Sunday, December 30, 2018

It's quite disconcerting that great leaders of past and present have sometimes willingly put their own lives at stake in the pursuit of greatness and success

A good example is the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. As beautifully detailed in this latest Mustard video about the legendary Tupolev Tu-114 turboprop airliner, Khrushchev knowingly and willingly risked his own life by choosing a somewhat experimental and unfinished Tu-114 airliner [instead of the complete  / finished / tested albeit less glamorous Tu-116 variant] in order to make a grand entrance / landing in the US. He wasn't / isn't alone. Great leaders have sometimes chosen to put their own lives at stake in the pursuit of greatness. It isn't always technological confidence or knowledge that drives them to take risk - Khrushchev was no aviation expert [he did carry onboard pretty effective non-technical confidence-building means though - the son of the Tu-114's designer, no less!]. Instead, it's a burning desire to make an impression, to be seen as big and tall, that drives these men to endanger their own lives.

No one should be fooled that risking one's own life is an essential quality for big successes. No one should assume that the so-called "calculated risk" [MBAspeak bullshit] is not going to be fatal because it hasn't been fatal to great leaders. The great leaders that we know about are only those who risked their lives and happened to survive the risk. We never hear about or know about those men who just never made it - whose lives got ended during the risk-taking activity. It's essential to include these dead men in the probability / statistical calculation in order to arrive at a more realistic picture.

Saturday, December 08, 2018

Meaning of arrest of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei's CFO, and how China should respond [COMPACTIDEA]

In one word, China should retaliate, and should retaliate immediately and forcefully. Immediately arrest one or more American CxO level folks on [otherwise genuine] charges ranging from helping America's illegal global spying operations and also aiding USA's killing of innocents in Iraq, Libya and elsewhere. Let the message spread worldwide. Let the world know the reasons for China's arrests - at least America's murderous wars will get ample news media coverage on the world stage. Let America know that it cannot touch China. The Americans have deliberately arrested a prominent Chinese woman in order to humiliate the Chinese even more, and it'll be better if the Chinese arrested one or more American female executives rather than male executives.