The Tiger in the Woods.

The image of a phenomenal shot by Tiger Woods, followed by the claim
of consulting firm Accenture - "High Performance, Delivered", won't
leave us for some time. Because it is high performance and Tiger
Woods has almost always delivered it. But now, Accenture is pulling
out of all endorsements of the golfing legend, because he "no longer
represents" the image they want to portray.

Question is - did they hire him for being a phenomenal golfer who can
personify high performance, of did they use him to make Accenture look
like a saintly company? I tend to think his golfing abilities were of
paramount importance and I have no reason to believe he is any less of
a golfer now after these scandals have broken out about his
extramarital affairs. In other words, his "high performance" could
very easily remain unaffected, but for some reason, his image as a
squeaky clean "person" is more important to a company that wanted to
associate with him when the going was good, and has readily dumped him
for reasons having nothing to do with their business with him. That
sounds like pure betrayal to me.

How come we don't care about squeaky clean people who can't perform
like Tiger Woods? There are never any prizes for being morally in the
best league, are there? So, what's the big deal when a high performer
in one area doesn't hold the same standards elsewhere? This is by no
means an endorsement of Tiger Woods' behaviour, but why is it that we
find it hard to accept the disruption of this image of sainthood that
we the world conferred upon him? Why're we so deeply invested in our
own stupidity, in an assumption that worked for such a long time for
everyone? Because we hate being told we are wrong. Much like the
flat earthers must have felt centuries ago.

The media is as much of an infidel when it comes to scandals. Not one
media outlet that has so far ooohed and aahed every Tiger Woods
achievement has thrown out the other perspective - "So what if Tiger
Woods had affairs outside of his marriage? He continues to be a
golfing legend we can continue to celebrate. We hope he comes out of
his problems and his self imposed exile and starts thrilling us on the
golf course again".

I'll tell you why this won't happen. The biggest
consumers of popular American media are white people, and they are all
feeling bad that a white woman, namely Mrs. Woods, has been "wronged".
How can they lose the entire population of white women from their
viewership by taking this perspective? Especially when Tiger Woods is
kind of black. The "See, we told you they're all bad" perspective,
even while unspoken, is the easiest nonsense to sell.

So, instead of being faithful to the phenomenal athlete for his
abilities and the number of times he has helped sell television time,
the media has shamelessly now jumped on the scandal bandwagaon to make
a mockery of him and get more of what they have got from him up until
now - popular viewership! That is what this pimping business is all
about. It doesn't matter who gets fucked as long as we can promise
more mindless sex.

There is nothing worse than an "average" mindset. The people who are
all outraged by Tiger Woods aren't by any means the people who will
ever belong in his high performance bracket. Tiger has simply
demonstrated that yes, one can have it all - a secure marriage, a lot
of money and goodwill, and affairs on the side! A lot of men would
love to have all of this, but would hate the consequences in case it
turned out like this. The big difference is, Tiger went for it. The
rest of us didn't.

None of us ever heard any of those damsels he had affairs with
complain until this scandal "broke out" did we? Now, why are they all
coming out of the woodwork? Because now, they can make money out of
the scandal! The frenzy is on, and the media is here to fuel their
fire. One of those paragons of virtue even said she feels really
sorry for Mrs. Woods. Oh, yes, we totally believe you my dear Mother
Teresa. I bet you never knew who you were being divinely uplifted by.
This nonsense is endless. I wonder how in her poetic conscience it
never occured to her that she could pick up the phone and called Mrs.
Woods to apologize to her quietly. Indiscretions are as common as
discretions. Get that, people.

Tiger Woods never claimed not to be anything he is being found out to
be. All of us slapped that clean image on him, because we wanted him
to be that way for our own limited minds to have something like that
to look up to, because we stupidly believe that being "good" brings us
all the good things in life! Sure, it can make us feel good, but
Tiger Woods wouldn't have a billion dollars if he hit the golf ball
into the ditch and went to church every Sunday.

Other people's fidelity, their sexuality, their choices should all be
strictly in their personal domain. None of us have any moral
authority to judge what other people do in their personal lives. We
have public figures for one reason only - to take the risks we would
like to take, without us having to bear the consequences. We're
willing to make them rich and famous to put up with this incredible
demand from us, but we forget to allow them one thing - flaws.

It is clear what a high performer can achieve. Tiger had it all. He
still has it all, and can have most of it all. That's what the world
cannot stand. That's what the media can never sell to the masses.
Tiger's highest performance is being able to keep a straight face to
his wife after having all these affairs. Kudos, Tiger! Now, the
reason she couldn't find out what kind of a man she was marrying was
because she is clearly not a high performer - she couldn't see beyond
the image. In other words, she is stupid like most of the fools
lapping up all the media sleaze.

Oh yes, she is a victim of marital infidelity, but she has always been
a victim of her own inability to tell what kind of a man Tiger Woods
really was. She still has a life much better than 99% of the women in
the world. How many women in the world would give an arm to be in her
place with the kind of wealth she has enjoyed without having to work
for a cent of it! Oh, tell me now, that she is shattered, and that
wealth doesn't mean much to someone who has to undergo the kind of
pain she is undergoing now, and I'll bet she doesn't ask for anything
less than a hundred million dollars in her divorce settlement.

If Tiger is the predator on the prowl and feels good about that, then
the mistake he has made is not having affairs, it is getting married!
He should divorce this woman he is married to, stop meowing like a stupid felis domestica and completely embrace being the Tiger in the Woods. It would make the world a much more interesting place, and leave a lot of people wondering why they lead such dishonest lives! Now that would be high performance, delivered.

BSK.

Slavery in the internet age.

It was legal to own your slave in the USA, just around the time
Mahatma Gandhi got freedom for India with his monumental methods of
non violence.

One would think after sixty odd years India would be the truly free
country. But one look at our educational system, and we'll realize we
have enshrined slavery, celebrated obedience over pursuit of
knowledge, and concluded that our "system" is more important than the
results it brings us.

The results our system has brought us are as follows:

- The education we consider most important for our children are those
mandated by foreign needs. If the Silicon Valley hires software
engineers, we rush our kids into computer science. If their stock
market dives without a clue, we dive with it!

- Virtually none of our "educated" masses are able to solve any
problems we face. We routinely turn to foreign "experts" even for
very national issues like cleaning the Ganges.

- Our educational system doesn't inspire any of our young minds to
turn innovators. Since the invention of the aeroplane, 90% of the
world's patents have gone to Americans.

Our construction and civil works standards have not been updated since
the 1940s. In other words, we still follow standards set by the
British Raj, while in the USA, these standards are updated every six
months. With the amount of innovation and technology and new
methodology that has evolved in this period, we in India have not made
a single attempt to come up with our own new standards.

Our government machinery and the bureaucrats it has spawned talk
regularly of e-governance, like it is some sort of revolution. Go to
the www.bsnl.co.in website and try e mailing any one of the forty odd
senior officers whose e mails are there in full public view. NONE of
them work! Ditto for most of the government websites, including the
Tamilnadu Police Department HQ. And there is a message from the TN
Chief of police about e-governance!

It was suddenly a hot idea to get on the internet, and so we did,
without a thought on how it would or wouldn't work. We are slaves in
our mind, and looking for a slave driver to force us to do something.
We were forced into the internet age because the rest of the world was
going there and not because we have genuinely embraced it for what it
can do for us.

- Why in heaven's name should the Indian Railways website "shut down"
every night?

- Why doesn't the Tamilnadu Directorate of Technical Education website
have a single means of contacting them?

- Why aren't we still able to vote online?

Out of sheer pride, we built something called a Light Combat Aircraft,
which was by no means the most advanced aircraft in the world, but we
called it "indigenous". The indigenous Kaveri engine produced less
than 70% of the thrust needed to propel our indigenous aircraft, and
we're still pouring our indigeous tax money to buy a foreign engine,
and to somehow convince the Air Force to buy this plane. Why?

Because we're slaves, and we would like to pretend like we love our freedom.

Hindustan Motors and Toyota started functioning the same year. HM had
the protection of the Indian government, while Toyota had to survive
in the world market. We nurtured slaves to our own laziness, while
Japan chose to compete with pride against the best in the world.
Result - today Toyota is the world's #1 auto maker, and HM needs one
stroke of pity from someone's pen to shut it down.

Why do we have to buy a certain brand of gingely oil because the
American Heart Association somehow endorses its goodness? Why isn't
there an Indian Heart Association? Maybe we are heartless?

Why are there white people in suits on most of our corporate websites?
Why is it always a white man telling me what underwear to buy and
what shirt to wear? And yet, why is it okay in the same industries
for white people to wear shorts to their jobs while we follow dress
codes like we're going to jail?

What DO we really care about and do well? Everything that foreigners
tell us how to do. Aviation, for example! How we maintain our
aircraft, the standards we set for selecting pilots - all foreign,
since we don't make planes, and we don't trust the ones we do end up
making once in a while. The big fear guiding us here is not even that
people will die if standards are not adhered to, but because planes
are expensive and aren't worth much when they fall from the sky, even
once.

How much of a price are we paying for keeping our faces in the mud?