Ramblin Rhumb Lines

On my work-day walks to office, I have started to listen in to the local FM channel RadioIndigo 91.9. They play contemporary pop tunes - not many are to my liking - but it's better than the rest of the stations. One morning I listed to an ad promoting a website and towards the end of the ad there was a real quick - I mean - really really fast "Conditions apply" message. The phrase was cued up to compress its duration as if trying a new mode of deception on the earnest listner. I found it interesting. Very. I remember how the print ads carried an "*" against a price tag which was carrying a discount and at the bottom it read "Conditions apply" is the lowest available font size. Again, deception at play ha ha ! The mother of deception is used by Mutual funds ads. Their  "Mutual Funds are Subject to Market Risk. Please Read the Offer Documents Carefully Before Investing"   should hold the Guniess record for the fastest sentence on TV - ...

We all wonder who owns that car brand don't we? well, here is a nic graphic I found on the internet:

Today I toured Srirangapattana near Mysore with my family. The first stop we made was on a little hill called Karighatta. I got a splendid view from the hill and was awestruck by the lush greenery surrounding the area. When you are on a hill, you are it's eyes. Apart from a stunning specimen of a Anthia sexguttata (Six spotted tiger Beetle), My little son told me that the grass in the area was very unique. Rightfully so, I could not miss noticing a whole lot of Eragrostis cynosuroides - commonly called "Darbe Hullu" in Kannada, growing around the place. My googleing on this found an entire legend on the grass on this hill, tracing it back to Varaha Avatar from Dashavatara!  Point is, India is a land of legends. Many of them are woven around local flora and fauna, as after all, there has to be some treatise to the creator of all this spendor right?  I do not complain. I am devouring this divinity with my eyes and I can't get enough of it.

C K Prahalad, a leader amongst modern thinkers is no more. It was shocking to me when I first saw a ticker tape news message below my 9:00 o'clock news today Morning. Having spent almost 7 years in Coimbatore myself, I remember missing a lecture by him at the Lakshmi Mills premises when I was in SI Viscose. Karthikeyan, my dear friend, had filled me in with CK's greatness and yet, somehow, I had missed the talk. in 2009, I picked up my first CK Prahalad book, The New Age of Innovation. I was instantly hooked onto his R=G and N=1 concepts. Greatness in such simple terms was almost startling. I for one, will surely miss CK. May his soul rest in peace. 

What happens if you take a serving of Soul, blend in a heady dose of Hindustani classical raaga and sprinkle in a dash of Jazz? That, in my opinion is vsop music.  Rekha Bharadwaj has rendered a soulful classic and it is called "Ab Mujhe Koi", one of the tracks from the movie Ishqiya, Lyricist Gulzar, a genius of words has offered a real treat. There is a fantastic guitar solo that gives the song a very Jazzy tempo but blends into the background like a well behaved child when the Hindustaani Raag kicks in. A snare drum in the ensamble is the only pep in the offering and it is very arty. Overall, 'Ab Mujhe Koi' will be remembered for its subtle character. Hmm...like Pinot Noir maybe? That reminds me of what Miles says to Maya in the film Sideways when asked why he was so into Pinot Noir. Here's an abstract: "Uh, I don't know, I don't know. Um, it's a hard grape to grow, as you know. Right? It's uh, it's thin-skinned, temperamental, ripens...

I have been toying about this topic for a while now. Please brace yourself for a baronial blog. Lets talk about Oil. So what exactly is a 'Barrel' of Oil? Well, for a quick metric, 1 Barrel = 42Gallons (US) = 0.159 kiloliters. BOE stands for barrel of oil equivalent. It is a unit of energy based on the approximate energy released by burning 1 barrel of crude oil. So what's the story? Let us look at this table of Key countries and their Primary Energy consumption in 2007. Oil Natural Gas Coal Nuclear Energy Hydro electric US 39.9% 25.2% 24.3% 8.1% 2.4% China 19.7% 3.3% 70.4% 0.8% 5.9% India 31.8% 8.9% 51.4% 1.0% 6.8% TOTAL WORLD 35.6% 23.8% 28.6% 5.6% 6.4% Let's also look at the justreleased 2008 Global Fortune 10 companies by revenue : 1. Wal-Mart Stores; 2. ExxonMobil;3. Royal Dutch Shell;4. BP;5. Toyota Motor;6. Chevron;7. ING Group;8. Total;9. General Motors;10. ConocoPhillips Th...

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair was an event held at Max Yasgur's 600 acre dairy farm in the rural town of Bethel, New York from August 15 to August 18, 1969. An event of insane proportions that brought together close to half a million people in search of peace and music, the quintessential early version of social networking. Wonder what happened to that 'woodstock' feeling? Where is it today? Well, to a large extent, its gone cyber. Consider this - "The Maldives has opened a `virtual embassy' in Second Life, the online virtual world. It is a global first. The Maldivian Government said in a statement that such embassies representing Macedonia and the Philippines are on the cards. Sweden has announced similar plans too." Second Life is an Internet-based virtual world launched in 2003. Go see the second Embassy being inaugurated on Second life. An Embassy in Cyberspace? That's a Phantasmagorical truth my friends. Second Life was honored at the ...

Frans Johansson's book " The Medici effect  " argues that breakthrough ideas most often occur when we bring concepts from one field into new, unfamiliar territory. In this space - which Johansson calls "the Intersection" - established ideas clash and combine with insights from other fields, disciplines, and cultures, resulting in an explosion of totally new ideas. The book has a small chapter on Sequoyah. Cherokees are the only Native American People who possess a writing system equivalent to the European alphabet. The Cherokee syllabary is the only alphabet in history a ttributed to be the work of one man,George Gist, known to the world as Sequoyah. Although he did not speak or read the English language, he understood the power of the written word. After twelve years of dedicated work and watching the new settlers communicate, Sequoyah finished the Cherokee syllabary in 1821. He spent the rest of his life teaching his people how to read and spell. Johans...

Sun-Tzu (pronounced "sun za") was a brilliant Chinese military General ( 544 BC - 496 BC.) who wrote a book called " The Art of War  ". This 2500 year old book was all about strategies for winning wars. Today, it has found a huge following in disparate disciplines including Sales. I remember what I had come across in a Solutions Selling workshop that I had attended some time ago. The true power of the information age must be the ability to apply knowledge, common in one discipline, to a totally new and interesting area. The outcome of such a feat can resonate with a huge and significant difference. We all read about Preemptive strikes when the US first entered Iraq.  I'd put that as a classic Sun-tzu move.  In a sales  deal, when  you are leading  a "not looking"  buyer to a "looking"  state,  the  best move is to strike a Preemptive deal (Be the first on the scene). The other four strategies that can be applied to an active opp...

Today, I was knockin on Heaven's door to let the confetti shower down on a rare display of sheer grace.  Sachin Tendulkar was a motion of fluid genius in Gwalior. His knock of 200 not out gave us a glimpse of the genius at his 5 star best.  In an age where make-belief Avatars roam the woods of fictitious planets, one man harnessing a mere willow in his hands gave us a treat of courage and glory that perhaps, only fables of King Arthur in his shining armor could provide parallels to. A feat that deserves a 'Melchizedek' bottle of champagne to celebrate! Long live the God of Cricket! Long Live Sachin!

This Sankranti, I thought I couldn't comprehend how to fly a kite - ever! Well, as luck would have it, that was a short moment. Simple. I asked my neighbor and he told me how to string a kite. Science from none other than NASA, tell us this: Lift (L) = Cl * A * r * .5 * V^2 The lift L is equal to a lift coefficient Cl times the projected surface area A times the air density r times one half the square of the wind velocity V . Similarly, the drag D is equal to a drag coefficient Cd times the projected surface area A times the air density r times one half the square of the wind velocity V .   Drag (D) = Cd * A * r * .5 * V^2   skratch-pad.com tells us this: The lifting force of all kites is produced by deflecting the air downward, the resulting change in momentum producing an upward force. The reason for this is that the air traveling over the top of the curved surface of the kite is going faster than the air passing underneath. Fast-moving air creates...