3 Idiots - Myth Busted!

No I am not referring to the chetan bhagat controversy. Honestly I dont give a damn. I enjoyed the movie, Aamir rocks and its great entertainment with loads of message without getting all preachy up your a$$.

However there are some technical glitches. In two scenes, it is shown that a person urinating on an electrified device gets his manhood electrocuted. This is not possible. How do i know ? There was an episode on the popular television series Mythbusters (on Discovery) where they test exactly this urban legend. You can read about the myth at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Patrick_O%27Malley.

Currently I am trying to get my hands on the episode. I had watched it long long back but i vividly remember how they had done it. They made a human model and filled it with urine (fresh out of a real human bladder). They had already measured the pressure with which a normal human being can urinate and then adjusted the model's "bladder" to that pressure. The model was finally made to urinate on an electrified metal strip. Result. No electrocution. Then they gradually increased the pressure to the point where electrocution finally takes place. However the pressure at which this takes place will take super human effort.

Conclusion. You cannot get an electric shock from urinating on an elctrified object (unless you are superman, spiderman or Shakti-man and really pissed off)

Further conclusion. It is not surprising that no reports have come in of children/teenagers getting electrocuted due to such pranks being played by their peers after watching the movie. I am sure they have tried, and thankfully failed.

Cheers
Rishi

28 Lacs

That is the amount I saved by booking a flat in early 2007, as against my neighbours who booked theirs in late 2008. Am I happy? Check this link for the answer.

http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/the_happiness_genie/

Rishi.

Online recommendations on Linkedin.

I want to ask one question.

If I recommend you in a public website such as linkedin, will I write bad or even average about you? Pay attention to the fact that the requestor can choose not to publish recommendations if he does not find it appropriate.

In other words, does it even make sense to write unending paragraphs glorifying a person? (unless of course the readers are pointy haired bosses who dont have a clue)


I would even go the extent of saying that online recommendations should be completely discouraged. Because, any public recommendations are by default useless. As mentioned earlier, nobody will publish a bad recommendation. For that matter nobody will even write a bad public recommendation (its easy to get your hands on a knife).
The only reason I would still believe in them is the fact that the person recommending is putting his/her neck out for you. However two things should then be strictly followed

1. There should only be one line saying : "xyz recommends abc" Anything else is useless.
2. The person recommending you should have been in a position where he/she has supervised you. No friends, no colleagues. Recommendations from them are useless


Apart from the above, online recommendations are nothing but blinding flashes of the obvious. I recommend to keep recommendations private.

Cheers
Rishi

P.S. I myself have a couple of online recommendations. But I cannot remove them unless the other zillion idiots remove theirs. Otherwise I stand to be a loser. Maybe this is another reason why online recos are still popular. But that's herd mentatlity, no?

Are you really yourself ?

Have you tried comparing yourself to what you were 5 years back? Physically ? Emotionally ? Physical change is evident, Emotional change is less so. Both, however are inevitable. What you thought and expected from life 5-10 years ago is different from what you want now. Agree? Now, think about the decisions we make at any point in time. Decisions are made forward looking i.e for the future. e.g you decide to buy an insurance policy for "future" safety. Agree? Now, if things constantly change and decisions are made for the future, can we ever make any correct decisions? Alternatively, we are doomed to a lifetime of cribbing over how we made the wrong decision(s). Now you might argue that although we change physically and emotionally, there are core attributes that remain for lifetime. e.g our height does not change, our basic nature does not change. I would beg to differ. We change as per circumstances. Good can turn to bad and vice versa. e.g the loss of a loved one can turn a perfectly sweet person into a grouch and full of hatred. On the other hand, marrying someone good might turn your personality for the better. I am not saying that all people change dramatically over a lifetime. However people definitely change, for better or for worse, depending on circumstances.

My question is, should decision making then be relegated to a random choice? Or you think it is still better to make an "informed decesion" (whatever that means!!)

Cheers
Rishi

P.S: Dont give me examples of how some of your decisions have been good. Firstly you are only telling me the ones that turned good for you and secondly you have been lucky things worked out as you "assumed" they would when you took the decision. No ?

Go on..be a tiger ! (but an Indian one please)

There are two tigers doing the news rounds off late. An Indian one and an American one. Well, the American one is busy hiding in the woods while the Indian one is busy having a master blast.

Iconic figures have two qualities. They are great at what they do, and they are good human beings. These are necessary and sufficient qualities. Drop the ball on any one of them and you are out of the game. That is precisely what has happened (sadly) with Tiger woods. He is a brilliant player but failed miserably at being a good human being. One might argue that extra-marital affairs are not something new. So why blow this one out of proportion? Because Tiger Woods is a celebrity (possibly was an icon too before this incident). If as an individual I would have considered Tiger woods my idol, I would be deeply stressed by what he has done. Because in a way it would have reflected on my personal preferences. I find it indeed very sad that such a great player of the game had to take an indefinite break from golf. All his hardwork, persevarance and patience seems to have come to nought. And I am not even talking about shelling out half his wealth to his wife.

Now about the Indian tiger. Two decades in cricket, tons of runs, infinite respect and a billion hearts backing him up. Top it up with humongous personal wealth. This is the stuff icons, nay idols are made of. Of course one can always argue that there might be skeletons hiding inside his closet too that have simply not come out. For the benefit of a billion people I hope this isnt true. In fact at a personal level I am sure that there aren't any such.

All this has got me thinking about a new twist to IT off-shoring. Tiger woods has been dumped by Accenture as a brand icon. Can his job be offshored to the Indian Tiger ??

Go on..be a tiger ! (but an Indian one please)

Media turns anti-capitalist.

Yesterday I read something in TOI that made me wonder if our media is turning anti-capitalist if not downright socialist (Times Impact. RCOM reduces SMS to 1p, Nov 28).It was a self-congratulatory note on how TOI reports and intervention had led to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) start "looking" into the matter of why telcos were charging Re1 per sms when it costs them a fraction of 1p per sms. Why should the media be concerned about this? Let the free market forces play themselves out. Telecom tariffs in India are anyways lowest in the world. If consumers can afford to pay Re1 per sms then it is a great way to subsidise lower tariffs on voice calls. Its a win-win situation. With more number of competitors coming in, the Average Revenue Per User (ARPUs) are set to decline further and telcos will be under further pressure to reduce prices and increase service. Reducing a profitable revenue stream will mean a serious hit on the bottom line. As a consumer, of course I will be jubilant if sms becomes 1 paise or something like that ( reliance plans some ulimited sms plan at nominal cost). But we need to look beyond consumer happiness. Telecom has been our poster boy of success. It has been an integral part of our economic growth of the past decade in two ways - one through generation of employment and second through increasing efficiencies in the system through a robust communication system. By using such interfering tactics under the garb of consumer good, will only mean stymieing growth and killing a once profitable industry. The SMS move in itself may not be enough to kill the industry, but the question is where does the interference stop? Our government is anyways doing a great job of jacking up things by messing around with the 3G policy. We don't need help from the media to make things worse. Let Laissez-faire be the rule of the game. Regulators should limit themselves to ensuring a fair playing field for all providers and crack down on collusive tactics. Let companies decide what they want to price. Let consumers decide what they want to pay. Simple demand and supply.
Its disheartening that a publishing house like TOI should forget this.

Capitalizing on Death!

There seems to be no better money puller than death itself. Why else is everyone capitalizing on the anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks?. From newspapers to reality shows, 26/11 is being plastered all across our consciousness again and again. Interviews are being held, special guests are being called on shows, reports of bravery and valour are being thrown at us and as usual celebrities have come together to show their solidarity against the terror attacks. It is as if, if you are not talking 26/11 then you are not doing the IN thing (I do realise how ironic this is but the constant media blast has got the better of me).
Have we learnt anything from 26/11/2008?. Dare I ask, will we ever learn anything? There are two things that we will keep doing forever. First, we will keep repeating mistakes and let others walk all over us (It makes me sick in the guts when R R patil, who downplayed this whole incidence as a small thing in a big city, is our home minister again!! ). Second, we will always scrape the healed wounds of others and infest them like parasites - all for our convenience. Thankfully I did not have any friend of relative who died in the attacks but I cannot even begin to imagine what must be happening to those bereaved families by watching all the "26/11 anniversary" bull crap being shown all over.

But I would like to take this to a level beyond 26/11. We are generally incompetent at dealing with all types of disaters - natural or manmade. And the general public is just as much at fault as the government. Take the case of the recent swine flu pandemic. Its all subdued now, but if it were to resurface, I am sure exactly the same thing will repeat itself. And this will again give the media full chance to capitalize on death.

It is just so pathetic and yet true. Nothing sells like death does.