Is it OK for scientists to lie?

“Max, grownups sometimes tell lies to make a living” – Fletcher (Jim Carrey) in the movie Liar Liar to his son Max (Justin Cooper).

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Remember Fletcher, a habitual liar, the lawyer in the movie Liar Liar, pleading with his son Max on his birthday, to ‘unwish’ so that, going forward his father can tell lies. That would relieve him (Fletcher) from the obligation to tell the truth under all circumstances. Fletcher goes at length to explain to his son that he has a case to win; his career is at stake and so requests his son to permit him to lie.

So while it appears reasonable that lawyers, politicians, priests and even doctors and the rest of us to lie sometimes to make a living, is it ok for that one group, Scientists; to lie? Continue reading

I am rooting for Battlestar Gallactica

Last week I happened to read two articles, on a famous science fiction TV serial / movies, in two leading magazines. If you guessed it to be Star Trek you are right and have set the premise for this post. While Newsweek chose to put it on its cover and Time gave decent two-page coverage on Star Trek and its influence on a generation (that includes President Obama) that grew up on it and in making science fiction as a welcome genre. There was just a passing reference about my favorite program Battlestar Gallactica (BSG) and that too in only one of the two articles. Continue reading

The myth of management education exposed in these economic times

This week I read two articles in Newsweek. While both are related in some way, one rejected outright the need for management education; the other was more subtle in stating that we are better off without it. I was so fired up after reading them, I had to stop everything else to write and finish this post in one shot. Continue reading

Performance enhancement: at what cost?

“When you burn the candles at both ends, you pay the price” – Randy the Ram in the movie “The Wrestler”

Once I happened to view a cartoon where a professional baseball player, asking a young kid with a baseball bat in his hand, if he was in it just for the fun of it. To him it was awesome that the kid has such motivation but somehow found it to be unbelievable. Continue reading

Kissing a lady through another man’s mouth

What’s missing in this picture? A cup of coffee? And some cookies to complement? Or you may say this is totally out of place (and anachronistic). This guy should have a laptop; instead he is holding a newspaper that he is pretending to read. Besides where is his Smartphone to show how important or how busy he is? If you belong to the ‘modern age’, living a digital life; you are apt to say so.

Continue reading

Internet’s influence on politics

41% of registered voters in Canada didn’t choose to exercise their right to vote in the recent federal election. I was one of them. Neither did any of my family members of voting age went to the booth to cast their vote. Apart from some pressing personal problems that we had to deal with in our family, it was also a plain indifference that made us stay at home.  


While I didn’t have any interest in Canadian politics, I was curious to find out why there was a poor voter turnout in the recent election and why there were so many like me who displayed such apathy.

I found two articles that gave quite convincing answers:

  1. What if they gave an election and nobody won? By ANDREW COYNE in the Macleans magazine.
  2. Parties stick with obsolete strategies by Michael Geist in the Toronto Star.

While Andrew Coyne explains in clear detail what is ailing our (Canadian) electoral system, he says little about what is the cure that can be applied, given the constraints that he mentioned in the article.

For instance it is understandable that when he says that we have five parties competing to form a majority government, and it is highly unlikely that such a majority government will be formed.

While I am not competent to answer many of his questions in the last paragraph of his article, there was one question (Why do so many people no longer bother to vote?) that interested me.

I could find some answer for it in the second article by Michael Geist. It was spot-on to suggest that our parties failed to capitalize on what the Internet can offer with its Web 2.0 technologies.

As the article puts it correctly that no party in Canada realized that the Internet is no longer just a broadcast medium, but also a communication and participation tool.

So it would have been prudent upon the parties to encourage and build up a strong Internet community debating several issues confronting the government, the country (not just electoral issues and not just partisan blogs favoring its own policies) to make it known where each party stands. And that should have begun long before the elections were announced.

This to some extent counteracted the strategy of Steven Harper to declare an election at short notice and quietly win it before anybody took notice. That also would have helped change some of the undecided voters and draw in some of the uninvolved voters (like me).


Contrast our electoral processes with that of our neighbors down south where potential voters actively participate using the Internet and make it known whom they favor long before the elections are called out. They not only contribute monetarily to the campaigns of political candidates online, but also upload their own videos of what they find interesting/important about the candidates and their policies and write blogs to share their views with others in the community.

It is reasonable to expect that such potential voters who so enthusiastically participate will definitely take the initiative to vote.

“Use your brain stupid” – Which one? The right or the left?.

Imagine someone in an authoritative position (your boss or your wife) chiding you to use your brain to solve the problem at hand. And you reply like, “Which one? The right or the left?” you are obviously smarter. Experts say you can only go up to some level in solving your problem if you use your logical side (the left) and at some point the creative side (the right) should come into play to reach a brilliant solution. The famous Edward De Bono suggests the use of ‘Six Thinking Hats‘ technique to switch our style of thinking while solving a problem. So that means at a given time we need to be aware of which mode we are in, say; being pessimistic or optimistic or cautious and switch it deliberately to widen our perception and that needs some disciplined thinking.


What if there is an easier method that makes use of both parts of the brain simultaneously, and let you see the result immediately and also is something fun to do? Luckily there is one and it is the use of mind maps pioneered by Tony Buzon.

Personally I feel the mind maps come close to our natural way of thinking (a scatter brain approach). Using mind maps, even as we jot down ideas in free form, we follow a structure. Looking at the partially developed mind map, we plug in the missing elements in our thinking as we go along. Before we know it, we will be amazed at the extent of territory we have covered and realize it was all fun and the job is done.

Before the advent of PCs the use of mind mapping technique was confined to scientists, executives in big corporations, students and professors at university. Though it doesn’t need much in terms of resources (a sheaf of papers and pen will do), it wasn’t popular and perceived to be an elite exercise. But now that PCs have become popular and along with the proliferation of mind mapping software, mind mapping has come to be within reach of every one.

I am convinced that if used properly, mind mapping exercise will enable you to create a ‘WOW’ effect in all your ventures.

Uses of mind maps:

Uses of mind maps are many as they are outlined here.

To show a live demonstration of the use of mind maps, I have taken browsing my website as an example. Please click on the link below to see how easy it is to navigate my site using mind maps. (Some of my visitors complained that they find it difficult to locate in my site what they came searching for)


Using mind map to navigate my website
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You may notice how easy it is to navigate web sites using mind maps which no one has talked about so far (at least as far as my knowledge goes. Please correct me if I am wrong)

I may even go further to suggest mind maps should be the first interface users see when they turn on the computer. Due to its intuitive nature this would make any operating system very user-friendly.

What do you think?

“You only live twice or so it seems”

Websites have a life like James Bond and apparently they get to live only twice. Visitors visit any site, for the first time out of curiosity, to see if there is anything interesting to browse. If they find anything that grabs their attention, they visit a second time to see if there is any new content added. If the site fails to impress at either of these two times it can bid goodbye to its visitors and there are ‘no comebacks’.

In the past few weeks (probably even earlier) my site has been hacked. Being aware of the high expectations of my visitors, I had been carrying out some desperate firefighting measures to bring my site back into shape. During this period my site has been acting weird and I couldn’t fix it as quickly as I wished and as a result I might have lost some valuable first or second time visitors who are never going to comeback.

Nevertheless I have learned several valuable lessons out of this painful experience which I would like to share with you and may help you if you maintain a site of your own.

Clues that your site has been hacked (it will bring out the inner Sherlock Holmes in you):


* If you log into your account at your web host, you see your file size bloated without any reason. (Mine shot up from 35MB to something like 170MB)
* You will see some weird characters on some of your pages alongside normal ones like the one below pointed by the arrows
* If you display Google Adsense ads like I do, you will see a lot of Adsense Ads that are not relevant to your page’s content.
* You will see an unusually large number of hidden external links pointing to sites that serve hackers’ interests.
* You will see a very long list of random words hidden inside some of your pages and code and may take a little of digging to find where they are hidden. Again these are to serve hacker’s interests to place Google ads related to these random words instead of your site’s content.
* You will see some of the pictures missing in your page and if you hover your mouse pointer over it, they point to a location in an unknown folder and not in the folder you originally uploaded.

The cause of my problem:

1. I was using an earlier version of WordPress platform for maintaining the site which is known to be vulnerable to hacker attack
2. My password was not strong enough and could have been easily cracked.

Remedies:

1. If you are using a platform other than the older versions of WordPress (say FrontPage or Dreamweaver or Blogger), look into appropriate forums of webmasters to see any vulnerability of hacker attacks and implement necessary actions to improve security of your site.
2. But if you are using an older version of WordPress immediately upgrade it to a newer version. Also please implement every one of the following suggestions mentioned in the following links.

Before I let you go, I request you to stay with me or come back as often as you can and I promise I will not fail you.

Given your loyal support, I challenge the agents and the sentinels determined to kill my spirit or destroy my ship ( taking cue from the movie Matrix) ,

“Try as you can, you cannot stop me. This Neo will always rise like a phoenix from the ashes.”


I love apples


I love apples raw, ripe, and cooked. Even if I go to any McDonald’s restaurant my eyes instinctively look for apple pies. But lately my attention is drawn towards different kinds of apples and Macs: iMacs. I have always been using Windows OS running on PC Clones and had little incentive to look outside ‘windows’. No one could dissuade me from using them for three reasons: my familiarity with Windows, its compatibility with a wide range of applications and its economy of use.

Every time I see the Mac vs. PC ads put out by Apple on TV and print media, a sense of anger builds up in me. It is as much due to my loyalty towards Windows, as it is about ignorance of Macs and my jealousy to those who can afford Macs. A chance exposure to this YouTube presentation made me only too happy that at last Windows gets its due recognition.

I am told for simplicity and ease of use nothing comes close to Apple products. A customer of ours who bought a few computers from us running Windows recently bought an iMac and was quite happy with it. In fact he was so enthusiastic that he was selling me on the merits of iMacs in particular and Apple products in general! Internally I started to worry whether I lost this customer forever to Apple products while I am devoted to selling PCs and laptops running Windows.

His reasons seem convincing enough that I may become a convert soon. See for yourself.

  1. User is totally freed from the details of hardware and the connection details. You bring home the iMac, connect the keyboard, mouse in the respective ports and turn it on. That’s it and it is ready to use. Rest of the items like monitor, webcam, wireless connection, all the hardware integrated and out of sight makes things simple. There is very little chance the user can go wrong in setting up the computer for the very first time.
  2. The system is intensely focused on giving the user the necessary help in getting his (her) job done. By that I mean all the necessary applications that an average user needs are preinstalled and come as a single package. The user need never have to worry about compatibility issues, no product key to forget and retrieve during installation or reinstallation.
  3. Apple is not content with just making their systems user friendly but even the after sale service is dedicated to giving an user friendly introduction to the use of Macs and solving Mac related issues on an ongoing basis. If you go by their slogan “Come to shop. Return to learn“, you will understand what I mean. Of course this service is not free but is on chargeable basis.
  4. Contrast this with us the Windows vendors, who are busy pushing hardware and software to a saturated market and in the process ignore the pleas of a customer who bought a Windows system but is beseeching to learn the basics. Often times I have come across customers who ask me as to where they can learn how to use the PC. To be honest with you, I directed them to some bookshops, library or the Internet!
  5. We learn about Windows from such disparate sources as friends, outdated books, manuals, internet articles, forums. A little here, little there and we are never sure we have learned enough or in a professional manner.

I believe there is a real business opportunity for us (the vendors selling PCs and Laptops with Windows on them) if we can combine training customers with selling them the system. Even if we don’t do this in a proactive way, soon we will be forced to be on the defensive as Apple continues to gain market share at the expense of Windows.

In writing this post I have become a traitor to myself.