The most dangerous man

The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. -- HL Menken

'NO' is the answer

Note to self

Winners don't take 'NO' for an answer. There is one thing that I would like to add to it. Forget about winning, if you want to stop screwing yourself, learn to say 'NO' to people, in the right time, right way.

An adage comes to my mind...

"మొహమాటానికి వెళ్లి ముండ కడుపు తెచ్చుకున్నదని"

37000 feet and cruising: So I am sick + some learnings and thoughts

Ensure that the entire process is under your control. This is very important. There will be temptations to do that deal with a large company who will get their entire sales force to sell your product. It will be lucrative to get integrated with this large pan-indian bank so that your cash management becomes a trivial problem. Trust me, this will not work. The fact that you want to do any deal with an external party means that you feel that the problem is a difficult one for you to tackle. Wisdom has taught us that the only reason the external party agrees to do the deal is they don't realize how difficult the problem is. In the initial days, it's important for every company to have full ownership and a fool-proof plan they can implement to solve the difficult problems they come across.


Never hire through recruiters. We have found that the best way to hire is through referrals and through job portals. Recruiters are just lousy. If your HR person is using a recruiter or wants to use one, it just means they don't want to put in the effort to do the job themselves. Of course the best hires are people who have worked with other team members in the past.

37000 feet and cruising: So I am sick + some learnings and thoughts

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Punished By Rewards

There is a time to admire the grace and persuasive power of an influential idea, and there is a time to fear its hold over us. The time to worry is when the idea is so widely shared that we no longer even notice it, when it is so deeply rooted that it feels to us like plain common sense. At the point when objections are not answered anymore because they are no longer even raised, we are not in control: we do not have the idea, it has us.

This book is about an idea that has attained just such a status in our society. The idea is that the best way to get something done is to provide a reward to people when they act the way we want them to. Scholars have debated the meaning and traced the development of the intellectual traditio known as behaviourism. What interests me, though, is the popular (or pop) incarnation of this doctrine, the version that lives in our collective consciousness and affects what we do every day. - Alfie Kohn

Bharthruhari Subhashitalu

thiviri isumuna thailambu theeya vachchu
dhavili mrugathrushna lO neeru thraga vachchu
thirigi kundheti kommu sandhimpa vachchu
chEri mUrkhula mansu ranjimparAdu

this game is rigged

At lunch we were discussing how ass-backwards the sales approach has been this quarter. I said, with my usual animation, "When you are falling from a 100-story building, until 50th floor it feels like flying."

CrazyFinger.

Quotes on Democracy

Democracy is a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses. - HLM

"Under the pressure of fanaticism, and with the mob complacently applauding the show, democratic law tends more and more to be grounded upon the maxim that every citizen is, by nature, a traitor, a libertine, and a scoundrel. In order to dissuade him from his evil-doing the police power is extended until it surpasses anything ever heard of in the oriental monarchies of antiquity."

Mencken wrote that in Notes on Democracy (1920), due out soon from the Mises Institute, and thanks to William H. Peterson for recommending it to us.

Quote of the Day

Mike Krzyzewski - "The truth is that many people set rules to keep from making decisions."

It's hard to sustain prejudice and bias

It's hard to sustain prejudice and bias against an abstract group when you develop relationships with individuals and discover they're just like you. It doesn't matter if they dress up like ponies, or refuse to conform to a societal idea of gender norms, or eat pancakes for dinner. Geek lovers know better than to try to impose their sexual preferences or standards on others -- including your friends -- and are more likely to love and let love.