IF - A poem for everyone

IF
by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!



-> SJ

Quote Blast

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamour of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. 

                                                                                   - Martin Luther King Jr.

-> SJ

Quote Blast

For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible.

                                                                                                                                             - Stuart Chase

 

-> SJ

Quote Blast

Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it can not be conquered by it.

- Ayn Rand

-> SJ

Guns, Guns & More Guns...

Extra! Extra! "Every minute someone is killed by a gun!"

This really great infographic came out in today's Economic Times claiming the above.

I'm not disputing the claim infact i'm surprised it isn't worse.

We have come to believe that we live in the most peaceful of times in the last 200-300 years... Do we really??

Think again. For the last 11 years majority of the superpowers have been fighting terror in Afghanistan and then in Iran. The Ghaza Belt is also active and keep shelling each others. India and Pakistan have set times to fire their Bofors Guns at each other across the border and aim to miss (what they want to achieve by missing is beyond me!). Pakistan's ISI plots against Indians by using USA's tactics of breeding terrorists, which by the way is what led to the rise of Osama Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda. Btw the Taliban is making a come back in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Not to forget the random killings in the USA itself. The citizens go around schools and colleges randomly and mindlessly killing other innocent children. Iraq is still under oppression and looks prime to become another failed state like Pakistan and Afghanistan.

With so much violence everywhere the statistics should have been worse! 

With 1 gun per 7 people worldwide how long is it before we get shot?

-> SJ

Indian E-Commerce Space: Discounts & Drugs!

Being at the forefront of the Indian e-commerce space and working with e-commerce start-ups has given me a unique perspective. As of this month I'm not new to this industry but I'm not old to it either, which gives me a view from a halfway point. I see this space as an insider and also as an outsider.

In my short journey, I'm seeing the long term & the short term bets that companies make and how it can effect their life. For example: offering too many discounts. This may seem like a great way to increase traffic and sales, but its like cocaine. Long term use of the same will make your customers addicted and when the discounts are cut off the traffic to your website will drop as the erstwhile customers are all pouting due to the effects of detox. Before you know it the brand would have disappeared.

Take the example of Jabong.Com. When they launched they came with a bang. Screaming televisions ads (Mainly responsible for traffic), SEO and SEM. They Offered the lowest prices and great discounts. Everything on their website seemed to be on sale. Once they burnt through their investor money; the discounts decreased, the TV ads disappeared and the traffic they developed in the short term has started to fall.

From Google Trends: Jabong Traffic in the last 12 months

They came with a bang and curiosity caught the better of people, but now that the curiosity has died down the marketplace corrects itself as Jabong's traffic falls and the whole buzz related to it is digested.

On the other hand we have e-commerce companies which do not resort to such discounts. One may think that its foolish, in a market full of discounts it would be important to match the competitors in order to survive... but discounts just erode the bottom line and delay breaking even. Ultimately the companies which offer less number of discounts but better quality goods and service are the ones that will survive. Discounts will  become common place and customers would rather pay a little extra for quality thereby shifting the business from being price sensitive to quality sensitive.

Companies in the baby care & baby shopping space like Hoopos.com and in the online grocery shopping space like BigBasket.com are going to perform exceptionally well over time as they offer relatively less discounts but superior quality of service.

Why I say overtime is because, as with Jabong, in the initial stage the crowd will go with discounts but after a few months as people adjust to the numerous discounts and as the discounts per site lessens, the market will shift towards being quality centric.

The crazy number of discounts also distorts the market for everyone, the customers and the competitors. It lowers profit, increases expectations and delays break even points making it difficult for companies to survive.

Lets face it, discounts while attractive are more of a drug which eats up the system from within.
Go for quality and not price.

-> SJ

Quote Blast

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

- George Bernard Shaw

-> SJ

The Power of Religion & Faith: Hypocrisy

As I've mentioned in an earlier post: I think religion is an unnecessary evil. We all should instead put faith in ourselves and try to live better and purer lives. This will make humanity into a better civilization and bring peace to the world and everyone's lives.

Human faith in religion is such that it can make up stories to prove that religion is important ... BUT... it can also make up stories to disprove it.

Below we see an unconfirmed case where devout Christians try to prove that religion is a sham so as to protect their real religion: Money!!

Human faith put in wrong places can lead to such gross errors of judgement.

Happy reading!

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In a small town in America, a person decided to open up his bar business, which was right opposite to a church. The church & its congregation started a campaign to block the bar from opening with petitions and prayed daily against his business.

Work progressed. However, when it was almost complete and was about to open a few days later, a strong lightning struck the bar and it was burnt to the ground. The church folk were rather smug in their outlook after that, till The bar owner sued the church authorities for $2million on the grounds that the church through its congregation & prayers was ultimately responsible For the demise of his bar shop, either through direct or indirect actions or means.

In its reply to the court, the church vehemently denied all responsibility or any connection that their prayers were reasons to the bar shop's demise. In support of their claim they referred to the Benson study at Harvard that inter-cessionary prayer had no impact !

As the case made its way into court, the judge looked over the paperwork and at the hearing and commented:

'I don't know how I am going to decide this case, but it appears from the paperwork, we have a bar owner who believes in the power of prayer and we have an entire church and its devotees that doesn't.'

Case Example credited to a friend on Facebook.

-> SJ