Ethics in a coffee cup

There are a few coffee/tea/vending machines - CVM in short, in the Academy-Mussorie. These CVMs have slots for certain tokens that one could to get for five rupees. These 5-rupee tokens would make one eligible for a cup of coffee etc. But the speciality of these CVMs is that these can be operated even without these specific tokens.(Unfortunately, I relised this only during the fag end of our Course there) This is by inserting any one Rupee, 50 paise or even 25 paise coin in the slot, instead of the 5-rupee CVM token. These CVMs are so intelligently designed!

I would have hardly taken four or five cups of Re.1 coffee when a friend disturbed me with some ethical lessons. He (not she) said that i was doing something immoral, cheating the CVM owner grossly. (i was paying at max only one fourth of the actual) As i was anticipating this issue to crop up some time or the other i did not have any difficulty in quickly countering this with my ready-made defence.

My primary line of defence is that it is purely the owner/designer/operator's job to ensure such glaring design flaws are rectified - after all the whole business runs around these tokens. It is also very obvious that these guys are well aware of this loophole, as the CVMs are opened on a daily basis to recycle the tokens and for accounting purposes. So if someone can be so very careless about his/her interests - probably due to sheer laziness - why should someone else be branded unethical?

In turn, I was posed with hard questions like - Is it ethical to takeaway items from an unmanned, open shop? Will you consider it ethical if someone picks your mobile phone while you are looking the other side? etc.

Need your help. Can I advise my friends in Mussourie not to waste Rs.5 for a cup of coffee or should I send a DD for Rs.16 (Rupees sixteen only) to the CVM operator?

Last minute

We are supposed to complete all our relieving formalities by today evening, returing this laptop is also a part of the activities. Before coming to Mussourie some three months back, I was very confident that I would be able to at least maintain my posting average of about one new post every week, if not better. But that did not click. Now am confident of something that is going to workout - I will not be able to make any new posts in the next 10 days! Lots of location changes in the anvil before I reach Nagpur on Dec 9th. See you then.

Btw, this is one of the very few good snaps I took here. Thanks to Arun's idea of posting more snaps.

Creative tests

I remember hearing in one of those psychology coaching classes that it's really difficult to objectively measure - most of the mind-related variables like intelligence, attitude, interests etc. And creativity is definitely not something that lends itself to metrics. Who is more creative - Maniratnam or George Bush? Can someone give a clear answer? No.
However that never deters us from designing tests that are most likely to measure creativity. The famous psychologist Guilford is known for developing many such tests, like Remote Association Test, Unusual Uses test and many more. Torrence Tests of creative thinking are also famous, such tests measured one's originality, flexibility, fluency and elaboration - thought to be the components of creative thinking.
Over the past two days I'm also testing myself on these four parameters, though that was not the intention of the individuals who administered the tests. Some good things happen without planning, they say. Coming to the tests, here are some of the items that really tested my creativity.

* Test 4/Item 4:

India is secular but Indian politics is communal. Please comment.
* Test 3/ Sec B/Item 7: What is the key assumption adopted in this working estimation model of social capital? (A complex Chemical Engineering-type formula followed this item)

There are many other gems, however I would like to end the list with this -
* * Test 5/Item 1: Why is the study of history considered relevant for a Civil Servant? Discuss.