The Origins of The Secret

In The Secret, Rhonda Byrne, in the introduction writes:

I'd been given the glimpse of a Great Secret - The Secret to life. The glimpse came in a hundred-year old book, given to me by my daughter Hayley.

Does any one know the name of this "hundred-year old book"?

I find it kind of strange that this book (or for that matter, its author) is not acknowledged.

There are, of course, four possibilities. The section on Biographies at the back of the book, The Secret are 4 dead people (the rest are alive and kicking!). These are:

Genevieve Behrend, who wrote Your Invisible Power and Attaining Your Heart's Desire
Charles Haanel, who wrote The Master Key System (believed to be the secret of Bill Gates's riches - aaah! Now you are interested! Aren't you?)
Prentice Mulford, who wrote Thoughts Are Things and The White Cross Library
Wallace Wattles, who wrote The Science of Getting Rich

So, which one is it?
I think, not explicitly acknowledging the author of the book that is at the root of the phenomenal success of The Secret is ingratitude. Wouldn't you say?

Are Antioxidants Good?

If you thought anti-oxidants is a recent discovery then you are wrong by about 50 years. In fact, the antioxidant theory of aging was first proposed by Denham Harman in 1956. It is only recently that the marketing people have caught up.

But wait. Before you jump onto the bandwagon have a look at what Scientific American May 2009 issue has to say about it:

Companies have started putting antioxidants in goods as different as face cream and soda, claiming that they clean cells, prevent cancer and even stave off death. ...

Synthetic antioxidants have failed to show any clear longevity benefits to humans, and that has been a problem for Harman ever since he conceived the theory. Although anti-oxidants definitely prevent damage, there is no consensus on how much they forestall aging.

Who wants to live for ever anyway?
Age in a dignified manner and die, I say.

Impala is a car

We did not even know the Fortune is a magazine; but we knew that General Motors is the top Fortune 500 company. This was when I was in school / college - my memory does not take me back to the exact point when I got interested in world beyond me and exactly when I heard of GM. But before than there was the Impala. In our childhood this was the ultimate definition of a luxury car.

"What cars do filmi heroes drive?"
"Impala!" would be the prompt answer.

Impala was the status symbol. This was the early seventies. The India of Ambassadors and Fiats.

We did not even know that Impala is actually an animal. To us it was a car. I remember when I told a few of my friends that Impala is actually a deer, they laughed.

Then some years ago, I heard that a Japanese bank had dethroned GM from the top of the Fortune 500 list. For about two years or so. I think GM briefly regained its position but if someone has to fix a date when the slide began it was then.

But in my mind the decline started a few years before that. I happen to meet an ex-colleague's relative who worked at GM India. I was naturally thrilled. The first question I asked him was - can you believe it; how dumb could I be - "Have you heard of Alfred Sloan?" I guess I was trying to impress him. After all he worked in GM. His response: "duh?"

"You mean they don't tell you about Alfred P. Sloan during your induction training."
"Who is Sloan?"
I thought I had mispronounced his name. So I tried different versions of 'Sloan'.
Blank face.

In my mind, a company who had forgotten Alfred Sloan was already in decline.

The past half a decade has been filled with GM struggling. So it is no surprise that today they are the verge of bankruptcy. Kind of sad. But my memories of GM will always be fixed to a White Impala driven by a Bollywood hero wooing his lady with a romantic song.

Plan your trip to South India with a friend

What do you do when you plan a trip? You Google. Buy up available literature and you talk to friends. Hopefully your friends would know someone (a friend of a friend) who has traveled before. All tiny bits help.

I just realized that I could be the friend of a friend. And before the modern mind is filled with skepticism, I hurry to state that I am *not* a travel agent *nor* a tour guide. I do not have any commercial interest in any place that I recommend.

And this comes absolutely FREE.

I travel the south India whenever possible. Besides, I am surrounded by friends and colleagues who belong to the 'South Indies'. They have friends who have friends who have traveled ... you get the idea.

So, if any one has any questions on ...

(i) Which route will fetch you the maximum ROI?
(ii) Where to stay (a) in style (b) in comfort?
(iii) Confirmation of tiny little facts that do not show up on Google search.
(iv) Mode of travel.
(v) anything at all.

... please feel free to write to amitabh1702@yahoo.co.in.

I will send you a personal response within a week and we could interactively decide on the best option.

This should help those who travel from the North of India or those living outside India.

So what is stopping you?

The joy of selling

Having worked for all my adult life in an extreme niche industry, I find the job of selling extremely difficult. Especially, since industrial selling demands incredible patience. And though we have a long list of customer, I am still not sure what makes an industrial customer tick. I guess pedigree helps. If I have 20 customers, I must be doing something right. So, the 21st is not that difficult. It is getting the first one that is difficult.

Internet gave me the chance of trying my hand at selling. I am not talking of selling as in selling on e-bay or something that I have authored or created. It is what I would call 'selling by impression'. How does it work?

I love reading books. And I write about them. Some of the readers who happen to read my reviews may order the book on Amazon through my lens. And I like to think that my review gave them the final push to order for the book. I, of course, would never know who bought it. But I would know how many bought through my pages.

And I finally did it. I managed to sell the first book through my Squidoo lens. Someone ordered The Go-Giver from The Go-Giver Book Review

Am I thrilled? You bet I am. It is not the money that comes for getting someone to buy the book. I get a few cents. It is the thrill of influencing someone's decision. Someone, somewhere, read my review and decided to buy the book. That gives me joy. Pure joy.

Mr. Obama, You need Lessons in Economics

Mr. Obama,

Chances are that you haven't read my open letter to you, posted some while ago. Chances are that you will not read this too.

In my previous letter I had a tiny paragraph on banning protectionism. For your convenience, here is the extract:

"Ban protectionism. Open up world trade. Will make you unpopular in America if you do it immediately. But has to be done and will happen whether America likes it or not. If the world has to prosper. Your call."

I am sure you are surrounded by economists of repute who advise you on important matters. I am therefore surprised how you could even dream of taxing outsourcing. The fact that you have been mentioning Bangalore quite often shows you are being misled. The roots of the US economic meltdown does not lie in Bangalore. Nor does Outsourcing to Bangalore or Beijing cause US misery.

One does not have to an economist to understand this. I am not. Fortunately there are many pop-economics books in the market that are very good. I would recommend that you go no further than Tim Harford's The Undercover Economist. Here is an excerpt:

A more extreme example may clarify things further. Think of a country whose government is very keen on self-sufficiency. 'We need to encourage our local economy,' says the Minister of Trade and Industry. So the government bans all imports and patrols the coast to prevent smuggling. One effect will be that a lot of effort will be devoted to producing locally what was once imported: this certainly is encouragement to the local economy. But another effect is that all of the export industries will quickly shrivel and die. Why? Because who would want to spend time and money exporting goods in exchange of foreign currency, if nobody is allowed to spend spend the foreign currency on imports? While one part of the local economy is encouraged, another is crippled. The 'no imports' policy is also a 'no exports' policy. And indeed, one of the most important theorems of trade theory, the Lerner theorem, named after the economist Abba Lerner, proved in 1936 that a tax on imports is exactly equivalent to a tax on exports.

Still wish to go ahead with taxing outsourcing, Mr. Obama?

Tiled Roads

Of all states Tamil Nadu is most geared for encouraging tourism. Ooty is in perhaps in decline, but Kodaikanal is not. It is perhaps the cleanest and neatest of all Indian hill stations. While it will take a tremendous effort to reach the standards of say, Interlaken, I must say, given the general Indian standards of public hygiene, Kodai is pretty good.

Roads impressed me most. Most of the roads I traveled on are regularly maintained. Even the hill roads! As I climbed the Hill Road to Kodai I was first amused and then intrigued by patches of tiles on the road - the kind you would find on the side walk of big roads in cities. It took a while but then I realized what was going on. The authorities who maintain the roads do not wait for the whole road to be broken. Since, it would be foolish to haul up a road-roller every time a tiny patch of road breaks, they replace the broken piece of road with tiles. And it works just fine.

Now that is ingenuity for you.