Throw Them Out

Recently a friend of mine, who holds the purse strings in her family, had asked her husband to leave the house (and go away). 

When a husband throws his wife out, the whole world jumps at him. All feminist groups decry his behavior.

I asked my friend how many times she might have condemned husbands who threw their wives out. She replied "Plenty". 

I told her that I hoped she will pause and reflect the next time she hears about a wife being thrown out.

While there are husbands who are assholes, many a times they throw their wives out because the wife did something inappropriate - saama dhaana bedha having failed they chose dhandam.

In our society, women are so glorified, we fail to realize the mistakes and blunders they do.

(Of course, this is not to say that all men are saints!! Or most. Or even many.)

Trumping Mueller And Eliott

For Trump and the System, a Turning Point and a Test.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/us/politics/donald-trump-mueller-report.html

Now that the report has come out there is a lot of speculation on what it will contain, what the AG Mr Barr will release, what the Congress will do and how Trump may be affected. Only time will answer these questions.

In the meanwhile, we know that whatever the special counsel Robert Mueller has found has resulted in convictions. He may not have found anything that will result in impeachment though it may be a close call. Nothing substantially new may come out. What the attorney general will release is in his discretion.

Trump will lie his way through. And probably scrape through. In a few months this may fizzle out.  And that, if it happens, is sad for the US.  That someone can get away with this is painful. 

Executive power seems to be unimpeachable. Who will guard the guards. Rather who can? Is there hope for a Ness like finale?

Here we go in forward chronological order:

• https://www.wsj.com/articles/house-committee-told-to-expect-word-that-mueller-report-has-been-delivered-to-attorney-general-barr-11553288563
• https://www.wsj.com/articles/top-findings-from-muellers-report-to-be-sent-to-congress-within-the-hour-11553454918
• "Notably, Mr. Trump’s lawyers have taken the position that Congress lacks the authority to constrain in any way how the president exercises his constitutional powers to oversee the executive branch, including deciding whether to direct the Justice Department to close an investigation, to fire a subordinate and to pardon someone. Mr. Barr himself endorsed that view in his June 2018 memo for the Trump administration, when he was still a lawyer in private practice. "Barr Clears Trump of Obstruction After Mueller Demurs": https://nyti.ms/2U1BhjW "Under that view, even if a president abuses his power by acting for corrupt reasons, it would be unconstitutional for Congress to make that a crime. Many legal scholars dispute that view, but the Supreme Court has never addressed the issue."
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/03/25/biggest-lesson-mueller-probe-its-about-character/
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/24/muellers-report-barrs-summary-what-questions-do-you-have-post-will-answer-them/
• How Trump dodged a special counsel interview — and a subpoena fight
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-should-come-with-a-warning-label/2019/03/29/5bd22752-5257-11e9-88a1-ed346f0ec94f_story.html
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/29/takeaways-william-barrs-letter-about-releasing-mueller-report/
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/attorney-general-expected-to-miss-deadline-for-giving-mueller-report-to-congress-wont-commit-to-releasing-it-in-full/2019/03/27/3f2453f0-50db-11e9-88a1-ed346f0ec94f_story.html
• Subpoena for Mueller Report and Documents Approved by House Judiciary Committee
• Some on Mueller’s Team Say Report Was More Damaging Than Barr Revealed
• Read Attorney General William Barr’s Summary of the Mueller Report
• Kushner clearance was denied out of concerns about foreign influence, finances: It was Income Tax for Capone. What will it be for the cartoon? Mnuchin reveals White House lawyers consulted Treasury on Trump tax returns, despite law meant to limit political involvement
• The Daily 202: Revelations that Mueller’s team is frustrated intensify pressure on Barr to release full report
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/04/plot-just-thickened-mueller-report/
• https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/05/trump-hires-law-firm-to-fight-house-democrat-bid-to-get-tax-returns.html - Maybe, as in the case of Capone, it will be income tax. I have seen people who brag about their status and wealth and also claim "poverty" (for exampleas in Income Tax). Each claim is dubious and exists only for a specific purpose.
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/scrutiny-and-suspicion-as-mueller-report-undergoes-redaction/2019/04/06/5dcdddfc-57d5-11e9-8ef3-fbd41a2ce4d5_story.html
• Capone time coming up: To Get Trump’s Tax Returns, N.Y. Democrats Try a New Strategy https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/08/nyregion/trump-tax-returns-ny-state.html
• Live Updates: Barr Tells Congress He Will Deliver Mueller Report Within a Week - I expect the version released by Mr Barr to be found to be very inadequate and Democrats well raise a hugh and cry. We wait for New York to release the State Tax returns. That well be fun. How come no one is hacking Income Tax returns? 
• https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/04/10/world/politics-diplomacy-world/white-house-discussed-trump-tax-returns-treasury-congress-asked-steve-mnuchin/ - The Best leaders say they had no idea what their underlings were upto and hence they themselves cannot be help responsible for the action of the underlings. Tiny with Cohen's payment to Stormy or Mnechin saying "prior to receiving the request, Treasury Department officials had been in contact with the White House to discuss it — even though Mnuchin himself was not personally involved." 

• https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/pictures-of-robert-mueller-tell-the-story-of-a-man-who-is-finally-free/2019/03/25/6c6d62be-4f0c-11e9-88a1-ed346f0ec94f_story.html
• Julian Assange arrested after being evicted from Ecuador’s embassy in London - Will Assange>Stone>Cohen>Ass. Will this unravel?
• Donald Trump’s Tax Returns: What We Might Learn. Read this https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/donald-trump-tax-schemes-fred-trump.html and Retiring as a Judge, Trump’s Sister Ends Court Inquiry Into Her Role in Tax Dodges and https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/10/trump-should-resist-giving-up-his-tax-returns-with-every-bone-his-body/ and Trump officials plan to resist subpoenas over his policies and finances
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/11/most-potentially-damaging-congressional-investigations-trump-ranked/
• House Democrats give IRS hard deadline of April 23 to turn over Trump tax returns
• Barr Expects to Provide Special Counsel’s Report to Congress, Public Thursday
• The Mueller Report Will Be Released on Thursday. Here’s a Guide.
• Mueller report will be lightly redacted, offering detailed look at Trump’s actions
• https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2018/10/worst-botchup-ever.html
• https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/2018/12/07/trump-narcissistic-sociopath/
• https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2016/08/difference-between-man-and-other-animals.html
• Durham Cracks the Russia Case: How does this tally with Robert Mueller's findings?

Bhagwad Gita And Mistakes

A friend was stressing a line from Bhagwad Gita - "Do your work, don't focus on results".

This is the only thing I know of Gita and I have thought a lot about it. While discussing with my friend we happened to be touch on ambition. And I told her that the Gita statement above contradicted the concept of ambition. She was not convinced nor at that time did I have a convincing explanation for my opinion.

Later we again touched base. This time she was mentioning that a person should not be afraid of taking action and if the action results in a problem then they should learn from the mistake and not make the same mistake. 

This time I was sure that she was violating the Gita. To learn from a mistake, you have to focus on the end result. If you didn't focus on the end result, you will just keep doing the same thing again and again. 

Ambition has a goal associated with it and

focuses on the end result. If the end result is not what we wanted we change what we do. Ask any entrepreneur.

This directly conflicts with Gita of not focusing on the result.

QED.

Here is an interesting example. HUD is charging Facebook with targeting ads instead of showing the same ads to all users. We target ads because showing ads to everyone isn't useful, some people make better potential customers. How do we know that? We targeted ads at various people and looked at the results. Oh my, but we aren't supposed to look at results, we are only to target ads (at everyone).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/28/hud-charges-facebook-with-housing-discrimination/

Does this mean Bhagwad Gita (that one statement) is wrong? I don't think so. It's aimed at an average person, not ambitious, not an entrepreneur. "Qaabil bano, kaamyaabi apne aap aa jaayegi" from the movie 3 Idiots echoes Gita's sentiment.

The interesting thing was that kinda not able to explain to my friend why I intuitively felt that ambition and Gita couldn't coexist. But when she said that we ought to learn from our mistakes, the reasoning became obvious to me.

Additional Reading
https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2019/03/epporul-yaaryaar-vaai-ketpunum.html

Children These Days

Couple of days back i was talking to a friend while having idli and coffee. He was an elderly gentleman and commented that my coffee was getting cold. I just smiled and asked him mischievously what he could say about people who were picky about coffee being hot.

He answered in a serious tone that you couldn't say anything about a person who preferred hot coffee. Some prefer it hot, he added, while others prefer to take it lukewarm. And that It was being judgmental if one were to venture to describe a person's character based on his (temperature of coffee) drinking habits. 

I let it go. He went on to tell me that (adult) children these days do not take care of their senior parents and that our generation took care of our parents. I suggested that we should seek our parents' opinion on our care taking ability especially since we are freely venturing our verdict on our children's care taking ability of their parents. He said his parents were no more, so how could we.

I asked him whether saying that the current younger generation does not take care of its seniors well wouldn't be considered to be judgemental. He was taken aback. He said, "No it's just an opinion". 

That begged my next question - how is an opinion different from a judgement? He stammered. And then we went on to other topics.

Now the question is: how is it that he found an opinion about coffee drinker's habits to be judgemental while an opinion about the current generation to be kosher?

My belief is this: my opinion about coffee drinkers (i didn't even tell him what that opinion was, just that there could be a pattern) was too strange to digest and hence he dismissed it as being judgmental. While the opinion about the current generation is oft repeated and hence could be mentioned without having to prove it.

Either of the opinions (his or mine) could have been faulted or been faulty. 

He didn't want to discuss the truth of either opinion. Mine was dismissed. His wasn't to be questioned. The entire conversation was very polite. But underneath the politeness.. 

Feeler  (MBTI) definitely. 

Both judgments (mine and his) come from our S1. Mine would have used S2 (conscious rational thought) but could have jumped to a wrong conclusion because of S1 without sufficient data analysis. Each of us is quick to point out quirks in someone else's faulty judgement while being nepotic towards our own.

Wow.

For an intro into S1, S2 read https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/10/thinking-fast-and-slow-daniel-kahnemann.html

Epporul Yaaryaar Vaai Ketpinum

Recently I had a long chat with an old friend. She told me she attended a pravachan (Hindu religious equivalent of a TED Talk) given by a guy who had been to Ivy league engineering and management schools in India.

I asked her how the talk was, whether it was good. She said it was nice considering the background of the speaker. I thought that was a wrong way to judge. How did it matter what the pedigree was. What ought to matter was only the content.

But then my conclusion was true if one was judging solely the content. What if one was also judging the speaker? If one was judging the speaker, one will consider what they said and where they went to school and so on.

So the logical question is: when would we judge only the content and when would we judge the speaker (as in a Ted Talk)? 

Or, is this question irrelevant because a content cannot be judged adequately or holistically without considering who the speaker is (or what they are wearing)?

Tiruvalluvar might be turning in his grave.

Now we come to what Wall Street Journal says about the same thing in this article written in response to NY Times anonymous op-ed piece on Trump: 
https://www.wsj.com/articles/publishing-anonymous-column-is-rare-editors-say-1536269520 "So much of the value of an op-ed is the weight the author brings to the issue through their experience. If you don’t know who that person is, it is very hard for the reader to determine whether it is important or not,” said Greg Kesich, editorial page editor of the Portland Press Herald." 
This is essentially the same as what my friend said. WHAT is said becomes important or unimportant based on WHO said it. 

This is also similar to how Google PageRank works. The importance of WHAT you say is determined by WHO links to you.

In an age where the WHAT is too difficult to evaluate, we use the WHO to filter out rubbish.

It's time to rephrase.
Epporul yaaryaarvaai ketpinum apporul 
Yaarvai endru kaanbadhu arivu

Maths And Puzzles - Solve For Hexadecimal Digits

A friend of mine sent me this puzzle.
A,B,C are all different digits. The following is a sum. 

ABC

ABC

ABC

--------

CCC

Identify the three digits.

Also solve for A, B, C if it's a hexadecimal sum (base 16).


Base 16
1=1
2=2
3=3
4=4
5=5
6=6
7=7
8=8
9=9
10=A
11=B
12=C
13=D
14=E

15=F

Solution for base 16

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12w8NwIwliFBaJ9h2YnityTWUKrL2zRtcGVaE8Qm4rfg/edit?usp=drivesdk

Another method:
Each of the numbers is
256x+16y+z
3*(256x+16y+z)
=768x+48y+3z

The sum with all 3 digits as z 
=256z+16z+z=273z

Thus, 768x+48y=270z
128x+8y=45z

Z has to be an even number. More important since the LHS is a multiple of 8, z also has to be a multiple of 8. The max vape of x, y, z is 16-1=15. Hence z can only be 8.

128+8y=45*8
16x+y=45
X=2, y=13, z=8

It is interesting that there seems to be only one solution each for bases 10, 16. And no solution for other bases from 5 to 16.

Additional Reading

1. https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2016/09/who-is-isis-winner.html
2. http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2018/04/name-of-5th-child-zaze-puzzle.html

MBTI Be Damned

I have 2 friends x and y. X is an E*FP (as in MBTI, not sure whether he is N or S) and y an ISTJ. Superficially they are both very dissimilar. One is fun to be with, gregarious, regales you with stories of incidents while the other is quiet, organized, disciplined.

Y is incidentally D's father in https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2018/02/vikram-or-vetaal.html

I found that x and y had something in common. Y has innumerable ailments. No sooner is one ailment kinda cured than he starts mumbling about the next one. He is scared stiff that people might come to believe that he is perfectly fine. He hates that very idea that people should think that she is doing fine. 

X as a young man used to gamble, got into many (i guess dubious) business ventures and ran up a lot of loans. His father would come from his home town to visit X in the city, pay off his son's loans and and ask his son if that's all the loan he, the son has. The son, X, would confirm yes only to bombard his father later with more loans to repay.

X, the FP, gave a lot of distress to his elderly father. After the father helped pay off X's  loan, x will broach the subject about another. And then another.

Y, the more disciplined FJ, would broach about his next ailment or pain, as soon as one was sorted out or addressed. He stood in perennial fear of being deviated healthy. The same way an OBC or SC/ST person might fear being termed a Brahmin and thereby lose all access to subsidy.

I used to feel that deep down both x and y were similar in the amount of pain they gave to the people who supported them.

J or P, it didn't matter.

Child Is The Father Of Man

Recently i was talking to a friend A. She has another friend B. A's daughter is in school while B's daughter is in college. 

A month back A informed me that B's husband died of a heart attack. I was sympathizing with B, wondering how she will manage.

A told me that B's life is better than hers in the sense that B's daughter is grown up and going to college while her own is still young and in school. I reminded my friend that B has lost her husband. 

A told me that it is a momentary issue. That husbands, even alive, aren't of much value. And that B will get over the death of her husband soon. And that B's life is better than her own.

That made me realize what Mel Gibson was struggling to understand in What Women Want. 

Women, Indians I refer to, are happiest not when you give them flowers or diamonds or when you tell them you love them. They are most happy when the husband isn't there and the daughter is in college.

Of course they still have to get the daughter married off. So they will prefer the daughter to be married than just in college. Even more preferable is a married daughter with children so you don't have the daughter's childbirths in front of you.

And so on.

Essentially, a mother wants the daughter to be as old as possible and she herself to be young. Another friend of mine used to be thrilled whenever she heard someone say that she looked younger than her own daughter.

Wordsworth got it wrong. Mother is the child of daughter 

Note:
Women that I discussed this incident and my conclusion with have all told me that I got it wrong. Even though tthey believed what my friends told me.

God Inherits Earth

A friend of mine, along with two of her bosom buddies, visited about 20 to 30 temples about 200km away over a 2 day period. This was a couple of months back.

Today, one of the three (not my friend) has lost her husband, the other two, well, if i said life has been a little difficult for both of them, then that would be a gross understatement.

My friend's husband has been involved in a misdemeanor. My friend, who is a very upright person, found this act very distasteful.

Well i had a conversation with her today. It went something like this:

Me: Just 2 days visiting temples and then all 3 of you had so many serious problems. Yet you continue doing similar things.

She: It has nothing to do with this. Serious problems are fateful .... Destiny.

Me: What your husband did was a serious problem?

She: Oh yes. That's man made serious problem. Nothing to do with God.

Me: Your logic is wrong. Think about it. If both sets of problems (one concerning the aftermath of Temple visit and the 2nd being the misdemeanor by my friend's husband) are serious and hence, as per your logic, they are both fateful. But in the first set, you exonerate God. But in your husband's case, you hold him accountable for a serious, hence fateful, problem. How do you explain it?

End of conversation

My explanation:

If there are 2 problems, both serious and hence "fateful" and if we think We can't hold God responsible for the 1st fateful problem (meaning even God can't handle those), how can we hold man accountable for the 2nd serious and fateful problem?

What logic is my friend using? I asked her to take time to respond. I am predicting that she will stick to her opinion about God not being responsible but holding her husband still responsible. And that she will recant or rephrase her logic avoiding "serious =fateful".

The word fateful that my friend used was what caused all this confusion.

The question is: why did she use the word fateful when i asked her about the problems after the Temple visit. 

Why does she want to exonerate God who is so powerful and hold a simple poor man completely accountable?

I would hold a bigger person more accountable for the same/similar serious crime. Holding a much smaller man more accountable just isn't conscientious. Nope.

If the meek husband is going to be held accountable for a serious issue, and if the omnipotent God is going to be just given a slap on the wrist or even completely exonerated, then the meek shall not inherit the Earth.

After reading this, would she ask her father (a very rational person) for his opinion and hence perhaps change hers and not judge her husband too harshly? I doubt it. She is wedded to her pet opinion (that man and children should take responsibility for their actions while women and God don't).