18 and successful? Time to write a book, son!

The book I had been waiting for had arrived. Finally. I ripped open the package in seconds, and blew the dust of the cover. The title on the gleaming cover read
"GERRARD: MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY"
For the uninitiated, Steven Gerrard is a professional English footballer, aged 27 who has achieved a fair amount of success with Liverpool FC.
The book is a good read -Honest and direct, but the thought that hit me when I was reading the book was- The average age at which these books are being 'written'[This word is so technically incorrect as the writing done by the sports person is Zilch. None at all. But that is a debate for another day] out is reducing so rapidly. What started as a medium for a successful sportsperson to look back upon his illustrious career, and the pathway to that career, has now become so commercialized that it leaves a inexorably bad taste in one's mouth.

And it's not just the footballers who are leading the way, Lewis Hamilton has 'authored' a book after one year in the sport. That's right, ONE YEAR.

The blame doesnt solely fall upon the players; they are under pressure from publishers desperate to cash in on whatever clout these celebrity players are generating. However, the over commercialization of every sport is a worrying issue.

In other news, Mahendra Singh Dhoni fetched US $150,000 in the recently held auctions for the IPL.

LIVING on Red

Being the huge follower of sports that I am, I thought this article would be a good addition to the blog[Source: NewScientist]

THE Washington Redskins, Manchester United and the Welsh rugby team have all been playing with an unfair advantage. Just seeing their red kit is seemingly enough to cow their opponents into submission even before a ball is kicked.

Russell Hill and Robert Barton of Durham University in the UK tracked success in four Olympic sports: boxing, taekwondo, Greco-Roman wrestling and freestyle wrestling. In these sports athletes do not wear national colours, but are randomly assigned either red or blue. Of 441 bouts, reds won 242 and in all four sports reds triumphed in more contests. And the red advantage was higher in close encounters: 62 per cent of red-garbed competitors won these. But in pushover contests there were similar numbers of red and blue winners. "If you're rubbish, a red shirt won't stop you from losing," Barton says.

The same is true in soccer. Five teams in the Euro 2004 competition who had predominantly red in one of their two kits all did significantly better while wearing red, scoring around one extra goal per game.

Such effects could be due to instinctive behaviour, says Barton. In animal displays red in particular seems to vary with dominance and testosterone levels. Human competitors might experience a testosterone surge while wearing the colour, he says, or feel submissive when facing a scarlet opponent.

Evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar from the University of Liverpool speculates that primate eyes may be particularly sensitive to red. "The significance is then a matter of context," he says. Red fruit is good; red competitors are bad.

Performance director of the Great Britain taekwondo team, Gary Hall, says most of his athletes don't have a strong colour preference. But he says that if red is an advantage the sport should consider changing kits. "We should take out any anomaly like that," Hall told New Scientist.

No surprise then, that many of the teams I support wear Red
Liverpool FC
Ferrari
and more recently , The Maryland Terrapins(Go Terps!)

Moral of the story: The next time you see two evenly matched teams go head to head, bet on the one clad in red!

The START of something new

I sat there munching on my cheeseburger at McDonald's, glancing at my watch for the millionth time in the last twenty minutes, waiting for my bus. Another check at the timetable revealed that my wait would last for 25 more minutes. Seemed like eternity. It was at this precise moment that a thought hit me – What was it about this country that, despite

Life being dictated by bus schedules (at least for the people without a car)
The paucity of options available for a half-decent vegan meal
Incoming calls being charged as heavily as outgoing calls
Life being dictated by bus schedules(Did I mention that already?),

that it still continues to be the Holy Mecca for innovators and dreamers alike?
Several factors can be attributed to this, many of them embedded into the culture, including the capitalist policies espoused by America and the ease for starting a new business but I felt these factors weigh more heavily in incubating entrepreneurs
- The broad American tradition of philanthropy, even to relative strangers, ensures that even first time entrepreneurs can obtain help from affluent individuals(i.e. Angel Investors),
- American schooling, despite its well-advertised vices, does afford the students the time and energy for activities other than formal education
- The respect given by the society to all kinds of jobs
- America's acceptance of Failure: This is probably the most important reason why the entrepreneurship culture continues to flourish and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. The stigma that accompanies failure in some societies, one that can damage reputations and adversely affect careers, is relatively suppressed, and this helps breed more entrepreneurs. Statistics show that the average American entrepreneur succeeds at the Third time of asking, thus substantiating this argument.

PS: Select portions of this article have been written with an EXTREMELY high Indian grad student bias, and hence extrapolating it to the entire community may cause an extreme case of nausea. Or Gonorrhea. Or BOTH.

The Roots

I am penning this blog as a part of this course I am taking this semester – an introductory Entrepreneurial course. It’s a rather cool course filled with fascinating activities, the best being starting a new venture [Watch this space for more details] from scratch and of course, this blog.

Some other things that caught the eye are a personality compatibility test called the Meyer- Briggs Type Indicator test to assist in having a well rounded team when you eventually decide to start your venture, and a novel marketing idea: The Million Dollar Home Page, devised by an entrepreneur from England.

Thanks to The professor and my classmates for making this class interesting!