SAST Wingees

FTOTW ending Jan 20, 2007 – $MM, Yahoo, Martin Luther King Jr., Mukesh Ambani…

1. I have always believed that if a critical mass of owners of  under-leveraged properties get together and do a collective sell-out, a lot of money could be made. Here is a story of a town full of trailer homes (mobile homes) who sold their town to a real estate developer and are going to make a 1MM$ each. I wonder if all the road side clunky-old tea shops and other poorly leveraged property owners in India occupying premium localities could band together and do a similar sell-out and make a lot of money. <trailer home story spotted by Priya Raju>. 2. How Yahoo got clusterf***ed? lots of change management lessons in this story of how Yahoo blew its leadership. 3. Did you know that Martin Luther King’s I have a dream speech was an impromptu one!  It is in my mind the best speech ever delivered on this planet and the  fact that it was delivered extemporaneously makes it even more amazing. Every time I hear it, it wells up my eyes and fills me with hope. Follow the link for the story as well the text of the entire speech. <Via Scott Berkun/Zugbot> Flashback: I had linked to the audio version of MLK’s speech a while ago. 4. Contrary to popular belief that India invented zero, it appears Sumerians invented zero 5000 years ago. Anyone has any thoughts on this? Looks like India’s major contribution to the world has been stripped of its glory. 5. Mukesh Ambani’s brilliant speech – Rediff.com carried this 3-part interview. I have never seen an Indian businessman speak with such passion and brilliant insights. Specifically look at the part where he is talking about increasing the Indian farmer’s income by 900%.  It is these types of business ideas that can bring India’s 500 million people mired in abject poverty out of it. I have always believed that Mukesh and Anil were simply riding their brilliant father Dhirubhai Ambani‘s coattails. But this interview shows that Mukesh is a brilliant businessman in his own right. <Via Sridhar Iyer>

Smackdown on Astrology

Caution – if you have strong faith in Astrology, skip this post. I recently came across in the New Scientist (Apr 2006 issue) magazine an excellent article by Chris Holt. Unfortunately, it is locked behind the premium wall. So i decided to paraphrase it. He talks of 4 major supporting rationale that the astrologers give and Holt demolishes each one systematically: If gravity affects the tides, and since humans are 70% water, it should affect us also
Since we know the masses of the planets and we know Newton’s law of gravity, we can actually calculate the gravitational force. It turns out that a one ton car on the road exerts a gravitational force 10 times as greater as the one that planet Mars exerts on a human being on earth. Magnetic fields have an impact on us because planets can even cause sunspots
Further our brain operates using electric currents, so magnetism of the planets infuences us.
Scientists have shown that if anything the magnetic interference from the household electric equipment is far greater. I can see the Vaasthu experts salivating at this. This is why the Vaasthu
shastra says that the microwave oven should be kept in the north east corner of the house or
whatever! Calendar Theory
The time of the year you were born infuences you. Per Holt, this maybe the most scientific of the lot because there is some evidence that the season you were born in may have a bearing on your personality to a small extent.  He says the seasons are reversed in the southern hemisphere but Australian astrologers still use the same charts used in the northern hemisphere.

Precession
Thanks to the astronomical phenomenon called Precession  there has been a shift of one whole zodiacal sign over the last 2000 years. So if your zodiacal sign is Aries it would actually be Pisces because astrologers use charts from 2000 years ago! In my view there is one simple point against Astrology – correlation is not causation. If something happens because Astrologers predicted it, it would have to be proven using the principle of causation not correlation. References:
1. Skepticwiki’s take on Astrology
2. Dr. T. Jayaraman of Matscience takes down Astrology during the attempt to add Astrology to the curriculum in India. Yikes.

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My celibate dog

Do you all share my view that this blog has literally gone to the dogs this week? Here comes Priya Raju’s heart-warming story about her dog Brownie.
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These days, there is so much debate about celibacy & whether it is necessary for priest-hood. I’m not taking a political stance in this article. I just think that – for certain types of people, celibacy is not as difficult as it is made out to be. What’s more, I think celibacy may be a natural preference, occurring in a small % of the general population. It may even occur among animals.

This is an article about my dog. And its celibacy.

I still remember the day our dog came home. I was about 4 years old & my brother, 8. Our parents had been out shopping – we were pretending to do our home-work, but actually trying to gouge each other’s eyes, under the supervision of our not-so-watchful grand-mom. My brother was on the verge of success, when our parents walked in. Mom asked us to see if the front-door was locked. We went at top gear to the front-door, but braked suddenly. There was a fuzzy, floppy creature near the door. It was brown in color, had a black mouth & a stubby tail. It had a soulful, sweet face that just melted our hearts. A dog! Our parents had bought us a dog! Its funny tail was wagging furiously. Oh, the joy!

We named it – so unoriginally – Brownie. Seems like a totally lame name now, but we thought it was perfect for our dog. Brownie was a German Shepherd (Alsatian). Very soon, Brownie’s breed asserted itself – at least as far as appetite & appearance go. After about 1 year, Brownie looked like a small, ferocious Rhino. The operative word being, “looked”. Its temperament, sadly, was more like a scared librarian in a city university. My parents – both of them professors – had taken a nice, ferocious German shepherd, exposed it to all their erudition & completely sissified it. 2^nd hand erudition is worse than 2^nd hand smoking, what can I say.

Now, time was a-passing & Brownie reached its teenage in dog years. If he had been human, my dad would have given him the “birds & bees” speech. But very disturbingly for my dad, Brownie showed no interest in anything, um, south of his stomach. By this time, the highlights of his day consisted of chasing the vegetable vendor & hiding from all the neighborhood dogs. I don’t exaggerate: when some dog paid him “attention”, Brownie would quiver with fear, run to my dad & try to hide his face in his lap! Me & my brother were indignant – why, Brownie was scared of the miserable Pomeranian that belonged to the Vet! It was so embarrassing for us.

So here was Brownie, so innocent, not even noticing that most animals came in 2 genders – male & female, if you didn’t know. One day, our dad decided that our dog can be normal, only if it led a normal (read sexually active!) life. Desperate situations demanded desperate measures. So, he devised an experiment. Early in the morning, he kept the gates open & lured an unsuspecting she-dog with a boiled egg. Then, he closed the door to give Brownie & his new girl-friend some privacy!! Really now – I shudder to think that he was a professor then. They entrusted vulnerable, young minds to his care. And here he was, playing Kinsey.

And nothing happened. A few minutes later, our dad opened the door to find Brownie sharing the egg ever so nicely with his new friend. My dad’s experiment had failed miserably. Brownie remained celibate & disinterested in sex till the day he died.

A few years back, my aunt was talking about how priest-hood runs in our family. Several relatives of ours had become men & women of the cloth – with celibacy thrown in, of course. She mentioned that in my generation, none of us had the calling – as she nicely put it. I shuddered & then remembered. None of my cousins or my siblings perhaps – but at least 1 member of the family had the calling. Brownie had honored the family tradition & had been the token celibate of our generation.

The story of how i conquered my fear of dogs

One of my friends asked me “how to get rid of the fear of dogs and is this fear inherited?”. She had read the article on fear I linked to in one of my recent FTOTW posts.

That question sent me scurrying into my own long term memory. As far back as I can remember I have been afraid of dogs and on May 21, 2004 I conquered my fear of dogs and I now I feel affection when I see dogs except for the most ferocious ones, of course.  How did this fear come about? Given that such  fears coded into the Amygdala are tough to get rid of, how did this transformation occur?

Fear getting Imprinted

As a child, especially in the community I hail from, I encountered  a general anti-dog rhetoric – people saying that you will lead a dog’s life if you do bad things, people treating stray dogs generally badly etc. Added to this, one of my friends had a Alsatian dog and it would bark fiercely whenever I visited his place. Everytime it would seem like it would bite me if my friend didn’t restrain it.  Eventhough, I had visited some friends who had friendlier dogs like Pomeranians, this fierce dog image got etched into my memory. To further reinforce this, one day one of my cousins got bitten badly by a dog and he had to be given the dreaded rabies injections on his stomach. At this point my fear of dogs was firmly in place, enough to make me stay as far away from dogs as possible.

The day I conquered my fear

Years later, on May 21, 1991, I was in Mumbai at a company guest house. The reason I remember that day is because Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated that day.  All kinds of rumors were floating and I heard that a Tamil had killed Rajiv Gandhi. All restaurants, shops were closed and the entire day I was trying to find food (no kitchen in the guest house) to no avail and it was late in the evening. .By now,  as a tamil, I was afraid that i may be targeted by rioters  –

In this background of fear, I was walking back to my guest house starving and my worst nightmare unfolded – a bunch of stray dogs started chasing me. I started running as fast as I could but  one of them was really fierce and it had caught up with me. It came so close to my ankle and it was about to bite and my heart was racing, fear was in full throttle. 

I don’t know what got into me, but I turned around and let out a full-throated (I have a loud voice) bark back at the dog. It was such a loud bark that I was myself surprised. It must have shocked the dog and it turned right back and ran away and all its compatriots followed suit. After that day I never felt the  fear of dogs except when I see some really scary ones. 

Fear turns into affection

Later I went to live in the USA in 1996 and spent 10 years there. I mostly encountered very friendly dogs. The general cultural rhetoric about dogs was one of fondness – friends would rave about their dogs, we would bump into them at our friends’s houses or in the neighborhood. Additionally, my wife, Priya Raju is a big animal lover and she would get very close to the dogs and pet them. The dogs would show their affection right back. Over that 10 year period, I slowly became a dog lover and I am now able to pet dogs when I get a chance. The transformation is complete.

What about you readers? Is any of you afraid of dogs? What did you do? From my experience I think its not hereditary but more likely learnt. What do you think?

Want to buy milk? Check your local billboard!

Google has filed a patent for a system to have digital billboards connected to the inventory at a nearby store for advertised products. So when you are out driving for milk, you can check the billboard to see if the nearby store has stock! Isn’t that cool? When I read that last week on New Scientist, i was wondering about the business potential for such an idea? My doubts were erased by a report in Livescience today, that says Digital Billboards are likely to become a $10B market by 2010. Way to go Google.