Viswanathan K's Thoughts

In a set of lab experiments involving rats, the rodents were taught to press a lever to get a reward, usually food. Once the rats had learnt this technique, a cup of the same food was placed in a cup inside the cage. The cup in the food was there for the taking: unlike the press-lever-for-food mechanism, it didn’t require any action by the rats. This is where things get strange: even after the rats had discovered both ways of getting food (by working on the lever and by doing nothing), the majority of rats preferred to “earn” their food by pressing the lever! And this just didn’t happen with rats. Fish, birds and monkeys behaved the same way preferring to “work” to get their food. Maybe the preference to work is something that is hard wired into all species for survival reasons. I mean, in nature, one can’t get food for nothing. And a species that expects to get food without effort will go extinct soon enough. We humans behave the same way. Even though people curse thei...

In the backdrop of the current financial crisis and all the criticism about ridiculously oversized bonuses for bankers, an American university decided to conduct an experiment to check the impact the size of the bonus had on performance. So they decided to give 3 different bonuses: a small bonus (equal to one day’s pay of the participant), a medium sized bonus (2 weeks’ pay) and an extra-large bonus (5 months pay). Obviously such an experiment would require a huge budget. Definitely way beyond the amount given for a university study. So the university decided to conduct the experiment in India: after all, what could be cheaper? I didn’t even know they outsource even such studies these days. I used to associate outsourcing with IT, BPO’s, KPO’s, pharma and call centers! I’d have happily signed on for such a study but the university was smart: they decided to conduct their study in rural India, where costs would be even lower than in, say, Bangalore. Who says universities can’t...

Rahul Gandhi, heir-to-the-throne, is a reclusive figure. He doesn’t give interviews. What are his views on different issues? What does he believe should be India’s priorities? How he intended to solve any of our problems? No idea. And now we get a hint about the man’s views, thanks to the WikiLeaks cables. He believes “radicalized Hindu groups” pose a greater threat to India than even LeT. And yes, he made this statement in 2009, i.e., after the 26/11 attacks. So let’s look at what Rahul Gandhi is really saying here. In terms of body count, did the 26/11 attacks kill more people than any other terrorist attack or religious riot in India? Obviously not: many religious riots have killed far more people. On the other hand, did any of those riots push India (even slightly) towards war with Pakistan? Of course not. But hey, to Rahul Gandhi, the prospect of a terrorist group pushing 2 nuclear armed countries towards war is less scary than those Hindu groups. Now at least we know ho...

The aftermath of the WikiLeaks saga hasn’t caused any major country-to-country relationship breakdowns. I guess that’s because most of the information has only been titillating, not surprising. After all, how many people are really surprised that that the Sunni Muslim countries want America to attack Shia Iran, to “cut off the serpent’s head” as the Saudi king put it? The events following the leaks show the true face of European countries. Like Switzerland. Always happy to take money from every criminal, crook, murderer, swindler, drug lord and terrorist. But hey, Julian Assange puts the wrong city as his place of residence and the Swiss bank blocks the WikiLeaks account! Or take UK. They’d never extradite a terrorist out of their country, but Assange, now that’s different. The Brits are falling over themselves to extradite him for a sex crime! Australia, which would normally defend its citizens (including Assange), has suddenly developed “confidence in the British legal system.” ...

(Some of) The recent Wikileaks revelations make for fun reading. I liked the one where the Americans refer to Russian President Medvedev as Robin to Vladimir Putin’s Batman role! There’s nothing new about that power structure for us though. After all, Bal Thackerey made the remote-control-style-of-ruling famous years back in Maharashtra. Sonia Gandhi continues the practice at the Center. Across the border, Pakistan’s generals have been doing the same thing for ages. But all of those are instances of a guy (or gal) ruling his own country. But George W. Bush’s took it one step further when he was able to rule Britain via his own poodle, er, puppet: Tony Blair. Trust the West to outdo the rest of the world on all fronts, even proxy-rule!

Even with questions being asked about the integrity of the press based on the Radia tapes, we still don’t seem to care that the media never asks the hard questions to politicians. Sure, we have the odd show like Devil’s Advocate by Karan Thapar, but even that gets a bit too aggressive and in-your-face at times. And even Thapar only goes after people who are obviously wrong or guilty. But nobody in the media ever asks politicians what they are doing about even the basic minimum things they are supposed to do: stuff like providing good administration and development? No wonder then that it’s only students who ask questions the media won’t: like the student who confronted Obama about Pakistan’s terrorism. Or the student who asked Rahul Gandhi in Ahmedabad why they should vote for the Congress when Narender Modi has developed Gujarat so much more? Rahul Gandhi’s response? He compared Modi to Chairman Mao saying while both did develop their areas, they also caused a lot of de...

We’ve heard the famous Tom Sawyer and his fence story. Of how Tom presented a punishment (painting the fence) as something attractive, so much so that his friends begged to paint the fence…and in some cases, even paid for a piece of the punishment, er, action. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, did something similar in 2007. When he was still at Harvard, he was spending so much time with his company that he hardly attended any classes. So when this art test was due, Zuckerberg had no idea of the course contents (Yeah, I know: most of us had no idea of our course contents at college even without forming companies, so does that make us smarter than Zuckerberg?!). Anyways, dropping out of college is not that uncommon, but to flunk out doesn’t sound so good, does it? So he posted all the images he should have studied on a web page and sent a mail to his classmates offering a “study guide”. Bingo! They posted the information about each image. Plus, they even filtered the most import...