"Water water everywhere, and not a drop to drink".
Today is the world water day. and lest we forget, Google has a way of letting us know that :)
Every drop of water we waste is precious and there're countless people in Asia and Africa fighting over every drop of water.
Do you know it takes much more water to produce a pound of meat as compared to a pound of vegetables? (you can read more into it you know :))
There have been saying that the future wars would not be fought over power or land, but water. Even a paper presented by President Musharraf at Oxford in about 1990 recognised that Pakistan's interest in Kashmir is not because of its hilly terrain but its water catchment areas.
So next time you water your garden or wash your car, remember - you're using up a resource that, like Helen of Troy would launch a thousand ships in future !!
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Who says elephants can't dance?
Recently, I happened to read a very interesting book by the same name. It was exciting for me because it concerned the company that also happened to be the first company I worked for - IBM.
IBM had been the powerhouse inventor for decades, and its not wrong to say that it had invented the computer industry around it. But by 1992, IBM was losing cash, making losses, and was fast on its way to extinction. Its flagship product, the mainframe S/390 was not selling much, and was rapidly giving way to smaller, PC-Centric products. In the midst of this mayhem, the CEO was given the marching orders.
And Louis Gerstner took over.
"Who says elephants can't dance?" is a wonderfully candid story of the guy who came from RJR Nabisco (often derided in IBM as the Cookie guy) and turned the "Big Blue" from Deep Red to Deep Black. Lou describes his reasons for taking up the job (he accepted the job because he felt his job in his then current company, RJR Nabisco was not safe anymore), his experiences when he moved in as the CEO of IBM (how, on his first day at work, he was stranded outside a building with a card reader at the door, and could not go in, because he had not been issued a badge by IBM Security by then) and his attitude of taking inputs from everyone who mattered, including the management, engineers and customers, and maintaining notes in each meeting.
An awesome read for everyone.
IBM had been the powerhouse inventor for decades, and its not wrong to say that it had invented the computer industry around it. But by 1992, IBM was losing cash, making losses, and was fast on its way to extinction. Its flagship product, the mainframe S/390 was not selling much, and was rapidly giving way to smaller, PC-Centric products. In the midst of this mayhem, the CEO was given the marching orders.
And Louis Gerstner took over.
"Who says elephants can't dance?" is a wonderfully candid story of the guy who came from RJR Nabisco (often derided in IBM as the Cookie guy) and turned the "Big Blue" from Deep Red to Deep Black. Lou describes his reasons for taking up the job (he accepted the job because he felt his job in his then current company, RJR Nabisco was not safe anymore), his experiences when he moved in as the CEO of IBM (how, on his first day at work, he was stranded outside a building with a card reader at the door, and could not go in, because he had not been issued a badge by IBM Security by then) and his attitude of taking inputs from everyone who mattered, including the management, engineers and customers, and maintaining notes in each meeting.
An awesome read for everyone.
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