Ram Writes

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Fundamental Attribution Error

One day I was waiting in the lift lobby at work, having nothing to do. It was one of those days where frustration was sky-high, everything that could go wrong did. So, I took a break! Software engineers reading this would agree with me. Might seem silly for others though. Coming back to the story. There in the ground floor lift lobby, I noticed a guy, who was in his mid-30s or so he looked like. We entered the lift. He punched in floor 1. What a lazy ass! I have noticed him repeating this couple other times. I thought he must really be a sloth. I made fun of him. I loud-mouthed once to my teammates that I am going to take the stairs for four floors and beat them to it. The one-floor guy was around waiting for the lift in the lobby. I made sure he heard it loud and clear. A few months later, I joined the gym to bulk up. My romance with the gym as you guessed didn’t last long. But oh boy I didn’t give up so easily. I persisted for two months you see! The fifth day of my first week turn

Survival of the persistent

Have you ever wondered how hunter-gatherers hunted for their food? Best way to get a peek into the past is to observe still surviving hunter-gatherers communities in the world. Well, they aren’t many such communities around. I am going to take you to the Kalahari Desert in Southern Africa. In the Kalahari Desert lives a hunter-gatherer tribe known as San people or Bushmen. Early in the day, a group of San hunters surrounds a Kudu herd. They create panic and scatter the heard. One or two San hunters then start to chase the bull that got separated from its herd. Kudu bull or any other four-legged animal is faster than us humans. Will the hunter-gatherer ever get to match the speed of the bull? Is one or two men enough to tame and kill the mighty bull? Kudu Bull Photo by Tobias Adam on Unsplash Well, four-legged animals gallop and run at great speeds that huma

Elixir for hair growth

In the late 1950s, a pharmaceutical manufacturing company Upjohn developed minoxidil to treat ulcers. However, during clinical trials on dogs, the medication did not cure ulcers. And they were disappointed. Instead, they found that medication had widened the blood vessels. An unexpected effect they didn’t foresee. Bingo! They had found medicine to treat high blood pressure. Upjohn patented the drug and the FDA approved its usage to treat high blood pressure in 1979. The drug was sold in oral tablet form with the trade name Loniten . Surprise, Surprise! The story doesn’t end there. While the FDA granted Upjohn permission to test the drug as medicine for hypertension, scientists noticed some of the patients were reporting unexpected hair growth. One of the patients, a woman, complained that she had to shave her legs and trim her hair more frequently than before she started taking the medicine. Even though researchers thought the effect of the drug on hair growth is more unlikely, they d

Pumped Out

Softsoap On August 22, 1865, Willian Sheppard of New York was granted a patent for his improved liquid soap. You take a small amount of soap and mix it with large amounts of spirits of ammonia. What you get is liquid soap with the consistency of molasses. In the US, liquid hand soap became popular in public places from the beginning of 1900s. But it took eight decades for liquid hand soap to make it to our homes, in the bottle pump avatar. In the 1980s, bar soap market was dominated by big brands like Dial, Ivory and Zest in the US. The competition was cut-throat and they had to fight it out for every percentage point of market share. Meanwhile, in Minnesota, there was a small company, The Minnetonka Corporation , known for niche items like bubble baths, scented candles, flavoured lip balm. They had a new product, liquid soap dispensed from a plastic hand pump. Until then only bar soap was used for handwashing. And Minnetonka wanted to change that. They tested their new product in sma

Why Chimpanzees don't work for money

Animals can communicate. They communicate to share information. But they share information about things that exist in reality. A monkey can share information on the availability of bananas. Animals can alert their group about a looming predator waiting to prey on them. Food, danger, obstacles like river or mountains on their path are things that exist in nature. These are objective reality . Humans are animals and can communicate about objective realities too. But humans are one level up. We can talk about things that don’t exist. We can share stories, ideas that don’t exist at all but are cooked up by our brain. Such stories, ideas, abstract concepts form subjective reality or fictional reality . These exist only in our brain. They are the product of our imagination. Humans experience and communicate both objective and subjective reality. When the imagined ideas, stories, concepts are shared and accepted by enough people, intersubjective reality occurs. And this makes us speci

Shaktimaan and the French Philosopher

My childhood superhero was Shaktimaan. I persuaded my parents to buy me Shaktimaan dress for my 6th birthday. I succeeded in getting the dashing outfit. But the transformation isn’t complete without red colour gloves, socks and shoes. I threw tantrums but my parents got the better of me. I was the Shaktimaan who showed up in paragon slippers. Sorry, Shaktimaan! Shaktimaan, the Indian Superhero Fast forward to the present. I buy the complete set for my niece as her birthday gift every year. She doesn't get only a doll from me. She gets all the accessories that go with it. Wand, tiara, makeup kit and what not! I remember the first time I bought a formal suit. I ended up buying cufflinks, tie, watch, belt and other such accessories. I am sure you would have experienced such things too. You buy a new phone. You follow it up buying a cover, earphones, screen guard, etc. One buy leads to another. And this has a name – Diderot Effect . Named after Denis Diderot, an 18th-century French p