Irreverence pays November 30, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in india, rant.1 comment so far
Angry at the desecration of BR Ambedkar’s statue in Kanpur, Dalits in several parts of Maharashtra went on the rampage on Thursday, setting two trains on fire, damaging over 100 buses and clashing with police in violent protests that left three people dead and over 60 injured.
Call me faithless, arrogant, whatever. I dont think there is any person/animal/earthly or heavenly entity/idea I respect so much that his/her/its ‘desecration’ will lead me to destroy public property and kill innocent people. How can this be excused ? Calling them uneducated, ignorant and therefore eligible for leniency by law ? Poor and insecure people ? Or maybe since I have already declared my position in the first sentence of this article, I just dont understand what it is be faced with that situation. Thankfully.
KPS Gill puts it quite rightly.
The contempt for the law is not limited to the state and its agencies, and to those who exercise power through these. It extends to the overwhelming majority of citizens who will ignore, if not actively breach, the law at almost every instance when they feel they are not being monitored and would not be liable to penalties. The internalisation of law and of accepted social norms and mores, the hallmark of civilised societies, is becoming increasingly rare, with our educational systems, as well as the example of elders and the leaders of society, failing comprehensively to encourage or inculcate any desirable value system in our children.
I thought we will break any law if we know we are not being watched. Turns out the qualification wasnt necessary. Just this will do – “We will break any law.”
Commanding heights November 30, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in general, humor.add a comment
There have been a few occasions when this was possible – with two of either Sadiq/Rajaram/Ashith/Prakash on either side ( and myself in the middle), similarities abound. Next time its possible, will get one.
[ Click for larger version ]
Linked from here. Here is the ‘actual’ trivia about the picture.
I was probably the last person to go out to lunch with Milton. We met at his favorite restaurant in San Francisco, where I showed him a picture of him standing next to John Kenneth Galbraith, the premier Keynesian and welfare statist of the 20th century. Galbraith towered over the diminutive Friedman. Beneath the picture was a funny line by George Stigler: “All great economists are tall. There are two exceptions: John Kenneth Galbraith and Milton Friedman.” Milton was so pleased with the photo and caption that he sent it to all his friends only two weeks before his passing.
(The phrase ‘commanding heights’ in the post title is a really really remote pun on Galbraith/Pandit Nehru)
Update : Sadiq adds that at our Golden Jubilee high school reunion in 2031, we will get one such picture !
“Minus the Nobel Prizes”, I was quick to add. 
My blogroll status – who is doing what November 30, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in blogging, general.1 comment so far
At some point, this girl sat on my lap on the way to school. Now a medical student, its great to read her write like a grownup.
Mona continues to pen haunting melodies.
Going by her latest post citing her willingness to put up with her imperfections, Smitha might not post again.
Whether honesty is the best policy or not, blogging regularly appears to be one.
Somebody appears to have as much liking for spice as I do. ( and an amazing blog too ! )
Combing research topics and a liking for blogging is a good idea.
3 years on, November 30, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in contemplation, littlerockers.3 comments
This mail dated Nov 30, 2003 was in some sense the beginning.
Dear Friends,I am Sharath Rao, Class of 1997, Little Rock. I am writing to you as alumnus of Little Rock. This mail is about a possible ALUMNI meeting of the Little Rock Indian School sometime in June 2004. Ofcourse an alumni meeting is not something that can be ‘announced’. Especially since this will be the first ever meeting of its kind, it is something whose details have to be discussed before arriving at a decision of this kind.
This topic came up during one of my recent visit to Little Rock when Madam ( Lali Mathew ) mentioned about a grand Silver Jubilee ( 25 years ) in 2007. She then added that its good to have a meeting before that..perhaps as early as June 2004. She said that Little Rock will provide every kind of support for a meeting of this kind.
However, it would be much easier if we alumnus can play a role in getting in touch with people and establishing a network before the first ever meeting. I personally feel its definitely feasible to get around and track down the Class of 1997. By this I mean anybody who in 1996-97 was in Class X and is a Little Rocker. It might somebody who left LRIS before 1996 or joined LRIS after 1996. I have started a yahoogroups ( littlerock_1997 ) so that the process of communicating becomes easier. Of the many people I am sending this mail to, several do not either have a yahoo ID or havent made it known. Therefore, I request you all to mail me your yahoo IDs so that you can become a part of the group and start receiving mails. I do hope that this idea of an alumni meet/ association finds supporters among you. Anytime you come across our batchmates, please mail me their IDs or recommend them to get in touch with me so that their IDs can be authorized to receive and send mails, post photographs etc.
In anticipation
Regards,
Sharath Rao
( www.geocities.com/raosharathonline )
I exactly remember my state of mind when I sent out that mail – cautiously hopeful. It was my first attempt at any kind of organization building if one might call it so. I wasnt exactly sure if people would heed to the above proposal. I thought more than the proposal itself (which wasnt at all unreasonable), the source of the proposal might rub people the wrong way. Although I did have a great time at school, over the years I had learnt of having been tagged (not entirely incorrectly) by my peers as having a disproportionately high nuisance value, arrogance value and such. I did think then that in starting off the alumni group, it was the wrong person doing the right thing.
Nevertheless, things happened, a lot happened in 3 years with a lot of help from people, mostly Ashith.
And the Orkut group saw a phenomenal group going from 30 in Nov 2004 to 100 in Nov 2005 to nearly 960 in Nov 2006 !! ( Ofcourse, no personal effort went into building the Orkut group, which largely built itself.)
That apart, quite a bit will happen in 2 weeks from now. From here.
Our website sees new registrations of our alumni every day. A vast number of old students are planning to come for the Alumni Reunion on December 16 and 17. I find that there are many coming even from distant cities in India, and some even from foreign countries to be here on this historic occasion. We are really overwhelmed by the response. We are indeed proud of our old students, much the same way as you are proud of your Little Rock.
I have no words to describe how unfortunate it is that I cannot make it to this event. Hopefully I will live long enough to make the 50th anniversary in 2031 
Looking back this whole set of activities pertaining to the LRIS alumni network that I involved myself in, few hundred mails/phone calls/SMSs, the time and energy that went into it, will remain one of those things to feel good about. Earlier this year I felt that its all stabilized – things had got to a point where they became self-sustaining – we convinced several other batches to start off their own groups which were doing well. Since then I have been looking for something else, some other cause that is not necessarily/at all grandiose (spketicism tends to be directly proportional to the grandiosity and utopian nature of the task), that is within my reach and that is largely self-less ( no matter how narrowly the word is defined) and that wich is worth the time and the kind of passion that went into helping build the alumni network.
We arent on the same wavelength ? November 29, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in contemplation, ideas, science.2 comments
I dont know for sure but this direction of research might someday explain the real meaning of expressions such that “Our wavelengths dont match” or that “it was love at first sight”.
The most significant finding was the discovery of “mirror neurons,” a widely dispersed class of brain cells that operate like neural WiFi. Mirror neurons track the emotional flow, movement and even intentions of the person we are with, and replicate this sensed state in our own brain by stirring in our brain the same areas active in the other person.Mirror neurons offer a neural mechanism that explains emotional contagion, the tendency of one person to catch the feelings of another, particularly if strongly expressed. This brain-to-brain link may also account for feelings of rapport, which research finds depend in part on extremely rapid synchronization of people’s posture, vocal pacing and movements as they interact. In short, these brain cells seem to allow the interpersonal orchestration of shifts in physiology.
As I put this up I am drawn to a possible grouse that this blog increasingly appears to be attempting to report or celebrate rational explanations/interpretation of things we hold sacred – things such as religion and deep human emotions such as love and friendship. Well, I dont know but for the moment the beautiful thing to me is the human quest to understand the demystify everything until it all makes sense, until something consistent is found. ( to the extent that the inherent inconsistency of the situation permits ). This spirit, this energy will one day have to encounter the law of diminishing returns. And then something else might come across as being worth my time and curiosity.
Emails, outerspace and Indian cricket November 29, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in ideas, science, sport.add a comment
1. How do you sign off an email and what determines how you do ( if at all ). I have thought of this before, the context of letters as well as email and its always nice to know the NYTimes has been as well.
Chad Troutwine, an entrepreneur in Malibu, Calif., was negotiating a commercial lease earlier this year for a building he owns in the Midwest. Though talks began well, they soon grew rocky. The telltale sign that things had truly devolved? The sign-offs on the e-mail exchanges with his prospective tenant.
“As negotiations started to break down, the sign-offs started to get decidedly shorter and cooler,” Mr. Troutwine recalled. “In the beginning it was like, ‘I look forward to speaking with you soon’ and ‘Warmest regards,’ and by the end it was just ‘Best.’ ” The deal was eventually completed, but Mr. Troutwine still felt as if he had been snubbed.
2.
Here is how your ( and everybody else’s) body is likely to react in outerspace.
For about ten full seconds– a long time to be loitering in space without protection– an average human would be rather uncomfortable, but they would still have their wits about them. Depending on the nature of the decompression, this may give a victim sufficient time to take measures to save their own life. But this period of “useful consciousness” would wane as the effects of brain asphyxiation begin to set in. In the absence of air pressure the gas exchange of the lungs works in reverse, dumping oxygen out of the blood and accelerating the oxygen-starved state known as hypoxia. After about ten seconds a victim will experience loss of vision and impaired judgement, and the cooling effect of evaporation will lower the temperature in the victim’s mouth and nose to near-freezing. Unconsciousness and convulsions would follow several seconds later, and a blue discoloration of the skin called cyanosis would become evident.
At this point the victim would be floating in a blue, bloated, unresponsive stupor, but their brain would remain undamaged and their heart would continue to beat. If pressurized oxygen is administered within about one and a half minutes, a person in such a state is likely make a complete recovery with only minor injuries, though the hypoxia-induced blindness may not pass for some time. Without intervention in those first ninety seconds, the blood pressure would fall sufficiently that the blood itself would begin to boil, and the heart would stop beating. There are no recorded instances of successful resuscitation beyond that threshold.
Though an unprotected human would not long survive in the clutches of outer space, it is remarkable that survival times can be measured in minutes rather than seconds, and that one could endure such an inhospitable environment for almost two minutes without suffering any irreversible damage. The human body is indeed a resilient machine.
Thats a link from MR.
3.
Here is an excellent article on what really is different ( read dysfunctional ) about Indian cricket. (Emphasis mine)
And there have been many before them: Simon Katich, Stuart MacGill, Adam Gilchrist, Justin Langer, Darren Lehmann, Michael Kasprowicz, Brad Hogg, Matthew Hayden, Damien Martyn – it’s a long list. Moral of the story: for Indian cricketers 25 is over the hill; for Australians it’s only the beginning. For Australia it is a triumph of the system; in India’s case it is testimony to the absence of a system. Australia look for the finished product, players who have gone through the grind, been hardened by competition, and are ready to plunge into international cricket. India search for precocity, a spark, and hope it can survive the cauldron.
That ( bold-faced ) is true of the larger scheme of things as well, it occurs to me.
Actually its probably about sub-continent cricket as a whole.
Over the last five years 22 players under the age of 25 have made international debuts for India. Fourteen of them were 21 or less, and two under 18. Only seven players over 25 have made debuts over the same period. On the all-time list of youngest Test debutants, one has to scroll down to 19th position to find an entry that is not from India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh. Nine of the 10 youngest centurions come from these countries.
So are we always preparing for a future ? Is having a young team an end in itself ?
Think about it, how about trying the same formula applying to India’s politicians and parliamentarians ? We might actually end up saving the country !
xoxo
Band of brothers November 27, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in india, sport.1 comment so far
This kind of candor is remarkable. Thats Ian Chappel on great cricketers ( and the not so great cricketers ).
As a captain, the guys who kept me awake at night were guys like Sobers, Graeme Pollock and Viv Richards–a guy who could get a big score and get it quickly. Guys like Geoffrey Boycott couldn’t keep me awake at night, in fact he put me to sleep during the day. I figured that if he got 150 he took so long that it made our chances of saving the game much better. Another reason why I don’t classify Geoffrey Boycott as great was that he was a selfish bastard; he never played for the team, he always played for himself. I heard Bill Lawry call him a great batsman one day, and I said to Bill as he came off the field, “that’s rubbish Bill, he wasn’t a great player”. He hemmed and hawed and I said, “Bill, Gary Sobers averaged bloody 58 and he played every second for the game of cricket and not for himself. Boycott played every single second of his career as a batsman for himself and he averaged only 47. What are you talking?”
His brother Greg is doing well too.
Following the 157-run defeat at Kingsmead, there had been calls in parliament for Chappell to be sacked. When asked about such remarks, he said, tongue firmly in cheek, “They are entitled to make any comment they like. That’s what they are paid to do in parliament.”
And how the section of the Indian Public reacts in the state of West Bengal.
At Kalighat in the southern part of the city, around 30-35 members of `Cricket Lovers Association` raised slogans against the Australian coach saying he has insulted not only the Indian MPs but also the entire nation.“The mps are people`s representatives. Insulting them is akin to insulting the Indian people,” they said, carrying aloft posters condemning Chappell. “Moreover, Chappell is an outsider, a foreigner. What right does he have to speak about the functioning of our parliamentary democracy,” they asked.
Since when did we start having so much respect for our ‘representatives’.
Changing currents in marriage November 25, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in ideas, life, science.add a comment
This article puts it really well.
“Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry,” Gloria Steinem proclaimed 25 years ago. She meant, of course, that women in large numbers were seizing the places in higher education and the professions that had formerly been closed to them, becoming the doctors, lawyers and executives that they once hoped only to wed. Over the past generation, the liberal notion of egalitarian marriage — in which wives are in every sense their husbands’ peers — has gone from pie-in-the-sky ideal to unremarkable reality.
We are seeing this trend in India as well, even though its picking up really slow. Educated women asserting their identity (to a certain extent) has gone in step with men being more broadminded ( to a certain extent ). But another result of this as the article points to is increasing inequality.
But this apparently progressive shift has been shadowed by another development: America’s growing gap between rich and poor. Even as husbands and wives have moved closer together on measures of education and income, the divide between well-educated, well-paid couples and their less-privileged counterparts has widened, raising an awkward possibility: are we achieving more egalitarian marriages at the cost of a more egalitarian society?
On a related note, is this in some sense contributing to this possibility ?
The human race would peak in the year 3000, he said – before a decline due to dependence on technology. People would become choosier about their sexual partners, causing humanity to divide into sub-species, he added.The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the “underclass” humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.
And it had to happen ! November 23, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in littlerockers.6 comments
This is really hot news. A very real example of where technology is taking us.
Go here and then continue reading.
I know this is not something new, but in the context of Little Rock I think its the first.
Several months ago, a friend of mine warned me that our high school community in Orkut was discussing matters that would either embarass or enrage our school management and some of the teachers. While admitting that nothing much could be done about this, he suggested that we should do everything to ensure that the knowledge of existence of the community is not easily proliferated to folks among our parents’ and teachers’ generation. He pointed me to a problem this creates and I thought it was technically valid when he said:
the entry of the earlier generation on to orkut would spell disaster for all of us ( i’m not sure how diplomatically correct you are on orkut , but i def am not ) … the day one of the teachers or parents arrive on orkut , will probably the day i delete my profile ( for orkut would not serve me any purpose any more if i have to censor my own self and not be who i am) …how carefully guarded is our LRIS community ? even current students of LRIS are in there … and we have all said things that we would not like teachers/parents to read for our own individual reasons …
Although it was a point well taken, it was going to be hard, purely on practical grounds as most would agree and on moral grounds ( as many would not ).
I frankly dont know whether the kids posting in the community I linked to are aware of the possibilities of this being busted. I would think they are and given that they are infact current students I think that is very courageous on their part to put up non-anonymous posts on controversial matters. Some of these might be rumours, some not, but many skeletons from many cupboards will be out in the open. Its unfair to judge the actions of these kids from standards other than those applicable to teenagers – at the point in life these excitements are hard to contain.
My reply to my friend was more futuristic than warranted, for the future seems to have arrived a little too soon.
By the time our teacher’s kids grow up enter orkut to see stuff written about their moms and dads and then alumni become teachers at LRIS and our parents’ generations become active online through retirement etc, they are going to discover a treasure trove !!
A free for all – everybody knows everything that there is to know. I admit life would be so uninteresting then.
I sometimes imagine how the crush dynamics in high school would have been if there was email back then in 1990s – all anyone wanted was someone’s email ID ( has its own problems, I admit)- there would have been no need for middlemen and middlewomen, classroom chits and postal addresses. The only ones who stand to lose today are those who would otherwise be middlemen and middlewomen. This is what technology does almost anywhere and everywhere, why then should high-school crush dynamics be an exception.
Technology does something else – introduce checks and balances. Teachers at LittleRock would now be under scrutiny like never before from empowered students and the power of anonymous protest if not severely abused ( naive to imagine it wont) will make things interesting.
Part of a phenomena November 23, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in economics, humor, ideas, media.add a comment
1.
The LA times has an article on the phenomenon. Its interesting because articles on new trends, fads and phenomena keep appearing in the media but this is one of those rare times when I felt a part of the phenomena and that the article is really talking about my story of being bowled over by Economic blogosphere. Linked through Mankiw chacha, my very Indian way of referring to one of my favorite bloggers.
2.
Question : What do you believe in ?
Answer : The invisible hand
…every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. [ From here. ]
3.
I really love the sarcasm ( for want of a better word ) that the British so skillfully employ in their writing. Dontchya ! Here is Tim De Lisle talking about how the Ashes opened.
Then they lost the toss. Actually that may have been a good thing.Then their national anthem was mauled by a nice-looking young woman.
Then Steve Harmison bowled the first ball: a wide. And not just an ordinary wide. There’s a moment in the film The English Patient when Ralph Fiennes chews on a piece of fruit and pronounces it “a very plum plum”. Well, this was a very wide wide. And the English didn’t feel very patient.
I have seen the movie and now that he mentions it, I remember the dialogue.
Dear readers November 23, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in blogging.9 comments
Just noted that the previous post completes 200 posts on this blog. I went back to notice that the 100th post was up here exactly 2 months back. 7 months for the first 100 posts, 2 months for the next 100. I dont promise that this trend will continue for too long but lets see what happens.
I have wondered how many of them read this blog and how often and how extensively and if there are any regular readers who I havent met. I would suspect a rough count of 15 regular readers give or take 3. Sometimes I think it would be good to know, to get atleast a single ‘roll-call’ in the comments section to just see what the number is like and who you are. But then I guess the good thing about the internet is the anonymity it provides and if your anonymity wasnt as dear to you, then I would have known by now – either through a comment/mail or a mention in a casual conversation if we already know each other.
So far so good – its been non-commital – you make no commitment to come back to read and I make no commitment to keep posting. In theory therefore any post may turn out to be the last post on this blog just as any visit of yours could be the last. Its in some sense a marketplace for ideas in some sense.
For now though, there have been a staggering 13 posts in a single day !
Readings from 1990s and a lone inspiration November 23, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in media, reminisces-1990s.add a comment
This is something completely trivial. I was in Class VIII, IX, X and XI then. An isolated memory from Manipal in the mid-1990s goes thus.
I would rush to pick up the newspapers- Indian Express and the Economic Times – when dad got home from work. And here is what I read.
Mondays : Investor’s guide in the Economic Times ( was crazy about the stock markets for a while in the 1990s ).
Tuesdays : La Creme de La Creme ( meaning “The Cream of the Cream” in French) in the Economic Times which contained mostly job classifieds. I remember wanting to see what jobs were there, what people who were looking to hire, where, the remuneration and other articles about the job market. I have no idea why I did this – I was in Class VIII-X then and now even 11 years later, I havent yet had my first job !!
Wednesdays : Brand Equity in the Economic Times and the Op-ed editorials from Mishirul Hassan in the Indian Express.
I have always found Hassan to be one of the best writers on Indian history. A Cambridge education professional historian, his commentaries on Indian political and social history have immensely contributed to my interest in this subject. Infact I remember no other columnist I read regularly by name. Yeah, its unlikely that any of the readers would know him or have known him from as early as 1990s for he is no celebrity scholar. Infact his claim to fame ( and controversy ) is opining that the Satanic Verses should not be banned on grounds of Freedom of Expression.
It was finding this article by him in the Outlook where he reviews Stanley Wolpert’s ( another India Expert ) book on the Indian partition that spurred me into writing this post. Over the years I have grown to disagree with some of his politics – but that really doesnt mean I have ceased to be enthralled by his commentaries. I guess some things never change. I looked online for archives of his articles from 90s but could not find any. I think reading some of these will likely bring back several states of mind from the 90s.
Thursday : Science and Technology section in the Economic Times
Friday : Corporate Dossier in the Economic Times meant reading stuff on Indian CEOs and happenings in the corporate scene – management gurus visiting India, some new socio-economic trend or some corporate party.
Sunday : Economic Times was great. So was Indian Express. I guess this is pretty much true today. In particular the ET had a special edition called Financial Times with mostly international content and corporate news, some columns with (or without) permission from Western Business dailies.
India and China as imperialist powers November 23, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in geo-politics, india.add a comment
I havent been posting too much on geopolitics as I would have been say an year ago. Looking through my article archive and the broadcaster blog archive, I see a gradual change in my kind of articles that interest me. Once in a while however, I come across some interesting ideas and viewpoints on geo-politics that I cant wait to put up here. Here is one.
Its impossible to know what it must have been to have lived in 17-18th century Europe when most nations set off to acquire colonies and justify the need for them as millions of people were exploited materially and otherwise. What did the media say, were there competing theories or arguments against colonialism, did the public really bother at all etc. The best we can do is to search for some such similar analogy today. Raja Mohan offers one comparing European colonialism to what India and China are doing in Africa – maintain ties with nations with questional credentials merely for trade purposes and import raw materials and either export them as finished products or for domestic consumption. He says :
Western activists argue, not entirely accurately, that the unfolding rivalry between China and India is similar to the scramble for Africa among rival European colonial powers in the 19th century. Irrespective of the analogy, India is certainly competing with China for oil and mineral resources in Africa. New Delhi might be way behind Beijing; but it is on the same road.The criticism of China and India is sharpest for supporting the government in Sudan, which is facing flak on the human rights front. Beijing and New Delhi, with their huge investments in Sudan’s oil fields, have no desire to sacrifice their energy interests to compel Khartoum to change its behaviour. Support from China and India has undoubtedly emboldened Sudan to defy the international system. The same is true in Burma, where both countries are competing for influence.
Ofcourse, he himself emphasizes, its not a perfect parallel or a case of history repeating itself. But he has a point nevertheless.
I want to marry somone November 22, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in humor, statistics.2 comments
…who can count. And unfortunately, the author of this article appears to be a guy.
Contrary to what you might think, the above wish will likely discourage over 99% of the people ( in my case, women) out there. Actually I should remember this so that I would have something to worry about when I am otherwise feeling good !
Okay, enough kidding. Here is more on the joy ( and virtues ??) of keeping count. Read the complete speech especially if you have any interest in medicine or the likes.
It doesn¹t really matter what you count. You don’t need a research grant. The only requirement is that what you count should be interesting to you.When I was a resident I began counting how often one of our patients had something forgotten inside them after surgery — either a sponge or an instrument. It wasn’t very frequently: about one in 15,000 operations. But they could be badly injured. One patient had a 13 inch retractor left in him and it tore into his bowel and bladder. Another had a small sponge left in his brain, which caused an abscess and a permanent seizure disorder.
Then I counted how often such cases happened because the nurses hadn’t counted all the sponges like they were supposed to, or because the doctors ignored nurses’ warnings that something was missing. It turned out to be hardly ever.
I got a little more sophisticated and compared patients who had stuff left inside them with ones who didn’t. It turned out that the mishaps predominantly occurred in patients with emergency operations or operations in which something unexpected was encountered ‹ like a cancer when one expected appendicitis. Things began to make sense.
If nurses have to track fifty sponges and a couple hundred instruments during an operation, already a tricky thing to do, it is understandably much harder under emergency circumstances, or when unexpected changes require bringing in lots more equipment. Punishing people more therefore wasn’t going to eliminate the problem. Only a technological solution would‹perhaps a way of scanning for sponges and instruments in everyone.
If you count something interesting to you, I tell you: you will find something interesting.
I cant agree more. I have counted before. And continue to.
Actually, this is my fourth post today on medical science and doctors. Hopefully I don’t have to see one soon !
"This word is rather tasty" ! November 22, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in science, weird.add a comment
The nature and extent of diversity – especially in the number of ways things can go wrong – never ceases to amaze me.
Lexical-gustatories involuntarily “taste” words when they hear them, or even try to recall them, she wrote in a study, “Words on the Tip of the Tongue,” published in the issue of Nature dated Thursday. She has found only 10 such people in Europe and the United States. One subject, Dr. Simner said, hates driving, because the road signs flood his mouth with everything from pistachio ice cream to ear wax. For example, the word “mince” makes one subject taste mincemeat, but so do rhymes like “prince.” Words with a soft “g,” as in “roger” or “edge,” make him taste sausage. But another subject, hearing “castanets,” tastes tuna fish. Another can taste only proper names: John is his cornbread, William his potatoes.
Read the complete article (again) if you dont the above. This is really weird.
Take a challenge November 22, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in economics, ideas.add a comment
Heads up B-school guys and gals. Economics guys and gals. Other thinking individuals.
Does boycott work ? Does it always work ? Under what circumstances does it ? and does it not ? Here is one of the most interesting discussions I read in the recent months. Infact, I had bookmarked it months ago, only now found time to put this one up.
Here is the question.
And here is the discussion. I wouldnt say “answer”, because the somewhat hypothetical nature of the question means it has no answer, or answers that cant be verified in practice.
For graduate students November 22, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in general.add a comment
Some of the best advice I have ever seen. No, this is not of the usual kind. Infact its too practical to be of the usual kind .
Thats a good start there ! November 22, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in general, humor, sport.add a comment
Its generally believed that the start of an essay gets people to really read through it, while the ending can help people retain what they read. And likely the above matters even more when the content itself is something people cannot ordinarily connect to – the college essay/statement of purpose for example.
Here are starts of two articles that I really liked.
When a man sees his end he wants to know that there has been some purpose to his life.
Any guesses on who is being talked about ?
The other one here :
There comes a time in the life of some sportsmen, only some, and it rarely comes more than once, when they believe they can do anything, even fly; when the idea of being vanquished is a distant, lonely world that strange beings inhabit; when the mind ceases to comprehend fear and when confidence breaches its barriers and flies forth into audacity without even recognising it. They call it being ‘in the zone’ and no drug has taken man there, for this is the lovely, unscripted real world.
Hard to guess who this one is about though, not enough context here.
Ofcourse, perhaps the all-time best known starts was Dickens in “The Tale of two cities”
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all doing direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
Update : Oh man !! Here is the funniest start in a long long time. And dont just stop at this – read the article – there is more (humor) there !
Controversy erupted again this week in Massachusetts over the fact that lawyers have sex.
No surprise the article is from Slate. They have some of the more funny articles /article titles I have seen as I noted before.
Degree of belief or frequency of occurence November 22, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in science, statistics.add a comment
Going by the last two posts, looks like I am staying on the doctors topic for a while !! Anyway, this single article contains several themes that interest me as a student and a curious observer of daily life.
Firstly this :
For example, a depressed patient told me she had read that the chances were 60 percent that she would respond to the antidepressant I had prescribed for her.“That means that 60 percent of the time I will feel better on this, right?” she asked.
Well, not exactly. I explained that if 10 people with a depression just like hers walked into my office, about 6 would be expected to respond to that antidepressant.
I hope you see that there is a difference between the two.
Consdier this example – “If there is a war between the US and China, there is a 50% chance it being a nuclear war.” Does it mean that if they fight 100 wars, 50 of them will be nuclear !! Or is it a degree of belief or strength of your conviction ?
How about this example – “There is a 0.7 probability that my classmates are male”. Does it mean that each person in class has 70% chance of being male ? Or is it that 7 out of every 10 are male.
The above infact is an example of frequentist and Bayesian interpretations of probability. Very simply, is probability something like a degree of belief or is it frequency of something happening ? Its quite an involved ( and unresolved ) debate ( like almost every other debate ! ).
Later in the article is something about how we intepret chance.
In a classic 1966 study, a group of subjects was told that a man had parked his car on a hill and that the car had rolled back into a hydrant after the man had left. The subjects were sympathetic to the man.But a second group of subjects, told that the car had rolled into another person after the man walked away, held him responsible, even though the cause was the same.
People might chalk up a minor mishap to chance, but they are reluctant to blame a serious event on bad luck. Someone or something has to be held responsible.
And finally the conclusion.
The truth is that random events can make or break us. It is more comforting to believe in the power of hard work and merit than to think that probability reigns not only in the casino but in daily life.
I think its more serious than that. My next post suggests why.
Good brain, bad brain November 22, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in science.add a comment
Here is a short account of something very interesting – “Toxic intimacy“.
Sitting in my office, he made little direct eye contact but was pleasant and clearly very intelligent. He had lots of interests: computers, politics and biking. But after an hour of speaking with him, I suddenly realized that he had not mentioned a single personal relationship in his life.“Who is important to you in your life?” I asked.
“Well, I have my family here in the States and some friends from work,” he said.
“Do you ever feel lonely?”
“Why would I?” he replied.And then I suddenly understood. He wasn’t depressed or unhappy at all. He enjoyed his work as a software engineer immensely, and he was obviously successful at it. It was just that human relationships were not that important to him; in fact, he found them stressful.
Amazing isnt it. The great mystery that the brain is – what is it within that mass of flesh that makes us geniuses, idiots, austistic, social butterflies, schizophrenic, recluses !
2.
An entire article about something we rarely think about.
To hold someone’s hand is to offer them affection, protection or comfort. It is a way to communicate that you are off the market.“It is a lot more intimate to hold hands nowadays than to kiss,” said Joel Kershner, 23. Because of that, he said, reaching for someone’s hand these days has more potential for rejection than leaning in for a smooch at a party where alcohol is flowing.
Blogs and online forums are rife with complaints of those who say their significant other does not want to hold hands. “When we go out, we always have a blast, but the one thing that bothers me is that he never holds my hand in public,” writes a woman. For older couples, letting go of hand-holding may be one more sign that they are pressed for time and too swamped for little acts of intimacy.
3.
Staying on the topic of the brain and its ways, here is something about why there maybe a good reason to read a man’s brain
The male susceptibility to the allure of the perfect car has not escaped the auto industry. In fact, it is heavily invested in discovering what kind of car turns a guy on.
This is not to say that the industry is uninterested in women’s taste in cars, but, at the risk of sounding sexist, I will venture a guess that women, as a group, do not think and feel about cars with the same peculiar passion that men do.
Dressing your doctor November 22, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in America, humor, sport.add a comment
Do you care how your doctor is dressed ?
Patients and colleagues may dismiss a young doctor’s skills and knowledge or feel their concerns aren’t being taken seriously when the doctor is dressed in a manner more suitable for the gym or a night on the town. There are also hygiene considerations: open-toed shoes don’t protect against the spills that commonly occur in patient care, and long, flowing hair can potentially carry harmful bacteria.
I havent particularly paid attention in the past probably because they werent awfully dressed anyway. Perhaps a case of negative reinforcement – if you get it right, nobody bothers ( or even appreciates ) but if you don’t, you are fried alive.
On a related note, I remember someone telling me that what we learnt in school about how a visit to the dentist is such a pain wasn’t quite true. He actually looked forward to visiting the dentist because she was apparently really really good-looking and asked me what would be a good way to ask her out. Turned out it was the right question asked to the wrong person because the treatment was soon over and while his tooth recovered, his heart took quite some time.
Where I shall spend my thanksgiving break November 22, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in CMU, general.add a comment
Warning : Its thankgiving time here – that means 5 days of holidays ( Tue-Sun).
Blogging, therefore, will be ..uuh…heavy !! ( hopefully )
[ The resolution of the photograph is so good that by clicking on it you can read the titles off the books in the book shelf. No kidding, go ahead and try it ! ]Some action items for this break ( so that I can hold myself accountable on Monday ) in order of decreasing ( increasing ??) weirdness -
- Delete most mails in sent items folder of all my email accounts and sort out the rest into folders !!
- Clean up my desktop – both real and virtual.
- Archive selected items for posterity, disk cleanup and defrag computer. Empty recycle bin !
- Watch 2 movies – “Proof” and another one I dont know.
- Blog(v)
- Attend lunch at Sanjika’s.
- Code Hidden Markov Models assignment. ( HMMs are my favorite mathematical model )
- Catch up on research stuff ; do more on the Information Retrieval Project work.
Although I should admit that its logistical reasons more than anything else that prevent me from taking a break and getting out of Pittsburgh, turns out there is a word for people who prefer to be indoors during breaks.
Once, there was the social butterfly. Now, the Young Indian Spender on high adrenalin is forgoing the night out and curling up at home instead. Insperience is the new getaway. Pop psychologists have identified it as the ‘cocooning’ trend
[ That link appears broken at the moment]
The (mostly) rational enquiry that is a man’s life November 20, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in contemplation, humor.4 comments
Or the unexalted ’sophistication’ that is a dog’s !
Reminds me of myself last night. Link from here.
Another first November 19, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in America.2 comments
Today for the first time since I came into the country on Aug 8th, 2004, after living in 4 houses in 2 cities, I knocked on a neighbour’s door to ask for something. No, not onions or ginger, it was the apartment owner’s number I was looking for – I was locked out of the house. Is that not the first thing we do in other places ?
Food for thought – WW II November 18, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in geo-politics, history.add a comment
So its about the food too !
The Wages of Destruction, by Adam Tooze is really fresh look at Nazi Germany. In an interview with Adam, he says :
However, there is no doubt that when the Third Reich invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 it did so in pursuit of not one, but three loosely coordinated programmes of mass murder: a mission to destroy the politically dangerous Jews of the Soviet Union; a long-term programme of colonization accompanied by the “removal” of virtually the entire native population – the so-called Generalplan Ost; thirdly, an immediate programme for death through starvation of the entire urban population of the Soviet Union, numbering approximately 30 million people, to release food for German use.Meanwhile, in early 1942 the food supply had emerged as an overriding preoccupation. The Hunger Plan of 1941, intended to remove the urban population of the Soviet Union from the food chain had been only a partial success. Germany now faced a severe shortage of grain and was forced to impose deep ration cuts even on the Wehrmacht. It was in this context that plan 1 (Judeocide) and plan 3 (general genocide through redistribution of food) converged. Goering and the Agricultural Ministry, now led by the sinister Herbert Backe, demanded a dramatic reallocation of grain and meat within the Nazi Empire, towards Germany. And it was in this context in the early summer of 1942 that Himmler happily agreed to accelerate the killing of the 2 million strong Jewish population of occupied Poland as a vital contribution to freeing up food for use by the Wehrmacht.
Those who still believed in the 1930s in a prosperous and secure future for Germany under an Anglo-American umbrella were simply naïve. Conquest and racial struggle were the only true routes to prosperity and security. Armaments were the means to that end. Hitler chose war in the autumn of 1939 because in light of renewed economic difficulties, he no longer believed that he could win the arms race with Britain and France. It was now or never. And he chose to escalate the war in 1941 with the invasion of the Soviet Union for the same reason. In the end of course the balance of force prevailed and Germany went down to defeat. But the remarkable thing surely is how close to success Hitler came.
Quite amazing, there is stuff about the WW II that is still coming out into the open, over 60 years after the last shot was fired/ first atom bomb was dropped.
Thats 28 feet November 18, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in humor.add a comment
…thats the distance between New York City and San Franciso.
Yeah, I know that you never knew that. [ Towards the second half of the video if you are in a particular hurry ]. More on behavior at Liberty University. My high school was more liberal than that !!
Why is the question always – Do you believe in God, why not do you believe in atheism ? Very interesting debate about God and Science here at the Time Magazine.
My belief in atheism is perhaps the only major aspect of my world-view that hasnt changed direction. My ideas of education, my people, my country, State-citizen relationship, aging, children, recreation, friendship, freedom, love, sex have all evolved ( and will continue to) and in many cases even undergone a dramatic change. Atheism though has stood steadfast and only further gone along the same direction since 1994.
Something more from Newsweek.
Some 30 scientists—one of the greatest collections of religious skeptics ever assembled in one place since Voltaire dined alone—examined faith from the evolutionary, neurological and philosophical points of view, and they concluded that some things only work if you do believe in them. Richard Dawkins, the British evolutionary biologist and author of the best-selling book “The God Delusion,” said he couldn’t have a spiritual experience even when he tried. After another panelist, neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran of the University of California, San Diego, explained that temporal-lobe seizures of the brain create profound spiritual and out-of-body experiences, Dawkins disclosed that he had participated in an experiment that was supposed to mimic such seizures—and even then he didn’t feel a thing.Dawkins obviously feels this loss is a small price to pay for freedom from superstition. But even physicist Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate and an outspoken atheist, acknowledged that science is a poor substitute for the role religion plays in most peoples’ lives. It’s hard, he said, to live in a world in which one’s highest emotions can be understood in biochemical and evolutionary terms, rather than a gift from God. Instead of the big, comforting certainties promoted by religion, science can offer only “a lot of little truths” and the austere pleasures of intellectual honesty. Much as Weinberg would like to see civilization emerge from the tyranny of religion, when it happens, “I think we will miss it, like a crazy old aunt who tells lies and causes us all kinds of trouble, but was beautiful once and was with us a long time.”
I couldnt agree more.
If we agree that the question of God and religion is one of the greatest unanswered questions of all times and one that is central to everything else in our life, then something else follows. If there are 2 group of people who believe in either of diametrically opposite hypotheses that far reaching implications on several other aspects of their life, then they must essentially be different kinds of people – so different that studying their brains might help.
And this is the first chapter from Dawkin’s latest book – The God delusion.
Repartees, debates and conversations November 18, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in economics, videos.add a comment
Friedman, circa 1970. Circa 1980. Circa 2005.
I have seldom seen such brilliant conversationalists and debaters. Why am I saying this – but I really wish sometimes there was someone I turn to for stimulation and/or advice, someone I knew who would have such insight, wealth of experience and intellectual integrity. Yeah I know, asking for Nobel Laureate who is a personal friend is tad too presumptuous.
Thats Former US Secretary of State George Schultz on Nobel Laureate Economist Friedman.
“Everybody loves to argue with Milton, particularly when he isn’t there.”
Here is an example of the above.
Gen. William Westmoreland, testifying before President Nixon’s Commission on an All-Volunteer [Military] Force, denounced the idea of phasing out the draft and putting only volunteers in uniform, saying that he did not want to command “an army of mercenaries.” Friedman, a member of the 15-person commission, interrupted him. “General,” Friedman asked, “would you rather command an army of slaves?” Westmoreland got angry: “I don’t like to hear our patriotic draftees referred to as slaves.” And Friedman got rolling: “I don’t like to hear our patriotic volunteers referred to as mercenaries.” And he did not stop: ” If they are mercenaries, then I, sir, am a mercenary professor, and you, sir, are a mercenary general. We are served by mercenary physicians, we use a mercenary lawyer, and we get our meat from a mercenary butcher.”
Karan Thapar domesticaly violated ! November 18, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in india, rant.add a comment
Karan Thapar asks:
To begin with, there is the whole question of what the Act means by domestic violence – it covers verbal abuse, emotional abuse, economic abuse and anything that tends towards them. For instance, emotional and verbal abuses are defined to include insults and ridicule. That means you can’t be sarcastic to your wife, it means you can’t call you brother-in-law an ass or a mother-in-law a nag even if both are those are correct. Surely, that’s a level of silliness, but it’s a part of your Bill.
Later in the interview, Renuka Chaudury, the minister for Women and Child development says :
I am empowering my women to have the right to access the dignity to their life, if they have been denied justice on other foras, if they have been given ex-parte divorce.
I might take all of this nonsense if Ms. Chaudury certifies that a muslim man insisting that his wife wear the burqa against her wishes ( which happens in non-zero % of the cases ) is considered domestic violence and the man brought to book. ( See this ) Can Ms. Chauduary say this without the Prime minister/Sonia Gandhi stepping in the next day to say that it is her personal opinion or she herself claiming I was misquoted by the press !
Later in the interview :
Renuka Chowdhury: There is always need for corrections and amendments in any law as we progress as a society develops and the needs arise. But for one hypothetically – before I reach the bridge and cross it – if you want me to make amendments, I won’t.Karan Thapar: In other words, let men suffer first, then I will correct the wrong I have done.
Renuka Chowdhury: It is not such a bad idea, except that I have such pity for men.
She must be reminded that her employer is the Govt of India, not the government of Indian women.
More on women’s status in India.
Women in power ( and powerful women ) November 18, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in humor, india, politics, sport.add a comment
1)
This is about women in power. In some good news, France might get a woman president, which would be great ! ( except she is representing the socialist party ). Good times for women politicians nevertheless.
I must quickly add that if anyone and especially women believe that in general their lot will improve merely by having one of their own on the top, you just have to turn to India/Pakistan/Bangaldesh/Sri Lanka for examples or even some of the Indian states. Politicians will do whatever it takes to be re-elected and in most cases, whatever the politicians do, it will be in order to retain power. Though I think they are much less likely to be corrupt. ( That issues such as status of women is not as much of a problem in places like France anymore is ofcourse another thing. )
2)
And here is something about powerful women. Zinedine Zindane has no doubt been an inspiration to millons of aspiring footballers all over the world. And atleast one model as well.
Life’s casual encounters November 18, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in America, economics, ideas, india.add a comment
Could the word “city” in Sex and the City refer to a 70,000 strong mid-western town ? Empirical social science research tells us something about where people live and why.
1.)
I have wondered why the sex ratios in American cities( and entire developed world I now hear ) are skewed towards more women compared to men. This paper offers a possible explanation that might atleast partially account for this trend.
Throughout the industrialized world, young women outnumber young men in urban areas. This paper proposes that such a pattern may be linked to higher male incomes in urban areas. The argument is that urban areas offer skilled workers better labor markets. Assuming that there are more skilled males than females, this alone would predict a surplus of males. However, the presence of males with high incomes may attract not only skilled females but also unskilled females. Thus, a surplus of women in urban areas may result from a combination of better labor and marriage markets. Swedish municipality data support the results.
2)
The contents of this post and more importantly the comments section came as quite a stunner to me. It says young people move to cities in order to enjoy anonymous and casual sex. Read the comments section – yes, its a small sample indeed but its hard to dismiss a hypothesis that at first might seem rather preposterous. An interesting comment says :
Less people looking over your shoulder, too. In a subruban environment, you’re more likely to know your neighbors and thus get interogated about the strange car in your driveway. Or, instead of letting your guest slip out in the morning, you might have to give them a ride to their car.
On second thoughts, isnt the fundamental motivation similar in sense even in India. Ofcourse this article is about people relocating to cities and also we in India havent gotten to the stage where casual/anonymous sex is the primary factor, maybe its just being around and breathing the same air as ‘interesting’/'hot’ men and women in the same age group. Why afterall do college students hang out on a certain streets in cities ( say MG/Brigade in Bangalore ) and the same people once married are less likely to hang out there ! There are great cinemas and food joints all over the place ! Why do people go to certain pubs because of the quality of the crowd ? Certainly, they arent referring to the average IQ of the crowd as much as they are talking about good looking and/or open-minded party butterflies.
3) Somebody is actually going to write a book on this – Why people live where they do -
Tell me about the place you live. Why did you pick your city or region? How did you go about picking it – what was your strategy? What other kinds of places did you look at? How has that choice affected the rest of your life? Your job or career? Friends, family, or romantic interests? Fulfillment and fun? Real estate jackpots or money pits? Would you do it differently next time? What cities and regions are on your radar for the future and why?
Firstly, I am amazed at the range of books for which a market exits in this country. Secondly, in India what does where you live depend on ? In my opinion, its either economic reasons – jobs/career or where you grew up. There appears pretty much nothing else – partly because moving to another state for reasons other than economic reasons is pretty much like going to another country. Or maybe I am wrong.
4) Staying on the same topic – isnt this such a creative piece of work. Ofcourse, your moral leanings apart.
Its raining CATfundas November 18, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in india, media, rant.add a comment
Saubhik Chakravarthy has this question about the recent shows on Indian TV ( I didnt watch any by the way ) that had experts taking questions about the CAT exam from aspiring applicats. He is bang on the mark when he asks :
I wondered though, every time I caught the show this week, whether a televised exam guide was really helpful. Which is to say if an “expert” tells me that my weak areas should be covered and my strong attributes should be optimally used so that I can make up for my weaknesses, would I be any wiser? If I am nervous about the quantitative bit of the test, would the advise that I should focus on the main areas inspire more confidence? If an expert says this year’s exam paper is likely to be easier than last year’s — last year’s was apparently really tough — should I worry less?
I dont blame the media at all. Here is why – we are talking about 20 somethings that the show caters to and this is no comparison to child targetted advertising being unethical. The media will do something because it anticipates that there are aspirants out there who will find the show helpful and consequently viewership translates into advertising revenue.
What I would like to say and in doing so I believe that it might be a favor to Saubhik since he doesnt need to be politically incorrect and bear the burder of calling a spade a spade. If there is any serious aspirant who really finds that these experts will have anything new for her/him a day before the exam, one must cast a doubt on that applicant’s competence, leadership qualities, commonsense, emotional quotient and the sense of initiative. Its quite likely then that the esteemed IIMs ( and this is certainly no sarcasm here ) could do without them. In other words and the words of the aspirants (and their role models) themselves, what is the ‘value-add’ ( to the aspirants’ prospects, not the channel!) of these platitudes at the eleventh hour ?
Infact Sameer my very good friend from KREC who is now at IIM, Calcutta apparently took some questions on this show on CNN-IBN or so. I would like to ask Sameer just to make sure I am not missing something ( I have never written the exam myself) – was there a question from the aspirants that is not quite standard knowledge or that has not quite a standard answer.
The dog and the bone November 17, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in CMU, humor, littlerockers.add a comment
Today is my school buddy Raghuraj’s birthday. I sent him this card a while ago. He is taking the CAT exam shortly ( with over 150,000 other individuals). May the bones be with you !
We were neighbours in Class X back in Little Rock – 1996-97. Never since.
By the way, a sentence doesnt necessarily logically follow from its predecessor. This might be an exception though. The silver lining is that he has learnt his lessons. The not-so-silver non-lining is that I probably havent – my current officemate Sameer says that he prefers to work from library or any public area, shortly anywhere but 2 person office we share.
You probably realize though that “not-so-silver non-lining” and “silver lining” are more similar than different.
Funniest thing I heard today November 17, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in humor.1 comment so far
Jane Galt, the Economist reporter and one of the authors of one of the most popular economics blog is moving to DC for a short-term assignment and is looking for a car. And so she writes :
I’m therefore looking for someone who:
a) wants to rent, for the short term, their car to someone who drives like a grandmother and has never been in an accident. Seriously. Ask anyone who’s ever driven with me; they will tell you long tales of my maddening caution
b) (more likely) sell me a piece of crap that will run for six months. I don’t care what it looks like as long as it is reliable, gets more than four miles a gallon, and fits my legs. It has to cost less than $3500, that being the cost of a long term rental from Avis.
To which one of the responses was :
Welcome to the neighborhood.Have you considered stealing a car? It is quite a popular option here.
Indeed a funny take on the crime rate in DC. On a related note, I wonder how Washington DC can be the murder capital of the United States. Is it a pun I wonder.
I have a lot more to write on Jane, but another day. For now I will just say I am surprised at the standards she has set for the car – 4 miles a gallon.
See ya November 16, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in economics.add a comment
You have done well old man. Its been worth it. Must read this sometime.
Other memorable quotes from Friedman.
This is some India related trivia.
“A FIVE per cent per annum rate of increase in real national income seems entirely feasible on the basis of both the experience of other countries and of India’s own recent past. The great untapped resource of technical and scientific knowledge available to India for the taking is the economic equivalent of the untapped continent available to the United States 150 years ago.”
- Nov 5, 1955, Friedman in a note during his visit to the Ministry of Finance, Government of India.
Less than 5,000 words long, today the contents of this memorandum have become standard thinking among reform-minded economists in India. But at the time it was written, it must have been nothing less than heresy. It certainly did not see light of the day for 37 years until it was published in a volume edited by Subroto Roy and William E James.
[ Linked from here. ]
And I reserve the best for the last.
There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government. And that’s close to 40% of our national income.
Lets play November 13, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in America, humor.add a comment
Sometimes I have fun too.
Learning curve November 13, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in humor, ideas, science.add a comment
For nearly a decade I have heard about the learning curve, but never seen one. Now I just made one.
Sadiq’s Linux learning curve[ Click for larger version ]
My roommate Sadiq is a subject for my experiments.
I gave him my laptop with the linux command prompt and asked him to tpye something until a valid response results and keep trying to maximize valid responses. Remember he is a doctor, is very well-versed with computer technology but not computing and definitely not Linux. He did some programming last in school in 1997 !
And here is his ‘learning curve’. Each time a valid response is generated he gets 1 point, else he gets zero. This is a simple plot of how he progresses. This is very less data to say anything at all – this is really just fun. ( for me atleast, if not for the subject ). How do we extrapolate this curve ? Hard to say, he might run out of any meaningful thing to type. I suspect what he has got is really the low-hanging fruit – stuff like clear, file and help. Though he got lucky when he typed “cal” which shows up a calender.
The next thing is to try with someone like my parents, whose knowledge of computers is elementary but not zilch, but not as much as Sadiq’s either. Another step down the ladder would be to try this with someone who is educated and knows English but has never worked with a computer.
Finally, lets give him a chance. And maybe him.
Old things with new eyes November 12, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in ideas.add a comment
Graphs and plots in general and a time series in particular, to me a thing of beauty ( the other thing is a probability distribution/histogram). In simple terms, a time series is just a plot where we are looking at how “things” change with time and probability distribution is something that tells you what “thing” is more likelier than what other “thing”. The “things” maybe as broadly as it pleases you.
Here is a lovely example of “a visual representation of air traffic in the United States over the course of the day, using FAA data.”
As Russel Robert says :
Each flight is represented as an animated path of light between the departure city and the destination city. The visual image that results is an illuminated map of the United States. The borders of the country emerge and then cities even though no boundary or city is shown explicitly. The animation also evolves over time. At first, you see only darkness. Then the East Coast becomes illuminated and the light moves west as the sun rises across the country. Then Hawaii is lit up with planes going and leaving there. And at the end of the day, the last red-eye flights head westward from California.
If you like that, you might want to see more such and similar ones here.
Other examples of some amazing visualizations of data – here and here.
Random sunday afternoons November 12, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in contemplation, rant.2 comments
Quoting from a recent mail to a friend :
I dont know…on a completely unrelated note, there are a million things running in my mind…million questions/thoughts or mutinies as Naipaul would put it …only if had a million hours of nothingness to write/speak/blog about these …And on a even more unrelated note, I wonder sometimes some things may never come to the fore/written/painted/drawn/built just because there is a lot to do on a damn sunday afternoon !!
I recognize that was rather impulsive ; for the naivete is in assuming that if you knew something really important would happen by not working on a Sunday afternoon, you wouldnt be doing it.
Ironically, Sunday afternoons are the most stressful part of the week. When you have taken it easy late Friday and soft-peddled work much and most of Saturday, you wake up on a Sunday morning to realize what was pending over the weekend should happen that day. My only identity then is that of (an overworked) graduate student.
But nothing is as bad or as good as it seems or is made out to be. And so to turn coat again, its probably not at all that when on Friday evenings you feel :
One day you will see that it all has finally come together. What you have always wished for has finally come to be. You will look back and laugh at what has passed and you will ask yourself… ‘How did I get through all of that?
Yeah man, sometimes I crib.
( Thanks to Natasha for the quote by the way )
Horny people – one billion and growing ! November 12, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in humor, india, life.1 comment so far
Here is something like a day in the life of a Bombay Taxi driver.
[ Linked in from here ]. Actually its also up here where they have translated some of the Hindi dialogues. In particular, imagine telling them to your date :
Jaaneman, main tumhe dil aur jaan se chahta hoon. Tumhari yeh bhari aankh, yeh bhari naak, yeh bhare hontth… main chumma lena chahta hoon.
‘Translated’ as :
My life, my heart, I love you more than my life. Your full eyes, your full nose, your full lips… I want to kiss you.
The CMU statistical machine translation system could do better I imagine. But it wouldnt turn up this funny, uh !
What did that mean anyway. “Ok, Horn Please” that the video is titled.
Here, I realize is my own experience with a Bombay Cabwala. My first day in India during my visit last year Dec 24th, 2005 [ yeah, the date on the photograph is wrong !], I happened to see this :
[ Click for larger version - else its makes no sense ] Human sacrifice November 12, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in life.3 comments
Aswin challenges you to think, about yourself, your priorities and their place in the world, about how important a personal cause is to you relative to a larger cause and what you would give up to see that accomplished. You may want to visit the post before you continue.
I will play the game unconditionally and later add caveats that will render meaningless everything I write .
On first thoughts, this actually sounds like a reasonable deal.
Forget about our own lives, are we noble enough to give up our possessions for a greater good like curing the world of AIDS? Most of you might blindly say ‘yes’ to that question but you’re not thinking enough – With a sway of my magic wand, you will LOSE your money, your laptop, your home, your car – everything!
Or maybe I am assuming that I am indeed told and so is the world that my sacrifice has lead to the cure, which is actually quite ridiculous. So lets say I dont assume that. Even then, that is not a bad deal at all. Lets assume that only I know this little secret and I am never to disclose this or that I am psychologically mutated to disable that ‘feature’ in me. Even then, can you imagine the morale booster I would have to know that my sacrifice brought this about even if none else knew it ! With that kind of an ‘achievement’ I may end up with a well-being/morale than I currently enjoy !! But maybe I am still making the wrong assumption. But if I weren’t to ever know that there is a causal relationship between the disappearance of my possessions and the cure for AIDS, then lets see what happens. Imagine, I accept the deal and the moment I do it, AIDS has disappeared and so have my possessions and so has my memory of my contribution to it. Would I do it then? Yes, I would because it makes no difference – if I didn’t know about my prior middle class status, I would be just another poor guy who is going to work his way up and if I did know about my prior status, then the above in bold would apply.
So now that I have played the game fairly, let me write my thoughts on the idea behind the game. This game is so open-ended and to be fair to Aswin, he would have had to write a 2000 word post to make the rules of the game unambiguous. So while there are so many reservations I have about the way the game is structured, I get the essence of it, I have played it in the spirit and there is no nitpicking here. [ Except that I would rather go to prison for 5 years than lose my memory !].
So at this point I am diverting from Aswin’s content/packaging while using the spirit of his post as a chance to make a few points.
1.
One of those things that differentiates mankind from the animal kingdom is how extraordinarily
co-operative our species is on how large a scale. The other difference between animals and man is what we are ready to kill for. Animals kill each other for food and/or self-defense. We kill each other, among other things, for the sake of ideology and the determination and enthusiasm to do so is most intense if it were a religious ideology.
2.
I admit that when we compare soldiers who fight for their country and those fighting for their religion, we may at times be on a slippery slope. Before you flame, I am talking about the fundamental philosophical difference and NOT about the means such as the attack on civilians in crowded market places etc. As Sidin asks in this post :
Is there, at a very basic level, any difference between a religious zealot who is prepared to kill and die for his religion and a member of the armed forces? Both have picked up causes they were born into with little choice. (You normally don’t choose your country and also accept the religion you were born into. Both with little question.) Both possibly consider their respective causes essential to their safe existence. (And in several places in this country people of a religion stay together because the law simply cannot protect them.) They follow orders blindly even if they know they are protecting or fighting for a country/religion which may be committing moral/humanitarian evils. (Nazi soldiers for instance. But one must still obey if one is a soldier.) So then why is one portrayed so heroically while the other is a heinous criminal?
3.
Thirdly, in my opinion, sacrifice as a virtue is misunderstood at best or overrated at worst. In several and most cases, people make sacrifices only if there is a potential for future payoff. ( Read on before you quit and leave me a misunderstood man. ) Ofcourse, the worst thing to do is to assume that this payoff is monetary – which in most cases is anything but. When things are not reciprocal, they are perhaps philanthrophic in nature. Even in such a case, nobody indulges in giving things away if they dont see a benefit in it, even if it comes in terms of ‘mere’ satisfaction. Nobody ever does something so that they can feel miserable about it. And this is true even of religion. People are ready to blow themselves up because that is what they believe is a sureshot way to go to heaven or prepare for a better after-life. In very crude terms, its a deal they strike with the God they believe will reward them in future. And few things apart from religion have this power over man. [ And am I glad nothing has such a power over me ! ]. So while we may think they are being idiots, they are doing something that is entirely in tune with basic human tenets – they are not sacrificing their life, infact its an extremely selfish act according to their world-view.
So if everyone is selfish then what is commendable, what is virtuous and what differentiates people. The virtue comes into play when people decide the range of things or actions that indeed give them non-reciprocal benefits. Monetary contributions to a charity is an example. It also comes from aligning some of your goals some of the time with that of others and working to achieve both. Like for example seeing a non-equivalence between working 18 hours a day with no time for family versus seeing time spent with family as an investment in your kids’ future, your spouse’s present/future and duties that come with being a committed family man and your own well-being that is interlinked to that of your family and vice-versa [ known as kin selection in evolution terms].
Baring exceptional cases therefore, selfishness and sacrifice/selflessness should themselves not be prejudiced and must be seen in context. As the quote that goes :
If I am not for myself, who will be? If I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?
When my friend Sadiq asked me the other day what I thought was the purpose of life, I said that there is a purpose that we build for ourselves and to me, its to be happy, on average. (In a psychopathic case, my happiness may entirely come from say yours ! ). I know its not interesting, but lets say its definitely not submission to a certain being/being one with a certain entity/going to a certain place where x number of virigins await me.
why oh why is this happening to my country November 12, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in india, rant.add a comment
Another Indian holy cow, says the Indian Express.
Aswin has a wonderful post here – which I urge you guys to participate in. I am heading there in a while. But if you read this, it appears that his estimate on the price of human life was rather high !
How to win elections in India – easy, just use the US foreign policy as a plank.
When in the UK, do as Indians do. I have seen this happening in one of the labs here in Carnegie Mellon that has an unusually large number of Desis.
An assignment takes me to the Indian embassy located on a grand structure close to the arty Covent Garden. And you are made to feel right at home, ’cos despite being located in a first world nation, the organisation and services are as third world as can be. The same chaos, same bureaucracy, same untidiness, same passing-of-the-buck that goes on back home. Nehru’s proud bust in the foyer is the official smoking zone, and R. Venkataraman peers through the coat-hangers. Sure, we know presidents are pieces of antique furniture in India, but do we have to advertise that on foreign shores?
As as aside, at the same site I like this tongue-in-cheek remark ( in the context of London ofcourse )
Being a quid-challenged backpacker (a bad word these days), I have no choice but to shack up with a B&B lady. For the benefit of the more affluent, B&B stands for Bed and Breakfast, though I think they should call them C&SL outlets—Cornflakes and Shared Loos.
That thing the blogosphere does November 11, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in America, blogging, ideas, politics.add a comment
I dont know. I dont know anything. Sometimes, I just dont have an opinion, or I hold several views that seldom reconcile – either because I consider myself insufficiently informed or because thats very much the nature of the problem.
One of the consequences of being a blogosphere freak is being reminded of the above again and again. Mainstream media is elitist, there is nothing you can do about that. But with the blogosohere, people who would otherwise never be relaying their views do so, creating such a diversity of views that you actually get to see democracy in action. ( okay, that was some exaggeration there ). Anyway, let me get to the point.
Consider this post from Mankiw Chacha, my very Indian way of referring to one of my favorite bloggers !
Sometimes the most responsible thing a person can do on election day is stay at home.…So the next time a friend of yours tells you he’s not voting, don’t try to change his mind. It’s a good bet that if he’s not voting, he’s not been following the election closely anyway. Maybe he watched a baseball game instead of the debates. Maybe he is bored silly with all the talk of targeted tax cuts, privatized social security, and campaign finance reform. Maybe he’s as ignorant about public policy as those focus groups of undecided voters that are the media’s latest darling.
So rather than pushing your friend to the polls, perhaps you should thank him for staying at home. He’s making your vote count just a little bit more.
Yeah, its that last bit there – you already see this is getting controversial since what is implied is that some votes are actually more important than others. Blasphemous, isnt it ? No wonder, this article he wrote in 2000 US presidential election eve wasn’t approved for publication by his editors at Fortune.
Setting aside all political correctness, (of which I have been accused of having little) , my first impression was maybe he is more right than wrong. But lets come to that later, for now head to the comments section.
Commenter 1 explains it as ‘Crowd-think’, or a sense of belonging.
I suspect a lot of people vote for the same reason I do – they want to “cheer on” policies and politicians they support and feel like they belong to something larger.
Commenter 2 thinks like an economist
You’ve made my point: the “feeling” you write of is based on fallacy. If you really go to the polls to enjoy the fruits of camaraderie and groupthink, then the actual process of casting the ballot would be irrelevant. You could simply go to campaign rallies and prance about like a good little cheerleader. Alternatively, you could go to the polling station to take in the atmosphere, then leave when the marginal cost of staying equals the marginal benefit. The casting of the ballot would be irrelevant at best and a time-consuming diversion at worst.
Commenter 3 treads the middle-path between symbolism and pragmatism
The reason they want more people to vote is because that lends legitimacy to the elected government, meaning that the state is free-er to do whatever the hell it wants. The majority of people just want to get on with their lives, without having a bunch of politicians running around changing stuff for the sake of it. There is no way of voting for this in a democracy, especially in the media age, as democratic politicians have to sell themselves as proactive and exciting in order to get the people out and voting.
Commenter 4 flames Mankiw Chacha
Why is it that whenever I hear someone advocating that some people shouldn’t vote (or worse be allowed to vote) they are always concerned with the intelligence of the other guy? This idea that people don’t vote because they aren’t well enough informed just sounds wrong. I’m an advocate of voting. There are two reasons I’ve heard from people who don’t vote: 1) My vote doesn’t count — this is the mistaken notion that their 1 vote out of millions doesn’t mean anything; 2) Politicians are crooks and I’m not going to legitimize a corrupt system. To be sure, those are paraphrases of answers that might be very involved. But, oddly enough, no one answered the way Mankiw’s article suggests.
Commenter 5 is the politician’s worst enemy – a fresh perspective
You should vote, and encourage your friends and neighbors to vote, regardless of how many issues they in fact vote on or which side they vote for. The reason is that politicians appeal to large groups of likely voters with policy proposals and legislation. The elderly vote; therefore, there are many laws and proposals to benefit the elderly. Twenty-somethings do not vote, so politicians ignore them. You as an individual will benefit by getting lots of people like you to go to the polls — doesn’t matter who they vote for. Once you get people to the polls, politicians will bid for their votes.
Coming back to the original point of the article, I think it makes sense. My uninformed vote would dilute and distort election results. But unless it is impressed upon the citizen that voting is his duty, he will unlikely ever take up upon him the task of informing himself so that vote can count. The line of reasoning would be something like this – “Well, my uninformed vote is a danger to democracy. Therefore, I will not vote.” – instead of – “My uninformed vote is unhealthy to democracy but voting is my duty. Therefore, I will keep myself informed so that the next time I can vote.”
Yes, hanging around these topical and intellectually stimulating blogs, and the comments section that are high on intellectual exchanges laced with humor/tongue-in-cheek likely improves your analytical and debating skills and might even increase your knowledge. There is however a risk of turning you into an intellectual snob. Now lets get really tongue-in-cheek here – the only people that the blogosphere does no harm are those who are intellectual snobs already, others beware !
On being (a) Nobel (Laureate) November 8, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in contemplation, economics, humor.1 comment so far
In some sense a continuation of the previous post, I thought let me put this up independently.
So yeah, the Swedes are known to make what turn out to be early morning calls to American Nobel Laureates informing them about the Nobel Prize and in the process perhaps catch them in ‘compromising positions’ as with MIT physicist Franz Wilczek.
Wilczek was in the shower when the call from Sweden came at 5:30 a.m. Tuesday morning. “It was this person with a beautiful accent, and it was so early, so I was immediately hopeful,” said Wilczek’s wife, Betsy Devine. “Frank came in, dripped all over the floor, and talked to half the Swedish Academy.”
Ofcourse, there are exceptions as with Thomas Schelling last year.
He sits me down in his living room and tells me that unlike other Nobel laureates, he wasn’t woken at an ungodly hour but at 7am, just seconds before journalists started phoning him. “Somebody said I was supposed to get the call by five in the morning but they didn’t have my phone number. Which leads me to believe that Swedish intelligence isn’t very good – I’m in the telephone book.”
Staying on the theme, here is something that might happen to your neighbours (and perhaps relatives) if you win the Nobel or the other way around.
For a little grounding Schrock called his mother, who is a bit hard of hearing. He said ”Mom, I won a Nobel! She said, ‘A what?’ “Schrock’s drowsy Winchester neighbors woke up just as confused with a phalanx of news trucks parked in front of their homes.”I heard it on radio when I was half asleep but thought, ‘That couldn’t be Dick,’ ” said Ellen Curran, who lives across the street. Then, when she saw the trucks she called her neighbor, Harry Werlin. Werlin said he had gone over to the Schrocks’ a bit earlier to ”borrow an egg and bust his chops.””Of course I didn’t need an egg,” said Werlin, who has jogged with Schrock most mornings for more than a decade. ”I just needed an excuse to go over there.”
By mid-afternoon, Curran’s 7-year-old daughter, Grace Lees, had written and delivered a new edition of Grace’s News, her very own newspaper, which has a circulation of one. The headline: ”Richard Schrock wins the Nobel Prize, Hurrah Hurrah!”
Werlin, who owns a Cambridge photography store, said he didn’t know how smart his neighbor was. ”How could I?” he said. ”I mean, I knew he was a little above the average guy and even the average professor, but I’ve asked what he does 30 times and I still couldn’t explain it to you.”
On an infinitely more serious note !, Paul Samuelson, 1970 Nobel Laureate asks “Is There Life After Nobel Coronation”. His conclusion is interesting :
Is the joy of the universe outweighed by the Weltschmertz of those who do not win? October can be a somber month in the Senior Common Room: many are called, few are chosen. On the other hand, science, scholarship, and human welfare are bigger than the passing mob of researchers who struggle with them. A more egalitarian society, with no differential payoff to effort and to ability, however acquired, might well be a more serene society. One must weigh against this how actual humans have evolved under the realistic Darwinian and cultural conditions of the past: perhaps cumulative progress might then result to be the less? Is there not some realistic tradeoff between more equality and more cumulative progress?
Your favorite moment in class ? November 8, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in economics, humor.add a comment
1. Here is something on Nobel Laureate Economist Milton Friedman from his student and now GMU professor Russel Roberts :
You asked if was a student of Milton’s. In my first semester at Chicago as a graduate student in economics, Milton taught a non-credit class for anyone who was interested. The format was quite simple. We could ask him anything we wanted and he would answer. Most of the first-year students sat in and we did ask him everything. We’d even ask him questions off the core exam—the qualifying exam required at the end of the first year. He usually got them right, but he struggled once or twice which made us feel very good. In the middle of that semester, he won the Nobel Prize which was very exciting.
What must that be like !
2. And yeah, a whole lot of economics talks for your hearing pleasure, if any
3. Atanu Dey goes after Swaminomics again. He has done this before.
4. And finally, why are we so enthusiastic about this ?
Fortune wise November 7, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in humor, life.add a comment
I had this fortune cookie lying on my table. I picked it up and lost in my own world, as I was, I peeled it, forgot to remove the fortune and put it into my mouth !
As I was munching on it, I realize I had forgotten to pull the forture out and I wondered how it happened – what kind of a person would forget something so elementary. Paused, spat the paper out and opened it.
It read – “Accept thyself”. In other words, next time you swallow the fortune, forgive yourself.
Anything more to know ? November 5, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in contemplation, life.4 comments
Natasha’s blog which I frequent (frequently!) has a few nice words up there.
I know its a poem, maybe she doesnt ( or perhaps she does ) expect me to take it literally. But think about it – if you were to describe to person A all the attributes of another unknown person B that Natasha says are not the only attributes that matters, A will still have a really really good idea about the person that B is !! ( books, significant relationships, failures, where u grew up, good/bad habits, overriding passions, job etc. etc. )
Yes, I agree that there will still be lots of ‘undescribables’ about people – there is nothing like knowing a person for a length of time. But undescribable doesnt mean undeterminable – many of those undescribables will already be determined by all the attributes Natasha has covered.
Besides, the extent to which we intend to know a person depends on at what level, for what duration we deal with her/him. To be fair to Natasha, she is probably talking about intimate people in one’s life, presumably what you need to know before you choose a spouse or so, in which case that would be more accurate.
What they didnt tell me at school November 5, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in science.add a comment
….about the importance of dispassionate logic, moving from evidence to conclusion, checking assumptions and explicitly stating inferences and hypotheses.
I have been a student of science for about 18 years now. Science at school was about facts, models, calculations and problem solving. I had heard the phrase – “Scientific method” – but a phrase it was. ( Why else would I wonder how my biology friends in Class XI and XII studied rats, mice and frogs !! ). I may have been able to define and explain it but never had a feel for it. It wasnt until much later that I felt I had goten the spirit and even later before I realized that scientific method and the idea of the scientific method pervades life, that it exists outside the classrooms and our examinations.
Becoming a scientist is as much as a choice of profession as it is a choice of culture – a way of thinking, a commitment to sustained intellectual curiosity. By the same measure, while we might need formal education for academic positions and cutting-edge research, we can be scientists even without these, even if in a more a limited sense of the term. I am beginning to realize then that being a scientist is a state of mind.
As with other states of mind, if you havent been in that state, you will are likely to find the previous sentence rather cliched and hollow. [ Needless to say, the converse is not implied ]
A above passage is from here.
Why I love the Slate November 5, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in humor, media.add a comment
Because none other well-known magazine puts up stuff like this.
Well, if you dont know a thing about Borat/Ali G, educate yourself here. ( Thats what I did 2 months ago )
Okay, I forgot this one.
Height and stupidity November 5, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in economics, ideas, life.add a comment
Eureka !
I finally found out why I am stupid.
To the many indignities visited upon shorter than average males — lower incomes, disadvantage in mate selection, cut rates for their deposits at the local sperm bank, long odds of making the N.B.A. — has now been added this one: short people are stupider than tall people. That’s the finding of a recent study by two Princeton economists who conclude, painfully for those of us (men) who are south of 5 feet 9 inches, that the reason taller people make more money is that they are smarter.
I also found out why I will make a better husband.
Darwin himself intriguingly suggested that while there is a general evolutionary bias toward greater size, survival-of-the-fittest pressures on our ancestors, who were smaller than their primate competitors, may have led to the development of human intelligence. Or, as Hall speculates, “the relative smallness and weakness of smaller human ancestors might be responsible for nothing less than the birth of civilization.” Speaking from his own experience, Hall surmises that being short as a boy forced him to develop not only greater mental quickness and wit but also greater empathy and understanding.Herewith some advice for the ladies: When surveying the scrum that is the schoolyard (or the boardroom), resist the strapping breast-beater at the top of the pile and consider the runt at the bottom. He’s less likely to become president, but he might turn out to be the better husband.
My height by the way is 5′5.5″.
Ofcourse, I am using this more as a form of humor than anything else. As with several statistical/empirical studies I quote here, these are likelihoods, aggregate figures – so I wouldnt like to mislead the female readers – you never know – maybe I am smart but (will make a) terrible husband.
A part of the problem of establishing direction of causality ( if A increases with B, did A cause B or did B cause A ). Consider for example the findings of this study versus this one.
Okay, okay, I know the last few posts have been rather controversial.
Love or mate selection or both November 5, 2006
Posted by Sharath Rao in economics, ideas, life.add a comment
More on sex ratios now.
Lebanese women are considered as being one in their class. Here is an article that seeks to explain why.
For a few weeks twice a year, after Ramadan and before Christmas, thousands of Lebanon’s young men return from jobs abroad — and run smack into one of the world’s most aggressive cultures of female display. Young women of means have spent weeks primping and planning how to sift through as many men as possible in the short time available. The austere month of Ramadan ended a week ago.
The country’s high rate of unemployment pushes the young men to seek work elsewhere, sometimes in Western countries like France and Canada, but mainly in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the other oil states on the Persian Gulf. The women, inhibited by family pressures, are generally left behind.
“The social pressures on young women are just huge,” Ms. Yazbek continued. “The focus is more and more on being beautiful, on pleasing other people. The competition is intense, conformity is a big thing, and everyone, rich and poor, gets plastic surgery. You can go to parts of Beirut where almost every young woman has the same little nose.”
Its the sentence that I have boldfaced that gets me wondering. How come do the women face no family pressures against being “world’s most aggressive cultures of female display”, but do face pressures when it comes to seeking jobs abroad. Strikes me as being something quite weird and something that the article should have addressed. Or perhaps I dont understand Lebanese mores well enough to comment.
And finally, this is quite striking as well.
“The guys that remain in Lebanon are the stupid ones!” exclaimed Nayiri Kalayjian, 19, who was hitting the bars on Monot Street, in central Beirut, with three girlfriends.“We’re too good for them,” she said. “The ones who remain in Lebanon are the ones with closed mentalities, the ones who just want a virgin girl. You start to feel that the men who stay in Lebanon are the ones with no ambition in their work, and so you wonder, why are they still here?”
I agree that this is just an instance but stuff like this gets one to give a second thought to theories that seek to de-romantisize romantic love and argue that while higher, finer, more spiritual purposes may be atrributed to romantic love, it still has very strong remnants of calculative mate selection that evolution has built into us.
In short, love being blind is probably an exception, not a rule. And arranged marriages is formalizing and institutionalizing the non-blind variety of love !
[ Thanks to Marginal Revolution for the pointer ]
