Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Have you ever felt (or been told) that you’re wasting your vote by voting for a candidate or party that has no chance of winning the election? In the US, the shrillness of such accusations has gone up a notch, as pointed out by Alan Jacobs : “I keep hearing from Trump supporters that if I vote for a third-party or write-in candidate — for convenience’ sake let’s say Evan McMullin, though I may not  choose him — in this election I’m “really” or “effectively” voting for Hillary Clinton. When I ask how that works exactly, I am told that it’s because Hillary is leading and therefore my McMullin vote isn’t allowing Trump to catch up.” Wait a minute, argues Jacobs. The winner in the US isn’t the guy who won the most votes (same as India and UK), and so voting for the 3 rd party candidate means different things in different states: “The argument must be that if you vote for McMullin in a state where Hillary is ahead, you’re voting for Hillary, but if you do it in a state w...

When Usain Bolt wins a race, it is obvious who won. It is not a subjective decision. Not so with the Nobel Prize that is highly subjective. And outrageously dumb at other times. Did you know Einstein never won a Nobel for his Theory of Relativity? (He won it for something else). Wow! So the man didn’t win a Nobel for the theory that changed our understanding of the universe?! I feel that even more strongly in hyper-subjective fields like literature. To make things even more subjective, people win that prize for stuff written in different languages. Who exactly is qualified to compare stuff in English v/s Tamil v/s Swahili v/s Chinese? Literature is often tied to the context; so not only does the judge need to know the language, (s)he needs to know the culture. Good luck finding such people anywhere on the planet. I woudn’t be ranting on this if it were some random prize. But this is one of those “confirming authority” prizes, as in what Calvin told Hobbes: “They only recogn...

To summarize the story so far , using words from Barbara Tuchman’s book, The March of Folly : “The British believed… in imperial terms as governors to the governed. The colonials considered themselves equals, resented interference and sniffed tyranny in every breeze over the Atlantic.” The Americans soon realized they could hit England where it hurt, without firing a shot: by reducing British imports and start manufacturing themselves. The slide down the slippery slope had started. England’s response was “asserting a right you know you cannot exert”. The “terrible encumbrance” of pride and principle were beginning to trump pragmatism. Of course, some of the thinking was rational: if they let the Americans act this way, would the Irish do the same? And so, from here on, every act on either side was misinterpreted: “(The Americans) assumed the British were more rational, just as the British government assumed they were more rebellious, than was true in either case.” And as mo...

“No taxation without representation”. And the Boston Tea Party. That’s about all I knew about American independence. Until I read Barbara Tuchman’s awesome book, The March of Folly . It all started with the Seven Years’ War, a war over who controlled America: the British, the French or the native Indians. The British won; and so America became a British colony. After that arose the fairly reasonable question in England: shouldn’t the colony pay for its continued protection from the native Indians and the resurgent French? The Americans, however, didn’t think of it that way: they felt the money would be used to pay British troops to act as “a rod and check over us”. The seeds of mistrust were sown. The topic of taxation brought with it an unintended debate. Unlike most other colonies, the inhabitants of America (leaving the Indians aside) were British citizens . And so they asked for the “Englishman’s right not to be taxed except by his own representatives”. How come the Engli...

Technology and the arts. Sounds like one of those “never the twain shall meet” cases, right? While that is indeed true an overwhelmingly large amount of the time, every now and then someone joins the two and the result is pure magic. Steve Jobs said it perfectly with the perfect image in the background : “We’ve always tried to be at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts. To be able to get the best of both. To make extremely advanced products from a technology point of view, but also have them be intuitive easy-to-use, fun-to-use, so that they really fit the users.” Apple’s VP of Design, Jony Ive, on the iPad: “The face of the product is pretty much defined by a single piece of multi-touch glass. And that’s it. There’s no pointing device. There’s isn’t even a single orientation. There’s no up, there’s no down. There’s no right way of holding it. I don’t have to change myself to change the product. It fits me.” So why don’t more companies aim for this tech-a...

I found Horace Dediu’s article on what “innovation” means at the workplace an eye-opened. He identifies 4 related terms (each term includes the attributes of the terms preceding it): - Novelty : something new, may or may not have any value. - Creation : something new and valuable, but like art or books. - Invention : something patentable. - Innovation : valuable in the market place; often includes not just the invention but even the method to make money out of it. Thus, for Dediu, Google’s innovation is not just the search algorithm; it is also the way to make money (ads linked to your search terms). That certainly explains why so many people feel all confused about the word “innovation” at the workplace. Based on our schooling, we don’t think of the “How will it make money?” question as part of an innovation. And so end up feeling all confused (This isn’t to pass a judgment on what is right: it’s just to explain that the term “innovation” in the corporate world includ...

As Donald Trump finally seems to be imploding, Matt Taibbi wrote : “There are not many places left for this thing to go that don't involve kids or cannibalism.” Trump’s party still doesn’t seem to know how to handle the situation: “The strategy seemed to be to pretend none of it had happened, and to hide behind piles of the same worn clichés.” Assuming Trump is toast, the next question is whether he was a one-off case of such a candidate reaching this far? Tiabbi is not so sure. After all, he says: “All 16 of the non-Trump entrants were dunces, religious zealots, wimps or tyrants, all equally out of touch with voters.” John Scalzi is even more alarmed. Here’s why : “Donald Trump is not a black swan… He is the end result of conscious and deliberate choices by the GOP, going back decades, to demonize its opponents, to polarize and obstruct, to pursue policies that enfeeble the political weal and to yoke the bigot and the ignorant to their wagon.” In American lingo...