John McCain's Celeb advertisement on Obama

In a recent lecture to students, I was teaching them about techniques in public relations. One of the techniques used is 'defining an opponent'. This was used by Bush to define Kerry as 'a flipflopper'. It was also used by L K Advani recently to describe Manmohan Singh as 'the weakest PM ever'. This is exactly what John McCain has done with the latest ad put forth by his campaign.

In this ad, McCain compares Obama's popularity and 'celeb' status to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton! It is certainly a new low in politics but it should be seen as a technique in PR and how it can be used/misused.

Students should find something to learn from it and they should realize the tremendous power that language and discourse exerts in our lives.

Here is the link: The 'celeb' ad on Obama.

The Booker Prize 2008: Longlist

Friends, the Booker Prize long list is out for the year 2008. The list is:

Aravind Adiga The White Tiger
Gaynor Arnold Girl in a Blue Dress
Sebastian Barry The Secret Scripture
John Berger From A to X
Michelle de Kretser The Lost Dog
Amitav Ghosh Sea of Poppies
Linda Grant The Clothes on Their Backs
Mohammed Hanif A Case of Exploding Mangoes
Philip Hensher The Northern Clemency
Joseph O'Neill Netherland
Salman Rushdie The Enchantress of Florence
Tom Rob Smith Child 44
Steve Toltz A Fraction of the Whole

The link for the Booker Prize website is
http://www.themanbookerprize.com/news/stories/1105

Running a Portfolio Management Service

If I were to think in terms of possible entrepreneurial ideas that I might like to implement in the future, portfolio management services would rank pretty high. Even though I'm a pretty qualified and an experienced translator and professional linguist in my language combinations, I wouldn't like to necessarily start a translation or a localization company.

But it does look pretty attractive to me if I could have sufficient capital to do two important things in my life. Both are equally important in my perspective. The first is to run a series of highly successful educational institutes with excellent faculty. The second is to offer portfolio management services. I am sure I could offer good returns compared to conventional investments such as bank term deposits.

When the stock markets crashed about two weeks ago, I bought Parsvnath stock at Rs. 103 [$2.45] per share and on Friday, July 25th, it was quoting at Rs. 117.75. So, I had a notional gain of Rs. 14.75 or about 14% in two weeks. On July 25th, the stock made a high of Rs. 122.

I guess that is a pretty good return. If one sells at a 14% profit within two weeks and then sits pretty till the markets present another opportunity, and buy again, one could be making a goldmine. This is why I feel I could really offer excellent portfolio management services.

Great News

Dear All,

Right now, as of today, July 27, 2008, my blog here, roomynaqvy.blogspot.com has a Google Page Rank of 4 out of a possible 10,--for a personal blog and for a blog that is not aggressively marketed, this is an excellent development. I hope you folks feel good too.

This is because most of you have visited my blog. I hope you would continue to do so in larger numbers.