I was thinking how Travis Kalanick founded what is now (circa 2017) the most valuable startup in the world, but couldn't see fast enough that his personal sexist behavior would end up getting him chucked out of his life's work. Mark Zuckerberg on the other hand strikes me as a guy who has a superhuman capacity to see and ward off an oncoming crisis. (My understanding of him is based primarily on what I read in the news, and that wonderful movie "The Social Network". So my logic is dependent on the accuracy of the movie in capturing Mark's personality, even if not getting all the facts correct). In the movie Zuckerberg is so conscious of crises. When Eduardo Saverin cuts off the payment to the servers hosting Facebook, Zuckerberg goes ballistic (and perhaps that's when he decided to dump Saverin). And at the end when Sean Parker causes another crisis. The movie doesn't show how Zuckerberg resolves the crisis, but clearly he does, since FB is around and thriving. My sense is that its not just external crises. Internally too Zuckerberg is adept at reinventing himself. He started off with the bad-boy antics at Harvard and his early days in the Valley where he humiliates a VC egged on by Sean Parker. Today's he's a model corporate executive atleast to public knowledge. And its not just a facade.
Showing posts with label whimsical. Show all posts
Showing posts with label whimsical. Show all posts
Sunday, October 29, 2017
Idle reflection - Mark Zuckerberg and Travis Kalanick
I was thinking how Travis Kalanick founded what is now (circa 2017) the most valuable startup in the world, but couldn't see fast enough that his personal sexist behavior would end up getting him chucked out of his life's work. Mark Zuckerberg on the other hand strikes me as a guy who has a superhuman capacity to see and ward off an oncoming crisis. (My understanding of him is based primarily on what I read in the news, and that wonderful movie "The Social Network". So my logic is dependent on the accuracy of the movie in capturing Mark's personality, even if not getting all the facts correct). In the movie Zuckerberg is so conscious of crises. When Eduardo Saverin cuts off the payment to the servers hosting Facebook, Zuckerberg goes ballistic (and perhaps that's when he decided to dump Saverin). And at the end when Sean Parker causes another crisis. The movie doesn't show how Zuckerberg resolves the crisis, but clearly he does, since FB is around and thriving. My sense is that its not just external crises. Internally too Zuckerberg is adept at reinventing himself. He started off with the bad-boy antics at Harvard and his early days in the Valley where he humiliates a VC egged on by Sean Parker. Today's he's a model corporate executive atleast to public knowledge. And its not just a facade.
Sunday, September 04, 2016
Small small insights - sugar
Natural sugar (from fruit) is packaged so that there is not too high a concentration of sugar. You can't eat huge quantities of it - your stomach gets full. So there's a built-in limit. You also get some other nutrients for free. With refined sugar, you can get a highly concentrated dose of sugar and nobody's checking. No extra nutrients either.
I've cut down on refined sugar a great deal. One of the noticeable effects over time is that your mood is more stable. You don't go through a cycle of sugar craving followed by eating something sweet and getting a sugar high. I never noticed that I was going through this cycle until I cut down on the sugar.
Stick to fruit sugar.
A previous post on food/cooking: http://despoki.blogspot.in/2009/01/some-thoughts.html
A previous post on food/cooking: http://despoki.blogspot.in/2009/01/some-thoughts.html
Sunday, August 28, 2016
Public art
While the classical vs. modern debate rages on, public art is one of the sites where it plays out in practice. Public art can be quite difficult to do well - you want to appeal to as wide a constituency of people, but serious art is often specialised and becomes inaccessible.
Singapore seems to do quite well in doing good public art. Changi Airport always has something interesting going on. Below are three other pieces that I really liked:
This brilliant piece recently installed at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. It uses just layers of wire mesh to create a likeness of the man. The artist must have taken years to build up his competence in doing this
This clever installation at Gardens by the Bay gives the impression of figures that are hanging in the air
This quirky piece at a mall was done as part of some robotics demonstration. Screams 'Japanese aesthetic' to me
See http://despoki.blogspot.in/2016/01/many-thoughts-about-art-triggered-by.html for the previous post in the 'art' thread
Sunday, October 16, 2011
On the cost of clothes
==
You could evaluate your clothes by dividing the cost of an item by the number of times you wore it. You'd look for a low number to come out of the ratio as that would indicate that it didn't cost you much and you used it a lot, therefore good value. We could call this number the cost per use (CPU). It seems an interesting way to evaluate the worth or the value you get out of it.
I've continued to think about this and find it very interesting. Firstly, you can think about how much money you're wearing everyday. This is the total cost per use of all the things you're wearing (lets restrict it to just clothes, including undergarments and footwear but not jewellery and accessories). I was surprised by the number that I estimated, in my case: greater than 50/-. I wouldn't have thought I was spending that much on clothes every day ! Take a 1500/- Rs pair of jeans which I bought recently ; I'd have to wear it a 100 times for the cost per use to come down to 15/- . I think I'll probably not use it so many times, perhaps 75 times is more like it. So cost per use is Rs 20/-. For other trousers I expect I'll use them even less than 75 times so if they cost the same, the CPU is even higher. A similar calculation for shirts, which could cost 500/- to 700/- for the kind of shirts I wear to work but which I would wear less number of times than trousers before discarding or giving away, perhaps 30-50 times (so CPU average around 15/-). Then calculate the cost for undergarments , shoes/socks, belt . And an unexpected extra, the cost of washing and ironing. Ironing now costs 4/- a garment for me, so that's close to 10/- for ironing itself ! So as I said, adding it all up, a total of Rs 50/- per day.
Its an interesting calculation to do.
The one thing that cost surpringly less for me was footwear. The current pair I use is from Bata, a fairly nice piece that is very reasonably priced at around 450/-. And since I use it everyday pretty much, I've probably used it more than 100 times already, so the cost per wear is down to 4.50 /- already . Very low compared to shirts and pants ! And its in pretty good shape still and could easily go for another 6 months, so the cost per wear is coming down even further. It seems I could cut down the amount I pay on clothes and splurge a little more on footwear, to reach a more optimal point.
For fancy clothes that you wear for special occasions, the cost / use would be much higher than for daily wear clothes. This is because these would be pretty expensive clothes, that we would wear it very few times, so double the effect. For eg. all the suits I've bought, I've used only a couple of times, and then they've gotten too tight for me :-( .
You can start doing this for the other things you buy and use. For example my cellphone cost is horrendous ; each time I've bought a high end phone (both Nokias), I've enjoyed using them a lot but they've lasted relatively short. The first one for eg. cost about 13000 and lasted for about 18 months, so that's close to 750/- per month ! No more expensive phones for me!
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Kissinger jokes
Henry Kissinger's work has many examples of what decent people would find enormous inversions of justice. Like, for example, that he was given the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing an end to the Vietnam war, when he was in actuality responsible for things like the massive bombing of Cambodia as part of that war. Giving him the Nobel was appropriately labeled 'the death of satire' when it happened.
Chomsky is not usually given to humor, and one of the few examples I've seen is in relation to Kissinger, whose guts he really hates. Debunking one of Kissinger's arguments where he says that that Western civilisation has a culture of 'toleration' (never mind a couple of World Wars and decades of colonial cruelty), Chomsky comments with an undertone of frustration and bitterness: "One can always count on K for some comic relief, though in reality, he is not alone" ( http://www.iran-bulletin.org/history/chomsky3.html)
And finally one from that fantastic commentator on US political affairs, Gary Trudeau author of the Doonesbury cartoons. In a series of strips, Kissinger is visiting faculty at a Washington DC university and leading a course while doing his stuff as Secretary of State. While he tries to use the seminar to talk about realpolitik and world domination and such, there are one or two idealists in the class who keep bringing up useless questions about truth, justice and the suffering of the common man. Finally Kissinger in frustration bursts out "Human rights! Human rights! I'm sick and tired of human rights!"
Touche. Sometimes I feel a similiar sentiment : "Climate change! Climate change! I'm sick and tired of climate change!"
For perhaps a more rounded portrayal of Kissinger, see the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger
Chomsky is not usually given to humor, and one of the few examples I've seen is in relation to Kissinger, whose guts he really hates. Debunking one of Kissinger's arguments where he says that that Western civilisation has a culture of 'toleration' (never mind a couple of World Wars and decades of colonial cruelty), Chomsky comments with an undertone of frustration and bitterness: "One can always count on K for some comic relief, though in reality, he is not alone" ( http://www.iran-bulletin.org/history/chomsky3.html)
And finally one from that fantastic commentator on US political affairs, Gary Trudeau author of the Doonesbury cartoons. In a series of strips, Kissinger is visiting faculty at a Washington DC university and leading a course while doing his stuff as Secretary of State. While he tries to use the seminar to talk about realpolitik and world domination and such, there are one or two idealists in the class who keep bringing up useless questions about truth, justice and the suffering of the common man. Finally Kissinger in frustration bursts out "Human rights! Human rights! I'm sick and tired of human rights!"
Touche. Sometimes I feel a similiar sentiment : "Climate change! Climate change! I'm sick and tired of climate change!"
For perhaps a more rounded portrayal of Kissinger, see the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger
Sunday, April 11, 2010
The Times of India
I recently began subscribing to the Times of India. The reason was a bit stupid and the kind of ass-backwards decision-making that I sometimes indulge in -- I find the Hindu so compelling to read that in the morning, I get absorbed in it, so that it both makes me late and distracts my mind. A bad way to start a work day. So finally I decided not to subscribe anymore. But my wife still wanted to subscribe to a newspaper so that she could keep in touch with what was going on outside Vibhat-world ; so we subscribed to the Times of India instead. It seems to be working out; I am definitely not absorbed in the newspaper in the mornings nowadays.
Subscribing gives me an opportunity to take a closer look than when I would just pick up occasionally at the office or elsewhere. My observations backs up that of many others, that The Times is a breathtaking newspaper and I feel compelled to add my notes to the reams that have already been written about it. This is hopefully just a beginning.
The first thing to say I think, is that a simple switch of context makes all the difference when thinking about the Times. Its as follows:
The Times of India is a business: then it becomes a predictable, sensibly run, run-of-the-mill, moderately interesting entity which is not very special compared to all the other zillions of businesses in India.
The Times of India is a newspaper: It becomes a jaw-droppingly amazing, completely crazy, death-of-satire, evil-empire, laughing stock, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it, death-knell-of-Indian-civilization entity.
Again:
business -- nothing special
newspaper -- what the **&&^&#(@*@*!&&!!* is going on?!
Moving on:
the paper design seems really bad. Actually I have not been really looking at the paper with a critical eye, I've been just reading it, so to say, since we started subscribing, so this post will be more off-the-cuff comments. Having said that, the paper is just a mess. The pages are a loud clash of colours from all the ads and the colors used in the articlespace too. I haven't yet figured out the logic of the newspaper in terms of what kind of articles go where or on what page, because the cues towards this are not there or not strong enough. The mixing up of editorial and advert makes the jaw drop lower each day.
Today's front page had a truly stupid artistic illustration of a big-boobed woman being flagged at airport security, because of some news that the new airport security detectors are set off by silicone implants. I mean... really, this is too idiotic.
More often than not, upto 30% of the front page is taken up up by a single ad which completely distracts the attention. Today its about 25% distributed between several ads. A couple of days back there was some absurd article of less than 12 column-lines on one of the pages, and all the rest were ads. Today the first "City" page has about 5% of articles and 95% of ads.
On the plus side: generally they seem to have a lot of coverage of water issues, and not competely superficial which I can vouch for, since I keep an eye out for this. So they do have some news going. For a couple of days now they've had a lot of coverage of the naxal issue, ("Deep Focus"), though I haven't had the enthu to read in detail.
Today's "Global" page, had an "Around the World" section (probably a standard feature. It had a.) a picture of an unknown (but stunning) South Korean actress, b) "Teri Hatcher looking for love" c.) "Postmen boycott UK house because of cat".
Swaminathan Aiyar, one of their usual columnists had a stupid article on irrigation, something about using piped or drip irrigation instead of canals. Not a single figure about how economically viable this might be.
They've expanded their "Speaking Tree" column into a full Sunday supplement and are running a slick, nicely designed, but, to me, predictable ad about it in the main paper for a while ("Visit yourself, once a week", "If you listen, you hear", "Somewhere between our head and heart (Ed- our neck?) lies a land we rarely go to")
Enough of Times bashing for now.
Subscribing gives me an opportunity to take a closer look than when I would just pick up occasionally at the office or elsewhere. My observations backs up that of many others, that The Times is a breathtaking newspaper and I feel compelled to add my notes to the reams that have already been written about it. This is hopefully just a beginning.
The first thing to say I think, is that a simple switch of context makes all the difference when thinking about the Times. Its as follows:
The Times of India is a business: then it becomes a predictable, sensibly run, run-of-the-mill, moderately interesting entity which is not very special compared to all the other zillions of businesses in India.
The Times of India is a newspaper: It becomes a jaw-droppingly amazing, completely crazy, death-of-satire, evil-empire, laughing stock, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it, death-knell-of-Indian-civilization entity.
Again:
business -- nothing special
newspaper -- what the **&&^&#(@*@*!&&!!* is going on?!
Moving on:
the paper design seems really bad. Actually I have not been really looking at the paper with a critical eye, I've been just reading it, so to say, since we started subscribing, so this post will be more off-the-cuff comments. Having said that, the paper is just a mess. The pages are a loud clash of colours from all the ads and the colors used in the articlespace too. I haven't yet figured out the logic of the newspaper in terms of what kind of articles go where or on what page, because the cues towards this are not there or not strong enough. The mixing up of editorial and advert makes the jaw drop lower each day.
Today's front page had a truly stupid artistic illustration of a big-boobed woman being flagged at airport security, because of some news that the new airport security detectors are set off by silicone implants. I mean... really, this is too idiotic.
More often than not, upto 30% of the front page is taken up up by a single ad which completely distracts the attention. Today its about 25% distributed between several ads. A couple of days back there was some absurd article of less than 12 column-lines on one of the pages, and all the rest were ads. Today the first "City" page has about 5% of articles and 95% of ads.
On the plus side: generally they seem to have a lot of coverage of water issues, and not competely superficial which I can vouch for, since I keep an eye out for this. So they do have some news going. For a couple of days now they've had a lot of coverage of the naxal issue, ("Deep Focus"), though I haven't had the enthu to read in detail.
Today's "Global" page, had an "Around the World" section (probably a standard feature. It had a.) a picture of an unknown (but stunning) South Korean actress, b) "Teri Hatcher looking for love" c.) "Postmen boycott UK house because of cat".
Swaminathan Aiyar, one of their usual columnists had a stupid article on irrigation, something about using piped or drip irrigation instead of canals. Not a single figure about how economically viable this might be.
They've expanded their "Speaking Tree" column into a full Sunday supplement and are running a slick, nicely designed, but, to me, predictable ad about it in the main paper for a while ("Visit yourself, once a week", "If you listen, you hear", "Somewhere between our head and heart (Ed- our neck?) lies a land we rarely go to")
Enough of Times bashing for now.
Monday, October 26, 2009
For those who care ..
Parle Poppins is alive (though perhaps not well).
I found it being sold in Tirupati, have not seen it anywhere else till now.
However I must say that the taste didn't quite live up to the childhood memories. Lacked a certain refinement.
I found it being sold in Tirupati, have not seen it anywhere else till now.
However I must say that the taste didn't quite live up to the childhood memories. Lacked a certain refinement.
Monday, March 06, 2006
Shvoong.com
Currently I am getting mildly obsessive about the possibility of making some money doing things that I like to do, during this 'sabbatical' of mine. I found out about this website called Shvoong today. These guys are positioning themselves as a site for "Abstracts". Ie, they want to have short summaries of every book/essay that was ever written, or basically of all human knowledge. The model is that the summaries can be written by anyone, and they get paid royalties depending on how many people read the summary and how they like it. The website makes its money (and pays the royalties) from (you guessed it!) advertising. The same old game again.
I think the business model of this site is pretty shaky given the amount of free yet quite reliable material on the net (eg. wikipedia, which I've found pretty good on occasion and book reviews at amazon). Nevertheless I'm tempted to give this site a spin since I anyway read a lot and like writing reviews. Take a look at the site : www.shvoong.com
Comments ?
I think the business model of this site is pretty shaky given the amount of free yet quite reliable material on the net (eg. wikipedia, which I've found pretty good on occasion and book reviews at amazon). Nevertheless I'm tempted to give this site a spin since I anyway read a lot and like writing reviews. Take a look at the site : www.shvoong.com
Comments ?
Saturday, March 04, 2006
Gentle Reader ..
Some notes to readers of this blog:
-- I would of course *very much* like to know who is reading the blog and what they think of it. So please leave a comment if you can, even if you don't have much to say.
--I would love to discuss anything on the blog (since I am interested in the stuff, that's why I wrote it!) so if you want to discuss or know more, I'd be happy to.
--Since I'm going to leave my well-paying job soon, I am experimenting with using Google ads on this site to see if it can make a little money. So do take a second look at the ads on the top of the page and click on any that might be interesting. So far the ads are not so interesting, but I was quite amused recently to see a link for "Philosophy" !! I followed it up and found ads for some very interesting sites including about a remarkable guy called Ken Wilber. So you might actually learn something from the ads !
-- I would of course *very much* like to know who is reading the blog and what they think of it. So please leave a comment if you can, even if you don't have much to say.
--I would love to discuss anything on the blog (since I am interested in the stuff, that's why I wrote it!) so if you want to discuss or know more, I'd be happy to.
--Since I'm going to leave my well-paying job soon, I am experimenting with using Google ads on this site to see if it can make a little money. So do take a second look at the ads on the top of the page and click on any that might be interesting. So far the ads are not so interesting, but I was quite amused recently to see a link for "Philosophy" !! I followed it up and found ads for some very interesting sites including about a remarkable guy called Ken Wilber. So you might actually learn something from the ads !
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Okay, I had an exciting event today.
For a while now I have been going to this used bookstore in the MG Road area (Bookworm) of Bangalore. I have good vibes about the owner he's a really straightforward and honest guy with good values. At the same time he seems to run a profitable and expanding business. I've had an itch to get involved more as I usually get when I see something cool (like bangalorewalks!). Today (actually yesterday), I went to this guy to sell off some old books that I have at home, I'm trying to prune my collection. I started talking with him and asked him how his business was doing and any issues and so on. He said that things were going well but he needs to publicise his business more and he is having trouble procuring good used books (history , philosophy , travel, stuff like that). I also told him that I was going to be kinda footloose in a little while. He then brought up that there are all these used bookstores in the US that sell good books really cheap and he feels that if these are bought and shipped to India by air or sea freight, he could still sell them at a profit. But he doesn't have any contacts or way to do this.
Obviously this set me thinking and I got all excited. Coz -- this is sooo cool. Atleast in theory. In a completely natural organic way I ran into a business opportunity (however small) that I'm naturally very interested in (books -- passionate about), and have some network that I could leverage to make it happen. Anyway -- there is a huge amount I could already write about this that is floating in my mind but I'll not do that, right now anyway. I am certainly going to experiment with a sample shipment and see what happens. I talked to Arvind in the US about it. Anyone reading this, I am *really* enthusiastic at this point about following this up and seeing where it goes. Any help would be verrrry welcome.
For a while now I have been going to this used bookstore in the MG Road area (Bookworm) of Bangalore. I have good vibes about the owner he's a really straightforward and honest guy with good values. At the same time he seems to run a profitable and expanding business. I've had an itch to get involved more as I usually get when I see something cool (like bangalorewalks!). Today (actually yesterday), I went to this guy to sell off some old books that I have at home, I'm trying to prune my collection. I started talking with him and asked him how his business was doing and any issues and so on. He said that things were going well but he needs to publicise his business more and he is having trouble procuring good used books (history , philosophy , travel, stuff like that). I also told him that I was going to be kinda footloose in a little while. He then brought up that there are all these used bookstores in the US that sell good books really cheap and he feels that if these are bought and shipped to India by air or sea freight, he could still sell them at a profit. But he doesn't have any contacts or way to do this.
Obviously this set me thinking and I got all excited. Coz -- this is sooo cool. Atleast in theory. In a completely natural organic way I ran into a business opportunity (however small) that I'm naturally very interested in (books -- passionate about), and have some network that I could leverage to make it happen. Anyway -- there is a huge amount I could already write about this that is floating in my mind but I'll not do that, right now anyway. I am certainly going to experiment with a sample shipment and see what happens. I talked to Arvind in the US about it. Anyone reading this, I am *really* enthusiastic at this point about following this up and seeing where it goes. Any help would be verrrry welcome.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
I've been having various low level issues (corpspeak!) with my nose for a while now and talked to a doc about it today. He took one look at my nose and says that I have a (massively) deviated nasal septum and that it will continue to cause me trouble. Only solution is to get it operated. I'm greatly amused -- this is the most interesting thing someone has said about my body for a while now (the previous one was way back in 2001 and was a compliment about my sexy legs -- I kid you not). A deviated nasal septum -- who woulda thunk it.
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