Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Bill Watterson, the author of the Calvin and Hobbes , was an Arts major. He hated the constraints and rules imposed on comics by the newspapers (size, panels, rules for Sunday strips etc) and the syndicates. He stuck to his guns and the result was, well, the greatest comic ever. Watterson’s work was, of course, utterly comprehensible and full of deep significance. It remains popular even today, long after he stopped drawing them.   Scott Adams, the author of Dilbert , on the other hand is an MBA. When he started Dilbert , it got published via one of the syndicates. And after a year, it was just stagnating in a handful of newspapers. So Adams did what his MBA training had taught him: seek the customer’s feedback, and the customer is always right. It was the start of the Internet age, and so Adams added his mail ID next to the strip. Voila! The feedback came in bucketloads and Adams learnt that people loved the strip when the main character was in office, not outside. Until the...

Finally. A few Western public figures are saying what many feel privately but dared not say publicly. Ex-Aussie PM Tony Abbott declared: “(The West) can't remain in denial about the massive problem within Islam…Cultures are not all equal. We should be ready to proclaim the clear superiority of our culture to one that justifies killing people in the name of God.” Now compare that with what Donald Trump said and it sounds almost tame! All he said was that the US stop allowing Muslim non - citizens into the US until lawmakers find a solution to this terrorism problem. Oh, in case you forgot, the US Congress already voted to disallow Syrian refugees from entering America! Scott Adams writes a series of blogs on Trump’s persuasive skills. While Adams doesn’t always agree with Trump, he is quite impressed with the techniques employed. For example, he says that sooner or later another ISIS attack will happen. At that point, Adams says : “You probably don’t know of any other...

Edward Snowden, the guy who let everyone know about the snooping that the US government was doing, had at one stage tried to negotiate a return to the US. It doesn’t look like the US responded (obviously). But the possible why’s behind that non-negotiation make for interesting reading. Take Scott Adams’ take on how messy this whole situation must be for the US government. First off, if and when Snowden is brought back to the US, he would stand trial. A jury trial, to be specific. And therein, argues Adams , lies the problem: “I'm wondering how you find a jury that would convict Snowden. On the first day of the trial his lawyer will explain to all twelve jurors how the government spied on them personally. Every potential juror is also a victim. Good luck getting the victims to side with the perpetrator, which in this case is the government.” Further, Adams feels that the jurors may feel the law is an ass: “Jury nullification is when jurors agree that the accused broke th...

Remember those 1 liners or phrases that you see on pretty much every book that praises it to the skies? “Terrific book…witty and thought provoking”. “Combines readability with meatiness”. The publishing industry calls them blurbs. I used to wonder how the first edition of a book could have any blurbs? How had anyone managed to read it before it was published? Well, the answer is kind of obvious. As Scott Adams described it: “A typical blurb process might involve picking some famous authors in the success field and asking my publisher to ask their publishers to ask the famous authors to 1) Read my book, and 2) Write glowing reviews.” Adams felt this process was wrong and too made up. Which is why he decided on a new approach for his own upcoming book, How to Fail Almost Every Time and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life . He decided that he would allow readers of his blog to come up with blurbs for his book before the book was released! But wait a minute, surely his ...

I read this Scott Adams blog where he talked about how he kept forgetting to take his 5 items to the gym. Stuff like keys, iPod and so on. He wondered why his brain can’t seem to remember a simple list of 5 items? He never got around to answering that question because his blog focused on finding a way to remember, not why he couldn’t remember in the first place. So I will give it a shot instead: why is it that most of us can’t seem to remember such short lists when we can, at the same time, remember much more complex things? I feel the answer is that a checklist activity really has 2 parts to it: first, remembering the list; and secondly, finding and carrying each item on that list. I feel it is the time gap between the 2 parts which makes us forget. I am guessing we get bored by the time we perform the 3 rd part of the activity. Or maybe we don’t allocate time to do so many pairs of actions at the last minute! Oh, if you are interested, Adams’ solution to remembering suc...