Does everyone like you?

everyone...?! Here is a related question. Have you ever been in a position where you have to make decisions for or on behalf of others? Here is an explanation.

'Leading' is making decisions.
Making decisions is choosing between difference choices.
Choosing is rejecting some choices.
Rejection affect people who stand to gain from those choices.
People who lose by your decision usually don't like you! :-)

In an ideal world where everyone is equally smart and appreciate the rational behind decision making, everyone will like everyone else in spite of any loss to their income, prestige, fame, etc. Our world is far from ideal.

So if you are a leader, not everyone likes you. That is guaranteed.

Eating with hands!

Eating with hands is somewhat uniquely Indian. While people around the world invented tools like spoons, forks, chop sticks, etc, we are comfortable eating with our hands. What's up with that? We are bunch of smart people why didn't we invent a tool? We do use different types of spoons for cooking. So why not one for eating?

Last winter I realized an answer to this question. Even if the food is served hot in the plate, when the temperature outside is freezing, very quickly the food becomes cold. If you eat with your fingers in the freezing cold weather, you fingers start to hurt by the time you finish eating! It is pretty uncomfortable. Cold food in mouth goes down without much discomfort. But touching the cold food is not a comfortable feeling. So if you can pick up the food with a tool and drop it in your mouth, that serves as a comfortable meal. In India, we are used to warm weather all around the year. If the food is hot, let it cool for a few minutes and you can pick it up comfortably with your hands to feed yourself. So there is no need to invent a tool!

Incidentally, we have food like Dosa that is difficult to eat with a standard tool like spoon or fork, especially if it is crispy. Either we have to invent a Dosa eating tool or make bite size Dosas just like mini idlies.

People eat sandwiches here with their hands. So it is not completely an alien behavior. The thing that beats me is why the fast food sandwiches are so big that it never fits in your mouth. Eating a sandwich is a scene. You have to wide open your mouth to take a bite. Restaurants boost showing their sandwiches with a huge stack of stuff layered with some bread or bun on the outside. If I am going to pick up loosely assembled stuff to eat, I would rather pick up a bite size sandwich piece and eat it at once. Oh well.... perhaps we need to modernize our food and eating tools...?! :-)

Wisdom and Instinct

The good and bad in life are not black and white as in the movies. They are shades of grey. It is only after the fact, well into the future, you realize if something turned out good or bad. Randomness influences life in a big way. So conventional wisdom is subjective and sometimes one has to completely ignore it. Here are few examples of how some famous people ignored their stumbling blocks and got ahead to make history simply by following their instincts.

"Children just aren't interested in Witches and Wizards anymore." - Anonymous publishing executive to J.K. Rowling, 1996.

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" - H. M. Warner, co-founder of Warner Bros. 1927.

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." - Ken Olson, Founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." - Decca Records executives rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

"You better get secretarial work or get married." - Emmeline Snively, Director, Blue Book Modelling Modelling Agency, to Marilyn Monroe in 1944.

"The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty, a fad." - The President of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford's lawyer not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don't know how to use the English language." - The San Francisco Examiner, rejecting a submission by Rudyard Kipling in 1889.

"The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys." - Sir William Preece, Chief Engineer, British Post Office, 1878.

"The world potential market for copying machines is 5000 at most." - IBM, to the eventual founders of Xerox, saying the photocopier had no market large enough to justify production, 1959.

Fascinating Facts - The floating Earth

As you may know, Einstein's general theory of relativity completely changed the way we think about space and time. Instead of objects sitting in space as time tics and tocs, objects distort and interact with space and time together. The theory predicts that earth, stars and other galactic objects bend the space around them.


NASA’s Gravity Probe B satellite proved the theory's predictions. 
http://einstein.stanford.edu/SPACETIME/spacetime4.html Don't miss the great video explanations on the link.