Hari's Corner

Well, Boxi's making an attempt - you've got to give him that!

Well, modern art galleries might have their uses

Papa Hari News Service

Sending out a strong message in the face of high rates of inflation triggered by rising oil and food prices across the world, the Papa Hari World Government announced that a committee of eminent mathematicians has been created in order to study and discuss the issue in a more scientific and practical way. Announcing the innovatively titled "New Plan To Combat Inflation" project, the spokesperson of the Papa Hari World Government hinted that the best method to prevent inflation would be to resort to simple mathematical formulae rather than depend on wannabe Nobel-prize winning economists who spin fuzzy, impractical theories to support their dubious doctorate theses.

"The best way to contain inflation is by tackling it head on... not by resorting to confusing jargon like National Income, GDP, GNP, fiscal deficit, budget, trade deficit, foreign exchange, foreign reserve or interest rates. The man on the street just doesn't care for such terms," said the spokesperson, "Therefore, the Papa Hari World Government has decided to hand over the problem to mathematicians who are known to be much more practical and down-to-earth than economists."

Stating that the committee has already started doing good work, the spokesman added that a few excellent ideas have been floated by the committee and the Papa Hari World Government would be seriously looking at these concepts. "One of the best ideas that has been proposed by the committee is to use the formula Inflation/Inflation = 1 (which means inflation divided by itself). This would instantly lead to a steady but low rate of inflation which is excellent for the economy."

Among other formulae suggested by the mathematical committee, one of them is to use the sine or cosine of the value of inflation as the actual inflation rate. Eminent Indian mathematician, Alangaputhur Raghavachari said, "If we used the formula cos (inflation), we will always get a value of between -1 and 1. This is an excellent way to ensure that inflation and deflation values never go beyond 1% overall. And just think of the additional benefits: "Cos" sounds very much like "cause." By finding out the cos (inflation), most lay people would believe that we've found the cause of inflation. sin (inflation) was also considered as an alternative formula, but it doesn't make much sense to say "sign of inflation" when we can use cos instead." Yet another formula proposed was the square root of inflation, but it was dismissed as being ineffective with larger numbers. "What if inflation reaches 10000? The square root of 10,000 is 100. It's still a very high figure and would be unsustainable, right?" argued Raghavachari very reasonably. Mathematicians also dismissed Inflation - Inflation = 0 as being too simplistic and unrealistic.

In spite of the optimism expressed by the World Government, many remain sceptical of these ideas. "This kind of number jugglery seems to be just the kind of gimmicks that discount stores offering up to 50% off resort to," said a housewife when asked for her reaction to the measures of the government. "Everything will remain on paper... it's all an eyewash!" said a journalist while washing his blackened eye after getting into an argument with a wrestler over the issue.

Most people across the world continue crying over rising prices of food and fuel while the mathematicians work furiously towards a solution destined to change the course of the global economy forever. A prominent statistician who wished to remain anonymous, smugly assured this publication that the efforts of the committee would prove futile. "What can these mathematical geniuses do which we cannot? We've been doing the same kind of number jugglery for hundreds of years now, albeit with statistics instead of trignometry. And now, these new kids on the block think that they have the solution! How foolish!" he said with a pitying smile. Rather irrelevantly, George W. Bush assured every American that the future generation of kids would get free education and plenty of credit cards.

We cannot call Boxi a couch-potato at any rate...

I've often wondered: do some bloggers have an uncanny knack of drawing more attention to themselves than other bloggers? I know that in the real world, people can often influence others around them with their behaviour, but what of the online world? I've been blogging for too long to pay much heed to topics like 10 Sure-Fire Ways to Get More Comments on your blog which frequently crop up on blogging-related online communities. I also know that just being popular is not guaranteed to generate attention and feedback.

In fact, I don't think controversy or deliberate baiting is always successful in bringing about a large readership. I've seen so many bloggers draw only feeble, tepid responses from readers even when they write about contentious issues in a most provocative way. I've also seen some other bloggers need to just put together a few words to generate hundreds of responses by way of comments. You might argue that these bloggers might have already got a dedicated readership, but so have other bloggers who write spicy stuff guaranteed to draw attention. But is commenting on others' blogs a sure way to get comments on one's own blog? Again, I've not seen this to be too effective. There are a few people around who return the courtesy, but most bloggers don't these days. Yet, some very indifferent and anti-social bloggers tend to attract more attention than others who try desperately to be more sociable. Does the topic of discussion have some effect on readership? Sure it does to an extent, but I don't think this correlates well with the comment-to-readership ratio.

The only thing I can say with certainty is that some people tend to have this strange ability to draw attention with the least bit of effort. I don't know how one's personality translates online, but readers tend to pick up emotional cues from the words they read. Communication always has two threads - one the informational thread and the other the more subtle emotional thread. In direct face-to-face communication, one tends to pick up emotional cues from one's senses, but while reading, I think we tend to attribute emotions to certain words, a particular sequence of words or even by the usage of the language. I know this sounds more obvious than it is in reality, but our brain works so quickly that I doubt whether many people actually realize this. Whether deliberately or otherwise, some people seem to use the language in a way that is designed to trigger an immediate response.

Whatever the cause of this strange phenomenon, I have decided to start using more visual elements in some of my posts to enhance the effect of the words. What do you think of my drawing above? Does it add or detract from the tone of this article?

I'm not going to explore deep into this subject, but from a HR perspective it seems to me that organizations with a 6-day working week are wasting their time. Organizations which ask their employees to work on Saturdays seem to have this deluded notion that an extra day of work means extra productivity during these extra hours. Here's my own analysis of this situation.

No doubt, the additional hours of work on Saturday means that a little more work will get done. But will employees really improve their productivity in the process? I doubt it, seriously. You see, a 5-day week with 2 days of rest is a perfect recipe for both employer and employee. The weekend seems long enough to feel attractive for employees to work harder during the week. I have no reason to doubt that the popular formula of 5 days of work with 2 days of rest is actually the most optimal formula to increase productivity. Fridays will be an extra productive day under this formula because people will try to finish weekly deadlines at this time. However, if the organization asks people to come into office on Saturdays, this motivation is thrown out of the window. Fridays no longer seem so important and employees won't feel the need to put in that extra bit of work. And to top it off people will tend to drag their feet into office on Saturdays. With a whole week behind them, fatigue is inevitable. Even with the so-called "casual dressing" rules, my belief is that people resent walking into a workplace after 5 continuous full days of work.

Even if you think that one extra day of work doesn't matter, consider its effect on Sunday. After 6 whole days of working, Sundays are practically ruined. Most people who work in high-stress jobs find it difficult enough to unwind in any case. Imagine having just one day of rest. And it's not just about the one extra day; with a 5-day week, Friday evening to Monday morning seems a lifetime. The addition of a Saturday removes that additional bonus completely: after all, Saturday evenings would be so tiring after work and you obviously cannot unwind on a Sunday evening as you have to get ready to face the next week!

And there's one extra reason why I feel that Saturdays are horrible working days. Not all organizations follow the 6-day week. Most government offices and banks remain shut during the weekends. Outside work (including interaction with customers/clients or other organizations) will be limited. All this increases my belief that a 6-day week is the lousiest idea in the history of mankind. And I've not even talked about the levels of stress or fatigue that employees might undergo as a result of the extra work day.

If all this seems like something out of the Papa Hari School of the Obvious, then I am surprised that so many companies still insist on following a 6-day week. I feel that it's best to let employees off for the weekend. Not only does it allow people to get back a sense of perspective from their time off, it also increases the motivation to actually get work done during the week.