SAST Wingees

Does eating chicken cause Chikungunya?

Updated: I guess I should have looked up the Wikipedia first for chikungunya.

Apparently, several recenty-moved-in-from-villages type people in Mumbai (a.k.a Bombay)  have been admitting themselves into hospitals claiming that they have contracted the dreaded viral disease called chikungunya because they have been eating chicken! Of course, this is wrong. This disease is transmitted via a daytime mosquito called Aedes Agypti. The key is to prevent getting bitten by daytime mosquitoes. The term chikun (sounds like chicken)  in chikungunya might cause people to confuse this disease with bird flu (or should it be chicken flu?). Bird flu is of course spread by some birds. So the question is – why is it called chikungunya? Apparently, in 1953, this disease was first reported in Tanzania. The term having originated in the Makonde language that is spoken in southern tanzania and northern mozambique. In Makonde the term means “that which folds up” referring to the crippling of the joints which is one of the key symptoms of this disease. <Via Mid Day Mumbai Nov 15, 2006 edition – page A03>

The Signum Quartett makes the magic of Mozart come alive

Had the good fortune of attending a western classical music concert featuring Mozart’s compositions tonight  The concert happened at the Music Academy as a feature of the  November fest. The concert assumes additional significance due to this year being the 250th birth anniversary of Mozart. We were in the hall half hour ahead of time to get a good seat. The hall was half empty at that time and we thought maybe Chennai people don’t like western classical.  Boy, were we wrong. The entire hall was filled by the time the concert started. The Signum Quartett is considered to be one of the best in Germany. The team consists of  Kerstin Dill and Annette Walther on the violin, Valentin Eichler on the viola and Thomas Schmitz on the cello. They started with Mozart’s string quartet in F Major (K 168).  It was a great performance and set the tone for the evening. This was followed by the amazing string quartet in D Minor (K 421). Apparently, Mozart composed this as his wife was in the next room delivering their baby. The final composition is considered to be amongst the best known of Mozart’s string quartets – K465 in C Major.  It is also known as “Dissonance” due to its disquieting opening chords. It was a fitting finale to the concert. The audience was moved so much that we gave a standing ovation. At this point, the audience asked for an encore. The artists obliged and we sat back down again to listen to an Italian serenade. By now, you could see the artists bubbling with emotions and pride and gave us another memorable performance. The Chennai audience proved once again that music knows no boundaries. Some tidbits collected from the compere who was none other than GV Ramakrishna (famous as a voice over for documentaries, TV shows etc). 1. Mozart started composing at the age of 4 when he composed Twinkle Twinkle Little star. 2. Like many geniuses who died in their 30s, Mozart dies at the age of 35.  3. Mozart was ambidexterous and notably he could write out 2 different compositions using both his hands simultaneously. 4. Mozart had a fancy for the game of Billiards.  During a game he would attempt a long shot covering all the sides of the board and by the time the ball returned to the cue, he would complete composing one movement of a composition (a a typical movement lasts a few minutes)!

Failure is not an option

I am at our annual customer event and we had the privilege of listening to Eugene Kranz. He took us through the entire Apollo 13 saga in a 1-hour long speech. He did not use any slides but he used some pictures from the Apollo 13 program as props throughout. Yes, i have seen the movie Apollo 13 several times. But hearing it straight from Gene Kranz is an experience in a different league altogether. A few interesting observations: 1. At a point Gene had to make a decision to either chose the shorter 1.5 day return route or the longer 3.5 day return route which goes around the moon. Gene Kranz made the counter-intuitive decision to take the 3.5 day return route. He mentioned that he made the decision based on his gut. It turned out to be a great decision later when the team figured out the extent of the damage on the spacecraft which would have made the 1.5 day route impossible. 2. At another point, 3 of his superior officers come and give him 3 different suggestions. He overrode all of them and made his own decision. When he was asked how he did it – he pointed to the job description of the mission controller (interestingly it is only 1 line long) – “Mission controller can make any decision to ensure the safety of the crew and the success of the mission.”  He pointed out that that description gave him more authority than his superiors in some ways and additionally his superiors trusted his judgement. Overall he said there are 4 important things if you want to prevent failure – leadership, values, trust and team work. He was able to bring out the human drama, the tension and everything in a truly memorable speech. The entire audience of 500 people were up on their feet and gave him a standing ovation. What a great moment for a speaker.

Fine tastings of last week (#5)

1. The human brain is arguably the best of nature’s creations. Many of us have heard that the brain has the capability to train another part of the brain to take over functions from a defective part. It may be hard to believe, but it is true. Now we even have a celebrity endorsement to corroborate this – Scott Adams of Dilbert fame writes of his succcess in reprogramming his brain to overcome a speech impediment.  In a related story, the New Scientist reports on an amazing experiment where volunteers learnt to control their emotional responses by observing a display which represented in real time, the brain activity (like a thermometer) the activity in the insula region of the brain – known to be an important part of the brain for handling emotions.

2. When it comes to mass market retailing, Walmart and Target dominate the conversations.  Fortune carried an insightful article on Costco – the quiet giant that is now clocking over $56B in revenues. Why Costco is so addictive? – read on (Via NRF Smartbrief).

3. Most Indian cities have a lot of street dogs. The pathetic state of these street dogs will make any animal lover’s heart sink. So far the only solution has been to put the street dogs to death. Now thanks to an NGO called Help in Suffering and the Blue Cross of India, the street dogs are being sterilized (neutered) and are being cared for as an important part of the community in some cities like Jaipur and Chennai. Touching! (Via Priya Raju)

4. Geologists have made an amazing discovery that the Amazon river in South America once flowed from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean – the exact opposite of how it flows today.

5.  JP has written an insightful post on predicting innovation by using the innovations that have come about in the credit card marketplace as a pattern. Must read for people interested in innovation.

6. ACM Queue has published a brilliant interview laden with insights on how to do non-disruptive innovation on a platform. Industry veteran David Brown talks from his experience on evolving the Sun Solaris platform to another Sun veteran Bob Sproull. Some of what David Brown has done with Solaris are object lessons in platform evolution. If you are a techie, don’t miss this (Via Debashish “DR” Roy).

Fine tastings of last week (#4)

1. When it comes to contributing content or knowledge or whatever (a.k.a user generated content (UGC)), it appears that only 1% of the users contribute content. Rest of the 99% happen to just consume the content. This obviously has significant implications for anyone pursuing such UGC ventures as well as those that are involved in Knowledge Management like myself. The Guardian published an excellent article “What is the 1% rule” a few months ago.  Brad Feld has an interesting twist to this rule which he calls the 80-19-1 rule. Read on.

2. Metacool proposes an interesting idea – every organization must publish their to-do-list publicly, so that customers can know what is likely to come. Metacool’s idea having been inspired by a public to-do-list seen at the Denver Art Museum. <Via Bob Sutton>

3. Alternative energy is a great thing for the world and every kind of alternative energy has been explored. But I recently came across a company attempting to harness the energy from lightnings. If they can pull it off, it could be a huge win for alternative energy. <Via Eyebeam reblog>

4. I and Priya Raju were contemplating the question – why are performance enhancing drugs bad for sport?  We realized that – you sort of sense why it is wrong but putting your finger on  exactly why we need to oppose this is a bit difficult. I came across this fantastic article called “Drug Test”  by Stuart Stevens. He was faced with the same question and he being an endurance cyclist, takes some of these performance enhancing drugs himself and has chronicled his entire experience  and draws  his conclusions.  Its a long article well worth a read.

5. What is the connection between talent and greatness? Can you achieve greatness without talent? Can you become automatically great if you are talented? These are some of the questions that pop up when you think about achieving greatness. Geoffrey Colvin has covered these questions in a brilliant article “What it takes to be great” in the Fortune magazine. His startling finding – “lack of natural talent is irrelevant to great success”. Then, what is the secret to greatness? Read on.

6. Innovation is a favorite topic everywhere these days. No two experts will agree on what constitutes innovation or how to go go about becoming an innovative company.  However, there is one company that can claim to be the epitome of innovation – Toyota and all the experts will agree. Toyota has implemented over a million ideas so far and continues to implement about 2500 new ideas every day!  Sanjay Dalal has a fantastic post about Toyota’s Innovation Factory. <Via Innovation Tools>

7. There is an interesting form of theater I came across called “Black Light Theater” It depends on the fact that the human eye cannot distinguish black color against a black background. So actors dressed in black, with parts of the dress colored  to say depict a fish, move against a black background making it seem to us that a fish is floating in the air. <Via Priya Raju>.

8. After 10 years we celebrated Diwali in India. It was great fun watching the kids in the building light up the crackers for hours together. Compared to my childhood days, things seem to be a lot subdued. I am told that there is a growing awareness of noise pollution and also a growing outrage against the practice of using child laborers to produce the crackers in Sivakasi where the fireworks industry is located. Given my affection for Bengali sweets, I decided to get the essential Bong sweet Mishti Doi”Sweet Yoghurt” from the best place in Chennai for Bengali sweets – Shri Durga Sweets in Annanagar near Chintamani. It was delectable and I finished the entire matka “clay pot” in one sitting. Yummy.

9. It was a 3 day weekend thanks to Diwali. Visted some relatives, met with some friends. Very relaxing. One of the days, i was channel surfing aimlessly and chanced upon the Hindi movie Bluffmaster. I had zero expectations and it turned out to be a pretty good, enjoyable movie with a good storyline. I could see the copycatting of famous English movies but it will be become a spoiler if i mention them. If you haven’t seen the movie, i would say, check it out. Phew! that was a long one. As I said before, you can follow my tastings through the week on my link blog featured on the right column of the blog.

A small explanation for how i categorize my finds: 1. Interesting – these are pretty good and worth reading up. 2. Insightful – these have atleast one insight. worth reading of course. 3. Amazing  – I use Amazing for fantastic discoveries like the one I featured recently  – a plant that smells its targets. 4.  Brilliant – for articles/posts that are  extremely insightful or those that have a lot of insights. 5. F***-ing brilliant – this is the highest accolade I give. I don’t think I have given anything this rating so far. However, I have come across a few things in the past few weeks that are in this category. I plan to write about those. Stay tuned.