An interesting read in today’s newspaper had to do with the proclamation by a cognitive scientist that a Pencil eraser is the Devil! Who would have thunk it?! The innocent little eraser, the scrubby little thing, the chocolate toffee sized, multi-faceted pencil eraser is a devil?? Really? As you read along, you would realize that the pencil eraser is used to correct mistakes made and give an appearance of cleanliness, almost as if the contents were all written clean and good at the first time of writing. It encourages children to seek perfection in their presentation at the cost of making mistakes and learning from these mistakes. The act of erasing misspellings or hastily scribbled, illegible notes indicates a need to cover up and not own up to faults and/ or mistakes. Ah! Now that makes sense. When I was encouraging people to make mistakes so they learn from them, I did not realize that the devil of playing it
Musings
General thoguhts that do not fit in any of the other categories
Changing mindsets
While driving in the streets of Bengaluru (or anywhere else in India, for that matter), it is common to see vehicles coming down the wrong direction in a 4 lane road that is divided by a concrete road divider. Often, it is to “save” on a precious few milliliters of fuel because the option of following the rules would force them to travel a few kilometers more. Auto rickshaws, taxis, bicycles, mopeds, motorbikes, cars, buses and even trucks are guilty of doing this. For an independent observer, it can be quite startling to see how little these vehicle drivers care for their lives as well as others’! As it is driving in India is an exercise in alertness and road awareness and all those who drive down the wrong side of the road, be it in city traffic or on the highway, endanger their lives and those of others in their endeavor to save a few Rupees. The Indian consumer’s
Amazon’s monopsony
In an interesting blog post by Paul Krugman this week, he lays into Amazon and the power that it wields in the books marketplace today. Amongst many other points he makes, he mentions that while Amazon is not a monopoly in trying to use its power as a dominant seller to increase prices but instead, is a monopsony – using its power to keep prices low for its customers. In the particular example of Amazon v/s the book publisher Hachette, Amazon was able to squeeze the publisher into giving a larger share of the book sales to Amazon by disrupting the sales of their books on its website. Books from Hachette would take longer to be delivered when compared to books from other publishers and such. Amazon used its power to influence the market place to benefit itself and also its customers. In the Indian landscape, Amazon has not yet achieved the kind of power that it ostensibly wields in
Connected Cars
Reading this article on the Economist recently got me thinking on the possibilities of the future. While movies such as the Fifth Element have thrown a glimpse at the future where cars operate in air without the need for roadways, a very feasible scenario is developing on the existing roadways. The connected car as described in the article is capable of understanding the distance between itself and other vehicles on the road, does not need a driver and creates a an accident-free on-road experience as the possibility of human error while driving is removed. It is another story that the possibility of human error now resides in the hands of the Engineers who design and develop these driverless cars but let’s assume that we are able to achieve a degree of unparalleled safety via rigorous testing and years of prototyping. The scene depicted makes for compelling viewing – trucks would operate on their own criss-crossing the country as if on
What’s in a name?
Having recently been through the experience of choosing a name for my daughter, my thoughts went to the identity formed by a name. There have been careers built around the spelling to be used in name – ask the numerologists. In the traditional South Indian tradition, the sound or the syllable that the new born baby’s name should start with, is decided by the way the stars align at the time of birth. It is not uncommon for parents in this part of the world to look for names that begin with “Re”, “La”, “Shi” or “Tha”after a baby is born. The English translation of some of these syllables is intriguing. As made popular in the movie “Chupke Chupke” about 30 years back, why are “go” and “to” pronounced so differently in English? An exact pronunciation of a Sanskrit word in English is not easy. Nowadays, more visible than ever before is the change in the spelling of the name
Mithun's Musings 