homes as required for central heating/ cooling it may be unfair to assume that they deserve to continue to live like this, shivering and sweating in uncomfort of their home.

It's logical point to ponder, that if a person requires & feels comfortable year-round in the centrally air-conditioned mall, office, public transport and private car while in same city in same season rather throughout the year, why he or she should not deserve similar thermal comfort in their home as well, in same city, in same season, rather throughout the year. Why some countries and cities falling in same temperature zone across the world have access to thermal comfort of central heating and cooling and continuous hot water tap but majority of population in other cities in same temperature zone are destined to live in thermal discomfort in the name of architectural tradition and sometimes inconsiderate and outdated bylaws. Certainly one or more or all of the above resons discussed above are accountable.

Urban planners, architects, environmentalists, economist & administrators need to take cognizance of this fact & situation for future habitation planning, design & during policy revisions.

Random exemplary questions are there like, who is accountable & what is the solution for mounting energy losses in cities & regions where window AC or split AC is being widely used for residential units, where ~100% residences having ~0% consideration for thermal insulation requirements. Is it that energy demand estimation and projection for cities and countries and world is rather wrong if we factor in justified need of thermal comfort of all citizens.

Author: Anoop Jha

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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www.linkedin.com/in/anoopjha   

#climatechange #urbanplanning #architecture

How to pinpoint prospective business!

[ #consultancy #city #state #projects ]

If an individual or organization cares to habitually screen and analyse following data in public domain they can easily foresee prospective projects which are yet to surface, they can either float suo moto proposal or in other case they are already half way through with proposal before project surfaces.

List of Data to be screened for prospective business in urban domain-

-Press release of ULBs, state, center and various departments

-Articles of local, regional and national newspapers (including local language and multilingual) and online news

-State vision plans and perspective plans

-Blogs and discussion forums, 

-Public speech and interview transcripts of PM, CM, Ministers, MLAs, Mayors, and Municipal Commissioners, councillors 

-Newsletters

-District Development Plans

-Vision document extracts related to phase 2, 3, n

-Strength and gaps of any state and city (state dashboard, city observatory) 

-Proposed basket of PPP projects under various fesibility reports

-Research papers of academicians and field experts

-Autopsy of failed project proposals and tenders which didn't kick off

-MoUs and EOIs of Business summits 

-Reports of chamber of commerce, thinktanks, financial and banking institution,

-Expansion plans of large national level companies and MNCs

-Manifesto etc.

BD efforts are to be properly backed by R&D and forecast. 

Authour: Anoop Jha

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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Key words:
#business #businessdevelopment #tender #tendering #bid #bidding #bidprocessmanagement #company #organisation #sales 

Prediction model for future events

When one says next step can easily be predicted in a series of events one easy empirical demonstration is that you can safely predict with 99% accuracy that a man will look for drinking water after walking a mile in blazing sun, further next step can be predicted based on context whether he will walk to fridge or dig a well for water. A temporal behavioral data can further add layers of accuracy. Similarly if you add the dimension of pervasive surveillance and targeted machine learning chances are that someone else knows better than an individual about  what exactly he is going to do, behave and react across a day or month. And wait if you will add another dimension of genome and astrology then possibly you can even predict about their lifetime. So goes the old saying your life is an open book, it actually is and its not on your sheer will, but on other's observation and analytical power.  

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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Thoughts on Complete Street Design

A lush green street, a canopy street, aesthetic avenue, rich boulevard and a street equipped to handle and harvest storm water in every part of city has been a distant dream here. Is it too difficult a dream to achieve. There are few reasons for same. A preconceived RoW template mindset which leaves very little earth or scope within RoW for landscape Architects to play with, transport modeling software only being limited to carriageway design and not the complete RoW, lack of synergy between approach of transport planning, storm water management, landscape architecture and street lighting leading to complete absence of collective vision. It cannot be solved professionally as by that time each one is rigid and wise enough to exclude most of above tasks from their respective scope of work.  Unless a transport planner will care for trees or a landscape architect will care to understand what goes into engineering of road or a water expert will have affinity and knowledge of ecology until then we won't get to experience a complete street. It has to start with education not from the desk of multi disciplinary team sitting in office. Above mentioned subjects to be made compulsory in each others curriculum for few semesters not just to teach them the technicalities but to help them sensitize about each others domain, to gain/give respect to each other and garner natural affinity about others subject so that end user could experience a complete street.

Author: Anoop Jha

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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With right amount of data and intention future can be staged and predicted with lot of accuracy.

Staging a physical barrier for instance which trigger the channelised behavior and action of subject which is somewhat  predictable in a sense considering 50:50 scenario, i.e. what will certainly not happen(85% to 99% accuracy) Vs what may happen (35% to 90% accuracy), which means that you can predict near term future with say 70% accuracy and longer term future with say 55% accuracy, its not simply unpredictable like probabilistic theory nor just a play of permutations combinations, but as introduced earlier its staged with more control over future scenario. You do not need a rat to experiment with this, human is perfect subject for this experiment with zero harmful side effects. Or rather take control of your own future.

One also feels that based on the analysis of individual's distributed long term and live information, routine analysis, habit tracking and based on behavioral analysis any individual's actual real time micro environment can be recreated at a remote location with 80+ % accuracy.

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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#future #AI #theory #science #technology #data #futuretech #health #psychology #information #world

Technology to increasingly make world a level play field.

Few years ago the best pizza delivery guys were those who had addresses on their fingertips, likewise the best drivers were those who had every city street memorised. Come today and that difference in skillset of various pizza delivery guy and different drivers is gone. Everyone of them is more or less equally empowered and informed about neighborhood street and addresses thanks to map based realtime tracking and navigation. No one considered how technology is going to change the rules of game increasingly making this world a level play field for all one segment at a time.

Author: Anoop Jha

There can't be scarcity of fund for social welfare ever as there are unexplored potential means!

It might seem unethical, disruptive and amusing at the same time but if ten odd seconds of non-invasive  commercial slideshow break or selling commercial right of part of slide, during acedemic presentations across universities and colleges could generate fund for education or healthcare in remote corners of world its an idea worth considering, academic community with students as potential customer base shall cooperate wholeheartedly one feels.

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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Little act of kindness are hard to find but always extraordinary!

In one brief journey back home, unexpected kindness you witness scattered every other passing mile on one shining day. Offered unasked to unknown by unknown, stark in a moment like a sudden heavenly spark, effervescent and gone in another moment, uncommunicated warmth travels through frozen time, blessed are not just those involved but also the one who witnessed. 

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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Must watch Google Trend - India online search trend in last 4 crucial hours of demonetisation!

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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Interest over time ......while US election results are also awaited!!

In 2095 when everyone in this world will be prosperous enough they will realise money wasn't the cure mankind was looking for.

Please visit my web page "Urban Tenets" at https://urbantenets.nl/

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So whats this pursuit today for?

We have vision and plans for cities, organisations and society for another 30, 50 and 60 odd years and we are bullish and content about that, but that's still myopic considering its been thousands of years since we emerged as human from monkey and we are yet capable of seeing just this deep into the future. Mankind's wit, confidence and reliability of calculations can only be judged with this fact that while most of us know what happened 300 years ago in world event, almost none of us know neither care to know who were our forefathers 300 years ago down the family tree. So our judgement, planning and projections are just limited to more or less couple of decades beyond today since only that's how far we are able to gaze and comprehend thinking that's what we will be able to control and we keep planning and improving our and world's living standards.

All this socioeconomic efforts currently points and culminates towards single point solution and agenda - "Money", as we think money is the only ultimate cure and panacea for human misery. So consider a hypothetical future year when everyone in this world will have enough money to get a good and convenient life, then what? Will we simply keep improving lifestyle and comfort of mankind to say we are evolving and in business as usual we might evolve and mutate into something biologically like we became human from monkey. Is that all? Its hard to accept that purpose of human life is just to strive and adjust to better lifestyle, better food and better comfort, Is that what we are targeting and moving towards or is it a futile chase. Can we give our kids a better larger purpose to target and approximate than spoon feeding them to simply accumulate wealth throughout life and perish. Does anyone see convergence and culmination of future social planning and spiritualism for instance?  Does anyone think about satisfying poor man's intellectual hunger or our thoughts are only limited to giving him a piece of bread thinking we have done our bit? 

May be global warming was invented or just a fashion statement... (do the math)

 Or else if it was such acute problem its awareness and quest should have on acclivitous curve! #googletrends

HOW we figured out WHAT is the best question!

How and What are the most asked questions, compared to who, why or where!