What's in a name?

Some decades ago, when I was in my early teens, we had an occasional visitor – an acquaintance of Dad’s – who was an interesting character. A portly fellow with a heavy paunch that rolled over his belt - the result of deep, unbiased affection for starch and red meat and pudding - he was from the rubber country of Kottayam.  Being a brainy dude, he did his Chartered Accountancy and worked for a leading CA firm in Bangalore, but, far from numbers, was principally interested in 3 things (in increasing order of importance):
1. Any beverage that had been fermented, particularly if it rhymed with frisky
2. Horse racing
3. Himself.
 
To this last topic, he devoted much of his research, fascination and his conversation, usually after downing a Patiala peg. The chap would speak about himself in hushed, reverential tones, and the anecdotes attesting to this Superior Intelligence were as awe-inspiring as they were fictional.  Dad would sit there patiently listening to excruciating details of how this Whizkid had won money at the races or shown his boss that he (the boss) was an ignoramus, while the rest of us would smirk and giggle.
 
But here’s the catch: none of us were quite sure of the fellow’s name. Dad vaguely remembered that he was a Mathew, but was there a George too in it?  I disagreed immediately because the initials on his briefcase did not match (I was obsessed with Sherlock Holmes at that time, as you can infer).  My mother recalled meeting his long-suffering wife, who had referred to him by another name – she would have been justified in calling him names of a different genre too, as you will agree, but let us not divert from serious reportage.   To resolve this vexing issue, we had a short family conclave, where we recalled earlier conversations and short-listed the possibilities to George, Mathew, Abraham and Thomas. Unable to proceed further, the fellow was now named GMAT.

The name, I am glad to report, stuck and any call from GMAT on the landline had me covering the mouthpiece and yelling, “Dad, it’s GMAT for you”, which is likely to have transmitted clearly to the other end even in those primitive Bangalore Telephone days. 
 
(If you are shocked enough to delete my name from your friends directory, note that this is hardly the only blooper I made, having once asked my mom, “Is Dad at home?  Pesticide Radhakrishnan wants to speak with him.” I was immediately given a lecture by mum, after which I asked her if, in future, I should refer to this senior manager of Pest Control India as Pesticide Uncle instead.  Apparently, mum then decided that  she would let sleeping dogs - and sons with inadequate appreciation of niceties - lie.)
 
My Dad, had the last word on GMAT, comparing the human to the exam: spending an hour with the test paper was a test of skill, he said, while an hour with the other was one of will. 

Why I Am Likely to Win The Nobel Prize

I am deeply touched that millions of people are buying cryptocurrency.  For years, I had been searching for a reliable way to measure the percentage of idiots in a population.  My ultimate goal, as you have now shrewdly guessed, is the Nobel Prize for Economics and Literature combined, and I was, until recently, about as far from it as Orion is from Earth.
ps: Orion is getting closer at the rate of six inches a year.  Persistence pays (but not in cryptocurrency).
 
The current population of gullible, naïve, inept, self-delused, infatuated, doting, obsessed, asinine, gauch, gumptionless, bird-witted, desipient, unstable idiots on our planet is officially at about 240 million, which translates to about 72% of the population of the United States (do not read anything more into this).  These are people (crypto buyers, not Americans) who wake up all animated in the morning and say, “Is there a new scheme to defraud me?” and, if they hear an echo, they do a funds transfer.
 
The most heartening news, of course, is that the population of idiots is exploding and new precious insights are a daily occurrence. For instance, one recent discovery is that crypto buyers do not know the difference between a virus and a cryptocurrency: apparently, Omicron, a cryptocurrency that was launched at the beginning of November moved from $65 to $325 after the virus variant was named.  They assumed (with crystal clear, profound, incontrovertible logic) that since both are invisible to the naked eye, they are the same.
 
Another one called Dogecoin that was set up as a joke even has its founder screaming, “Don’t buy, it’s a scam” Dogecoin buyer-idiots, who will not recognise a mistake if you present it to them in a lava-encrusted pressure cooker-with-weight, are convinced that this is reverse psychology at work, so they buy even more.  There is even a coin called SafeMoon that has been thoughtfully named by its creators who live there and prefer that the idiots stay on Earth. 

 

Then, there is the ultimate scam called Bitcoin that is today priced at Rs 37 lakhs a piece, which is the same price as a BMW X1 (which is where the similarity ends).  If someone had bought it years ago, being an Early Idiot and held on for years and years, he would now be worth Rs 37 lakhs in fake money.  Which, I must agree, is a lot of fake money to have, because I play Monopoly regularly and have never seen so much.
 
More later.  My Nobel is waiting.