Wednesday, June 30, 2010
The starting cycle of life
The first moments in the adult life of a newly-hatched mosquito are captured by these macro images taken by photographer brothers Will and Matt Burrard-Lucas
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1290526/Mosquito-emerges-deep-adult-life-outside-world.html#ixzz0sM4OsKAy
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Society's changing address
When our generation was young and in school, we all used to call all people even slightly elder to us as "bhaiya/didi" (north India) or "anna/akka" (south India). Even people who were a year older were called like that and if people below your age call you only by your name, that would be disrespectful. Times have changed. Now people prefer to be called only by their names with no suffixes even by people twenty years younger. There are two possible reasons for this: People are more age conscious and more international exposure/norms. The first is obvious when my female friend and cousin sister dont want to be called aunties by even their 4 yr old niece/nephews. Maybe the popular image of an aunty is a 40 yr old with enough girth that even a baby elephant gets inferiority complex.
The second is perhaps because of the software companies' culture wherein people are addressed only by their first names mostly.
Just an observation and hence no conclusion!
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Creating value
Story 1:
How to sell off a dead donkey
A city boy, Kenny, moved to the country and bought a donkey from an old farmer for $100.00. The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day. The next day the farmer drove up and said, "Sorry son, but I have some bad news, the donkey died last night."
Kenny replied: "Well then, just give me my money back."
The farmer said: "Can't do that. I went and spent it already."
Kenny said: "OK then, just unload the donkey.."
The farmer asked: "What ya gonna do with him?"
Kenny: "I'm going to raffle him off." (Note: To raffle is to sell a thing by lottery - draw lot - to a group of people each paying the same amount for a ticket)
Farmer: "You can't raffle off a dead donkey!"
Kenny: "Sure I can. Watch me. I just won't tell anybody he's dead."
A month later the farmer met up with Kenny and asked, "What happened with that dead donkey?" Kenny: "I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at two dollars apiece and made a profit of $898.00."
Farmer: "Didn't anyone complain?"
Kenny: "Just the guy who won. So I gave him back his two dollars."
*********************************************************************
Story 2:
A company has a debt of say 100 units and equity of 100. It splits up the company into 5 companies: 4 are debtless and the other takes all the debt. The one with excess debt shuts down and the other 4 companies take on more debt, do an IPO and prosper. Result: Tremendous value created for shareholders!
Moral: How many of you guys participated in things (eg:smsed to tv serials) thinking things are straight forward and were ignorant?
How come fooling people seems to be a very sustainable source of value creation?
I leave it to you to think it over...
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Women are very obedient!
The Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience.
Charles Sheridan and Richard King hypothesized that some of Milgram's subjects may have suspected that the victim was faking, so they repeated the experiment with a real victim: a puppy who was given real electric shocks. They found that 20 out of the 26 participants complied to the end. The six that had refused to comply were all male (54% of males were obedient); all 13 of the women obeyed to the end, although many were highly disturbed and some openly wept.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Friday, June 11, 2010
Time by Pink Floyd
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
And you are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun
And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
And you are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun
And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Rise above
"You're born, you take shit. You get out in the world, you take more shit. You climb a little higher, you take less shit. Till one day you're up in the rarefied atmosphere and you've forgotten what shit even looks like" - Layer cake
Friday, June 4, 2010
Good cop - bad cop strategy
The latest happenings with JMM political party in Jharkand has many of the same traits as that of what JD(S) done a few months back to BJP( yet again!) in Karnataka. Say yes, say no, say maybe and keep the other party frustrated and guessing. These political outfits played good cop - bad cop with the other party and no one knows who is to be believed and who is the decision maker. Trying to straddle (eat & keep the cake too) is the main motivation for these kingmakers. Who says you should be a major party to get handsome gains? In these days, the smaller ones make far more coalition governments with enough monisterial positions and horse-trading behind them. Ethics is something these parties dont know and cant expect them to share anything according to any unwritten rule (Even wriiten constutional rules and laws and openly flawed by politicians).
Coming back to the strategy, I have realised that this is one of the best strategies to use against someone to see what the other party will consider doing and to what extent under each of the conditiion. Call it testing the enemy's response to each of the scenarios and signals you give by playing both sides. From a personal experience I can tell you that this gets worse if the other party talks to you in a friendly manner and is emotionally blackmailing you by signalling consequences.
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