The runner-up's winning streak

I feel amazed when I watch a marathon race, where a runner who has led the pack for much of the race,loses out to either numbers two, three or four in the last lap, to win the race.

This also happens in car races like F1 and with teams who dominate much of the game in football and hockey,where the opponent shoots the winning goal and wins.

I once read - The person who discovered electricity did not make the money,it was the person who discovered how he could distribute electricity who became prosperous!

There is the case of Abraham Gesnez,a physician by profession,who had a passion for coal geology. While experimenting with coal tar, he devised a way to distil it into a combustible liquid he called, kerosene.

Kerosene burned beautifully and gave light as strong and steady as that of whale oil (used earlier for illumination). And there was the potential that kerosene could be produced much more economically.

Then came a man named, George Bisell, a former superintendent of schools, who saw this potential and formed the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company and began drilling in Western Pennsylvania.

When others saw how easy it was to extract oil and turn it into kerosene, a land rush was on. Others produced bigger volumes than the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company. And with this, land price also spiralled up to an artificially high level.

Subsequently, due to fall in the oil prices,from $10-00 a barrel in January l861 to just l0 cents a barrel by December 1861, land prices also dropped.

Many were out of the business. But a small firm in Cleveland,Clark and Rockefeller, which dealt in other farm commodities, decided to move in. They bought much of the land at throw-away prices.

And not surprisingly, soon, John D Rockefeller controlled about 90 per cent of the American oil business. His virtual monopoly allowed him to keep prices stable and grow fantastically rich in the process.

By 1900, his personal wealth was increasing by about $1 billion a year, measured in todays money. Only few human being in modern times has been so richer! He won, although he was a Johnny who jumped in quite late.

In 1846,a man called Frederick Holmes patented an electric arc lamp. He followed a technique used by Humphry Davy, 40 years earlier, which Davy had not capitalised on.

In the 1840s, a young pharmacist in Newcastle, UK, Joseph Swan, made some successful experiments to take this further in the field of illumination.

In 1870s, Herman Sprengel, a German chemist working in London, developed what came to be called the Sprengel Mercury pump, a crucial invention that made household illumination possible.

But it stopped there. It was only in 1879 that Thomas Edison, who had started his quest in 1877, could invite a select audience to come and witness a demonstration of his new incandescent lights.

Although Swan also gave a public display in 1879 in Newcastle, Edison was far more prominent and therefore more lastingly significant.

The invention of the light bulb was a wonderful thing but of not much practical use, when there was no socket to plug it into! Edison therefore organised the distribution of electricity.

Thus, time and again,throughout the course of history, we have witnessed that the leader of the pack need not be the ultimate winner! You can be number two,three or even four and still have the chance to be the ultimate winner. But you must make it happen.

(From Times of India, 28th December 2011)

Nine Investing Secrets from Warren Buffett

Secret #1: Invest in quality businesses, not stock symbols.

Secret #2: Don’t invest for ten minutes if you’re not prepared to invest for ten years.

Secret #3: Scan thousands of stocks looking for screaming bargains.

Secret #4: Calculate how well management is using the money they have.

Secret #5: Stay away from “glitter” stocks.

Secret #6: Know what a fat pitch is and what to do with it.

Secret #7: Calculate how much money you will make, not whether the stock is undervalued or overvalued according to some academic model.

Secret #8: Remove the weeds and water the flowers — not the other way around.

Secret #9: Become a conscious investor.

A talk on Joy of Science at IIAE&IT, Pune

Yesterday I had been to Indian Institute of Aeronautical Engineering & Information Technology for a talk on "Joy of Science". This talk was all about the beauty, the awe and the wonders that we feel when we come across various simple as well as complex manifestation of creation in the nature. Involving a debate on "Evolution" and "Intelligent Design", it controversially took the turn towards existence of God, and posed a big and recurring question from audience side - whether God exists or not? This question has no simple answer, and yet, form the perspective of debate on "Evolution" and Intelligent Design" an explanation is needed.

God, as we normally contemplate or talk of, is a matter of Religion. And Religion is a matter of faith. Thus, God is all about a matter of faith. Domain of Science and that of Religion are two separate domains and these must be kept separated. Moreover, Religion, and hence faith, is an individual affair. So, whether God exits or not is like questioning the faith of an individual. It is said that the definition of truth is different for different people. Likewise, meaning of God is different for different people. We must not question any body's faith. After all it is the faith that makes the individual strive for something in his or her life. The theory of "Intelligent Design" is not a scientific theory. For, it has so far failed to present a successful model. In the absence of any such model, no testing and/or verification can be done, neither any prediction can be made. Theory of "Intelligent Design" is therefore not scientifically falsifiable theory. All the creations which we seen in the universe owe its existence to Natural Selection (Evolution) and Laws of Physics. Hope this explanation puts the issues in proper perspective.


Another point that came up during the talk was whether "thoughts have mass". At this, in the lighter vain, it was remarked - if thoughts were having some mass, then we kept on loosing our brain every time we think of something! Well, mass energy equivalence relation have been well established in Physics - famously written as E= m C^2. So, One can very conveniently associate mass with energy, and energy with mass, based on above relation. And it is an issue of technological advancement whether all the mass could be successfully converted into energy or whether all the energy can always be converted into mass. So, far there is no such technology. Example of psychokinesis does exist. It evidently make it clear that there is some energy associated with our thoughts originating in the mind. And based on mass-energy-equivalence principle one can also associate some mass with this energy. At this point, it will be appropriate to emphasise that while applying Laws of Physics to biological objects, one should be cautious that these are applied to various constituent parts, and interaction of constituent parts in the whole object should also be taken into consideration. For, a ball thrown in the air goes over a parabolic trajectory, but a bird (live) will never as it will use its wings and muscles to fly off!