What’s Worse Than a Coworker Who Undermines You?

Kannu

An interesting article on coworkers. Yes this has happened before to me. How do you deal with this?

Be very good at what you do. No weaknesses son. Second be very helpful. Third make your boss successful. Fourth no gossiping at work. Extremely professional. 

Remember son, you go to work to earn so that you can have fun with your family and be happy. You don't need shit at work. 

Love

Baba

What’s Worse Than a Coworker Who Undermines You? | LinkedIn
http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130428165232-69244073-what-s-worse-than-a-coworker-who-undermines-you?ref=email

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Bad colleagues can wreak havoc. One of the signs of a bad coworker is a pattern of persistent undermining—intentionally hindering a colleague’s success, reputation, or relationships. If you’ve ever had a coworker actively interfere with your productivity, try to make you look bad, steal your ideas, or give you false information, you’ve been the victim of undermining.

The opposite of an underminer is a supporter. When colleagues are supportive, they go out of their way to be givers rather than takers, working to enhance our productivity, make us look good, share ideas, and provide timely help.

Most people assume that relationships are either bad or good. Our coworkers are either takers who undermine us or givers who support us. But research shows otherwise: negative and positive relationships are independent. Many of us have ambivalent relationships with a colleague who undermines us in some situations but supports us in others. What are the implications of these ambivalent relationships?

Why it’s so hard to be a business leader in India

Kannu

Son you have some inherent advantages. Amongst many others. But this one is an accident of birth. You are a descendant of Indians. You know Hindi. And culturally you have been exposed to Indian and Hindu culture. 

Now look forward the next 20-30 years. Where is the growth going to come from? And based upon the article below where is your competition going to come from? 

So how do you build on your strengths? And protect against your threats? Try to do an internship in India. Your challenge kannu is yourself. You are ferociously smart and intelligent and I'm proud of you but you aren't been tested against the brightest and best. So you're still in your comfort zone. That's why I suggested going to the USA or India. You don't have to stay there and work but have some experience. Like with SAMEER mama's firm. Or in India. Invaluable experience son. 

Think about it. 

Love

Baba 

Why it’s so hard to be a business leader in India
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2013/06/17/why-its-so-hard-to-be-a-business-leader-in-india/?utm_campaign=Socialflow

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India may be one of the toughest markets in the world for a global company, but this also makes it one of the best incubators for next-generation global leaders. Adversity, after all, breeds leadership. This fact is not lost on major companies like GE and Nestle, which are using the role of India head to groom their rising executives.

Yet many companies, put off by the country’s chaos and adversity, are redirecting their efforts and investments elsewhere. It’s hard to build a global business in India, and much of the success or failure hinges on getting the right leaders in place who can tackle the country’s unique challenges—the first being the structure of the market.

If you want to go to war, have a nuke

So here’s an interesting article on why Russia breached the Budapest Memorandum.

Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, brought renewed attention at the Munich Security Conference this month to the Budapest Memorandum, an instrument adopted some twenty years ago by Ukraine, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States.  The Chancellor said that the Russian Federation, by invading eastern Ukraine and annexing Crimea, “has broken its commitment to the Budapest Memorandum.”  Merkel asked, “Who would give up their nuclear capability if their territorial integrity were not respected?”

It reminds me of a quote that I read way back about when an Indian General was asked about his views on the second Gulf War (the first being the Iran Iraq War), he said, if you wanted to go fight USA, best have a nuke handy. I don't think the Ukrainians thought this through, did they? If they had nukes, would Russia attack? or maybe use battlefield tac-nukes to rip out the Soviet Armies massed on this side of the Ukrainian frontier? And will Russia attack back? I don't think so.

interesting.

Which reminds me of this recent article which I read about the Davy Crockett. Which has a 0.01 kiloton payload.

totally crazy, I tell you. Having nukes is so stupid, you cannot imagine…anyway, its out of the bottle now.

Do not increase the school day, reduce absences instead

this was a very interesting paper.

While instructional time is viewed as crucial to learning, little is known about the effectiveness of reducing absences relative to increasing the number of school days. In this regard, this paper jointly estimates the effect of absences and length of the school calendar on test score performance. Using administrative data from North Carolina public schools, we exploit a state policy that provides variation in the number of days prior to standardized testing and find substantial differences between these effects. Extending the school calendar by ten days increases math and reading test scores by only 0.8% and 0.2% of a standard deviation, respectively; a similar reduction in absences would lead to gains of 5.8% and 3% in math and reading. We perform a number of robustness checks including utilizing u data to instrument for absences, family-year fixed effects, separating excused and unexcused absences, and controlling for a contemporaneous measure of student disengagement. Our results are robust to these alternative specifications. In addition, our findings indicate considerable heterogeneity across student ability, suggesting that targeting absenteeism among low performing students could aid in narrowing current gaps in performance.

so its not a question of increasing the school year, its a question of using the existing school year properly. if you are encouraging or condoning absenteeism, then the pupils dont take the lessons on board and do not have the discipline to handle the concepts. Quite an important finding, specially given the propensity of politicians to push for longer school years. See here for a UK example.

Insight on pathogenesis of lifelong premature ejaculation: inverse relationship between lifelong premature ejaculation and obesity

Abstract

Although both biological and psychological factors are important in the etiology, the exact pathogenesis of lifelong premature ejaculation (PE) remains to be clarified. Obesity is a worldwide epidemic that contributes to many chronic diseases. Obesity is associated with erectile dysfunction, but the relationship between obesity and PE has not yet been specifically investigated. The aim of this study was to evaluate the relationships of these two conditions. Between January 2008 and December 2009, we evaluated consecutive patients with lifelong PE in the urology outpatient clinic. Control cases without lifelong PE were selected randomly among cases attending the department of internal medicine for a checkup procedure. The age and sex of control group were matched with that of the study group. Body mass index (BMI) of each case was calculated using the World Health Organization criteria by the measurements of the physician instead of relying on verbal expressions. The mean (±s.d.) age of the premature ejaculators was 31.7±5.7 (range 21–51) years and in the control cases it was 32.3±6.7 (range 22–54) years. The comparison of the mean (±s.d.) weight between the study (74.1±11.2 kg) and control groups (81.9±6.4 kg) revealed a significant difference (P<0.001). The mean BMI of premature ejaculators (24.9±3.4 kg m–2) was lower than the mean BMI of control (27.5±3.6 kg m–2; P<0.001). As the BMI increased, the number of patients decreased in the PE group. The number of the obese cases in the control group (n=26, 24.1%) was three times greater than the obese premature ejaculators (P<0.005), and the number of PE patients were approximately two times greater than the control cases in the normal-weight class (P<0.001). This is the first prospective study that investigated the relationship between lifelong PE and obesity, and we found that patients with lifelong PE were leaner than the healthy control cases.

what a choice…be a porky and have lesser PE, be lean and mean and have a greater PE tendency. Truly mother nature is naughty.

A House Divided

Kannu

Discrimination based upon skin colour is rampant in the world and is very difficult to remove. Very. It's like it's in our genes if you excuse the pun. The main reason is that we are tribal people. At heart. Biologically speaking. We are predisposed to form groups. These groups are defined by as much as what they are as they aren't. In other words, people define themselves as something that they are and what they aren't with reference with others. This is very very common. I find myself doing this all the time. Casual racism and discrimination is rife son. The only two ways to sort this is by economics (money makes these differences disappear, somewhat) and intermarriage. This is true for non racial discrimination like religious, caste or jati, linguistic, national etc. 

but good intentions usually don't work out as this story tells. 

Love

Baba 

(Saving...) A House Divided | Moment Magazine
http://www.momentmag.com/a-house-divided/

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A Daniel Pearl Investigative Journalism Initiative Story

At apartheid’s end, the dorms of the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein were integrated.
At first it went well, then the students chose to resegregate. A story of the continuing battle against racism in South Africa.

Billyboy Ramahlele heard the riot before he saw it. It was a February evening in 1996, autumn in South Africa, when cooling breezes from the Cape of Good Hope push north and turn the hot days of the country’s agricultural heartland into sweet nights, when the city of Bloemfontein’s moonlit trees and cornfields rustle sultrily beneath a vast sky glittering with stars. The 32-year-old dormitory manager at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein was relaxing in front of a wildlife program on the TV with his door open.

Suddenly, he became aware of a new noise. Could it be the trees, rustling in a gust? No, it was heavier, more like trampling. Could it be his TV? He switched it off. The noise grew louder.

Food stamps put Rhode Island town on monthly boom-and-bust cycle

Kids

Yesterday I was chairing the finance committee at a charity. Which is an animal shelter. We help abandoned and abused animals, train vet surgeons etc etc. Very nice place.

But one of the things that we were talking about was how do we help our staff members. The basic problem is that people cannot survive in London on minimum wages. At about £15000 per year, after taxes, it's impossible to live. Their money runs out about the 22nd of every month. And then it becomes a nightmare. Like it's described here in the article.

Kids, being poor is very bad. Having had gone through this, it's soul destroying. Specially if you have children. Yes you may ask why have children when you're poor and cannot afford them but human nature and sex does that. Be that as it may, the human behaviour of people changes when they are poor. Very differently kids.
But we've got to help them kids. That's the mark of civilised people that we help others who are unfortunately in a worse situation than us.

London is more expensive than rest of the country so minimum wage doesn't work. So we are going to pay our staff at minimum wage an increase to what's called as a living wage. It will impact our delivery. It's a difficult decision as every pound we spend on staff has to be taken away from an animal. But it has to be done. We have to think holistically. Animals wouldn't be treated well if we have an underpaid hungry staff member. Yes. Hunger happens here in the uk kids. You've never experienced it and I promise you never will as long as I am alive but it's a very corrosive feeling.

Read this article kids. And think about how you can help the more unfortunate members in our society. And what can we do as citizens to make sure that we avoid this problem in the first place.

Love

Baba

http://m.washingtonpost.com/national/food-stamps-put-rhode-island-town-on-monthly-boom-and-bust-cycle/2013/03/16/08ace07c-8ce1-11e2-b63f-f53fb9f2fcb4_print.html

WOONSOCKET, R.I. – The economy of Woonsocket was about to stir to life. Delivery trucks were moving down river roads, and stores were extending their hours. The bus company was warning riders to anticipate “heavy traffic.” A community bank, soon to experience a surge in deposits, was rolling a message across its electronic marquee on the night of Feb. 28: “Happy shopping! Enjoy the 1st.”

In the heart of downtown, Miguel Pichardo, 53, watched three trucks jockey for position at the loading dock of his family-run International Meat Market. For most of the month, his business operated as a humble milk-and-eggs corner store, but now 3,000 pounds of product were scheduled for delivery in the next few hours. He wiped the front counter and smoothed the edges of a sign posted near his register. “Yes! We take Food Stamps, SNAP, EBT!”

“Today, we fill the store up with everything,” he said. “Tomorrow, we sell it all.”

At precisely one second after midnight, on March 1, Woonsocket would experience its monthly financial windfall — nearly $2 million from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps. Federal money would be electronically transferred to the broke residents of a nearly bankrupt town, where it would flow first into grocery stores and then on to food companies, employees and banks, beginning the monthly cycle that has helped Woonsocket survive.

Three years into an economic recovery, this is the lasting scar of collapse: a federal program that began as a last resort for a few million hungry people has grown into an economic lifeline for entire towns. Spending on SNAP has doubled in the past four years and tripled in the past decade, surpassing $78 billion last year. A record 47 million Americans receive the benefit — including 13,752 in Woonsocket, one-third of the town’s population, where the first of each month now reveals twin shortcomings of the U.S. economy:

So many people are forced to rely on government support.

The government is forced to support so many people.

Private Ceremonies

Son

Abortion is a right that I fully support. Totally without reservations. Men cannot and will not ever understand what women go through pregnancy and the reasons women like to go ahead or terminate are their’s to decide. All you can do is to hold their hands and pray for the best. Don't ask too many questions. Just be there for her. Whatever she decides and whatever you feel. It's not for you to debate this. 

It's heart wrenching for the man as well but you can deal with it. It's not important when you compare with what the woman is going through son. 

Just be there. Rub their backs. Get icecream for them. Quietly listen to them biting your head off. 

Cry if you will. In private. 

Love

Baba

Private Ceremonies | Vela
http://velamag.com/private-ceremonies/

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I had only a minute while I waited for the doctor to meet my patient. I grabbed a plastic cup and a pregnancy test from the lab and slipped into the bathroom. This is one of the perks of working at an abortion clinic – all the pregnancy tests you can take. My husband Jeff and I had been trying to get pregnant with our second child. But every month when I placed those two drops of urine into the reservoir, the results had been the same. One stripe. Negative. I steeled myself for the same.

I stood at the bathroom sink, watching. The two minutes it takes for the sample to travel from reservoir to top of the test seemed like hours. Finally, faintly, a second stripe shadowed the first. A thrill shot through me.

I did not shout. I did not run into the hallway to announce to my coworkers my news. I wanted to race to the phone to call Jeff, but I knew I wouldn’t have time before the next surgery, and besides, I wanted to tell him in person. Mostly, I wanted to let the idea sink in. I pressed my hand against my lower belly, as if to give my little zygote a welcoming hug. Still, as happy as I was, I was also afraid.

Could California's Salmon Make a Comeback?

Kannu

The collapse of the pisiculture and fish stocks is one of the big disasters currently happening. There are loads of reasons. Like this happening outside normal life. Who cares about fish? You can't see them can you? 

Second is the issue of politics. The European fisheries policy, the American one. The Asian policies are frankly extremely stupid and short sighted. 

So we are slowly screwing up one of the worlds most important biodiversity species and sources of protein. 

And once fish stocks collapse, they don't return usually. They leave behind a sea desert. As a Bengali son, this is cultural, scientific and logical for us to Worry about and raise our voices. 

Love

Baba 

Could California's Salmon Make a Comeback? | OnEarth Magazine
http://www.onearth.org/print/35449

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After years of decline, the rich human community that depends on California’s salmon runs may at last be rebounding

Jon Rosenfield and I bushwhack through the scrubby willows that line the American River east of Sacramento. The air is crisp this October morning, and the timing of our visit should be just right to watch California’s Chinook salmon as they return to where their lives began and spawn the next generation. Rosenfield, a biologist, works for a conservation group called the Bay Institute, and he wants me to witness an annual ritual that future generations might not have the opportunity to see.

For the salmon, it’s the end of a hard journey that typically lasts three years. After hatching in the river’s gravelly bottom, the young often hang out in its shallow backwaters, developing the bulk and camouflage they need for survival. They then travel downstream toward the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta — the tidal estuary where they start their transition from fresh to salt water — and out through San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean. There the fish spend most of their lives, feasting on krill, crab larvae, herring, sardines, and anchovies. This is in preparation for the most arduous part of their life cycle: the swim upstream to close the loop. By the time the salmon reach the spot where Rosenfield and I are standing, their energy has been channeled entirely from survival toward reproduction. They’ve stopped eating. Their skin is falling off. After depositing eggs or fertilizing them, they will die. Their carcasses — “these millions of 20-, 30-, 40-pound bags of fertilizer,” says Rosenfield — will be eaten by coyotes, bears, and eagles, which in turn will spread their droppings across forest floors and agricultural fields. “In watersheds where wine grapes are grown and salmon still spawn,” he says, “you can detect the ocean-nutrient signature in the wine.”

incarceration maps

this is a map of all the concentration camps in Germany during World War II. When you manage to kill 6 million people and many more injured or imprisoned, then the infrastructure required is going to be vast.

The above is only for all the federal prisons.

Here’s another view of the prisons in USA from here.

Another factoid

To put these figures in context, we have slightly more jails and prisons in the U.S. -- 5,000 plus -- than we do degree-granting colleges and universities. In many parts of America, particularly the South, there are more people living in prisons than on college campuses.